No group in history has been as dangerous as soldiers who feel betrayed. Whether they are conscripts, volunteers or mercenaries, the men who fought for a cause that later became reviled as failed or wrong, are neglected at great peril. From the ‘auction of the Roman empire’ in CE 193—when the wealthy senator Didius […]
Continue Reading →The social meaning of famine is to be found in memory.
A just-published special issue of Third World Quarterly on famine and memory, includes contributions on Bengal (India), Biafra (Nigeria),
Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as ‘Hemedti’, attracts a horrified fascination. A man of humble origins, who rose through military prowess, has a great city at his mercy. His story evokes great historical antecedents such as the Turko-Mongol conqueror Timur (1336-1405). Timur led an army of nomads that conquered Persia, captured and sacked Delhi, defeated the […]
Continue Reading →Sudan’s civil war is senseless but was forseeable. The prospect of street fighting in the national capital, comparable to Mogadishu in 1991 or Tripoli in 2012, was too awful to contemplate, especially given the reputation of the metropolitan Sudanese for restraint within their heartland. But any frank analysis of the logic of Sudanese politics pointed […]
Continue Reading →Sudan’s war-makers refuse to learn from history. Time and again they seem to believe, despite every piece of evidence from the country’s sorry history of conflict and destruction, that using force will solve their problems. I have listened to Sudanese generals, politicians and rebel commanders, explaining why war is unavoidable, or necessary, or even desirable. […]
Continue Reading →There’s a lot of bad analysis around the current “world food crisis” and the purported threat of “Biblical famines” globally. The World Peace Foundation program on mass starvation clarifies.
Last year, UN Secretary General António Guterres cited figures of 276 million people worldwide who were food insecure and an increase in food prices […]
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