The International Crisis Group will list you the top ten conflicts going on around the globe. When I last used their analysis last Fall, all nations with active war, the kind that comes with ceaseless bloodshed and loss of life, were in those parts of the world where people have learnt to turn a blind eye to .
We know we live in a lopsided global system. We’re not all equal parts of the United Nations family. Forgotten nations in crisis tend to figure things out on their own, some after decades of death and destruction, because they become a distant noise in the media, a curious case study on academic papers and a footnote in diplomatic boardrooms.
UN resolutions go nowhere and Continental organizations remain powerless behemoths staffed with well-paid brains.
In all this, there’s a silent knowing that there are parts of the world where this kind of prolonged crisis cannot happen, and if it did, it would be nipped in the bud in no time. Until it happens. And the shock that the devastation of war can happen to these other nations makes heads spin in confusion. Journalists stutter – but this is a a a… European country, how can this happen!
No matter how much censorship is done, shocking images of this-uncivilized-thing-can’t-happen-to-us humanity bleed though and splash our screens with screaming mothers, fathers in anguish over the killing of their children and separation from family, children staring, muted by trauma, students unable to articulate the situation intelligently.
The lopsided global system of civilized nations couldn’t stop it. It is a system utterly and completely incapable of saving us from our own annihilation.