While many are earnestly pointing at the devastation of war, the rampant human rights violations and the deliberate relegation of international and humanitarian law, there are those who see war from an entirely different perspective: profits.
For the merchants of war, the collective pain and misery of whole nations is dwarfed by the lucrative deals of billions of dollars generated from weapons sales.
The Geneva Academy, a legal research organisation, says that it currently monitors about 110 active armed conflicts worldwide. Most of these conflicts are taking place in the Global South, though many of these cases are either exacerbated, funded or managed by western powers or western multinational corporations.
Of the 110, 45 armed conflicts are taking place in the Middle East and North Africa region, 35 in the rest of Africa, 21 in Asia and six in Latin America, according to the Academy.
The worst and bloodiest of these armed conflicts is currently taking place in Gaza.
Indirect deaths vs direct deaths
To estimate the future death toll resulting from the war in Gaza, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, the Lancet, undertook a thorough research entitled “Counting the dead in Gaza: Difficult but essential”.
The approximation was based on the death toll figure produced as of June 19, when Israel had then reportedly killed 37,396 Palestinians.
Lancet’s new number was horrifying, even though the medical journal said that its conclusions were based on conservative estimates of indirect deaths vs direct deaths that often result from such wars.
Should the war end today, meaning June 19, 7.9% of the population of the Gaza Strip will die because of the war and its aftermath. That’s “up to 186,000 or even more deaths”, according to the Lancet.
Palestinians in Gaza are not dying because of an untraceable virus or a natural disaster, but in a merciless war that can only be sustained through massive shipments of arms, which continue to flow to Israel despite the international outcry.
On Jan. 26, the International Court of Justice resolved that it had enough evidence to suggest that genocide was being committed in Gaza. On May 20, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, added his voice, this time speaking of deliberate acts of “extermination” of Palestinians.
Yet, weapons continued to flow. The main source of weapons is, unsurprisingly, the United States, followed by Germany, Italy and Britain.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the world’s top ten exporters of major arms between 2019 and 2023 include six western countries. The US alone has a 42 per cent share of global arms exports, followed by France at 11 per cent.
The total arms export of the top six western states amounts to nearly 70 per cent of the global share.
If we consider that the vast majority of armed conflicts are all taking place in the Global South, the obvious conclusion is that the very West that purportedly champions global peace, democracy and international law is the very entity that also fuels wars, armed conflicts and genocide.
Taking charge of future
For the Global South to take charge of its future, it must fight against this obvious injustice. They cannot allow their continents to continue to serve as mere markets for western arms.
True, it will take much more than limiting the arms trade to end global conflicts, but the free flow of weapons to conflict zones will continue to feed the war machine, from Gaza to Sudan and from Congo to Burma and beyond.
One can continue to argue that Israel must respect international law, and that Burma must respect human rights. But what use are mere words when countries continue to provide the murder weapon, with no moral or legal accountability?
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor
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