Syria — Is there anything left to salvage?

Since 2011 economists have been adding up the accumulating costs of the ongoing war in Syria. Year after year they have been recording the numbers that have come to point directly to the impending demise of the Syrian economy and studying what seems now an imaginable way to recovery. The latest estimate revealed by the World Bank predicts that $180 billion is needed to rebuild a war ravaged Syria. Another study by World Vision and Frontier Economics estimates that the war is costing Syria $4 billion a month in lost growth. The war has seen Syrian schools, hospitals and major infrastructure turned into rubble and with only 43% of the medical facilities functional the estimated life expectancy at birth has dropped to 15 years. World Vision is warning that without an internationally agreed reconstruction strategy ready to be implemented when the war is over, Syria’s fate would be no different than that of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Planning, reconstructing and rebuilding are all words that bring forth a ray of hope in an otherwise grim reality, a reality whose facts show that this hope is far-fetched. After the fall of Gaddafi’s Libya the United Kingdom alone has spent 13 times more on bombing than rebuilding the country. The United States Department of Defense boasts a daily cost of $11.5 million spent on bombing Iraq and in 2009 was spending about $7 billion a month in Afghanistan. Considering that history shows us time and again dark precedents we are almost promised a battered Syria that will not recover for at least another 50 years. The problem with history is that it tends to repeat itself and if mankind fails to learn from it then one after the other every Arab country is destined to perish.

Brick and mortar can be calculated, measured and rebuilt but what of lives lost? What of a nation of nomads that are roaming the world begging to be sheltered? What of the psychological damage that has befallen them as a result of this senseless chaos?

The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.

Analysts have said the devastation caused by the Syrian war has reached World War II levels. With that in mind and the fact that there are mini wars happening in almost every other Arab country, that was unfortunate enough to be seduced by a false spring, this region is in fact going through the world’s third war. Once the dust settled on the Second World War much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins, there was nothing left to rebuild and the year 1945 was dubbed “Year Zero”. Millions dead and millions more had fled their homes seeing the birth of a new term, the DP, or “displaced person.” In modern day terms it would be what is known to us as the “refugee.” Once again history shows us that while the terminology changes the vicious cycle of war is more or less the same.

The end of the Second World War saw great cities such as Warsaw, Tokyo and Berlin reduced to piles of ash and in our reality the great cities of Baghdad, Tripoli and Aleppo have succumbed to the same fate. The end also brought about the creation of new world superpowers, the once mighty Japan and Germany looked to be beyond recovery which left ample room for the United States and the Soviet Union to flex their political muscles. The war in Syria has resulted in an undeniable power shift in the Arab world as well where we witness the weakening of Iraq, Libya and Syria to have made room for other less geographically dominant countries to take the helm.

Nevertheless, what was once Europe’s dark reality of defeating Adolf Hitler was now well behind it, recovery was possible for them because they bound together forming a grand alliance that had one thing on its agenda, the resuscitation of Europe, all of Europe. If Syria is to rise from the ashes it needs a united Arab world which has one thing on its agenda, not the falling of a dictator for we have seen many of those fall, but the reemergence of a prosperous Arab nation, one that is not reliant on foreign aid but is self-sustained and set on its way to become powerful once again.

Let us assume that this hypothetical situation is not a mirage and that its existence is well within reach, the question remains, what would our history books teach? Will the truths be taught so that our future generations could learn from our past or will it be ignored, skipped over to better times just like post World War II Europe did, where Italy neglected to mention its fascist past and France’s history pages were freed from the pro-Nazi Vichy period?

History is not always pessimistic for if World War II Europe has taught us anything it is that the rebuilding of cities is possible and the mending of a nation’s spirit can be achieved and therefore we remain hopeful that the new Arab powers will strive to sift through the ashes and salvage what they can to bring back what was lost and breathe life into what we thought dead.

This article was first published in The Gulf Today on 24 April, 2016  http://bit.ly/1SEPRXM
Article also appeared in Arabic in Al Khaleej Newspaper http://bit.ly/24cArf7

Celebrating the death of innocence

It used to be that for an issue to become the subject of worldwide debate it had to be investigated, fact-checked and exposed yet today all it takes is a video gone viral. This month, a video of 11-year-old Yemeni girl Nada Al-Ahdal made the rounds on social media sites and after hitting over 7 million views the story was picked up by the media and the doors of debate were flung open. 

This video showed young Nada eloquently telling the world that she has escaped the horrors of home seeking refuge at her uncle’s house because her mother intended to have her married. The passionate child addressed each and every one of us and asked, “What happens to a child’s innocence?” She expressed her wish to die rather than be sold to a man and feared for the lives of other young girls like her who have had their lives ruined. All of a sudden the child bride had a face and that in itself moved the world more than any statistic could.

The media pounced on the story based on its circulation and once again failed to do journalism’s basic requirement, that is, investigate. Turned out Nada’s video was staged by her uncle who works as a graphic technician in a TV station. Nada’s mother never intended on marrying her off and the girl never escaped from home. After the media vilified Nada’s parents in an attempt to save face the story was dismissed as a hoax and the world moved on and away from Nada. 

As this story fades away its remnants still linger on and one wonders, so what if this video is a sham and Nada was never to be a child bride? The facts remain that according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) a staggering 52% of girls in Yemen are married before the age of 18. Adding insult to injury in 1999 Yemen’s parliament abolished article 15 of its Personal Status Law which set the minimum age for marriage at 15. Simply put, Yemen has no minimum age for marriage. In a study conducted by Sanaa University it was revealed that in some areas in Yemen girls as young as eight are married off. 

Faced with these frightening figures does it really matter that Nada’s video was staged? Has the world missed the larger picture with regard to this story by dismissing it as a lie? Nada’s story might have been fiction but the crimes she spoke of are very much a reality. In 2008 the world was shell-shocked after hearing the story of 10-year-old Nujood Ali who approached a court in Sanaa asking the judge for a divorce. The words spoken by Nada, scripted or not, depict the lives of many young girls in Yemen who remain helpless because of the poverty compelling parents to sell their children to the highest bidder and the lack of laws which have aided these inhumane acts. 

Yemen is not alone when it comes to the normalisation of child marriages for the likes of these injustices are prominent in all countries suffering from endless political unrest and devastated by poverty. Countries like Niger, Afghanistan and Pakistan among many others rank highest in percentage of child marriages. This pandemic exists all over the world and must be combated. Cases of child marriages reveal many forms of physical abuse and violence, premature pregnancies and a high rate of infant mortality. The psychological effects on the young brides and the eternal feeling of isolation have led to many taking their own lives. 

It is predicted that 100 million young girls will be married in the next 10 years. Child protection laws must be enforced and greater efforts exerted in educating parents and providing a safe haven for children who have no choice but to escape the dismal future forced upon them. Adults should not be given the right to throw parties celebrating the death of their child’s innocence.

An 8-year-old girl should not be denied her childhood by living a life carrying out the duties of a wife. 13-year-old girls should not be raising children for they have yet to live their own childhood. These young girls represent our future and what a ghastly one it will be if we continue allowing these injustices to happen. 

Nada Al-Ahdal is not a child bride and we pray she never will be, but her question to the world still echoes in my mind and should do so in yours as well, when we allow for such crimes to occur she asks… “What happens to a child’s innocence?”

This article was published in The Gulf Today Newspaper on 4 August, 2013. 

Arabic version published in Al Khaleej Newspaper http://bit.ly/1914uxN

                       

Earth Wars: Attack of the Drones

Buttons, every single moment of our waking lives is controlled by buttons. When we wish to be entertained we click a button and on comes an onslaught of channels designed to keep us transfixed for hours. When we are running low on energy we push a button and out pops our replenishment in whatever form we desire. At the end of our hectic day and after having pushed, pressed and clicked our way through a thousand buttons we flick the all important one, the button that allows for darkness to fall and envelop us as we lay our weary heads to sleep.

Yet we have not restricted buttons to controlling our lives for they control our death as well. Just as we have created buttons to push us forward we have created ones that could bring us to a complete stop. Man has waged war for the pettiest of reasons and from the beginning of time, yet in the past winning wars was measured by the amount of blood spilled in attack and defence of the so-called cause. It meant armed men going face to face with whoever the enemy may be, looking him in the eye and pulling the trigger.

Today we have a button to do that for us.

After creating an industry that preys on human fears there was nothing else to do but sit back and watch nations throw billions of dollars at it for the latest in weapons technology. Technology to keep them safe, secure and protected from the ‘enemy’. After successfully selling buckets of blood rather than actual security, the arms trade has now given us the drone. An unmanned, aerial vehicle designed to go to war for us, capable of delivering death to our ‘enemy’s’ doorstep with, you guessed it… a push of a button.

It has become the United States’ weapon of choice for it has been used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Yemen. It is Israel’s weapon of choice for if you ask any Gazan he will speak of his drone filled night skies. He will describe the buzzing sound of hovering metal wasps and the fear they instil in the hearts of the innocent.

According to the New America Foundation, in 2010 alone the United States carried out more than 200 drone strikes in the hunt for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Drones are controlled remotely and are aimed at a targeted location not a targeted individual therefore, indeed, some of those targeted have perished during strikes. But without clear knowledge of how many ‘actual’ enemies are at the location, and frankly because a drone cannot look its enemy in the face and assess his guilt, thousands of innocent civilians have been murdered in cold blood via cold, soulless drones fittingly named Predators and Reapers by their deployers.

I call it the weapon of choice not only because of the sheer volume of drones being used by the United States government all over the world but also because with a drone, unlike a human being, there is less mess to clean up. Unlike humans, drones do not torture captives; they do not urinate on the dead and post videos of their exploits. Drones do not develop psychological trauma and cannot speak of injustices. The US government need not worry about cover-ups and military trials; in warfare-logic the drone is the weapon of choice because, it just makes sense.

The United States government has now decided to bring this technology home when Congress passed a bill to allow flying drones over its own citizens. Projections show an estimate of 30,000 drones will be released in US airspace by 2020. If killing innocent civilians via flying robots is logical and if we now live in a world where ends justify the means then spying on your own people makes sense as well.

Wars are meant to be difficult so we would think a thousand times before waging them. Wars are meant to test the faith and resolve of humanity in order for them to never be our solution for every problem.

Wars are no longer difficult.

And so, they have infiltrated the daily rhetoric of governments around the world. They have become a nation’s answer to every threat, words have failed us and buttons have won.

This article has been published in The Gulf Today newspaper on 13th May, 2012. 

Link to Arabic version of this article published in Al Khaleej newspaper: http://bit.ly/IRm3hi

Obama Kills Osama to Remain Alive

Almost a decade after Osama Bin Laden’s inauguration as the most wanted man on the planet it took American soldiers 40 minutes to kill him. Today the American people rejoice with the feeling of utter relief for the bogeyman hiding in the dark closets of their minds is gone.

The truth is, it cost the United States billions of dollars and thousands of human lives to eliminate a man who was apparently hiding in plain sight. After years of scouring dusty caves it was revealed that Bin Laden had in fact been residing in a mansion in Pakistan. Osama Bin Laden’s death comes as no shock to the Arab world. We believed it inevitable but it was the timing that was unforeseen.

Had Bin Laden been killed only a few months earlier the reactions of the Arab world would have been resentful and possibly more heated. But as the news comes to us at a time where the plates of the Middle Eastern political world are shifting, Arabs seem more subdued and indifferent. Osama Bin Laden neither had a presence in the Arab revolutions nor reacted to them.

Ten years after the September 11 attacks Bin Laden’s status and influence on Al Qaeda has dwindled. While killing him nine years ago would have been credited as eliminating a leader, killing him today is viewed more as the death of an iconic figure for Al Qaeda, a mascot if you will.

The timing of Bin Laden’s death is nothing short of genius. With the Arab uprising in full swing there seems to be a list of dictators/villains to take his place. Bin Laden filled in the spot vacated by Saddam Hussein’s death and so the question is who will succeed Bin Laden on America’s most wanted Middle Eastern face of evil?  

The American presidential elections have to also be factored into this equation, which resulted in the quick sudden death of the world’s most feared man. George W. Bush Jr. declared the war on terror to secure his second term at the presidency and while President Barack Obama proved the impossible by being the first black President of the United States at the end of his first term his promise of ‘change’ hasn’t yet made a huge impact on the average American. And while Obama tried his best at playing the peace card he finally realised that Bush Jr. had played it right all along knowing that nothing matters more to the American people than regaining their throne as the most powerful and untouchable country in the world. 

Revenge was the final dish on Obama’s table, served cold, the American people ate it graciously. Has this move secured Obama’s second term at presidency just as it did for his predecessor? We await the answer in 2012.

This article has been published in The Gulf Today newspaper on May 4th, 2011.