Historical events that impacted Africans lives
Authors: Enzo Monhol, Julia Nunes, Marina Andrade and Murilo Murad
Throughout African history, there has been a lot of suffering and exploitation of the African people and these countries were never economically rich as the first world countries. Influenza, the Sudanese Civil War, the Gulf War, and the Iran and Iraq War marked Africa’s history. Overall, these conflicts caused a huge number of deaths, since the government administration did not think about or prioritized the well-being of africans families, made questioning decisions and did not look at the quality of life and what Africans needed.
Influenza
When talking about pandemics in the world, mainly in Africa, it’s impossible not to mention the “Spanish flu,” the catastrophic outbreak of “Influenza.”After the First Great War in 1919, Africans thought that the deaths were over and now they would finally have peace without having to be victims of external conflicts. Even innocent families, kids and workers just wanted to continue with their lives. However, influenza came and infected 500 million people in different countries of the world, mainly in Africa, one of the continents where the disease came first.
At the end of the First Great War, Africans were surprised with influenza in their countries. The chaos came, and started to spread when ships transporting some of the 150,000 African troops who, together with 1.4 million laborers that provided logistics support to the war in Europe, brought Influenza to the seaports of Mombasa. The war, besides killing a lot of innocent people, played a significant role in transmitting the virus rapidly and globally. In the book Listening for Lions, by Gloria Whelan, the main character Rachel, is a African girl that came to England when she was a little kid, but in 1919, right when the Influenza epidemic started, she returned to Africa with 13 years old, because her parents were convocated to help the hospitals that did not have many doctors and good equipaments. Her parents were missionaries so when they came, the girl witnessed Influenza creating a terrible and painful situation for Africans, resulting in a number of families being broken by deaths. In the first chapter of the book, she says that just wanted to close her eyes and see again the beauty of Africa that was losing its people, its happiness and its colors, for the worrisome situation due to the virus. The girl had good memories of Africa in her childhood, and she hoped that this would not be erased from her mind. Raquel describes how influenza looks like through her point of view, and what she knew about diseases as a kid that did not understand the virus and never lived something like that; she says, “Father treated sleeping sickness, plague, smallpox, and leprosy” (p.6), suggesting the situation in Africa was so confuse, because no one knew what in fact the symptoms of influenza were.
Other countries, England, for instance, had to send missionaries to Africa to help decrease the level of the cases, and Raquel’s parents were one of them – her mother, as a teacher, also had to help her husband, who was different from the other doctors that were doing this job as a government order. Father looked at that as a mission with all africans families that did not have the fault of the bad government management with the influenza. Considering that Father and Mother were in the hospital for the whole day, it is no surprise that they got influenza and died. After that, Raquel decided to change her identity, as a plan to help Africa, pretending to be a girl from a local and very wealthy family. She was doing that because this family owned many plantations important to Africa’s economy, so considering the severity of the epidemic that was largely under colonial administration, the influence of rich people could make the government pay attention to the quality of hospitals, and the number of doctors after the loss of her parents. In the book, Raquel relates her plans to return to England and try to find more doctors asshe wouldn’t give up on the hard work that her parents did to Africa. This intensive job saved a great number of kids, mothers and also preserved families. Raquel learned with her parents that hospitals don’t mean death, because before the beginning of the epidemic Africans had the misconception that any person who goes to hospitals will die, since they were used to doctors not being properly trained. Her parents showed that hospitals can save people, because there are heroes like them.
The only data about deaths in Africa is that 2% of the country’s population is estimated to have died within 6 months, 2.5 million out of an estimated 130 million people. In the end of the book, Raquel felt frustrated and unable to help Africa in a way she expected. She would like to have built a large hospital with technological equipment and many doctors, a school for kids and a nursing school. The girl mentions, “I could not tell the government what to do or bring the rains” (p. 194), suggesting that the government didn’t want to look deeply at the real situation that Africans were living through and the chaos caused by that influenza epidemic. Moreover, many kids become orphans, since influenza used to kill young people. Africa was passing through these situations as a result mainly of the government that did not do what was necessary to protect Africans, and did not provide good hospital conditions to the population. From 1983 until 2005, in the Sudanese Civil War, women were raped and unable to provide food for their children, so the number of orphans grew wildly adding to the large number left by the influenza epidemic in 1919.
Sudanese Civil War
In 1983 the northern part of Sudan started a war against the south. This aggressive movement resulted from the north (and the government) wanting the whole country to follow Islamism. On the other hand there were different religious groups that didn’t want to be forced to follow only one. This led the south to fight for independence, with the objective to have their own independent concepts and ideas. After the North expose its goals and actively work to achieve them, there were consequences such as kids having to deal with war as adults, since their parents were killed for thinking differently from their former “allies,” and having to mature early to face this pain. Also, many women were raped and got pregnant, then they abandoned their children because they could’t supply their kids with food – a situation worsened by the tracks, such as hunger and sufferment influenza left in Africa; Many kids were lost in the war when they were sleeping since the adults left the children alone because they thought the kids would mess up more than help; and the North cut access to school in the South by destroying school buildings with government support.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement, also known as the Treaty of Naivasha was signed in 2005 by Ali Osman Taha, the Vice President of Sudan and leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). It was a peace agreement which ended the Second Sudanese civil war. After almost three years of negotiation, the agreement ended the conflict of more than 21 years with approximately two million people dead and three million refugees and people displaced internally. In the agreement, it was established the formation of an interim government in Sudan by the National Congress Party (in power) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), with John Garang as first vice president, a six-year autonomy in the southern region (South Sudan), a referendum in 2011 (after the period of autonomy) with the possibility of the southern population trying for independence, a division of oil profits between the two parties, and amnesty for the guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
In the book A Long Walk To Water by Linda Sue Park, the main character is a child living in 1983 Sudan. Salva (the main character) is abandoned by his refugee group when sleeping because he was a child, and his parents had been killed by northern troops that invaded his village. The ones that escaped, left him alone to die. Salva is alone in the middle of the completely devastated desert, fighting to survive, fighting against the temperature. “Why do they leave me without waking me? I would not have been any trouble-I would not have complained!… What will I do now?”(p.15)Salva is a portrayal of the kids that suffered in the war; he represents the fear, the pain, the hope, the innocence of a child… More than half of the kids that lived through what he faced didn’t survive. He also embodies the mindset of the kids that were killed in South Sudan, he represents Sudan’s people rights by showing how they were treated in this period of Sudan’s history.. The author tried to show in Salva how kids were feeling about the war, how they faced it, how the war impacted them, how traumatized they got. The northern region was so cruel that not only the children of the south were fighting, the government used children to conclude their plans, kids from the northern troops were also obligated to fight. This shows that kids were fighting against each other and not playing soccer, having fun.
Sudanese Second Civil War served to show what a man can do to others. people being dispatched because of their notion of what was right and wrong, orphan kids dying of hunger because of insufficient food. Parents were elimate or raped in front of them, the invader thought that if they witnessed this homicide they would feel afraid and follow thir order when grown up. This shows how this generation of kids were impacted by this war that lasted more than 20 years.
Gulf War and Iran – Iraq war
In 1991, a war happened between the United States and Iraq. This conflict occurred because Iraq invaded Kuwait to get more control of the lucrative oil supply of the Middle East. As an “answer”, the United States of America and the UN security Council demanded that the president of Iraq (Saddam Hussein) withdraw Iraq troops from Kuwait, but Hussein refused. As a consequence of refusal of the invasion of Iraq troops in Kuwait, the president of the United States (George Bush) attacked Iraq since they were also interested in the oil of Kuwait. That “new war” was called the gulf war, this conflict was named like that, because Kuwait is in the Gulf region. There were 148 American soldiers dead, and this war was the first war that was heavily televised.
Besides the Gulf War, the book Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein by Ali Fadhil and Jennifer Roy, also mentioned the Iran – Iraq war. This conflict was a result of border disputes, political and religious issues between the countriesIran and Iraq. This was a very violent conflict, responsable for 1 million of deaths total. The president of Iraq ( Saddam Hussein ) was a very violent president. As a consequence, we have these two wars ( Iran – Iraq in 1882 and Iraq – United States in 1991 ).
By these two wars, we could see similarities and differences between them. The 1882 war was not heavily televised as the 1991 was, in the Gulf War (the 1991 one ) had the United States as a winner, and in the Iran – Iraq war, nobody won. Both wars had a lot of people involved, but there was a big difference in the number of deaths between them. The United States – Iraq war had 600 thousand people killed and Iran – Iraq had 1,5 million people who died. The two wars were very bad for the Iraqi, because at the end of these conflicts the country entered into a severe economic crisis, which is very bad for the country.
Ali, an Iraqi boy, who is the main character of the book Playing Atari With Saddam Hussein, by Ali Fadhil and Jennifer Roy, is an Iraqi boy who is suffering because of the wars that his country entered in, sometimes he talks a little bit about the wars and his feelings. Most of the times he’s afraid and nervous, so when that situation of nervousness happens, he found a way to distract him, which is think that he was destroying a bomb from the United States in his mind, this somehow relax him from these tense situations. He has two brothers, Ahmed and Shizard, andhe also has a sister, Shireen, who isand she’s only six years old. His mother is responsible for the house, she’s always looking for help from her sons. Unlike his mother, Ali’s father is working all day, so he has little time to spend with his family. In conclusion, it can be observed that Ali is a boy who lives in Iraq, has a big family, and a short time to be together with his father, because he is working the whole day.
With these conflicts, Iraq entered a severe economic crisis, because they spent their money on armaments, security and war clothes, in addition to ending up not winning any of the wars, losing to the United States, a power at the time, and neither winning nor losing to Iran. In the Iran – Iraq war, both presidents Saddam Hussein from Iraq and Ruhollah Khomeini from Iran, the two were saying that their respective countries won the battle, but there was no winner.
The Iran – Iraq war
The Iran e Iraq war was a big conflict caused by politics , economics and religious disagreements. It happened in 1980, when started the military conflict between Iraq and Iran .In the iraq the president, Sadam Husseins was also a military dictatorship,
At that time The president used his army to advance along a broad front into Khūzestān, taking Iran by surprise. Iraq’s troops captured the city of Khorramshahr, but failed to take the important oil-refining center of Ābādān. In December of 1980 the Iraqi offensive had bogged down about 50–75 miles inside Iran, after meeting unexpectedly strong Iranian resistance.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is an Iranian state military, initially tasked with safeguarding the Islamic Revolution .Their actions proved effective: a victory by the militia in April 1981 made the Iranian leadership to amplify its role in combat their enemies.
In August 1990, while Iraq was worried about its invasion of Kuwait (see Persian Gulf War), Iraq and Iran restored diplomatic relations, and Iraq agreed to Iranian terms for the settlement of the war.The Gulf War was a conflict in which Iraqi government action generated an international reaction. The two wars were bad for Iraqis, because the conflicts created a severe economic crisis.. Nowadays the country still suffers with the results of both wars , currently experiencing a major economic and social crisis.
In May 1982 Iranian forces recaptured Khorramshahr. Iraq voluntarily withdrew its forces from all captured Iranian territory, soon after and began seeking a peace agreement with Iran. But under the leadership of Ruhollah Khomeini who saw Saddam as an obstacle to the Islamic Revolution remained intransigent and continued the war in an effort to overthrow the Iraqi leader.
In July Iranian forces invaded Iraq’s Al-Baṣrah province. Iraq’s defenses solidified once its troops were defending their own soil,and the war settled down into a stalemate with a static, entrenched front running just inside and along Iraq’s border.
In 1982 a twelve years old boy named Reza had no interest in join iran force against Iraq. But when he knew that his uncle was dead he decided to join the war to take revenge on the people that started the war and put his uncle in a grave . His uncle was like a father to him , he was the only person in his family that supported him in his music career .His uncle never liked war but the government hunted him down until he joined. At that time The president used his army to advance along a broad front into Khūzestān, taking Iran by surprise. Iraq’s troops captured the city of Khorramshahr, but failed to take the important oil-refining center of Ābādān. In December of 1980 the Iraqi offensive had bogged down about 50–75 miles inside Iran, after meeting unexpectedly strong Iranian resistance.
The war had been one of the most destructive conflicts of the late 20th century. The total number of combatants on both sides is unclear, but both countries were fully mobilized, and most men of military age were under arms. The number of casualties was enormous but equally uncertain. Estimates of total casualties range from 1,000,000 to twice that number. The number killed on both sides was perhaps 500,000, with Iran suffering the greatest losses. It is estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds were killed by Iraqi forces.
In conclusion this book talks about the things that happened in the war as a reality. In conclusion the war in general brings many sentimental losses and economic losses for countries, one example of that is iraq that suffers with the consequences of war so in general everyone will lose in war that’s why solving tinks with war is never the right way.
