On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four passenger planes in the USA and crashed them into skyscrapers at New York and into the Pentagon building, the defence ministry. The terrorists, the pilots, and 3000 innocent people died in these attacks. The leader of Al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, claimed responsibility for this massive attack.
Terrorism is the use of terror in the form of violence or threats to force an individual or group to accept the demands of terrorists. Terrorists intentionally destabilize the society and the state through acts of violence like kidnappings or attacks. In their opinion they are waging a war for freedom. For instance, in the Basque region in Spain the ETA has killed more than 800 people in its struggle for an independent state in the past 40 years.
The United Nations (UN) was established on 24 October 1945 in the aftermath of the two World Wars. The purpose was to save subsequent generations from wars. Over the decades, the UN has ended many conflicts through peacekeeping operations. UN peacekeeping operations are crucial for international peace and security. UN peacekeeping forces received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. This brought international recognition to UN peacekeeping.
The civil war in Sudan - a conflict between Muslims and Christians, Arabs and Africans, or North and South - has claimed two million lives. The civilian death toll is one of the highest of any war since World War II. Religion, ethnicity, and regional issues were the key factors responsible in the early days of the conflict. However, the recent reasons are based on economic lines. Ecological problems, scarcity of resources, and the drought made the situation worse. A Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005 in Nairobi between the rebels and the government to end the conflict.
The war has been waged three times in Iraq since 1980. In the first war, Iraq fought against Iran, and in the next two wars, several countries under the leadership of USA fought with Iraq. For many years, the West - in an attempt to secure its influence in the Middle East rich in oil - had supported the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, the tables turned in 1990 when Iraq occupied the small neighbouring country of Kuwait and the western countries came to its rescue. The main issue was crude oil. The USA accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction, and invaded the country in 2003 with the western allies, defeated the army there, and arrested Saddam Hussein. Since then, the country has been facing a humanitarian crisis of alarming scale of severity.
Every war has a reason. The causes of wars include conquest, freedom, or religion. The conflicts in the Middle East as well as the wars in Iraq are good examples of this. One of them started in 2003 with the Iraqis gaining freedom from their dictator. In the civil wars, such as those in Sudan, which often resulted in large famines, the issue was mostly the inequalities in the society. Since September 11, 2001, a new form of war - war against international terrorism - has come up.
Many of the 15 republics of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR), had been forced to merge with the Soviet state when it was made in 1922. When the country was in an economic crisis at the end of the 1980s and states like the Czech Republic and Poland were opening themselves up to the West, a few Soviet republics, which were separate states before 1922, declared themselves independent in 1991. By the end of 1991 the erstwhile USSR had split up completely.
After the summer in 1989, many GDR citizens fled to the West via Hungary and the FRG embassies in the Czech Republic and Poland. In addition, thousands of people demonstrated against the state in Leipzig every Monday. On November 9, a member of the GDR government mentioned by mistake in front of the camera that the inner German borders were open. Thousands took his word for it and celebrated the opening of the borders on the same evening at the Berlin Wall.
The cold war did not end suddenly. It came about through the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev, the President of the erstwhile USSR. After 20 years of scare tactics by the Soviets, he started with a policy of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Social issues could be discussed openly, the state stopped controlling the economy, and the countries of the East Block like Poland and Hungary got much more freedom from the USSR as compared to earlier times. In 1991, ‘Gorbi’ and the then US president George H. W. Bush signed a first agreement that both will destroy their atomic weapons. The cold war was technically over after this agreement.
In the twelve years after the founding of the GDR, about 2.5 million people fled the country and went to the FRG. They wanted better living conditions and freedom of opinion because the GDR did not allow any political views that were against the government. To prevent this mass migration of people to the West, the GDR built a wall around West Berlin in August 1961. Moreover, it also renovated the 1800 km long border fence to the FRG with spring guns and made it a ‘death strip’.
After the three Western powers single-handedly introduced a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, in their zones in 1948, the USSR reacted to this angrily and blocked Berlin. It shut down all channels of supply to West Berlin. The western allies had only two choices: either give up Berlin or supply it by airlift from the West German airports. An aircraft landed in Berlin every 90 seconds, whose pilots threw sweets from the cockpit. As such, these aircraft came to be known as ‘Rosinenbomber’.
Ten West European countries, the USA, and Canada founded the NATO in 1949. With this alliance, the states agreed to support one another in times of war. The FRG entered this alliance in 1955.The East European counterpart of the NATO was the Warsaw Pact. Both the alliances started arming themselves and the cold war started.
After the Second World War, the four ‘Allies’ that fought against Germany - England, France, USA, and the Soviet Union (USSR) - divided Germany into four occupation zones. Berlin lay in the middle of the Soviet zone. Sharp differences of opinion between the three western powers and the Soviet Union led to the founding of the NATO in 1949 and the formation of two German states, the FRG and the GDR. The cold war began with the enemies constantly threatening the use of atomic weapons. Soon, the GDR was blocked out for the West with a border fence and the Berlin wall. The change of events came at the end of the 1980s. The cold war ended, the two German nations got unified, and the USSR split.
Yes, people protested against him at various points in time. A few hid the opponents of the regime and the Jews from the authorities. Groups like the ‘White Rose’ by The Scholl siblings distributed handouts and asked the people to revolt against the Nazi regime. Businessmen like Oscar Schindler employed the CC detainees in their factories in order to protect them from the death camps. High military officials attempted to assassinate Hitler but without success. Workers in the arms factories intentionally produced defective weapons, and there were revolts in ghettos and concentration camps. In addition, in the occupied territories, the armed groups fought underground. However, most of the people remained inactive out of fear because whosoever was betrayed or discovered had to pay the price with his life.
After acquiring power, Hitler started preparing for expanding his territory to the east. This happened on September 1, 1939. The German armed forces attacked Poland and the Second World War started. Till 1941, the Germans fought together with Italy and Japan against France, Great Britain, USA, and the Soviet Union. The war was waged outside Europe as well. Unlike previous wars, the civil population also suffered mainly from the constant air raids. The war ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, with the surrender of Germany.