' ALL-SINGING : ALL-DANCING ' : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

 

! IT'S ALL ABOUT MANKIND ! : The best and only hope for building a peaceful and dignified better world is The World Students Society - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world.

AMERICA AND INDIA'S '' poisonous and polarising '' elections, happening and due, will cast a terrible pall over global politics. No easy solutions and times will glimmer and glow.

The war in Gaza and Ukraine is just about perfectly positioning the world for World War III. Sadly and tragically for mankind, both wars are likely to grow more and more violent before engulfing the world.

BY THE SKIN of its teeth Proud Pakistan continues to grapple on a daily basis with grim spectacle and consequences of terrorist attacks, while adopting, nurturing and raising, this ever slippery democracy. 

2024 will be a stressful year for anyone who cares about liberal democracy, predicts Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-chief, The Economist. It will be a nerve racking and a dangerous year.

Of Chaos and Coups : DRAW AN ARC across Africa south of the Sahara, and it passes through not just a belt of junta-run countries but the most conflict-ridden region in the world.

This arid stretch, known as SAHEL, takes in jihadist conflict in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger ; rampant banditry in northern Nigeria; the fight against the terrorists of Boko Haram and its offshoots by four countries around Lake Chad.

Civil war in Sudan; smouldering ethnic conflict in northern Ethiopia; and, to the south, the terrorists of al- Shabab in Somalia.

The devastation is shocking. In Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, known as the central Sahel, more than 10,000 people were killed in armed conflict in 2022. By September 2023 that total had already been surpassed.

In northern Nigeria, more than 7,000 people were killed in 2022. In five months of conflict in Sudan more than 9,000 people were slaughtered. 

A conservative tally of the number of people forced from their homes in the region, excluding Somalia, comes to 15 million.

There will be no sudden silencing of the guns in 2024. The conflict in the central Sahel - in which Jihadists linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State attack civilians, fight against government forces and each other - will probably grow even more violent.

Jihadists see the recent coup in Niger as a chance to gain ground from a distracted army, and the army will then probably pursue a more scorched-earth approach against Jihadism.

IN Sudan further clashes are almost certain between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Forces, a paramilitary group, as is more ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

The two at least have clear leaders, holding out the possibility, however remote, of a sudden peace deal, in a way that is impossible to imagine in the jihadists conflict elsewhere.

Though most of these conflicts are separate, some countries such as Niger are battered by more than one. Refugees spill in all directions. 

Some wars are spreading. In Ethiopia the fighting between Tigray and the government officially ended, but clashes with other ethnic groups, such as the Amhara and Oromo, appear to be spiralling.

And states such as Benin and Togo are already suffering attacks from Jihadists crossing over from Burkina Faso.

All this violence has gone hand in hand with political chaos, most recently through coups in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Sudan. If this violence spreads in 2024, expect political chaos to do so as well.

The World Students Society thanks Kinley Salmon, Africa correspondent, The Economist, Dakar.