Kabul-Baghdad-Mogadishu-Damascus-Kyiv or Ukraine as outskirts of humanity Analysis by Emin Galali

War is being waged in the center of Europe. These are not just hostilities. This is a sanctions war, an informational war, a psychological war, and God know what else. There is slight hope for its rapid end. 

Our Russian neighbors still call these events a special operation. I will agree with their wording but only on the condition that from now on all wars in the world, including World War I and World War II, the Anglo-Boer war and Punic wars, will be called that way.
For example, special operations of the Mongol Empire or Tamerlane's special operations. What's wrong? It sounds like a title for an action movie. According to the same logic, it is necessary to rename "Special Operation and Peace" by Tolstoy, "Special Operation of the Worlds" by Wells, and so on. Let's not forget about the movie - "The tomorrow special operation".

Funny, isn't it? It would be funny if it wasn't sad. There is slight hope and it's getting less. The parties of the conflict were antagonistic on February 24 and the events of the last two months easily turned the harsh opposition and hostility that had remained since 2014 into hatred. There are reasons concerning the relations between the two countries. But there is also an important element here that does not directly concern Ukraine and Russia. This is the sad situation that the modern world viewed in 2022.
As a reader, when did you see a report from Syria last time, such as those with which all recent news began and ended? When did you see the new adventures of the Islamic State and Boko Haram? When did you see the news about Afghanistan, to which a happy future seemed to come a couple of decades ago, then the terrible past left and returned?  The past situation is not worse than that when hundreds of billions of dollars were spent during many years and hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Has anyone heard that due to the drought during forty years, 13 million inhabitants of the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia) are facing starvation? What do you know about the situation in Mosul today? Do you remember such a city in Iraq, it was captured by Islamic terrorists in 2014 and declared the capital of the "Islamic Caliphate"? Do you know how many people died during its liberation as a result of religious fanatics’ actions? Just guess! 1,000? No. 5,000? You didn't guess. 8,000? Alas, you are wrong again. Some 40,000 people died during the battle for Mosul in 2016. Around 800,000 became refugees only in one city. 

“What do you trying to say?” the reader will ask.
“I am not in position to accuse the world of hypocrisy, comparing the degree of interest and compassion for Ukrainians today and for Afghans, Syrians, Yemenis, Libyans, Malians, Moldovans, Iraqis, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Somalis, Georgians and other peoples, who find themselves among wars and natural disasters. There is such a world. I'm just convinced that if it had reacted differently to the terrible events of those years, Ukraine's nightmare would not have lasted a week. It is unlikely to start at all. 

Time cannot be turned back, but if there were no Karabakh, then perhaps conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Transnistria would not have flared up. If there were no strange moments in the fight against the Taliban, the Islamic State would not have appeared in the region. 

If it were not for the hasty decisions in Iraq, then this terror in the form in which it appeared in the world might not appear at all. If due to political, economic, regional and God knows what other situations, the world had not put up with the Syrian and Libyan madness and the international security system had not turned into a perverted version of case law, Russia might have acted differently. 

All this is purely hypothetical. I am not calling for inventing a time machine and preventing the error of the future from the past on the principle of the "Terminator". It is necessary to see the processes not only in perspective (short, medium and long-term) but also in retrospect. 

Humanity could not react correctly to the horrors of the capitals listed in the title (it is not full, it can be easily increased). An adequate response to the nightmare in Ukraine is another chance to stop at the edge of humanity and not fall into the abyss. I'm not talking about the end of humanity and not about apocalyptic scenarios. I'm saying that to heal the most terrible wound on our planet, we must remember its other sores.
Perhaps we will avoid further twisting of this ominous spiral. A commentator will not say (enter the right name of the country or region) what could have been avoided if the world had been able to resolve the war in Ukraine better and more effectively than it was done.
Oh, sorry, not war, special operation, of course, special operation.