The Iraq war continues to spiral out of control, the year leading up to its fourth anniversary this week the deadliest so far.Unless a political solution is sought, the destructive toll in lives is destined to reach an astounding one million in the next year, since it was already 650,000 a year ago according to the Johns Hopkins University study.
The world has also never been so unstable or threatened. With Somalia invaded, the world and our region are even more so, with four countries now occupied, all of them Muslim. Once a war deepens, positions become entrenched and finding a peaceful exit becomes harder by the day.
Peace and human rights advocates in Kenya must therefore take the lead in emphasizing the need for a democratic, inclusive government devoid of the rampaging warlords rather than support the current aggression. We must lead this campaign because we are next door and directly involved, and the whole region could be engulfed by this crisis, as Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat emphasized on Monday in these pages, although he advocated use of force as the way to end the resistance.
More on this from Salim Lone here.
