Por Peter Bach
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“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” wrote George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Looking at just eight conflicts today, the words feel less like fiction than prophecy. The challenge for the world should be to find paths to peace. Instead, we walk an endless corridor of killing. We are voyeurs in a perpetual dance of death. And yet, when conflicts are studied with a humane eye, the routes to peace appear. The greater tragedy is not that peace is impossible, but that ambition and ego outweigh every mechanism meant to restrain them.
“All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal,” raged John Steinbeck. The latest Israel–Gaza crisis may have begun with Hamas’s October 2023 attacks, but it has spiralled far beyond: Gaza lies in ruins, Lebanon and Yemen are entangled, Syria and now Qatar pulled in, tens of thousands dead. A ceasefire once seemed possible, until the strike on Hamas leaders in Doha convinced the last remnant of doubters that war, not compromise, is the aim. And yet the path to peace is not invisible: a truce that holds, food and medicine delivered without obstruction, mediators willing to endure the slow labour of dialogue without being bombed.
From the eastern Mediterranean to Africa’s interior, the pattern repeats. “The war tried to kill us in the spring,” wrote Tim O’Brien. In Sudan, the war has no season. It eats each harvest, every breath of relief, until survival itself feels like rebellion. The Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces fight for power while civilians are broken — famine spreading, villages burning, millions displaced. On paper the way forward looks simple: guns silenced, aid corridors opened, safety guaranteed under international watch. For those in Darfur or Khartoum, peace would mean only this: a child who eats, a home still standing come morning, one night without gunfire.
“The horror! The horror!” cried Conrad’s doomed narrator. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, horror has become routine. The Allied Democratic Forces, tied to ISIS, massacre villagers in North Kivu — sixty lives in one night, countless more unmarked. Even without the 107 dead in a recent boat fire, violence is the drumbeat of daily life. And yet fragile paths still glimmer: reported neighbours who resist together, regional forces choosing cooperation, peacekeepers refusing to look away. Small beginnings, perhaps the only way despair yields to stability.
Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace that “the strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” For Ukraine, time and patience are luxuries it cannot afford. Russia’s invasion has rewritten Europe’s security map and scarred a generation. Fresh drones fall over Poland, shells still over Kharkiv, while diplomats talk in sterile terms. Peace, if it comes, will demand binding guarantees, painful compromises, and leaders willing to risk their own standing for others’ lives. As long as admiration for power outweighs compassion for suffering, patience will be stretched beyond breaking.
“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery,” wrote Dante. In Myanmar, happiness must feel like a distant memory. Since the 2021 coup, the junta wages war against resistance groups with fire and fear, crushing civilians between them. The only hope is dialogue that includes all voices: soldiers, rebels, ethnic minorities, citizens who dream of democracy. ASEAN speaks of mediation, the world of sanctions, but beneath the abstractions lie urgent needs — protection from airstrikes, the freedom to speak, the right to imagine a future not ruled by the gun.
“Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero,” runs the African proverb. In Ethiopia, both lions and hunters have bled. Though the Tigray war is “over,” violence still burns in Tigray and Amhara, displacing thousands. True reconciliation cannot be scripted from Addis Ababa alone. It must listen to every voice, even the ignored. Justice, disarmament, reintegration — words on paper until lived out in villages, in markets, in the daily trust of neighbours. The African Union might offer structure, but only Ethiopians can rebuild what has been torn down.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” wrote Yeats. In the Sahel, the line between anarchy and order blurs daily. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger — governments weaken, insurgent groups multiply, populations teeter on the edge. The fight is not only with guns but with hunger, neglect, and eroding trust in institutions. Peace will need more than counterterrorism: schools that stay open, services that reach the forgotten, leaders held accountable. Without such foundations, anarchy itself will be the only centre that holds.
“There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives,” wrote Graham Greene in The Comedians. Haiti has long since crossed it. Today gangs rule the streets, institutions crumble, Port-au-Prince lives in fear. Erik Prince’s company supplies drones to the police under a ten-year contract, but force alone cannot restore peace. It must come from rebuilding courts and schools, offering young people futures beyond the gun, and restoring belief that government can serve rather than prey. Without that, every intervention is just a pause before the next collapse.
If only these routes to peace could be made real. If only it were that simple. Orwell’s paradox lingers: for those in power, war can masquerade as peace. For those who endure it, war is only war — and peace remains out of reach. As Santayana wrote, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
The living, however, know another truth: war devastates nations but enriches a powerful few. Arms giants see their stocks surge with every missile fired. Private mercenaries thrive on endless instability. Corporations feast on reconstruction contracts, energy firms cash in on chaos, and surveillance companies profit from fear. For ordinary people, war is ruin. For the entrenched war economy, it is business. This is the dark machine Eisenhower warned of when he named the “military–industrial complex.”
Peter Bach lives in London.
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