There are somewhere north of thirty armed conflicts running in the world
today.
Essentially every one of them is along an ancient ethnic line in some form or another. They also almost always include a religious component which honestly shouldn’t be thought of as separate. None of it is novel, in the sense in which we might call these new kinds of wars. They are not. Look back at history, and you’ll find the same everywhere two tribes of humans meet. Even when human beings are so similar that an outsider cannot at first distinguish between them, they place life-and-death value on whatever differences they can find. Often, the subtle differences between us and our closest relatives are literally the only method for defining ourselves.
The evidence is what was filmed, what was counted, what was published, and by
whom -- in several of these wars, published by the people doing the killing,
who were proud of it.
I’m Allen Schyf, and this is Polite Disputes.
Music: Truth Be Told by Maarten Schellekens
Image: by Hosny Salah from Pixabay
