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The lethality isn’t why the war in Ukraine gets media coverage in the west; it’s because there’s a war in the neighborhood that’s unprecedented in decades. A war in Africa isn’t unexpected. It’s sad of course, but there’s pretty much been war in Africa since… well, since forever. While all-out war in Europe was seemingly over since the late 90s.
Also, it's two developed nations going all out on each other. That hasn't happened since 1945.
One of whom has the big boom!
Duh. I keep hearing about a war in Ethiopia since I was born, approaching 4 decades.
In the meantime, the war in Ukraine is just 5 hours from my home city.
So of course I will be interested in a war between a nation that tried (and succeeded in a way) to conquer my country previously, a conflict that is so close that I could easily drive to the warzone in less than a day, than in an eternal conflict in Ethiopia.
I wouldn't even say that it is because there is a war in Africa, but that it is a civil war between different Ethiopian political parties. How is the world supposed to encourage peace there?
You also have Ethiopia in a part of the world without that much strategic importance to major powers outside the impacts of building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. In contrast, the Ukrainie War is on NATO's frontier and is a contribution of aggression of Russia against Ukraine.
The Eritrean army was in there too, though it took months to admit it. There was some very harrowing footage.
How is the world supposed to encourage peace there?
Politically, at some level the world tried to encourage peace insofar as asking them to respect human rights and to not genocide an ethnic minority.
The US government in particular organised a bunch of sanctions against the Ethiopian government, some of which are still in force.
Once the word "genocide" was being thrown around by observers, I would have liked to see a bit more action from the UN though.
But both countries were fighting together against the insurgency.
And outside of sanctions, what was the UN going to do? Send peacekeeping troops?
There were so many deliberate civillian casualties this went far beyond a war with insurgents.
Send peacekeeping troops?
You say that like you don't think it would have been a reasonable option?
As this crisis unfolded, there were many reasons a UN peacekeeping force would have been a good option, particularly as the racial rhetoric ramped up and the detention camps were set up.
We now have a famine situation due to all the targeting of civilian infrastructure and crops.
There were so many deliberate civillian casualties that this went far beyond a war with insurgents. The Eritrean forces - who the government forces spent months denying were there - were also there to target Eritrean refugees (the regime is about as bad as North Korea).
Send peacekeeping troops?
You say that like you don't think it would have been a reasonable option?
As this crisis unfolded, there were many reasons a UN peacekeeping force would have been a good option.
Particularly as the racial rhetoric ramped up, NGOs reported systematic rapes of minority women, and the nationwide ethnicity-based detentions began.
We now have a famine situation due to all the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and crops.
One of the podcasts that I listen to has a Black host. She spent multiple eps around the start of the war talking with guests asking for their takes. What she kept coming back to was that Americans seemed to believe in supporting Ukraine because their population looked like white people in America.
I'd say she's right. White people in America could generally not give two shits about black and brown people in Africa. It's not right that it is that way, but it is that way.
From the article:
While headlines worldwide spotlight the distress in Eastern Europe from the Russia-Ukraine clash, a new report reveals the conflict in North Ethiopia has extracted a much steeper cost in human life, largely escaping international media coverage.
The Ethiopian and Ukraine-Russia conflicts accounted for 89 percent of battle-related deaths worldwide in 2022, according to a new report from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
The institute’s annual conflict trends report found that last year was the deadliest in four decades, with 204,000 battle-related fatalities.
The two-year war in northern Ethiopia resulted in approximately 100,200 deaths before an African Union-brokered ceasefire was reached in November 2022. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia war that began in February led to 81,500 deaths.
“While the war in Ukraine captured most attention, the parallel war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front was more lethal,” the report states.
The Ethiopian conflict, already the third deadliest in 2021, drew in forces beyond the two warring parties.
The report counted an additional 22,300 deaths from other conflicts in 2022, accounting for 11 percent of the total.
About half of all casualties due to military conflict worldwide in 2022 happened in Ethiopia.
According to the report, battle-related deaths in Tigray have reached alarmingly high levels while the world’s attention has focused on Ukraine.
Wait, third deadliest? And I hadn’t even heard of this
I mean I knew the media cared more about white people but HOLY SHIT
Yeah, it's crazy how little people talk about it despite it being incredibly deadly.
Today, Tigray province in Ethiopia has a man-made famine as a result of widespread deliberate destruction of crops, orchards, implements, seeds, and water infrastructure by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces during that war. 1.2 million people were displaced in the first year.
Food aid has been suspended by the UN and US because it was being diverted by government officials, which has led to an increase in starvation deaths this year, yet if they hear about it at all, most westerners seem to assume it's from "choosing to grow the wrong crops" smh.
The western news cycles ignore most of the world.
Wait, what was the second one then? The article doesn't say.
I am surprised to see "only" 80 on the Russian war. I thought the count is around 300k by now.
Edit
The numbers are from 2022, so of course they aren't the current numbers.
The article is about the Peace Research Institute Oslo's report on annual conflict specifically for the year 2022. PRIO is a Norwegian institution.
Obviously we are now over halfway through 2023 so figures have changed.
Tagging you @agarorn because the above answers your question as well.
it seduces you to marginalize
To address your other point @Akasazh I think it's totally fair enough that Ethiopians might care about a war that displaced over 1.6 Million of their people and created a famine in which so many people are currently dying.
I don't think an Ethiopian newspaper article that points out the Norwegian 2022 data is "seducing" anyone to "marginalize" Ukraine.
If you look at my profile it should be obvious that I am not some sort of propagandist either.
Obviously we are now over halfway through 2023 so figures have changed.
Aha, that makes sense. Sorry for taking that in bad faith, but I feel I've been a bit knee-jerkey since joining lemmy.
Shall edit the original comment to reflect that.
Thanks! That's cool.
Yeah I feel you, think I learned some bad habits at reddit and am trying to be more chill now in the fediverse.
Yeah, but most people there don't have blue eyes and blond hair.
I feel like it's more about money and international implications than whiteness. If China attacked a country like Taiwan or Vietnam, there would likely be a ton of press over it as well. An Ethiopian civil war has less economic implications globally.
Plus it's a civil war. I grew up in the Balkans and I can tell you that people gave so few fucks about the war of my country, that when the Ukraine war started they weren't bringing up Yugoslavia as a recent European conflict, they were talking about WWII. If your country isn't gonna make a huge impact on the global markets, nobody cares (even if you're blonde like many ex-Yugoslavians).
when the Ukraine war started they weren’t bringing up Yugoslavia as a recent European conflict, they were talking about WWII
I find some anglophone westerners who aren't old enough to remember it for themselves don't seem to even know about the Balkan conflicts. It's kind of disturbing how quickly our cultures forget.
US is currently occupying a larger percentage of Syria than Russia is of Ukraine. Where are the sanctions, the outrage, and so on?