this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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The lethality isn’t why the war in Ukraine gets media coverage in the west; it’s because there’s a war in the neighborhood that’s unprecedented in decades. A war in Africa isn’t unexpected. It’s sad of course, but there’s pretty much been war in Africa since… well, since forever. While all-out war in Europe was seemingly over since the late 90s.
Also, it's two developed nations going all out on each other. That hasn't happened since 1945.
One of whom has the big boom!
Duh. I keep hearing about a war in Ethiopia since I was born, approaching 4 decades.
In the meantime, the war in Ukraine is just 5 hours from my home city.
So of course I will be interested in a war between a nation that tried (and succeeded in a way) to conquer my country previously, a conflict that is so close that I could easily drive to the warzone in less than a day, than in an eternal conflict in Ethiopia.
I wouldn't even say that it is because there is a war in Africa, but that it is a civil war between different Ethiopian political parties. How is the world supposed to encourage peace there?
You also have Ethiopia in a part of the world without that much strategic importance to major powers outside the impacts of building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. In contrast, the Ukrainie War is on NATO's frontier and is a contribution of aggression of Russia against Ukraine.
The Eritrean army was in there too, though it took months to admit it. There was some very harrowing footage.
Politically, at some level the world tried to encourage peace insofar as asking them to respect human rights and to not genocide an ethnic minority.
The US government in particular organised a bunch of sanctions against the Ethiopian government, some of which are still in force.
Once the word "genocide" was being thrown around by observers, I would have liked to see a bit more action from the UN though.
But both countries were fighting together against the insurgency.
And outside of sanctions, what was the UN going to do? Send peacekeeping troops?
There were so many deliberate civillian casualties that this went far beyond a war with insurgents. The Eritrean forces - who the government forces spent months denying were there - were also there to target Eritrean refugees (the regime is about as bad as North Korea).
You say that like you don't think it would have been a reasonable option?
As this crisis unfolded, there were many reasons a UN peacekeeping force would have been a good option.
Particularly as the racial rhetoric ramped up, NGOs reported systematic rapes of minority women, and the nationwide ethnicity-based detentions began.
We now have a famine situation due to all the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and crops.
There were so many deliberate civillian casualties this went far beyond a war with insurgents.
You say that like you don't think it would have been a reasonable option?
As this crisis unfolded, there were many reasons a UN peacekeeping force would have been a good option, particularly as the racial rhetoric ramped up and the detention camps were set up.
We now have a famine situation due to all the targeting of civilian infrastructure and crops.