In the second of a five part special report, Ahmed Shibli, managing director of ETD Consulting sets out his own unique take on the twenty-first century to date and how several disparate events that have shaped our lives over the past twenty years may well be connected.
Part Two
If a million people died in the Middle East’s recent wars, and if we assume that there are four injured for everyone death, then perhaps many millions were injured and disabled in these desperate countries. Then followed the drone attacks, justice from the air, with the single push of a button by someone sitting thousands of miles away in Nevada desert and oblivious to the ground realities.
The ripple effects of all this reached the West in the form of so-called ‘Islamic terrorism’ although it resulted in the death of tens of thousands in the Muslim countries themselves. The countries in turmoil gave rise to desperate civilians many of whom tried to escape to the West for the future security of themselves and their children. This in turn resulted in divisions in the EU countries with many closing the doors to these ‘terrorists’, others making arguments that they will be ‘swamped’ by the ‘flood’ of people with their alien culture and religion, while some countries, such as Germany, welcomed many. Under this strain, cracks started appearing in the EU with right wing parties and populist leaders with attractive slogans and ‘alternative truth’ theories gaining popularity. In the UK the slogan ‘76 million Turks are coming’ was used to scare the people off the EU.
Across the Atlantic, the USA situation was not immune from this either. While the younger more liberal generation voted for a black president twice in a row, the right wing couldn’t take it anymore, with the one called Donald Trump asking for the proof of the new president’s birth certificate and nationality because for some he ‘didn’t look American’. The eight years of the rule of a ‘foreign’ President resulted in a huge backlash and brought in the ‘doubter in chief’ as the new ‘saviour’ President. Yet again the desperate immigrants from Mexico and those from, by now, the devastated Muslim countries became the targets of open hate. The ‘great and beautiful wall to keep the rapists and drug smugglers’ out became the talk of the day with some.
Then along came the so called ‘Arab Spring’, encouraged by us in some countries (like Egypt, Tunisia) but reported only in passing in our media in others such the uprisings in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. While we claimed to be fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq our best friends were, and still are, the most brutal dictators of the Middle East and elsewhere. Our head of governments or states enjoyed the sword dances with them as long as they purchased our billion dollars arms. Our own disposed watched the violent uprisings in the Middle East with quiet interest. Encouraging peaceful uprising for democracy is one thing but supporting violent uprising and waging wars has consequences not only for those countries but for us back home, which somehow we failed to understand.
To add to the twist, we lost control of the ‘well behaved’, though sometimes irritating, news media. The 21st century saw the dawn of the digital media over which we had little or no control. Then came along the mobile telephones with the digital and video cameras that cost little and came within the easy reach of everyone. This meant that what happened either at home or in our wars overseas was instantly relayed around the world. Muslim youths, many dispossessed and unemployed around the world, were radicalised by some of the pictures that they saw.
The clergy became even more radical than ever before with their own ‘heavenly’ view of world affairs. The mix became really toxic. Warnings that the invasion of Iraq would radicalise the Muslim in the UK were brushed aside, perhaps because we thought that this would all be controllable and only a minor irritant. The digital media took on its own momentum and became a mix of real and fake news. This mix suited some who termed as fake news anything that they did not like or termed all bad actions as the doing of a ‘few bad apples’.
To be continued…
