Après moi le déluge
By Salama A Salama
The sun is about to set on 2005, closing the drawer on this year's stock of disasters. Many of these disasters had their origin in the previous four years of war and international turmoil that followed in the wake of the attacks on some of the world's major bastions of power and influence. The fallout from these events triggered rapid changes in the West and momentous quakes in this part of the world. Sadly, the waves of upheavals that began those many years ago are nowhere near over.
War, revolution and bloody conflict are what determine the fate of peoples and propel them towards maturity, reshape systems of government and ways of life, and pave the ground for the emergence of new cultures and ideas. In the course of this conflagration, the so-called Greater Middle East, with its Arab and Muslim peoples, was identified as fertile ground for engineering extensive long-range change. It simultaneously became the primary locus of a confrontation into which plunged a host of international powers. In tandem with their military machine, the powers that be also mobilised their vast capacities for "subtle" persuasion by means of a sweeping cultural, religious and psychological invasion spearheaded by an ubiquitous media and backed by their overwhelming economic might.
The first five years of this century are far from sufficient to deduce exactly what this millennium has in store for mankind. However, they do show us the contours of the minuscule spot in the universe in this sliver of time.
To the extent that no country has it in its power any more to say "Apres moi le deluge" or to barricade itself from the world and outside influences, no matter how ingenious it may be at constructing security walls, mounting surveillance equipment in ports of entry and inventing scrambling devices to block transmission signals, and no matter how many prisons or camps it builds to round up the hordes of refugees and illegal immigrants looking for work. Certainly, the US and Europe have proved unsuccessful at stemming the human tides from across their borders or overseas from Mexico and Cuba or North Africa. In fact, the problem has grown more complex and intractable.
We can hardly say that the world has grown any more secure or peaceful over the past five years since Bush sounded the trumpet to the "war against terrorism" in spite of the hundreds of summits, speeches, policy statements and commentaries that bore this trademark. According to the latest figures, more than 100,000 people, among whom were more than 2,000 US soldiers, have died in the killing fields in Iraq. And before this war, tens of thousands of innocent people were killed in Afghanistan. On top of these are the dozens who drop by the day, victims of wars in which the conflicting parties are moved by invisible strings attached to hands lusting after mineral wealth.
Nor have the plethora of international conferences on fighting poverty, writing off the debts of poor nations and deregulating the global economy brought more prosperity to the peoples of the world. On the contrary, the statistics for 2005 show that the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer and that a third of the world's population lives below the poverty level.
Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars are being funnelled into the production and purchase of ever more sophisticated and destructive weapons. And others scrambling to possess equally potent arsenals. And little wonder, now that international justice and legitimacy have become games played by the rich and powerful and the UN has been sidelined by the US.
No, the world has not become a safer, more prosperous or peaceful place this year.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/775/op221.htm