By Professor Artwell Nhemachena
WESTERN sanctions have assumed pandemic proportions in the 21st Century but I am not sure who, in the United Nations, is supposed to declare the existence of such a sanctions pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has come and gone but the pandemics of sanctions keep rearing their ugly head, sending many to their beds hungry, and seeing millions quietly pass away without even becoming statistics.
Indeed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been demonised by some Western leaders for supposedly not timeously declaring the COVID-19 pandemic as such.
Yet the pandemics of sanctions are not being noticed and everyone in the West appears to be happy with such pandemics spreading like wildfire across the world. In fact, when the sanctions have not killed enough people or caused enough havoc, the pandemics of sanctions are extended and boosted for more virulence to sufficiently trouble and kill those targeted.
The world is not only suffering from a spate of natural pandemics but is also suffering from anthropogenic pandemics which are man-made, such as the pandemics of sanctions.
Of course, in discourses on climate change, we are told that there are anthropogenic causes of climate change but ironically we have not been also told that in pandemics there are also anthropogenic pandemics which are man-made, or human-made if one wants to be gender neutral.
The question is: Why are there anthropogenic causes in climate change only but not also in the generation of pandemics? Much as humanity is trying to address anthropogenic causes of climate change, it is necessary for humanity to also address anthropogenic pandemics so that the world can be better and safer.
From Zimbabwe to Russia, from Uganda to Venezuela, from Cuba to North Korea, from China to Burma, from Iran to Syria, from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Lebanon to Libya as well as from Belarus to the DRC, Western sanctions have assumed pandemic proportions yet no-one appears to be working on a vaccine for the fast-spreading pandemics of sanctions.
Recently, WHO has been working on a Pandemic Treaty which was, in fact, initially proposed by some Western leaders who appear to have quacked so much in their boots when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, to the extent they thought of coercing all the countries in the world to ‘work together’ to stop or prevent pandemics in future.
The irony here is that, even as they happily generate pandemics of sanctions, Western leaders have proposed to the WHO, a Pandemic Treaty to stop or prevent future pandemics.
Paradoxically, the pandemics of sanctions are emanating from the same Western States that are coaxing all other States in the world to accept being bound to stop or prevent future ‘pandemics’. The question here is why the same Western leaders are not advocating for a similar Pandemic Treaty to stop or prevent the pandemics of sanctions?
The question is: Why, in the Pandemic Treaty proposed by Western leaders to WHO, are the pandemics of sanctions not included? Yet we all know that sanctions kill like any other pandemics.
I am sure the States that are victims of the pandemics of sanctions would agree with the idea of a Pandemic Treaty designed to stop or prevent pandemics of sanctions which are troubling, and killing millions across the world.
Of course, the problem is that whereas the COVID-19 pandemic-related illnesses and deaths were quantified and reported, the illnesses, tribulations and deaths related to the pandemics of sanctions have not been, at least as much, quantified around the world.
It would be useful if we could track pandemics of sanctions much as we tracked the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, it would be helpful if technologies are designed not merely to track the COVID-19 pandemic but, also, there should be technologies to track pandemics of sanctions and to press for accountability in the world.
When Western States describe their pandemics as ‘smart sanctions’, this must be understood in the context of other pandemics like COVID-19 which they could similarly, and by extension, describe as ‘smart’.
Of course, speaking of the pandemics of sanctions as ‘smart’ amounts to a mischief similar to speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic as ‘smart’, even when it infects and kills other human beings.
The wisdom of the Shona idiom: ‘Gudo guru peta muswe kuti vadiki vagokutya’ must be part of the politics of sanctions if the pandemics of sanctions are to be abated and prevented.
For the Shona people, a big baboon should not always be bashing other smaller baboons simply because it is el jefe among the rest.
Similarly, in the family of nations, big States should not always be casting spells of pandemics of sanctions on smaller nations simply because they are big. There is need for restraint from those who see themselves as big, particularly when they became big through plundering other States and peoples in the world.
Might is not always right.
The current pushbacks, including evictions, against big States in West Africa is testimony of what happens where big States are constantly bashing smaller States, including by casting spells of pandemics of sanctions on the hapless.
There is need for restraint — no State is backyard to another. And, of course, Africans never agreed to become and/or live as shadows of other States in the West.
If the COVID-19 was not good because it troubled and killed humanity, why must pandemics of sanctions that trouble and kill be good for anyone in the world?
Food for thought!
