Is Africa Next

Somalia has been an anarchy since the early 1990's. Rwanda, Ethiopa, the Sudan, and Congo have each suffered through some form of genocide or ethnic cleansing in the last two decades. Nigeria is constantly threatened by pirates and terrorists who regularly blow up oil pipelines and take people hostage. Zimbabwe has been ruled by the tyrant Robert Mughabe since the early 1980's and their economy is on such thin ice that their inflation rates are regularly three and four digits. Up until three weeks ago, Kenya appeared to be some sort of a model and beacon for this continent and now that country is on the brink of its own genocide.

There is an appropriate term to describe this country, hornet's nest. There is an awful lot of evil and wickedness that all comes together in one continent. For the most part, the rest of the world yawns at all the death, destruction, and other evils that happen on a regular basis on this continent. I think soon enough the day of reckoning will come and the rest of the world will have to clean up the uncontrollable mess that the continent has.

Nearly one million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Several thousand people were killed in Ethiopa's genocide four years ago. Nearly five million people were killed during the genocide that occurred in the Congo. A few hundred thousand folks were killed during another genocide in the Sudan.

Worse than that is that the roots of many of these conflicts are the same, tribal warfare. In the end, the Africans don't identify themselves by their nation but by their tribe, and when things go bad it becomes tribal warfare. This was the case in Rwanda as members of the Hutu tribe committed acts of murder against members of the Tutsi. Kenya is the latest coronation of this phenomenon. The incumbent and current leader, Mwai Kibaki, is being blamed for what most folks consider a corrupt election. He is a member of the Kikuyu tribe. As such armed Kenyan men, carrying machetes many times, are roaming the streets looking for members of the Kikuyu tribe.

Furthermore, most of these nations are impoverished. In Ethiopia, the unemployment rate can be up to 70%. In Uganda, the average per capita income is $300 PER YEAR. Nigeria, a member of OPEC and holding the tenth largest oil reserve, has a per capita yearly income of $692.

There is disease, starvation, and STD's all over the place. Just over 6% of all people in the Sub Saharan nations of Africa are afflicted with the AIDS virus. For comparison, the rate in the U.S. is one tenth of one percent.

Africa has long been a fertile ground for terrorists. Both the Sudan and Somalia have played vital roles in the creation and evolution of Al Qaeda. It is likely operatives are common in most of the nations. Bad guys love chaos and the one thing that is plentiful on this continent is chaos.

I simply cannot believe that this sort of thing can continue to happen in the vacuum of the African continent without eventually spilling over to the rest of the world and being left the Western World to clean up much like the way the troubles of the Middle East have been left to the Western World in the GWOT. The rest of the world is yawning while Kenya stands on the brink of genocide. The whole world yawns while an entire continent is gripped with mass starvation, mass slaughter, mass tyranny and of course mass evil. I try to approach everything with a certain logic and logic tells me the world can't ignore this much evil without having equally disastrous consequences.