What are these violent conflicts about? The simplest answer is political power in a disputed territory. Most of the conflicts involve a regional minority who want to separate and form their own state, or at least their own autonomous region. The conflicts in Burma (Karens), India (Kashmir), the Palestinian territories (occupied by Israel), Philippines (Muslims), Russia (Chechnya), Sri Lanka (Tamils) and Turkey (Kurds) are more or less of this type. In other cases, the insurgent ethnic group wants to take over government of the whole country: thus Burundi’s majority Hutus wish to take power from the minority Tutsi government.
