ABSTRACT
Over the last score years, four wars have been fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. All involved foreign interventions, of varying types and scale. The countries in question all had pre-existing ethnic and religious cleavages, which were exacerbated by war and external meddling. In each case also, all or part of the opposition have included hard-core jihadi fighters. In each case the adversaries have committed ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’. Although states have presented their interventions as humanitarian, and in support of popular forces against dictators and police states, in none of these four cases have foreign-supported actors succeeded in consolidating power and establishing stable states. The resulting carnage has been on an epic scale: these four conflicts alone have killed at least 600,000 civilians and forcibly displaced more than 20 million people. 1
