Sir, - Kevin Myers is quite right. A sprinkling of UN soldiers will not solve the problems in Africa.
When the Algerian human rights defender Salima Ghezali was in Dublin last year, there was already talk of Ireland joining the Partnership for Peace and intervening in Algeria. I mentioned this to Ms Ghezali and she was stunned and horrified. We already have too many armed people in Algeria, she said. The last thing we need is more of them.
If we want to solve the problems of Africa, perhaps we should investigate the causes and, to do that, we could apply the methods of detective novels and ask: who benefits from the crime?
Africa is a very rich continent. Who benefits from the wealth? Not the millions who die in barbarous conflicts, not the millions of displaced people parked in refugee camps, not the millions of AIDS victims, nor the people burned alive trying to scoop up petrol from a leaking pipeline. Who benefits from that petrol, from the gold and diamonds and tin and copper and natural gas? Who benefits from the sale of weapons? Who benefits from the interests on the debt incurred to buy those weapons? These are questions we should be asking. - Yours, etc., C. Gaidoni,
Ailesbury Grove, Dundrum, Dublin 16.