The dawn must come.

The dawn must come.

Saturday 29 September 2012

Mr. Prime Minister: Sinai expects more care not a Free Zone

By: Ahmed M. ELNAHAS – Castelfiorentino, September 29th 2012.
Before Mr. Kandeel the Prime Minister starts his visit to Sinai, the SIA (Sinai Investors Association) passed to the press that they plan to present him a list of suggestions and demands to promote the destination in a way to attract some 4 million tourists more!! On top of the list: “To convert South Sinai into a Free Zone”!
As always those so called investors care only for their benefits and protect only their own pockets.. They never took care of Egypt national interest..  For a very long time they were safely hiding behind the illusion of creating jobs and fighting against unemployment, and the outcome was that less than 1% of the  Sinai natives found job in all these hotels, motels, casinos, brothels, restaurants...etc..
Even worse, as a result to the improvised expansion of their greed, the labour laws mutated to meet their pressures thus creating an entire population of Salary Slaves, unprotected, unassisted, uninsured and untrained..  Which brings us to the Supplied Product Problem: Hotels lacking professionalism, showmanship, innovative sales, and overall quality.
As the shoreline has limited natural resources due to the typography and structure of the peninsula itself, that uneducated and improvised expansion became damaging to the environment and a jeopardy to the demography.. Because if South Sinai is half full, it would host about 75000 tourists needing as much individuals for services and others for excursions and entertainment!!! Al of these will need to swim, to eat to evacuate of course.. The infrastructure is not up to the task. The shoreline is not adequate to receive them.. The reefs are not that accommodating because they are very sensitive creatures.. The sea fauna will escape if lucky to survive the daily bread feeding practices.
The evil mistake that those so called investors are doing is to increase the shops and boutiques in and out of their properties.. Having in the same area 100 cotton products shops (T-Shirts, Galabeyas, Foulards…etc) entails inevitably mass production with less quality to stand the competition topped by the rent and fixed expenses.. Same goes for jewelers, artisans, spas, hair dressers…etc..Obviously and inevitably the end result is that the entire destination becomes labelled “CHEAP”.
Those investors have sold Egypt for peanuts for long.. It's time to care for our environment and our fellow Egyptians to work with dignity and security (Bedouins included, because inclusion not exclusion that make the citizen committed to the collectivity).
Tell me Mr. Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment: “What measures did those investors took to protect the main attraction in the Gulf of Aqaba, and the entire Red Sea Coasts as well, The Coral Reefs and the Deserts?”.. I say Nothing..
·         The mass tourism is still pouring in without any kind of restrictions at least on the type of sun creams and oils they use, which are extremely harmful to the environment as such products repose on the corals and suffocate them, creating a chain reaction of damaging events over the entire life cicle..
·         No control whatsoever on their mistreating the Reefs and Corals by walking over and even tearing them off hoping to escape airport controls..
·         Feeding the Red Sea Fauna is a crime still committed every day against few pounds to remain unpunished.. No significant controls on the sea safari boats waste and dark water disposal in the waters of our National Park which should've been more seriously protected..
·         Quad Bikes and carts are still invading the dunes and plants of the desert even inside the National Parks without any kind of regulations.. The Desert needs only its creatures: Dromedaries and Horses, not quads, motorbikes and 4X4s.
And now those investors want a “Free Zone” ? So that the Eastern front would remain vulnerably wide open to the entire criminal package: Drugs, Counterfeits and Prostitution?! They argue it will be good for the national products.. Sure the ones they import from China at a penny and resell at a pound..
My friends and fellow Egyptians: if the wonderful natural beauties of the Gulf Of Aqaba remain mistreated that way soon we will not have anyone who is interested to see what once was the second best diving and snorkeling destination on our globe after the Australian great barrier.. You can see Mr. Prime Minister that I'm angry and disappointed.. Are you and your Cabinet going to do other than posing for some P.R. photos with the Investors and the helpless Tribal Elders??
Pass On The Word.

Friday 28 September 2012

Decline or Withdrawal?

By: Ahmed M. ELNAHAS – Montopoli, September 22nd 2012.
With the fall of Islamic Spain in 1492*, the scientific and technological initiative of the Islamic world was inherited by Europeans and laid the foundations for Europe's Renaissance and Scientific Revolution.
*The year Christopher Colombus discovered the New World!! What a coincidence.
Decline of The Golden Age  http://metaexistence.org/goldenage.htm
Islamic science and the numbers of Islamic scientists were traditionally believed to have begun declining from the 12th or 13th centuries. It was believed that, though the Islamic civilization would still produce scientists, that they became the exception, rather than the rule.  Recent scholarship, however, has come to question this traditional picture of decline, pointing to continued astronomical activity as a sign of a continuing and creative scientific tradition through to the 16th century, of which the work of Ibn al-Shatir (1304–1375) in Damascus is considered the most noteworthy example.This was also the case for other areas of Islamic science, such as medicine, exemplified by the works of Ibn al-Nafis and Serafeddin Sabuncuoglu, and the social sciences, exemplified by Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah (1370), which itself points out that science was declining in Iraq, al-Andalus and Maghreb but continuing to flourish in Persia, Syria and Egypt.
One of the traditional reasons given for the scientific decline was when the orthodox Ash'ari school of Thought challenged the more rational Mu'tazili school of Thought, with al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers being the most notable example. Recent scholarship has questioned this traditional view, however, with a number of scholars pointing out that the Ash'ari school supported science but were only opposed to speculative philosophy and that some of the greatest Muslim scientists such as Alhazen, Biruni, Ibn al-Nafis and Ibn Khaldun were themselves followers of the Ash'ari school.
Other reasons for the decline of Islamic science include conflicts between the Sunni and Shia Muslims, and invasions by Crusaders and Mongols on Islamic lands between the 11th and 13th centuries, especially the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The Mongols destroyed Muslim libraries, observatories, hospitals, and universities, culminating in the destruction of Baghdad, the Abbasid capital and intellectual centre, in 1258, which marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age.
From the 13th century, some traditionalist Muslims believed that the Crusades and Mongol invasions may have been a divine punishment from God against Muslims deviating from the Sunnah, a view that was held even by the famous polymath Ibn al-Nafis. Such traditionalist views as well as numerous wars and conflicts at the time are believed to have created a climate which made Islamic science less successful than before.
Another reason given for this decline is the disruption to the cycle of equity based on Ibn Khaldun's famous model of Asabiyyah (the rise and fall of civilizations), which points to the decline being mainly due to political and economic factors rather than religious factors.
Muslim Pakistani Philosopher, Hammad Yousuf says in his book MetaExistence, "The major factor of decline of the Muslim golden age is mysticism (Sufism). when Muslims involved in the mysticism activities, their educational activities were directly affected. Mysticism played a key role in the decline of Muslims golden age."
Muslim scientists have in the past played a significant role in the history of science. There have been hundreds of notable Muslim scientists who have made contributions to civilization and society by furthering the development of science in the High Middle Ages. The following is an incomplete list of notable Muslim scientists.
Astronomers and astrophysicists
Ibrahim Al Fazari, Mohammad Al Fazari, Al Khawaresmi (astronomer), Albumasar, Al Farghani, Banu Mussa (Ja’far – Ahmad – Al Hassan), Al Majriti, Mohammad ibn Jabir Al Harrani Al Battani, Al Farabi (Abunaser), Abdel Rahman Al Sufi, Abu Said Gorgani, Kushyar Ibn Labban, Abu Ja’far Al Khazin, Al Mahani, Al Marwazi, Al Nayrisi, Al Saghani, Al Farghani, Abu Nasr Mansour, Abu Sahl Al Quhi, Abu Mahmoud Al Khujandi, Abul Wafa Al Buzjani, Ibn Yunus, Ibn Al Haytham (Alhacen), Abu Rayhan Al Biruni, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Al Zarqali (Arzachel), Omar Khayyam, Al Khazini, Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), Ibn Tufail (Abubacer), Nur EdDin Al Betrugi (Alpetragius), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Al Jazari, <sharaf EdDin Al Tusi, Anvari, Mo’AyedudDin Urdi, Nasir Al Din Tusi, Qutb Al Din Al Shirazi, Ibn Al Shatir, Shams Al Din Al Samarqandi, Jamshid Al Kashi, Ulugh Beg, Taqi Al Din Ibn Ma’ruf, Ahmad Nahavandi, Haly AbenRagel, Abolfadl Harawi.
Chemists and alchemists
Khalid Ibn Yazid, Ja’far Al Sadeq, Jabir Ibn Hayyan (father of chemistry), Abbas Ibn Fernas (Armen Firmen), Al Kindi, Al Majriti, Ibn Miskawayh, Abu Rayhan Al Biruni, Ibn Sina, Al Khazini, Nasir Al Din Tusi, Ibn Khaldun, Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Al Khawarezmi, Ahmad H. Zewail (Nobel 1999 Chemistry), Mostafa El Sayed, Abdul Kader Khan (Nuclear Scientist), Ata’a UrRahman (leading scholar in natural product chemistry), Omar M. Yaghi (Professor at University of California).
Economists and social scientists
Abu Hanifa An’Nu’man (Islamic jurisprudence scholar 699/767), Abu Yussuf, Al Saghani, Shams Al Mo’ali, Al Biruni (the first anthropologist), Ibn Sina (economist), Ibn Miskawayh (economist), Al Ghazali (economist), Al Mawardi (economist), Al Tusi (economist), Ibn Al Nafis (Sociologist), Ibn Taymiyyah (economist), Ibn Khaldun (forerunner of social sciences: demography, cultural history, historiography, philosophy of history, sociology and economics), Al Maqrizi (economist), Akhtar Hamid Khan (Pioneer of microcredit), Muhammad Yunus (Nobel economy, pioneer of microfinance), Shah Abul Hannan (Pioneer of Islamic Banking), Mahbub Ul Haq(Pakistani economist).
Geographers and earth scientists
Al Masudi (Herodotus of the Arabs and pioneer of historical geography), Al Kindi (environmental science), Ibn Al Jazzar, Al Tamimi, Al Masihi, Ali Ibn Radwan, Mohammad Al Idrisi (Also a catographer), Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, Al Biruni, Ibn Sina, Al Baghdadi, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al Nafis, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, Piri Reis, Evliya Celebi.
Mathematicians
Al Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf Ibn Matar, Ibn Yazid, Al Khawaresmi (Algorismi - father of algebra and algorithms), Ibn Turk, Abul Hassan Al Qalasadi (1412/82 – Symbolic algebra), Abu Kamil Shuja Ibn Aslam, Al Jawhari, Al Kindi, Banu Mussa, Al Khawaresmi, Al Mahani, Ibn Yusuf, Al Majriti, Al Battani, Al Farabi, Al Khalili, Al Nayrizi, Abu Ja’far Al Khazin, Al Uqlidisi, Al Saghani, Al Quhi, Al Khujandi, Abul Wafa Al Buzjani, Ibn Sahl, Al Sijzi, Ibn Yunus, Abu Nasr Mansur, Kushayr Ibn Labban, Al Karaji, Ibn Al Haytham, Al Biruni, Al Nasawi, Al Jayyani, Abu Ishaq Al Zarqali, Al Mu’taman Ibn Hud, Omar Khayyam, Al Khazini, Ibn Bajjah, Al Ghazali, Al Marrakushi, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Al Banna, Ibn Al Shatir, Abu Ma’shar Al Balkhi, Al Kashi, Kamal EdDin Al Farisi, Muhyi Al Din Al Maghribi, Maryam Mirzakhani, Mo’ayyaduddin Urdi, Mohammad Bakir Yazdi, Al Tusi, Al Rumi, Qutb Al Din Al Shirazi, Shams Al Din Al Samarqandi, Sharaf Al Din Al Tusi, Ibn Ma’Ruf, Ulugh Beg, Cumrun Vafa.
Biologists, neuroscientists, and psychologists
Ibn Sirin (654/728 – author of Work on Dreams and Dream Interpretation), Al Kindi (pioneer of psychotherapy and Music Therapy), Al Tabari (pioneer of psychiatry, clinical psychiatry and clinical psychology), Ahmad Ibn Sahl Al Balkhi (pioneer of mental health, medical psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive therapy, psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine), Al Farabi (pioneer of social psychology and consciousness studies), Al Majusi (pioneer of neuroanatomy, neurobiology and neurophysiology), Abul Qasim Al Zahrawi (pioneer of neurosurgery), Ibn Al Haytham (founder of experimental psychology,psychophysics, phenomenology and visual perception), Al Biruni (pioneer of reaction time), Ibn Sina (pioneer of neuropsuchiatry, thought experiment, self awareness and self consciousness), Ibn Zuhr (pioneer of neurology and neuropharmacology), Ibn Rushd (pioneer of Parkinson disease), Ibn Tufail (pioneer of nature vs. nurture), Mir Sajad (neuroscientist).
Physicians and surgeons
Ibn Yazid, Ja’far Al Sadeq, Shapur Ibn Sahl, Al Kindi, Ibn Fernas, Al Jahiz (natural selection), Ibn Sahl Al Tabari, Al Balkhi, Al Rahwi, Al Farabi, Ibn Al Jazzar, Abul Hassan Al Tabari, Al Majusi, Abu Gaafar ibnAbi Haled Al Jazzar (pioneer of dental restoration), Abul Qasim Al Zahrawi (fatjer of modern surgery and pioneer of neurosurgery, craniotomy, hematology and dental surgery), Ibn Al Haytham (pioneer of eye surgery, visual system and visual perception), Al Biruni, Ibn Sina (980/1037 – father of modern medicine, pioneer of Unani medicine, pioneer of experimental medicine, evidence-based medicine, pharmaceutical sciences, clinical pharmacology, aromatherapy, pulsology and sphygmology, also a philosopher), Hakim Rahman, Ibn Miskawayh, Ibn Zuhr (anatomy, autopsy), Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufail, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al Baitar, Ibn Jazla, Nasir Al Din Tusi, Ibn Al Nafis (1213/88 – Father of circulatory physiology and pioneer of circulatory anatomy), Ibn Al Quff (pioneer of embryology), Al Farizi, Ibn Al Khatib, Ibn Ilyas, Saghir Akhtar, Sayed Zia’UrRahman, Sheikh Mus’Zaffar Shukor (pioneer of biomedical research in space), Hulusi Behçet, Gazi Yazargil (founder of microneurosurgery), Ibrahim Sayed (radiologist), Mehmet Öz, Abdul Qayyum Rana.
Physicists and engineers
Ja’far Al Sadeq, Bani Musa, Ibn Fernas, Al Saghani, Al Quhi, Ibn Sahl, Ibn Yunus, Al Karaji, Ibn Al Haytham (father of optics), Al Biruni (pioneer of experimental mechanics), Ibn Sina, Al Khazini, Ibn Bajjah, Hibat Allah Al Baghdaadi, Ibn Rushd, Al Jazari, Tusi, Al Shirazi, Al Farisi, Ibn Al Shatir, Ibn Ma’ruf, Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi, Fazlur Khan, Mahmoud Hessaby, Ali Javan, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (Indonesian aerospace engineer), Abdul Kalam (Indian Aeronautical engineer and nuclear scientist), Mehran Kardar (Iranian Theoretical physicist), Cumrun Vafa (Iranian mathematical physicist), Nima Arkani Hamed (Iranian physicist), Abdel Nasser Tawfik (Egyptian particle physicist), Abdus Salam (First Muslim Nobel laureate), Riazuddin, Abdul Kader Khan, Sameera Moussa (Egyptian nuclear physicist), Munir Ahmad Khan, Shahid Bikhari, Kerim Kerimov (founder of soviet space program), Farouk El Baz.
Political scientists
Sayed Qotb, Mohammad Bakir AsSadr, Abul Ala Maududi, Hassan Al Turabi, Hassan Al Banna, Mohammad Hassanein Heikal, M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Rashid Al Ghannushi.
Other scientists and inventors
Azizul Haque, Umar Saif..

Dear friends,
Now I invite you to sit down and write down your opinion on why the decline occurred in all aspects of our lives, as you may have noticed in our art, architecture, music, poetry, agriculture, industry, scientific research, and education itself… Etc.
You may have noticed that since ages we do not produce technology, we just consume what others have done and wait for their innovations to follow on by merely exporting it, we don’t even exploit it..
In every aspect of our daily lives.. We are still using almost the same technologies our ancestors, the Ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians were using.. Even worse, at the time of Mohamed Pacha Ali we were pioneers in maritime and military industries.. Now you see that our enemies are extremely far ahead in that regard.
Were the reasons set above plausible? Or we are to blame as somewhere along the way we let things go? It’s a very confusing matter, but if we do not deduct guiding hints from past history, our future will remain uncertain.
Pass On The Word.

Western Media News.

By: Ahmed M. ELNAHAS – Montopoli, September 27th 2012.
Ø  2006: in Tel Aviv the US Republican Secretary of State RICE declares “.. the New Middle East starts in Lebanon…”. (in support, together with the UK, of the Israeli siege and invasion of southern Lebanon..*)
Ø  2007: The CRG (Center for Research on Globalisation*) published on its web-site Global Research, the report entitled “Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a ‘NEW MIDDLE EAST’”, by which the author demonstrates that such plan will use the Sectarian, Ethnic and Religious differences to produce conflicts and redesign the borders of the New Middle East map, within a broader scheme to contain the Russian and Chinese growth.
Ø  2007: “The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo- American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American- Israeli interests”. (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – CRG)
Ø  2009: the US CFR’s Center for Preventive Action published his ‘Contingency Planning No.4’ entitled Political Instability in Egypt by which sets the plan of action to be carried out, when the revolt would burst, in order to protect Western and American strategic interests in the region.
Ø  2010: NATO forces start evacuating Iraq, and the US declares a timeframe to reduce its presence in Afghanistan to the level of ‘Experts’.
Ø  2011: A tidal wave of Rebellious Activities described as Revolutions is mopping the Arab World.
Ø  2011: Israel increases its raids on Gaza.
Ø  2011: The Knesset agrees to allocate the requested investment needed to increase the settlements in the West Bank.
Ø  2011: Israel threats a unilateral preventive attack against Iran.
Ø  2012: After the Parliament, the Muslim Brotherhood gets the Presidency seat in Egypt.
Ø  2012: What would be the limits of the Islamic Reign in the Middle East?
Ø  2012: Tensions increase between Muslims and Copts in Southern Egypt.
Ø  2012: The Film that enrages the Muslim World causes the death of the American Ambassador in Libya, hundreds of victims and wounded around the world.
Ø  2012: US Congress may cancel accorded aid to Egypt.
Ø  2012: Will the IMF back off from granting Egypt the requested loan?
Ø  September 10th 2012: Israel starts military maneuvers at the occupied heights of Golan.
Ø  September 24th 2012: The International Criminal Court allows the extradition of Abu Hamza El Masry, the Central London mosque ex Imam, to the United States where he is wanted for several terrorism accounts. (the case has been in that court since 2002!!!*).
Ø  September 25th 2012: Qatar agrees to invest several hundred million Dollars in the rural upgrading plan for Paris suburbs. (Palestinian Authority needs less than $70Mil to even its balance and escape bankruptcy.. Over 1 million Syrian refugees need few million dollars in food and medicines to survive their health/hygiene tragedy inside camps..*).
Ø  September 25th 2012: The siege of Gaza tightens as Israel insist that the Egyptian border wall must be concluded at all costs.
Could you figure out the connection and/or relation tying all these news together?
Our political élite(s), intellectuals, and religious leaders are they aware of the enormity of the danger?
Will there be another “Paris Peace Conference”, similar to the one held in 1919, to adopt a new revised “Sykes/Picot Map”?
Pass On The Word.

* Note From the Author

PS: I watched OBAMA’s address to the UN General Assembly.. My impression, after carefully following it all the way through, that it was attentively tailored to meet the expectations of the American electorate.. Especially the hesitant voters.. It was no surprise to find out that Obama cashed a bonus of ten percentage points immediately after his UNGA speech over Romney.. The USA will never compromise or jeopardise its main strategic objective: Total Hegemony!

Friday 21 September 2012

What’s the plan?

By: A. M. ELNAHAS – Montopoli September 21st 2012.
I am quoting to you hereunder the full article published on the United States Armed Forces Journal back in 2006 when the hawkish lead of the Republican Bush and his team, chiefed by Cheney, Powell and later on Rice, drove the world into what they coined as the “Preventive War” laying down on the Security Council’s table the most arrogant fabricated lie international diplomacy have ever encountered. If the ideas you’re about to read are published on such a Journal, then the question is no longer IF there is such a scheme, the question is how and when it is due for achieving its targets.
I want you to carefully note the sympathising tones the author is using while trying to convince his readers (mainly Us soldiers) so that they start preaching these statements like parrots to conquered people in Iraq, Kuwait, Gulf States and Emirates where the US have established permanent Military Bases.
The author, much as his ‘sources’ in the Pentagon and the White House, is clearly unveiling the American tool to achieve the targets set by such a plan: to promote sectarian differences and religious grievances to make it happen.. And that’s what I’ve been explaining for sometime on my blog. It’s happening already in Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; and soon it will reach Egypt and Algeria.
When you observe the figure ‘AFTER’, I want you to carefully consider how the author present the West Bank as “Status Undetermined”! Because what you’ll hear from any American administration regardless of its colour or logo would be something similar to the following statement: “The United States of America supports and promotes a peace process in the Middle East that would lead to two sovereign democratic states: Israel with Jerusalem as Capital, and an Arab state to live and coexist in peace….etc.”..  
What you’re about to read is barely the thin shell covering a galactic long term western strategy aiming at the undisputable full dominance of the region’s resources: Oil reserves, Water and Cheap Manpower; in order to keep the region poorer, defenceless and deeply indebted for a very long time.
So, what our “Freely Elected Leaders” are planning to do?
What are YOU planning to do?
>>>>> QUOTE <<<<<
Dismembring Arab states
In June 2006, Armed Forces Journal published this map from Ralph Peters, a prominent pro-war strategist. It shows the method to the madness -- creating ethnic tension and civil war in order to redraw the boundaries. Most of the existing borders were imposed by Britain and France after World War I - and conveniently (for the US and Europe) divide most of the Arabs from most of the oil. Note that their new "Arab Shia State" would contain much of the oil, separating governments in Riyadh, Baghdad and Tehran from what is currently the main source of their national wealth.
Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.
By Ralph Peters
International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.
The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.
While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.
Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia, but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.
Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.
Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosporus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected.
As for those who refuse to “think the unthinkable,” declaring that boundaries must not change and that’s that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static, and many frontiers, from Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus, are changing even now (as ambassadors and special representatives avert their eyes to study the shine on their wingtips).
Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.
Begin with the border issue most sensitive to American readers:
A] For Israel to have any hope of living in reasonable peace with its neighbors, it will have to return to its pre-1967 borders — with essential local adjustments for legitimate security concerns. But the issue of the territories surrounding Jerusalem, a city stained with thousands of years of blood, may prove intractable beyond our lifetimes. Where all parties have turned their god into a real-estate tycoon, literal turf battles have a tenacity unrivaled by mere greed for oil wealth or ethnic squabbles. So let us set aside this single overstudied issue and turn to those that are studiously ignored.
B] The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they’ve lived since Xenophon’s day.
The U.S. and its coalition partners missed a glorious chance to begin to correct this injustice after Baghdad’s fall. A Frankenstein’s monster of a state sewn together from ill-fitting parts, Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately. We failed from cowardice and lack of vision, bullying Iraq’s Kurds into supporting the new Iraqi government — which they do wistfully as a quid pro quo for our good will. But were a free plebiscite to be held, make no mistake: Nearly 100 percent of Iraq’s Kurds would vote for independence.
As would the long-suffering Kurds of Turkey, who have endured decades of violent military oppression and a decades-long demotion to “mountain Turks” in an effort to eradicate their identity. While the Kurdish plight at Ankara’s hands has eased somewhat over the past decade, the repression recently intensified again and the eastern fifth of Turkey should be viewed as occupied territory. As for the Kurds of Syria and Iran, they, too, would rush to join an independent Kurdistan if they could. The refusal by the world’s legitimate democracies to champion Kurdish independence is a human-rights sin of omission far worse than the clumsy, minor sins of commission that routinely excite our media. And by the way: A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.
C] A just alignment in the region would leave Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn. The Shia south of old Iraq would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf. Jordan would retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.
D] A root cause of the broad stagnation in the Muslim world is the Saudi royal family’s treatment of Mecca and Medina as their fiefdom. With Islam’s holiest shrines under the police-state control of one of the world’s most bigoted and oppressive regimes — a regime that commands vast, unearned oil wealth — the Saudis have been able to project their Wahhabi vision of a disciplinarian, intolerant faith far beyond their borders. The rise of the Saudis to wealth and, consequently, influence has been the worst thing to happen to the Muslim world as a whole since the time of the Prophet, and the worst thing to happen to Arabs since the Ottoman (if not the Mongol) conquest.
While non-Muslims could not effect a change in the control of Islam’s holy cities, imagine how much healthier the Muslim world might become were Mecca and Medina ruled by a rotating council representative of the world’s major Muslim schools and movements in an Islamic Sacred State — a sort of Muslim super-Vatican — where the future of a great faith might be debated rather than merely decreed. True justice — which we might not like — would also give Saudi Arabia’s coastal oil fields to the Shia Arabs who populate that subregion, while a southeastern quadrant would go to Yemen. Confined to a rump Saudi Homelands Independent Territory around Riyadh, the House of Saud would be capable of far less mischief toward Islam and the world.
E] Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan — a region with a historical and linguistic affinity for Persia. Iran would, in effect, become an ethnic Persian state again, with the most difficult question being whether or not it should keep the port of Bandar Abbas or surrender it to the Arab Shia State.
F] What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining “natural” Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.
G] The city-states of the United Arab Emirates would have a mixed fate — as they probably will in reality. Some might be incorporated in the Arab Shia State ringing much of the Persian Gulf (a state more likely to evolve as a counterbalance to, rather than an ally of, Persian Iran). Since all puritanical cultures are hypocritical, Dubai, of necessity, would be allowed to retain its playground status for rich debauchees. Kuwait would remain within its current borders, as would Oman.
In each case, this hypothetical redrawing of boundaries reflects ethnic affinities and religious communalism — in some cases, both. Of course, if we could wave a magic wand and amend the borders under discussion, we would certainly prefer to do so selectively. Yet, studying the revised map, in contrast to the map illustrating today’s boundaries, offers some sense of the great wrongs borders drawn by Frenchmen and Englishmen in the 20th century did to a region struggling to emerge from the humiliations and defeats of the 19th century.
Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible. For now. But given time — and the inevitable attendant bloodshed — new and natural borders will emerge. Babylon has fallen more than once.
Meanwhile, our men and women in uniform will continue to fight for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracy and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself. The current human divisions and forced unions between Ankara and Karachi, taken together with the region’s self-inflicted woes, form as perfect a breeding ground for religious extremism, a culture of blame and the recruitment of terrorists as anyone could design. Where men and women look ruefully at their borders, they look enthusiastically for enemies.
From the world’s oversupply of terrorists to its paucity of energy supplies, the current deformations of the Middle East promise a worsening, not an improving, situation. In a region where only the worst aspects of nationalism ever took hold and where the most debased aspects of religion threaten to dominate a disappointed faith, the U.S., its allies and, above all, our armed forces can look for crises without end. While Iraq may provide a counterexample of hope — if we do not quit its soil prematurely — the rest of this vast region offers worsening problems on almost every front.
If the borders of the greater Middle East cannot be amended to reflect the natural ties of blood and faith, we may take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region will continue to be our own.
• • •
WHO WINS, WHO LOSES
Winners: Afghanistan, Arab Shia State, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Free Baluchistan, Free Kurdistan, Iran, Islamic Sacred State, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen.
Losers: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, West Bank.
>>>>> UNQUOTE <<<<<
PS: The map of the “New Middle East” seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.

It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.

Pass On The Word.

References:
  • Global Research.ca
  • Armed Forces Journal