Ongoing wars

Here is my simple analysis

1) Usually conflicts have a resolution. It is unusual but not unheard of for them to last hundreds of years.
2) Conflict is caused by certain key sectors of society having differences so great that they think they can only solve them with "negative strategies" (for example killing people)
3) Resolution usually occurs when one side's expectations meet the other side’s expectations.

So why do conflicts usually end?
Well it is a naturally unstable situation to have two sides killing each other - it is very tiring, costs lots of money and extremists keep dying. Eventually both sides get tired and see that they are making no progress and move on.

Religion makes the situation worse but the vast majority of them have slowly died down also AND where they exist have a intra country effect which is rather similar (but less stable) to what I’m going to look at.

So the next question is how could such a conflict keep going for hundreds of years despite this self limiting nature of conflict?

Well what if there were huge amounts of money being pumped into the region? If the locals who are fighting don’t need to worry about destroying their own homes or their neighbors because they are guaranteed that they will be able to get more money. Also the flow of money means that it won’t accumulate in the hands of locals since corruption far exceeds productive investment in terms of return it will always be a sort of cash flow coming in through the authorities (influenced by those who fight).
This effect of money is also related to moral support where the usually moral support sapping activity of killing random people (usually even the soldiers themselves start to feel sick of it) is propped up by constant attention of people who push those doing the killing to feel self righteous about it. So these foreign expectations placed upon the locals make "militancy" rewarded and compensate for the negative effects.