Yemen will soon slide into total anarchy, similar to what we have seen in Libya. The West’s worst moral and political disaster since the Nazis is reaching its climax — and just as many politicians and institutions paid for the failure to stop Adolf Hitler, many will pay dearly for allowing the Middle East to self-destruct. Power politics will set many nations ablaze in a fiery inferno. Political paralysis and inaction will spur many to flee from deadly combat zones.
The dismemberment of Iraq and Syria and its people continues unabated. However, the contrast between the course of action being followed in Africa versus the West’s inaction in Iraq reveals the bankruptcy of the West’s foreign policy posture. Watching as tragedies unfold across the world and as poor women and children bear the burden of conflicts borne of greed, unchecked corruption, the desire for consolidated power by corporate elites, negligence, duplicity or malfeasance, profiteering and unchecked aggression are an affront to human Nature and justice. Apart from war, new diseases and viruses are in incubation, and when they emerge, mankind will be on the precipice.
Our humanity is in the balance while the international community’s profensity for engaging in talk, talk and more talk about mass atrocities while be doing little to nothing to truly provide any sort of protection of the victims. In the Middle East, Nigeria and Afghanistan acts of extreme violence, the perpetrators and the victims have been reduced to mere statistics and caricatures. As the death toll rises and the bloodshed shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down, it becomes harder to remember the reality of what is happening. Each bomb or air strike not only kills, it also chips away our humanity, taking away the sympathy and outrage that senseless murder of innocents should generate.
— The reader is a South African based in Johannesburg
