Although over 50 conflicts exist in the world the most worrying situation prevails in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. These conflicts have caused massive distress to people and the first two have an even bigger risk of possible rapid escalation to a much bigger and wider war.
All these three conflicts have been allowed to extend for too long while these should have been and could have been stopped much earlier.
In the Ukraine conflict around 500,000 people have died or have been seriously injured or disabled. Over a dozen times this number have been internally or externally displaced. Advanced possibilities of almost certain end of war within two months were sabotaged by the UK and the USA and now this has dragged on to 26 months with no immediate signs of ending. Environment has been devastated. Risks to nuclear plants and dams have appeared. World food supplies have been adversely affected, including to those countries much in need of these. More than any other recent war or conflict, this war has very serious possibilities of a direct Russia-NATO confrontation, and hence of World War 3 and nuclear war. Astonishingly, this has not prevented some of the world’s top leaders from continuing to make provocative statements or take escalatory actions.
While it is quite likely that most of Ukraine’s people may desire immediate unconditional ceasefire, the articulation of this desire has not been possible in increasingly repressive conditions in which only the consensus created between a few Ukraine leaders and their powerful western backers is allowed to emerge as policy.
There is hardly any doubt for anyone desiring peace and relief for people that an unconditional immediate ceasefire based on existing line of control, to be followed by extensive negotiations to settle all contentious issues, is the way forward, but this is not allowed to happen by the present west-backed leadership, thereby prolonging the extensive, acute distress of people and the even more serious risks of escalation. The western backers desire the Ukraine-Russian conflict to cause as much problems for Russia as possible, and for as long as possible, even forgetting in the process that sometimes those who fan the fires of others’ conflicts get burnt in the same fires.
In Gaza over 37,000 people have been killed and an overwhelming majority of the population has been displaced, many of them more than once. Children have suffered the most including in the form of very painful injuries and disabilities.
From time to time threats of escalation have appeared. World shipping routes and trade have been adversely affected. Environment and living conditions of almost the entire stretch of land have been very adversely affected in the course of over 8 months of the terrible conflict.
It is the weapons and ammunition supplied with very little restraint by the USA, Germany and other western countries which have done the most harm. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been widely blamed for prolonging and accentuating war conditions for selfish considerations relating to his political career.
Even though the people of Gaza have suffered immensely, it is possible that the worldwide opposition to the horrible excesses and atrocities of the Israeli army actually prevented the execution of an even worse agenda—the driving out of most of the people of Gaza beyond the Egyptian border. This may well have been the original objective, and once the Israeli authorities were prevented from pursuing this by worldwide protests, including by youth in western countries, the Israeli assault remained very aggressive but appeared to be also becoming more aimless.
If one also remembers all the formidable evidence which indicates that the Israeli authorities had chosen to ignore all the mounting advance evidence of the impending October 7 Hamas attack, suggesting some degree of collusion among at least a small high-level section of Hamas and Israeli authorities in the October 7 attack, to pave the way for a big operation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, then of course Netanyahu’s aggression becomes even more horrible. If Israel ignored advance warnings of October 7, as appears highly likely, then at what stage did its western backers become aware of this?
The best way forward for peace here is immediate and permanent ceasefire as well as release of all Israeli hostages (who should never have been taken as hostages in the first place) and release of most Palestinian prisoners (who should never have been imprisoned in the first place). However this agenda of peace has not progressed, and the UN has appeared extremely helpless in ensuring the implementation or steady progress of its on resolutions at several levels.
In Sudan the UN had much higher possibilities of stopping the terrible conflict unleashed by two irresponsible military generals, as here the interests of its permanent Security Council members or veto holders were not such a big issue. However even in such conditions the UN could do hardly anything to prevent rapid deterioration of the situation to the extent that now the number of displaced people here is probably the highest, higher even than in Ukraine, and fleeing people including women have been forced to seek shelter even in those countries which have a serious humanitarian crisis of their own. At the same time, the available resources for urgent humanitarian assistance are a very small percentage of what is needed.
This extremely tragic recent experience of how three of the most serious conflicts have got prolonged and have worsened in highly unfortunate circumstances indicate the deeply worrying extent to which world leadership has been abdicating its world peace responsibilities, instead choosing to being guided by very narrow national interests, and at times even narrower consideration of some national or business elites or even personal, very selfish considerations. These narrow considerations are also being seen in overall very aggressive frameworks.
Thus at a time of the most dangerous weapons stockpiled by humanity, creating the most serious existential threats, world leadership is increasingly abdicating its most essential responsibilities towards world peace. This should be a matter of the highest concern for all people of world who are committed to peace, and should motivate them for making more and more efforts for creating a strong, thoughtful, innovative, highly creative worldwide peace movement.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Earth without Borders and A Day in 2071.
