We may all have to eat some humble pie, but it will be well worth it if a shattered population can be assisted to remain in its homeland.
Whatever happens, Angola will face skepticism from donors perplexed by a country with so much oil and yet so little money, even now after the civil war, to spend on its shattered population.
This is America before the fall, or at least before searing divisions in our government and general population shattered any semblance of national solidarity.
Then there's Pailin's tragic history as the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, which left the population shattered, isolated, uneducated, suspicious, and devastatingly poor.
Bloodshed had been limited compared with the fighting in other Libyan towns and cities - a total of four people had been killed - but the abuse of power by a minority of the town's Tuareg had shattered relations between the two populations.
But civil war between rival governments at either end of the country has shattered the economy, leaving the population almost wholly dependent on revenue generated overseas.
Professor Knox recalled, in "Essays Ancient and Modern," "These lines, written some 30 years before the birth of Christ, expressed, more directly and passionately than any modern statement I knew of, the reality of the world I was living in: the shell-pocked, mine-infested fields, the shattered cities and the starving population of that Italy Virgil so loved, the misery of the whole world at war".
Within a short period of time, the economy of the formerly wealthy pastoral population had been shattered.
In some regions of Europe, the Great Famine of 1315-17 killed a tenth of the population, shattering social norms and local economies.
With a population of 80 million, a shattered economy, lack of education, lack of water, food and fuel... the challenges are staggering for Egypt.
