During 2009, 17 major conflicts took place around the World, six of which were over territory, and the remaining 11 were over government. In fact, most recent conflicts were purely about power, because according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)... "conflicts over government outnumbered those over territory in 9 of the 10 years 2000–2009". According to the SIPRI, who put this list together with Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) data... "for the sixth year running, no major interstate conflict was active in 2009" (we challenge this below).

The SIPRI says that... "no major interstate conflict was active in 2009", which is an impressive soundbite for the western mainstream media to carry, but we challenge this assertion. Here are the two most obvious examples of this inaccuracy.

(1) Afghanistan/United States: Both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began as the United States & friends V's the entire governing regimes, and people's, of Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, and both appear to remain this way to very different extents. Focussing only on Afghanistan, when we delve beneath the mainstream media's portrayal of the ongoing war, we now know that the conflict is still mainly being fought between US-led forces, and local fighters. Those US-led forces are only allied with a local government (and it's newly-formed army), which does not appear to have substantial local support, and remains forcefully in power, after fraudulently holding onto power subsequent to loosing the 2009 presidential election. If we use a commomsense approach, which recognises that the Taliban appear to have overwhelming unending local support in massive areas of the country, then they are the armed forces which represent atleast a major area of Afghanistan and a sizeable portion of it's people - not Hamid Karzai's army, as is portrayed in the mainstream media. To some political commentators, the Afghanistan conflict will only ever end when a US-controlled puppet government wields ultimate power, or when US forces are driven out of the area.

(2) Israel/Palestine: We also believe that the 2009 conflict within the Palestinian Territories should be considered as interstate. If Israel and Palestine are both states, and conflict has taken place between Israeli forces and a governing Palestinian faction - the 2008/9 Gaza Invasion by Israel - should that not be considered an interstate conflict? Obviously both the SIPRI and UCDP do not consider Palestine as a state, or alternatively, they do not consider the Gaza Strip as a state, but in reality, many people around the World would not deny the Palestinian people their right to call their tiny piece of land, a nation, a country, or a state. And many would also consider Israel's December 2008 incursion into Gaza as being an act of war by one state, against another, and to further this point, Israel's expressed aim was to remove that states government. Surely this was an interstate conflict in it's purest form?

Conclusion: No doubt the SIPRI and UCDP will say that the United States is not a party at war in Afghanistan, rather a peacekeeping force (or technically something similar), and they will also point to the fact that Palestine is not a fully-recognised nation by the United Nations, therefore it is not technically a state... but shame on you United Nations, and shame on anybody else who does not recognise Palestine as a state, just because the UN wrongly says it is not. Contrary to the soundbite being pushed - no major interstate conflicts in 2009 - there were countries at war with each other in 2009, and just because those wars involved, and were started by, the United States and Israel, doesn't mean that we should re-brand them with more polite terms.