Since the country's independence in 1956, successive weak governments in Sudan have used tribe-based militias to fight proxy wars.

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In Asia, too, the proxy wars were over, but the thawing of the cold one still brought big changes.

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The Bush administration refused to confront the fact that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are to a large degree Iranian proxy wars.

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Such a state of affairs in the latter half of the twentieth century led to the endless series of proxy wars that defined the Cold War era.

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Mr Kourouma denounces the iniquity of adults who, in Africa as elsewhere, fight their wars by proxy, sending children to their death on the front line.

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The unborn baby would have quickly become the latest proxy in America's ongoing culture wars.

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