Modern Conflicts

Throughout the 1990s, a devastating series of separate but connected wars were waged across the territory of the Western Balkans as the former state of Yugoslavia collapsed. The subsequent wars that were fought in the chaos of Yugoslavia's collapse were waged across Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Kosovo. More than 140,000 people were killed throughout these wars and millions more were forcibly displaced by the violence, which made them the most violent conflict fought in Europe since World War II at the time. This is the story of how Yugoslavia was created, why Yugoslavia collapsed in the early 1990s, and why the wars that followed were so monstrously catastrophic.

From 2003 through 2005, the first legally defined genocide of the 21st-century took place in the Darfur region of Sudan. Compared in brutality and scale to the Rwandan Genocide a decade earlier, the genocide in Darfur was carried out under the regime of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan and perpetrated against Darfur's non-Arab, African communities. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost as a consequence, and the echoes of the genocide in Darfur have reverberated through to the present day, and continue to influence events in the country and in Africa at large today.

In January of 2013, rebel factions in Mali backed by al-Qaeda had overrun the entire northern half of the country—an area larger than the entire country of France. Working on expanding their area of control, the rebels began marching on the Malian capital itself and seemed poised to overrun the entire country - which would have transformed Mali into a Jihadist-run state directly on Europe's doorstep. Unwilling to let that happen, France decided to militarily intervene with more than 5,000 troops, and this is what happened next.

In the summer of 2023, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a major military counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces across the eastern front in Ukraine. It was one of the biggest military operations to have taken place in Europe since the Second World War and involved the participation of hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides. Ukraine's forces were heavily equipped and trained by Western and NATO militaries for the offensive, while the Russians spent months heavily digging in and fortifying their lines with thousands of miles of trenches, minefields, and artillery dugouts. For months the Ukrainian forces battered against the Russian frontline to little avail, and after months worth of extremely heavy fighting, little ground was gained. This video attempts to explore the reasons why.

Between May of 2020 and January of 2021, thousands of Indian and Chinese troops engaged each other in aggressive melee fights along their disputed border in the former princely state of Jammu & Kashmir. Due to an agreed-upon restriction on firearms and explosives along the border area, both sides fought the other with more primitive melee weapons instead like spiked clubs, metal bars, rocks, and riot gear - making the clashes between them appear like something more from the medieval era than the 21st-century. This is the story of why these events happened, and what exactly took place.

Over the summer of 2021, the US began pulling out the last of its troops present in Afghanistan after occupying the country for nearly 20 years. The Taliban then launched a renewed assault against the US-backed government in the country that Washington had installed, and against the expectations of virtually everyone, it only took the Taliban a matter of months to completely overrun the entire country again and destroy the US-installed government in the process. This was despite the fact that the Taliban was both significantly outnumbered and significantly less-well equipped. This is how the Taliban shocked America and the World over the summer of 2021.

How al-Qaeda began as an organization in the late 1980's, and how al-Qaeda's early strategy waging war against the US evolved over time leading up the infamous 9/11 attacks.

On September 11, 2001, the organization known as al-Qaeda carried out the deadliest attack on US soil in the country's entire history that killed nearly 3,000 people. In response, the US launched the Global War on Terror, a worldwide conflict aimed at combatting terrorism and especially aimed at combatting al-Qaeda, with the primary goal to kill or capture all of al-Qaeda's leadership. The war included some of the biggest and most extensive manhunts in human history as al-Qaeda's leadership was relentlessly pursued by the US for decades after the attacks, and eventually culminated with the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003, and the killing of Osama bin-Laden himself during a raid by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

On October 7, 2023, the organization that runs the Gaza Strip known as Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel from air, land and sea, killing 1,139 people and taking another 251 hostage back to Gaza, in what would be the most devastating attack of its kind in Israel’s history. Hamas gunmen targeted military bases, as well as dozens of agricultural communities in Israel’s south, as well as an outdoor music festival. Israel’s inadequate response time to the attacks called into question their invincibility, intelligence capabilities, and threw the status quo of the region into chaos. Israel’s retaliatory attack would be the deadliest and most destructive for Gaza, and claim tens of thousands of lives.

In the late 60s, Irish Catholic residents of Northern Ireland began a civil rights campaign in protest of the deeply entrenched discrimination against them and in favor of British Protestants that had defined the region for hundreds of years. After explosive reactions in response from British nationalists and British security, from then until the 1990s, Northern Ireland was the site of a prolonged, bloody conflict between its residents in the name of defining the region’s contentious status: as a part of Ireland, or the United Kingdom. After decades of bombings and shootings between paramilitaries that mostly claimed the lives of civilians, a tentative peace was brought on by the Good Friday Agreement, a groundbreaking step that allowed Northern Ireland’s residents to define themselves as they pleased, along with a soft border with Ireland.

Rwanda was historically home to three ethnic groups: the majority Hutu, the minority Tutsi, and a small population of Twa. Historically, these groups coexisted in a hierarchy, with a ruling Tutsi class, but with mobility between groups. However, under the German and Belgian colonial administrations, these ethnic divisions were politicized and racialized. After Rwanda gained independence, the Hutu became the ruling class and began mass discriminating against the formerly powerful Tutsi. In the years that followed, many Tutsi would flee, or be expelled to surrounding countries, leading to the formation of the RPF, a Tutsi political and military movement with the goal of returning Tutsi to Rwanda and restoring their power. By the early 90s, hostilities had built to a full-out propaganda campaign against Tutsi in the name of Hutu Power, declaring Tutsi as foreign, “cockroaches,” and Hutu as essentially superior. From April to June of 1994, this would deteriorate into one of the most bruta

After unsuccessful attempts to break through Avdiivka’s powerful, fortress of defenses, Russia tried again in October of 2023, with the goal of encircling the city. In what would become a drawn out, several month-long slog, Russia threw thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles and tanks at the city, in constant waves the Ukrainians described as zombies. While the Ukrainians managed to hold the city for months, particularly the control of the city’s incredibly strategic coke plant, it quickly became clear that this was a losing battle. Russians continued to gain ground and advantaged, fitting their bombs with UMPK kits, turning them into guided glide bombs that allowed them to assault Ukrainian positions with constant bombings. Knowing they couldn’t keep their hold on the city, Ukraine held on as long as possible, outgunned and outnumbered, to force Russia to burn as many resources as possible in capturing the city.