Wars in Africa No One Is Talking About
Everyone knows about the war in Ukraine and Israel’s operation to punish Hamas for the October attack. However, those are not the only wars going on.
The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights lists more than 110 separate armed conflicts globally.
Every argument about how to measure the incidence of war and the number of casualties hinges on how the data is collected and interpreted. There was a very public debate about this subject in the middle of the last decade.
Steven Pinker argued in his book “The Better Angels Of Our Nature” that we are living a permanently more peaceful environment where mass casualty events will not occur because the benefits of democracy, diplomacy and global trade will deter countries from such massive attacks.
Nicolas Taleb rubbished that argument by arguing that 70 years of peace is not enough to draw any kind of conclusion and that massive casualty events have occurred about once every 100 years. His primary argument is that long periods of no events do not reduce the incidence of occasional spikes.
A decade on, a massive conflict is ongoing in Ukraine. This is having two significant effects.
Firstly it is drawing the attention and resources of great powers into one focused geographical area. The 2nd front in Gaza and Lebanon is further concentrating resources in the Eastern Europe/Near East theatre.
The flash attack that toppled the Syrian regime was largely possible because both Russia and Iran were occupied elsewhere.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are also on the cusp of a hotter conflict. That is escaping the notice of the mainstream media because there is nothing anyone is likely to do about it. The same might be said of the conflicts smoldering in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan too.
At the very minimum, business for arms manufacturers is unlikely to slow down anytime soon and may yet escalate.