By Amb. Anthony Mukwita
24.04.24
Being the news junkie that I am, especially for geopolitical news, I came across a story last evening—the US has agreed to dish out some $95 billion in military aid to Ukraine, Taiwani and Israel.
I got thinking, what do we need to do as Zambia to benefit from the United States dough, go to war like Ukraine and Israel? No way we are a Christian nation that has enjoyed undisrupted peace for 59 years, war is good for ´absolutely nothing´.
As a peace-loving global citizen, I also got thinking, ´isn’t this package aimed at arming Israel against Hamas in Palestine, Ukraine against Russia and Taiwan against China just going to prolong the raging conflicts?
The United States argues that if Ukraine loses, western civilisation and democracy suffers and if Taiwan that has not even been harmed by China fails, the US fails and if Israel doesn’t eliminate Hamas, America fails´.
How many wars can one country and its allies support when the larger part of Africa, Zambia included, has the highest number of people living in abject poverty that could use the money Uncle Sam is splashing on wars.
Zambia has been kicking the can down the road for a measly $1.3 billion credit line from the IMF for years but ´boom´ the US can just print $95 billion for wars in countries their citizens can’t even spell, life aint fair.
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I am a fairly intelligent man, but I don’t understand how funding a war brings peace to the world! Whatever happened to diplomacy?
I get the feeling that since Israel that already gets $3.8 billion in aid from America every year now has more cash, the war in Gaza where 34,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women have died since October last, will continue to perish, Ukraine, Russia same deal.
The question arises again, ´why are the missiles called peacekeepers when their aim is to kill?´
Anyhow, a colleague and fellow author tells me over a cuppa, ´brother Africa must forget about a helping hand or a handout from the West…they have wars to fight and fund we have hunger and human rights abuses to fight.´
I agree with my brother and tell myself, ´if we had all the economic parameters in place, we wouldn’t be asking the world to give us $900 million for relief food after a drought and a bit of poor planning.´
Let us fight our own wars of poverty and ownership of our own mines and mineral resources instead of looking up to the west for help.
By the way up to 280 million people face food insecurity around the world due to armed conflict and in some few cases, climate change.
The Military Industrial Complex must keep running, it can’t run without wars.
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Ambassador Anthony Mukwita is a published author whose latest book ´China in Africa the Zambia story ‘is available in Bookworld, Grey Matter and on Amazon and a Takealot.
