Conference Planning and New Edition

The passing of one year and the beginning of the next one are stereotypical moments for reflection. Reflection upon not just what has been, but also what is to be in, for example, the all too human field of armed conflict. While the past will be left for others to dwell upon, I would like to bring focus to the future immediately ahead of us. The internal strife in Syria continues with the passing of each day, having seemingly lost its international problemsolving momentum of late 2012. With a hardly definable and foreseeable end, calling into questions its justifiable existence, the ‘war on terror’ shows little sign of subsiding and relieving the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. Almost exactly ten years after the commencing of Operation Iraqi Liberation, later renamed Operation Iraqi Freedom, stability remains the sought-after commodity in much of the Middle East. And even though many an armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa fails to make international headlines on a daily basis, their absence from such headlines ought not to be mistaken for their absence entirely.