Guns or Butter?
It is often heard of the so-called forgotten wars that just because are such,
we are not able to identify them. They are all that conflicts of the third world
that are chronic at the point not to constitute news anymore for our media. Examples
can be: the civil war in Sri Lanka, in Cambodia or in Sierra Leone, the perennial
contrasts between India and Pakistan or between Israelis and Palestinians. When
our televisions and our newspapers waste space to give an updating to us on what
it happens down there, something must have happened of inexpressible. It is ‘what
is happening at the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, today. The long war that
had brought the state of Asmara to the independence has never stopped entirely
but from half of last year, it has had a worrisome escalation. The Ethiopians
have launched a sudden offensive exploiting some Russian help and putting in crisis
the Eritrean army, unprepared to a new conflict. Currently, the troops of Addis
Abeba are at few more than seventy kilometers from the capital city of Eritrea
and it seems that nothing can stop their advance.
Described with this chronicle, the situation would seem not different from
the reality of about tens other countries of the Third World that live daily an
armed struggle. To make unique the circumstances that are developing in the Horn
of Africa there is, however, the terrible famine that has struck the region threatening
of death for hunger more than forty million persons. The nation more tried is
surely Ethiopia, where well eight million individuals have NOTHING to eat. With
the war they are also prevented the humanitarian missions that lavished in past
on limiting the effects of this terrible sore that periodically torments Oriental
Africa. The Ethiopian government spends annually, according to the last available
census, 4,9% of the gross inside product for the education and the welfare, while
21,5% it is devolved to the military expense. These figures are reported to periods
of peace, therefore, it is presumable that they are notably increased. The disproportion
is alarming, so much more if we think that Italy has surely an important role
in the foreign commerce of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Both tightly tied up to the circumstances
of our Colonial Empire, as after all Somalia, they look at our nation not only
as a point of economic reference, but also political. A delegation of the Foreign
Affairs Ministry has uselessly tried to create the bases for a cease-fire without
success. After this slim attempt, more nothing. Our government, too worried by
the inside problems has abandoned every international ambition, attending the
evolution of the events.
I would like to remember the text of article 11 of our Constitution that has
a particular meaning if used in this context: Italy repudiates the war as tool
of offense to the liberty of other people and as mean of resolution of the international
controversies; it allows, under conditions of parity with other States, to the
limitations of sovereignty necessary to a system that assure the peace and the
justice among the Nations; it promotes and it favors the international organizations
revolts to such purpose.
Well, if our government still has a minimum of historical and political dignity,
it would have to comply to the constitutional dictated, trying to put an end to
this conflict, acting as it suggests the article itself, that is to say making
pressure on United Nations so that there is a military intervention in the style
of that happened in Sierra Leone. It would not even serve a large effort from
the great powers, because as in many other occasions, they would be the African
nations to furnish the troops for the intervention. Unfortunately, just because
of the difficulties that the mission of peace in Sierra Leone is living, the UN
seems not having intention to continue on this way. If indeed it ended accepting
the Ethiopian theory according to which this war would be nothing more than an
action of police towards rebellious unit (the same one that sustains the Russian
government for Chechnya), it would deny all blood poured by the Eritreans to get
independence, frustrating every value of the struggle for liberty. This would
be a defeat for the whole world that it still persists to define itself civil
(as if there was an uncivil one), but above all for Italy that by the way it would
have to have a certain experience of wars of independence, having fought three
for its own unification.
The strong Eritrean community that lives in our country has striven more times
to gain the favor of the public opinion and it is not to me to judge if they are
right or not. I prefer to think that if indeed it will have to prevail an idea
on another, it is that of the peace on the blind violence. If we want that the
war is not anymore a tool to regulate the international controversies, we have
to furnish to all the states some firm law principles accepted from everybody
and some tools to let respect their force. The globalization that we are experiencing
has to be not only that of the Internet, but also the reality of the law of the
nations and the laws of the man.
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