Africans don't have wars, they have 'genocides'

When does war become genocide? When the protagonists are black people. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the unhinged claims that the Ivory Coast is on “the brink of genocide” following the disputed presidential elections and the stand-off between the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo and president-elect Alassane Ouattara.

Unlike we in the West, Africans, it seems, never “fight wars”; they don’t “launch invasions”; they don’t have “political tensions”. They just commit genocides – barmy, inexplicable genocides, often with machetes, for no other reason than the fact that they like to kill people. Lots of people. Entire races of people if they can get away with it.

The speed and casualness, the robotic thoughtlessness, with which the term “genocide” is applied to African conflicts is extraordinary. No matter how relatively small-scale the conflict is, no matter where it is taking place in Africa, it will quickly be stamped with the G-word, marking it out as a product of exterminatory bloodlust rather than politics.........More