leaders of arab countries have met in a summit for the first time in 3 years as things like inflation, starvation, and an energy crisis have taken hold in partsfo africa and the middle east. many of these come as russia has invaded ukraine with ukraine being the main export of wheat and grain to many of these arab countries and for yemen was a whooping 40% of their wheat import though apparently russia has agreed to a deal that would allow ukraine to export some resources to these countries. Droughts have also killed many livestock and crops in places like Somalia causing mass starvation made even worse amid a civil war in the country. another topic discussed was relations with palestine with many leaders calling for an end to the warfare happening there “Our main and first cause, the mother of all causes, the Palestinian issue, will be at the heart of our concerns and our main priority,” Tebboune the president of algiers said.
The summit revealed a lot of things and in my belief was pretty successful as i think a meeting of so many countries can be. the war in ukraine has such far reaching effects that many don’t think about and countries are suffering for it with Ukraine being around half of some countries entire wheat and grain production. this is further made worse by the drought which is only going to get worse as climate change does and the rain becomes more irregular so i think this will be a continuing issue regardless add in the fact that i’m not so sure russia will uphold their end of the deal in letting ukraine export because it would seem a bit out of character though i guess this may be them acquiescing so they can use turkey to move gas and energy. The Palestine discussion was important because some of the Arab countries are in league with Israel due to gas and oil and so this is a point of contention between a lot of these countries who argue that the attacks on Palestine are unjust. i unfortunatly doubt that the countries making dals with isreal will tae them back because money rules all and secondly these world leaders arent dumb they now the situation beforehand so im not optmsitic there though algeria making a supportive stament towards palestine is big as they are big players in the oil and gas game.
What this connects to is the complicated nature of allies. In class we discussed how country A may be an ally to country B but B is allied with C who A hates and how this can lead to certain conflicts of interest in the relationships and I feel this is exemplified here. Some countries have ties to Russia which is absolutely tanking the production of their allies and then some of the Arab countries are allied with Israel and have contracts with them while others actively oppose Israel and support palestine. so all in all i feel this illustrates it’s not so much stay loyal to who your loyal to but rather who can help you the most currently which we’ve talked about in class