The Forgotten Wars of 2024 and 2025
March 24, 2026 · Frisian News
While the world watched Ukraine and the Middle East, armed conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America killed thousands with barely a mention in Western news. Media silence does not mean these wars matter less.
In 2025, fighting between rival factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed large numbers of people within weeks. The international press gave it little coverage. Earlier, violence between Fulani herders and farming communities in Mali claimed many lives over several months. Western outlets that had sent crews to cover protests in New York found time for neither story. These deaths happened. They matter. Yet the news cycle moved on.
The pattern repeats across continents. Fighting in Myanmar between the military junta and armed groups has displaced hundreds of thousands since late 2023. A low-grade war in the Philippines pits government troops against communist insurgents. Colombia battles drug cartels that control entire regions. None of these conflicts lack brutality or scale, but all share one thing: they do not fit the geopolitical narrative that Western editors have chosen to push.
Media attention follows power, not suffering. Ukraine matters because it involves Russia directly. Gaza matters because it sits at the intersection of American power, oil, and ideology. But when Africans kill Africans, when Asians fight Asians, when Latin Americans destroy their own towns, the calculation changes. These wars lack the starring role that great power competition demands. They bore audiences trained to see world events through the lens of American interest.
The death tolls from conflicts in Africa and Asia in 2024 and 2025 were substantial, yet news coverage split itself unequally. The forgotten wars received a fraction of the coverage, a fraction of the aid, a fraction of the diplomatic effort. Small countries with no strategic value to major powers learn that their dead do not count as news.
This indifference carries consequences. Conflicts that attract no cameras tend to fester and grow. Warlords find it easier to recruit when the world ignores them. Famine spreads in wars that nobody watches. When the West decides a conflict does not matter, the combatants lose incentive to negotiate, because no one will pressure them to stop. The forgotten wars will not stay forgotten. They will simply grow until they cost too much to ignore.
Published March 24, 2026 · Frisian News