An underground nuclear test by North Korea, the festering civil war in Iraq, a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon, increased violence in Afghanistan, intensified fighting in the Darfur region of The Sudan, and the collapse of a four-year-old cease-fire in Sri Lanka all contributed to the turbulence in 2006.
In 2006 North Korea became the newest nuclear weapons state; it announced that on October 9 it had conducted an underground nuclear test. An initial lack of evidence to verify that radioactivity had been detected raised questions about what had actually occurred. A week later the United States confirmed the presence of radioactive debris in the atmosphere but said that the North Korean explosion was less than the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was equal to about 12,500 tons). The test followed months of provocative actions by North Korea, such as the test launch in July of a long-range Taepodong-2 ballistic missile, claimed to be capable of reaching North America. In response to the nuclear test, on October 14 the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1718, which prevented a range of goods from entering or leaving North Korea, banned international travel by North Koreans involved in the nuclear weapons program, and allowed UN member states to inspect cargo moving to and from North Korea.
A UN conference in New York City aimed at strangling the illicit trade of small arms, such as assault rifles and machine guns, ended without a final agreement on measures to reduce the spread of the weapons. Delegates to the July conference also failed to develop a plan for future action. The first meeting of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism was held in October in Morocco. The organization comprised Australia, China, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Turkey, and the Group of Eight industrialized countries. Members pledged to work together to keep their own nuclear materials under control and to combat trafficking in nuclear materials that might end up in the hands of terrorists. The first-ever international agreement obliging belligerents to remove unexploded munitions—such as shells, grenades, cluster bombs, and rockets—left over from the war came into force in November. The Protocol on Explosive Remnants of War, an addition to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, became legally binding after ratification by more than 20 states.
The situation in Iraq devolved toward all-out civil war in the months following the bombing in February of a Shiʿite mosque. The incident was a flashpoint for sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiʿites, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that by midyear some 50,000 Iraqis a month were being internally displaced. Many others were fleeing to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. In October an estimated 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed, a record high. Over 3,000 coalition troops—more than 2,900 of them Americans—had died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began in 2003. The coalition battled an array of insurgent groups, some loyal to the former regime of Saddam Hussein, some seeking to settle sectarian grievances, and others pursuing a religious war to drive all non-Muslim forces out of the country.
Israel launched numerous incursions into the Gaza Strip to eliminate rocket attacks by Hamas (the main Islamist group calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state) and other Palestinian militant forces. During 2006 more than 1,000 homemade Qassam unguided rockets were fired at Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip, killing several civilians and wounding dozens more. The Israeli raids killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians.
Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon crossed into Israel in July and captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others, triggering a 34-day invasion by Israel. (Hezbollah, a Shiʿite Islamist organization, had been fighting Israel since 1982.) Almost 1,000 Lebanese (mostly civilians) and 159 Israelis (mainly soldiers) were killed, and thousands of civilians on both sides of the border fled their homes. A cease-fire agreement called for the 2,000-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon, stationed there since 1978, to be reinforced. By November nearly 10,000 UN troops and 2,000 naval personnel from 21 countries had deployed; their mission was to ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and to help the Lebanese military free the southern part of the country of guerrillas and their weapons.
Sporadic violence continued in Chechnya’s 12-year-old war for independence from Russia, but journalists and human rights workers were largely denied access to the region to confirm the numbers of casualties. Chechen rebel leaders Abdul-Khalim Saydullayev and Shamil Basayev were killed in separate incidents. Basayev was considered the most-wanted criminal in Russia for his role in organizing the 2004 attack on a school in Beslan that left over 300 dead.