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New Conflicts in the Middle East... And Some Old Ones...

© lawhawk

The issues between the Israelis and Palestinians appear to have taken a back seat, at least temporarily, to the unfolding events in Ethiopia and Eritrea. These countries, located on the other side of the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and adjacent to Somalia and Sudan on the Eastern tip of Africa.

Fighting between the two countries continues even though the civilian population continues to suffer from famine and disease that is common to the area. It was famine in Ethiopia that originally brought attention to the various aid groups and spurred the USA for Africa movement and numerous celebrity movements to bring famine relief to the starving people in this part of the world. What was lost on most of these movements was that the primary source of the woes were government actions to hoard food and inadequate measures to teach the people how to conserve their resources and where governments failed to act or no longer acted with authority anarchy ruined whatever chances these people had.

It is unfortunate that the developed countries of the world will only respond to these situations if their personnel are affected and wont take a greater role in promoting peaceful relations among nations or improving the well being of lesser developed countries.

Of course there is always the United Nations that could act to bring about these positive changes in worldviews but as I've pointed out elsewhere, there are numerous reasons why the UN will not step into conflicts or may itself be in violation of its own charter in enforcing UN decisions. The UN has the ability to bring about tremendous positive change if it can step beyond these difficulties and reform the way it does business.

Meanwhile, the UN continues to find evidence that the Iraqi government is failing to completely disclose its weapons program to inspectors as per UN Resolution 687. Continued failure to abide by the resolution means that the Iraqi population will suffer from crippling sanctions that prevent basic food and supplies from entering the country unless they are first cleared by the UN.

Links to Countries Involved:

University of Pennsylvania Ethiopia Page contains links to resources on Ethiopia's background and to the history of the region and the current conflict.

University of Pennsylvania's Eritrea Page contains similar links and information on Eritrea.

CNN has continuing coverage of the situation in Eastern Africa and the growing concern that this conflict might spill over into neighboring Sudan or Somalia.