Eswatini

Eswatini is unlikely to be directly involved in significant armed conflict in the next three years; the most plausible violence remains episodic internal unrest rather than sustained organized warfare.

Low risk of significant armed conflict. Expect continued tight control of political activity, with the main security concern being sporadic demonstrations that can turn violent and localized, plus elevated crime risk. No credible indicators point to insurgent organization, territorial contestation, or external military entanglement over the next 12 months.

Low-to-moderate risk over five years if political exclusion persists and economic stress deepens, increasing the frequency and lethality of unrest. Even then, the more likely trajectory is cycles of protest and repression rather than civil war, unless opposition networks militarize, gain external support, or security-force cohesion fractures.

Threat drivers The dominant pathway is internal escalation from political exclusion and repression into recurring unrest with fatalities. Human-rights reporting continues to describe constrained civic space, use of security laws against dissent, and unresolved accountability for the 2021 violence and subsequent political killings, which can sustain mobilization and raise the odds of sharp confrontations with police/military. A secondary pathway is criminal violence (including armed robbery) that can degrade perceptions of security but usually remains below an armed-conflict threshold.

Resilience and state capacity Eswatini’s coercive apparatus remains cohesive and oriented toward regime protection. The UEDF is small and lightly equipped, with limited ability and little incentive to fight externally; its structure and doctrine are better suited to internal security support than expeditionary operations. The country’s compact geography and centralized control reduce the feasibility of insurgent sanctuary, prolonged territorial contestation, or a sustained rebel campaign. Economic fragility and inequality are real stressors, but they more often translate into protest and labor disruption than organized armed conflict.

Systemic firebreaks The regional environment in Southern Africa remains comparatively resistant to interstate war, and Eswatini is deeply economically interdependent with South Africa through trade, labor flows, and regional integration frameworks. This creates strong elite incentives to avoid escalation that would trigger border disruption or external intervention. New defense-cooperation outreach (e.g., training/benchmarking with other African militaries) signals professionalization and networking, but does not materially increase exposure to kinetic conflict absent a clear deployment driver.

Net assessment New evidence reinforces the baseline: elevated political-violence and rights-abuse risk, but weak structural conditions for significant armed conflict. A meaningful upward revision would require clear indicators of armed group formation, sustained security-force fragmentation/defections, or persistent territorial control challenges—none are evidenced here.