If you can't resolve your problems in peace, you can't solve them with war.

This proverb is not saying that war never achieves anything. It plainly does. Wars have removed governments, pushed back invasions and changed borders.

What it says is harder. Fighting can decide who wins. It cannot decide what the argument was about.

Imagine two families who share one well. War can settle which family holds the well. It does not settle whether the other family still needs water. It does not settle the anger, the debts, or the empty places at both tables. When the guns stop, the first question is still sitting there — and now there is less to share, and fewer people to share it with.

That is why the proverb begins with peace. If two sides cannot find an answer they can both live with, force does not produce one. It only decides who has to accept it, and for how long.

The saying is Somali, from a tradition that has long used proverbs inside real peace talks. Another Somali saying sits beside it: both peace and war come out of tongues.