The dove that pulled freely to the sky

Is the sentiment of ‘peace and goodwill to all,’ an appropriate sentiment just now? Given the time of the year we hear it more often, but really... nothing seems to change does it? Is it really a case of “Theirs not to make reply. Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do or die. Into the valley of death, rode the six hundred.” Have we come no distance at all since Alfred, Lord Tennyson?

The Gaza conflict features protagonists with hundreds of years and a religious gulf to conquer. Really, it doesn’t say much for either nation, either religion, that they are so intractable and entrenched, that they cannot take on board the compassion that purports to be a feature of both. There is no doubt that the initial attack and kidnappings were acts against mankind, but tit-for-tat went out of fashion half a century ago, didn’t it?

Russia and the Ukraine keep hammering away at each other for more than 650 days now, without any sign of a solution to the impasse. In this supposedly ‘most enlightened’ time, it’s difficult to concede that the same global generation that has placed such importance on individual rights, of a million varieties, cannot collectively resolve this conflict that has so many future implications for our futures. US President Joe Biden insists that this is not a war, but an invasion, and that if the Russians packed up their 600,000 troops, and went home, the conflict would end. So why is it still going? Still killing, still maiming, still costing, still frustrating? Wilfred Owen wrote of the misery of war in the winter, when ‘nothing happens,’ except people die.

In Ethiopia, the Eritrean reinforced government troops, are apparently preparing to resume hostilities with the secessionist Tigray rebels. This is a region that, quite simply, not afford any more conflict. Poverty, starvation, and disease have been rampant in Ethiopia, then known as Abyssinia, since its heyday as an African seat of power 600 years ago, under Emperor Zara Yaqob, who ruled until 1468. At that time the nation was cultured, wealthy, religiously and socially stable, its warriors the continent’s policemen, and its statesmen respected. How the mighty have fallen!

Similarly tragic, but mainly because it needed to somehow recover from the Ansar Allah atrocities and genocide of 1994, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is beset by conflict within its borders, mainly from a newly militarised Tutsi population. However Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, are also involved as the civil unrest in the Congo spreads. The UN has 14,000 peacekeepers in the region, but they are like referees without a whistle aren’t they. Brave, but ineffective. There is an election scheduled for this year, but unfortunately the DRC President Tsishekedi has past form in fomenting discontent with his fiery rhetoric, and for him to ‘fire up’ again could be a recipe for disaster! “Hell,” wrote Carole Satyamurti, “like heaven, is untidy, its boundaries arbitrary as a bloodstain on the wall.” The Congo is headed that way.

All in all, it’s not a good look is it? What has happened to us that we cannot resolve issues without loss of life? Thomas Hardy wrote of how, “Quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down, (who) you’d treat if met where any bar is, Or, help to half a crown.” All these poets learned long ago the futility of war, yet... there are always egos that need massaging in blood. Happy Christmas everyone.