THE briefing in the most recent issue of The Economist’s print edition tackles the tricky subject of civil wars. As anyone familiar with Africa's cold-war history might expect, the continent features prominently.

What is remarkable is how many African civil wars have ended since the fall of the Berlin wall. A map showing African conflicts two decades ago would show the continent aflame. Today we have Congo and Somalia, and most recently the Central African Republic, and perhaps Nigeria, though Boko Haram is still no match for Biafra, the secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria which went to war in the 1960. Of course, civil wars can be hard to define. The Peace Research Insitute Oslo in Norway paints a slightly different picture to ours (see map). But their parameters too, show a marked decline in the number of African conflicts. Not so long ago civil wars raged in Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Chad and Uganda.

Many unstable countries benefit from having somewhat more stable neighbours. Nothing increases the risk of civil war like having one next door. The briefing points out that the genocide in tiny Rwanda spread murder across a swathe of neighbours. In coastal west Africa, violence is passed back and forth between Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast like a winter cold round an office.

The lesson here is that French intervention in Mali may have saved other parts of Saharan west Africa from strife. Critics have warned that al-Qaeda affiliates are merely being chased into neighbouring countries rather than defeated. And there is some truth to this. But the likelihood is that they would have gone next door anyway and at least now they no longer have bases in Mali from which to operate.