Clionadh’s Monthly ACLED Data & Analysis Outlook
Welcome readers,
I hope that the start of the New Year has been exciting for you. 2025 promises to bring controversy, competition, and change — though the destination remains uncertain (or is it?). Perhaps it’s this ‘known-unknown’ of the future that is driving what I’d call ‘exhausted anxiety’ in our collective reactions to ceasefires, inaugurations, and policies. But, it is also the sense that no one is in charge (or wants to be in charge) of a stable global system; Further, those pushing massive changes to international institutions and norms don’t really know how those changes will land. We hear a lot of strong (but loosely held) views about what is going to happen, when the reality is it is anyone’s guess. As much as ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ is a great motto, even I can see its limits.
Conflict watch: warnings for the year ahead
I now wish to take this opportunity to tell you that we at ACLED know what will happen as we have an excellent Watchlist that details where we expect to see a lot of movement in the next 12 months. Indeed and unfortunately, we recently warned of the recent surge in violence in Colombia as active armed groups recalibrate the competition between them, and with the government. Such a surge happened in mid-January. Similarly, we also warned of the Trump administration’s moves on ceaseless and dominant cartel violence in Mexico — effectively noting that if President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration won’t deal with it, the new US administration will. Discussions are already underway, spurred by the anemic response on the part of the Mexican government.
Why is conflict information deteriorating?
An evergreen concern to all seems to be the information environment that we grapple with on a daily basis. As we noted in our Conflict Index, conflict rates have doubled in the past five years. As conflict soared, information about violence has deteriorated. Why? This is related to so much information ‘flooding the zone’ in the recent past, and a steadily growing proportion of it being misinformation. Unfortunately, tactics to limit misinformation have often backfired due to bias and restrictions (e.g., partisan or biased fact-checking). Conflict information is a special case, and some bias is always going to occur — often intentionally and with good reason.
Meta’s fact-checking of public posts was not holding back the tide of misinformation. Its decision to stop won’t lead to a surge. But it comes at a moment when multiple factors are reducing the quality and quantity of accurate information, and both public and private information flows prioritize fast data, regardless of its quality. There is certainly an audience for fast information – i.e., most young people, who, if they get news at all, receive it through brief, visual messages. Attention is the currency, not accuracy. To get attention, conflict news often pushes extremely unreliable counts of the dead or a blame narrative that is simplistic and skewed (indicators that a number is completely fabricated is that it has no direct reference, and is very rounded — e.g., “150,000 people have died in Sudan’s war.” Commonly used fatality numbers have a lot more to do with conflict public relations than military reality — it only seems to matter if it is ‘the worst.’ This results in a conflict news cycle both brutal and intended as perversely one-upping.
When inflated numbers don’t work, extreme rhetoric becomes the next tool (and is employed as a substitute for accurate reporting). In 2024, we saw ‘genocide’ become a buzzword, though I think we can all agree that the vast majority of ‘genocide’ claims are inaccurate, and there are so many now that this very important concept and byword for the most heinous and destructive acts known in humanity has lost resonance. As a strategy for attention, it does not work in changing actions or raising awareness. It did serve to position many on an ideological spectrum and be largely ignored by others on that spectrum.
If attention rather than accuracy is the focus, then the less-than-informed-but-plentiful public is the audience. That same public wants to be informed by a 30-second video summarizing the worst moments of a community’s existence. Concurrently, those engaged in conflict are the least likely to listen to public appeals or change tactics from public shaming. A new approach to communicating the risks of and exposure to violence is urgently needed. I recently discussed this in more detail in Politico.
Notes and notions
Are cartels terrorists? Good question — and whether the US should designate those organizations as terrorist groups is covered here by our brilliant Senior Latin America Analyst Sandra Pellegrini. She notes that whatever the outcome, this conversation signals a shift toward a more confrontational stance against Mexico. ACLED has not, to date, held a firm stance on the word ‘terrorism’, but has grappled with how and whether to apply it. As our Director of Data Lennart Landman noted, it’s a policy and political label that rarely aids understanding behavior or distinguishing armed group agenda and practices from each other. We have come to a reasonable adjustment of designating groups who disproportionately target civilians as terrorist groups (and still keeping other ACLED group identifiers). More on this as we refine the specifications.
Ceasefires and peace: A long-awaited (and delayed) ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli government started on 17 January with exchanges of some hostages and prisoners. We will be tracking the ceasefire, but also how the war shifts rather than dissipates. Some examples of the shape-shifting include the move of violence to the West Bank (ongoing but less discussed) and the way that Hamas is reasserting authority (some early accounts exist of killings in Rafah for ‘collaboration,’ and severely injuring people who challenged their continuing control over food trucks and aid). Across the world, there is a fervent wish that the ceasefire holds, but the reality is that peace negotiations and agreements rarely work to mitigate violence. We have a project in which we explore the presence of ‘agreements’ without the expectation of peace, and track how it alters subsequent conflict patterns. More on that throughout the year.
Living with violence: There is a wealth of knowledge about conflict groups and war statistics, but a particularly important aspect of political violence is the banality of living with it. The film ‘I’m still here’ (Ainda estou aqui) by Walter Salles, based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir, is about a mother and lawyer living with the forced disappearance and murder of her husband (dissident politician Rubens Paiva), during the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985). This vantage of violence is one of the most effective for understanding how people raise children in the midst of death squads; the persistent fear and torture of citizens; the assumed normalcy of extreme governance; the impunity of the perpetrators; and the casual apologies decades later for destroying lives and families.
Upcoming events: We are starting a new series of webinars, where myself and the much more engaging Professor Caitriona Dowd (from University College Dublin and on our advisory board) will take turns talking with guests about conflict patterns and places. Some choice selections will be “Why is Clionadh a climate-conflict denier?” or “Why doesn’t Cait believe in peace?” and “Are al-Shabaab crypto bros? How soon will there be a coin?”.
In the meantime, I had a great chat on the Disorder Podcast (with Jason Pack) about African conflict patterns, and really enjoyed listening to Dr. Keith Noble —the director of the Office of Advanced Analytics in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations — chat about ‘what is around the corner’ on American Diplomat. Also, to see a compelling view of why the US intervention in Afghanistan went so poorly (especially at the end), Al Jazeera has a documentary called ‘Afghanistan: The Price of Peace.’
Check out a very good and recent article by our very own Head of Analysis Dr. Andrea Carboni, Research Analyst Ana Marco, and North America Research Manager Kieran Doyle who explained how last year’s mega election calendar resulted in a spike in electoral violence.
