A brutal war since April has left at least 10,000 dead and displaced 6 million but remains a mere footnote on the international agenda.

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’ve been trying to add “Horn of Africa” when I talk about Ukraine, Gaza, etc. It’s an awful situation. I know people only have the capacity for so much horror but the same refugee charities are going to have to work there too. I do a monthly donation to Refugees International and Doctors Without Borders in part because they go anywhere, sometimes before journalists.

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    The victims are the wrong colour, the perpetrators are the wrong religion, the west is distracted, Africans aren’t great fans of former colonial powers getting involved in their former colonies, and it’s in the Russian/Chinese sphere of influence.

    Although the root causes of the conflict are domestic, Russia’s working on building a naval base there, there’s evidence of Wagner involvement, and according to some media Russia is using Sudanese gold to help fund the war in Ukraine. Which probably doesn’t help or give the Russians much of a motive to weaponise the conflict for propaganda purposes, unlike other conflicts.

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Yep, and it will continue to be since it’s China’s and Russia’s territory. Most of the underdeveloped African nations are these days. The west gave up a while ago and often weren’t wanted anyway.

    https://apnews.com/article/china-russia-xi-putin-brics-south-africa-f596f2362aa11c42d17d26ba739e56f2

    https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/11/the-dragon-and-the-bear-in-africa-stress-testing-chinese-russian-relations/

    https://warsawinstitute.org/russia-and-china-in-africa/

    • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I think it was the head of the African Union who said, addressing the EU, “when I talk to you I get a lecture, when I talk to China I get an airport.”

        • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          No, that’s the genius in their strategy: They don’t expect payback quickly. It’s perfectly fine for them if you lease your new infrastructure for 99 years and pay nothing. They’ll then happily take it away from your great-grandchildren.

        • jonne@infosec.pub
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          11 months ago

          Yes, completely different from how the IMF and World bank behave.

            • jonne@infosec.pub
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              11 months ago

              Is it though? To me it seems they just took the post/neo colonial playbook and started applying it too. I’ve never seen a straight comparison of terms for similar investments. In either case, the country ends up loaded with debt it can’t repay, and they have to privatise something (or in the case of China, they get the asset?).

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                11 months ago

                I think there are two things I would point to. One is that neither the IMF nor the World Bank are nation states, which makes their predatory lending a little different. The other is that China brought Sri Lanka’s economy to the brink of collapse through predatory lending and I don’t know that the IMF or the World Bank has gone that far with a nation’s economy, but feel free to correct me on that.

                • jonne@infosec.pub
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                  11 months ago

                  Here’s a top 10 list of debtors to the IMF, on top of which is Argentina, which, as you know isn’t doing great economically.

                  I’m not going to claim there’s a causal effect, as I don’t think the case of Sri Lanka can be attributed solely to debt to China either (Sri Lanka was run by kleptocrats, and had to import a lot of goods and energy, making it vulnerable to external market conditions).

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Weren’t wanted is an understatement. France and the UK were robbing whole Africa dry. Africa would have been extremely developed by now if their population saw some of the money the west was stealing from them.

      • nevemsenki@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Well, let’s see how things will be different now that it’s china and russia extracting wealth from them.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Not much, but it’s pretty easy to get the locals riled up to overthrow the current government.

          China might do some minor projects to get them into debt like our IMF has but it won’t amount to much either

      • Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        France and the UK were robbing whole Africa dry.

        Were robbing? France still controls the currency of like 7 or 8 African nations. America gets most of the blame for foreign meddling but the French never stopped colonialism. Fucking assholes

    • WHARRGARBL@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      It’s hard to know about all the wars and genocides, if they aren’t in the standard westernized nations. I only learned of the Rohingya genocide this year.

      The best that most of us can do is be like ShittyBeatles and donate to legit charities of your choice.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Hell even with western nations it can be forgotten, plenty of folks dont know about the Armenian genocide for example. Frankly speaking I think at best you can get most to list off the Holocaust, Armenia, and maybe the Holodomor or Cambodia.