House demolition is primarily a military tactic which has been used in many conflicts for a variety of purposes. It has been employed as a scorched earth tactic to deprive the advancing enemy of food and shelter, or to wreck the enemy's economy and infrastructure. It has also been used for purposes of counter-insurgency and ethnic cleansing. Systematic house demolition has been a notable factor in a number of recent or ongoing conflicts including the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Darfur conflict in Sudan, the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav wars and the Caucasian conflicts of the 1990s.