THE brutal Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can easily divert attention away from the fact that, according to experts, there are more than 32 armed conflicts taking place across the globe.
 
At the beginning of this year, the UN said we are experiencing the highest number of violent conflicts since World War II.
 
I am making these points not to diminish even slightly from the carnage that is being inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israeli settler regime, where at least 20,000 people have been slaughtered, including more than 10,000 children, with thousands more people injured.
 
I just want to make two main points.
 
Firstly, war now appears to be the default position in much of the world rather than peace.
 
Secondly, some wars get far more attention than others even though the root causes are largely the same.
 
War is certainly the default position for the largely self-appointed leader of the world, the US, which has been at war almost continually for its entire existence.
 
The US empire has been directly involved in 107 wars since it gained independence from its own former colonial ruler, Britain, in 1776. They have also, of course, been covertly involved in many more to further their own strategic interests.
 
If there are lessons to be learned by the left over these tragic facts it certainly includes the need to widen our gaze from west Asia (labelled as the Middle East by colonialists) and Ukraine to the continent of Africa and elsewhere.
 
What we know about conflicts in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan — to name but two — is that these are not just local difficulties that have sparked more deadly conflicts.
 
They are part of the quest, directly or by proxy, for full spectrum economic or military dominance by the US or one of the former colonial powers — but only with permission of the US.
 
But outside west Asia, many of these conflicts go largely under the radar.
 
Since 1996, fighting in eastern DRC has left around six million human beings dead. Not that you would really know that from the lack of reporting of the conflict or any efforts to bring about a lasting peace.
 
The first Congo war, which ran from around 1996 to 1997, came in the wake of the much more documented genocide in Rwanda where Hutu extremists are said to have killed around a million Tutsis and opposition Hutus.
 
Amid such slaughter, it is difficult to really say who won. It certainly was not the barely able-to-survive peasants or working classes in either country, but the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is held to have defeated the Rwandan government.
 
The second Congo war broke out in 1998 after the short-lived accommodation between Kigali and Kinshasa fell to pieces as Rwanda invaded the DRC.
 
The DRC president Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001 by his own bodyguards and he was succeeded by his son Joseph who, a year later, ended the war which had amassed a death toll of over three million.
 
Yes, that’s right — three million African lives in just a few short years. Again a story seldom told.
 
One of the most prominent rebel groups to emerge in the early 2000s was known as the March 23 Movement (M23), made up primarily of ethnic Tutsis.
 
From around 2012, the M23 group became a clear military force in eastern DRC, and Kinshasa accused Kigali of backing them financially and militarily.
 
The UN even sent a force in 2013 to support the DRC army in its fight against M23.
 
Last year, the M23 resurfaced after five years of inactivity and won control of large parts of the North Kivu province by July 2023.
 
Kinshasa accused Kigali of funding and supporting M23’s resurgence.
 
The DRC, especially the resource-rich eastern region, is home to some of the world’s largest reserves of minerals that the global North have come to rely on, such as cobalt, copper and zinc for mobile phones, computers and components in military hardware.
 
DRC is home to nearly seven million people who have been internally displaced due to the fighting and extreme poverty — despite the abundance of coveted minerals.
 
In Sudan, two warring factions have been engaged in deadly fighting since April 15.
 
More than 10,000 people have been killed and more than 12,000 injured in the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
 
Around 80 per cent of the entire population of the country has been displaced within Sudan and hundreds of thousands have dispersed to neighbouring Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan — but not Egypt (the reason for which I explain below).
 
The conflict is essentially a power struggle between the leaders of the SAF and the RSF who co-operated in running Sudan.
 
President Omar al-Bashir was ousted after popular protests in 2019 and eventually, a Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) was set up under the leadership of the SAF commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan with the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, as his deputy.
 
After disagreements — manufactured or otherwise — over the terms of the transition to democratic rule, fighting broke out between the two sides in April.
 
Several ceasefires have come and gone during the last eight months during which time the RSF have been accused of genocidal attacks against minorities.
 
At least 68 villages have been set alight by RSF militias in Darfur. In November the RSF are said to have killed more than 800 people at Ardamata in western Darfur.
 
The current violence in Darfur is reminiscent of the genocide in the region between 2003 and 2005 which is estimated to have killed around 300,000 people.
 
Other countries are helping to fuel the conflict in Sudan. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all played a role in worsening the crisis in Sudan.
 
Each shared a common goal of preventing Sudan from transitioning to a civilian government over the past few years. They have chosen to support the conflict to serve their own interests.
 
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Sudan policy was guided by three primary objectives. First, he sought to bolster military rule in Sudan in order to be able to control and direct it in favour of Egypt’s interests.
 
Secondly, after the TSC broke down, probably with its help, Sisi wanted to make sure that Sudan did not pursue an independent foreign policy that might affect Egypt’s interests, particularly concerning the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile river.
 
Thirdly, President Sisi wanted to prevent Sudan from becoming a failed state, which could lead to significant political, economic, and humanitarian challenges for Egypt. The latter is particularly important for Egypt which faces a severe economic crisis.
 
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fearful of the possible spread of democratic forces across the region and so use their vast resources to block attempts to establish democratic rule in Sudan.
 
Saudi and UAE oil are, of course, vital for the economies of the global North so the likes of the US and Britain are very happy to overlook the democratic deficit and human rights abuses in those countries.
 
They are also happy to go along with regional policies that do not destabilise the current regimes.
 
Our job on the left must be to draw the lines that show the links between the various conflicts across the globe, few of which are isolated from wider geopolitical considerations.
 
When people march for the Palestinians they must find better methods than we currently use to help develop an understanding that they are also marching against the warlords exploiting the peasant and working-classes of the DRC, Sudan and so many other places.