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Archive for category POLICE & REPRESSION

Arab Leaders and Aleppo- Insanity Overtakes Humanity By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD.

 Aleppo

 
 
[Photo: A general view showing damages after what activists said was an airstrike with explosive barrels from forces loyal to President al-Assad in Al-Shaar area in Aleppo] 

December 142016

Arab Leaders and Aleppo- Insanity Overtakes Humanity

By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD.

Does Authoritarian Insanity have another Name?

Authoritarian leaders kill people just as butcher slaughters cattle. Casual allusion and changing power metaphors hardly distinguish between people and animals across the Arab world.  The cycle of the dreadful humanitarian crisis unfolding in Aleppo is baffling – as if global humanity and institutions do not exist for other than Americans and Europeans. All advancements of knowledge-based humanity, laws and preservation of life and human dignity and international institutions appear null and void. Our failure to grasp the compelling realities of authoritarian atrocities against the helpless civilians makes us feel we are standing at one of the darkest timelines of history.Is the surrender of Aleppo to powerful insanity inevitable?  Given the informed and resourceful 21st century global community, we were capable to avert the bombardment and to extend security and sense of humanity to the besieged population. Yet, the UNO Security Council and US-Russia kept on talking and talking about paper resolution, abstract dialogue and no concrete action to preserve human dignity and freedom. The abyss of horrors unfolding tells of the deliberate rapes of women and execution of the civilian population by the Assad forces as stated by the outgoing UN SG Ban-Ki Moon. The fallen Aleppo brings shame and disgrace to all the Arab leaders and the global humanity for being indifferent to the ever growing humanitarian crisis.  

Where are the Muslim scholars and intellectuals to claim sense of honesty about what is happening on the ground? If values of human life and wisdom were the signs of intelligence and responsibility, the situation warranted an urgent powerful intervention to safeguard the entrenched people of Aleppo. Witnessing the authoritarian cruelty, bombardment and the on-going cold blooded massacres of innocent civilians in Aleppo, the conscientious Arab masses wonder if there are any Arab leaders to offer sense of security to the people.  Shocking as it is to discover that there are no Arab leaders to protect the people in conflict situations. They are foreign agents of influence imposed on the helpless Arabian people.

The entrenched people kept on calling upon global humanity to come to rescue them but it was an illusion turned fantasy and nothing else. The global humanity, the UNO, America and humanitarian protection laws are just empty words devoid of life, morality and just written in school books with dry ink that means nothing to the suffering humanity in Aleppo.  Today, Shamy, a 15 year old girl from Aleppo sending SOS on Twitter as if there is a living global mankind listening to her in extreme adversity.  Abdullah, a 72 year old man carried his seventy year old wounded wife on a wooden cart and was waiting for medical help but shell fell and an Al-Jazeera reporter showed the clips how she died there in split second, but Abdullah kept on moving with the dead body in search of the unknown.

London-based Al-Jazeera moderator asked 15 year old school girl Aminah Abubaker, if she was safe and had enough food. She answered, “For two weeks we are hiding in the basement watching deaths and destruction and nowhere to go and no food and no shops around here. Is this catastrophic humanitarian crisis out of the nowhere? The inhuman political metaphor is sugarcoated by Syria’s enriched neighbors –  a treacherous cluster of petro-dollar economic prosperity to furbish modernism that prevails in palaces, not amongst the masses.

While Steffan de Mustara, Kerry and Larove pretend to be talking about a ceasefire and safe corridor to allow humanitarian aid and the civilians to depart from the bombardment in Aleppo, it was all a malicious stage drama to cover-up the political failure.    For five years, millions are forcibly displaced to become unwelcomed refugees in European continents, several millions killed and others waiting to be consumed by the insanity of the Assad regime and its military allies. Are these official honest and rational or do they think the global mankind is blind. The game is the same “do nothing” and talk loud. In a global age of knowledge and information, Arab leaders cannot pretend being ignorant and unaware of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis unfolding daily on the television screen. The alleged war crimes are just a scenario for the uncertain future, but reality warranted swift action to safeguard the human lives entrapped in the war zones, and honor of Muslims and their habitats across Aleppo, Idlib, Baghdad, Mosul and Yemen. None of the puppets had courage and will to challenge the deliberate pillage and insanity imposed by the Assad forces and the superpowers. Are there no Arab Generals and no Arab armies to help the believers?  If not, why do these leaders spent billions of dollars to acquire weapons from the US and Europeans? How could the rest of the Arab leaders differentiate between their role and what is being carried out by the Assad regime? Are they all sadistic criminals and violent robbers of peoples’ right, human dignity and future? Isn’t the same insane egoism and militarism that brought downfall of Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi and many others in the region?

All Arab leaders must be held accountable for the crimes committed against the Syrian people. To uplift their own images, when overwhelming crimes against humanity are shown by the global news media, some affluent Arab leaders take asylum in the shadow of British dwindling leadership at a gathering in Bahrain and others sent foreign ministers to Paris to mourn their own wishful thinking for failure to oust the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Often Arab leaders say next to nothing to global audience. But one of the foreign ministers spoke of Islamic extremism emerging out of Aleppo if nothing was done.  The cynical minds know nothing about the realities on the ground. Who will do what to safeguard the besieged people of Aleppo for over several years, is not clear. It is the ruthless forces of Syrian Government and its military Allies Russia, Iran and Shiite army of Hezbollah that are fighting against the civilian population opposing the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Ironically America, Britain and France had already destabilized the entire Arab region by continuous aerial bombardment and deaths and destruction to which the frontline Arab countries were an essential component. None of the Arab leaders had any imagination or capacity on how to deal with political problems and approach conflict management and security paradigm. It is always the Master – USA and Britain that dictate the oil exporting Arab states in their affairs. All of the secretive police apparatus are operated by the same egomaniac masters. It is unthinkable to imagine that Bashar Al-Assad  and his allies could ever escape the accountability by time and history.

Are the Arab Rulers Waiting to See the End Game?

Sigmund Freud (Civilization and its Discontent, 1930) noted that “the inclination to aggression is an original self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man, and that it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.”  The Arab Middle East is no exception.  In view of the unstoppable cycle of political killings and daily bloodbaths across Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and spill-over to other oil producing Arab nations – and reactionary militancy against the authoritarian rule and dismantling of the socio-economic infrastructures –  is the Arab world coming to its own end because of the sadistic dictators?  The Arab rulers and the masses live and breathe in conflicting time zones being unable to see the rationality of people-oriented governance. Perhaps, the worst is yet to come, surrender to foreign forces as there are no leaders to think of the future or the Arab armies to defend the people. Borrowed weapons and corrupt and failed rulers cannot extend moral or intellectual security to the masses. The question is how to decode treachery, greed, incompetence and dead conscience to tell the future generation – the real story of the Arab ruler’s aggressiveness and drudgery interjected and internalized in egoistic conscience to manage the governance.

Wars suck out positive human thinking and creative energies to articulate a sustainable future.How should humanity view contemporary Arab societies, their war-torn bloody cultures operated by foreign mercenaries and few authoritarian dictators?  What kind of message of civility, moral and intellectual values do they convey to the watchful eyes of the global community? What happened to their Islamic culture, values and glorious civilization? Was the petrodollar a conspiracy (“fitna”) to disconnect the Arab people from Islamic culture and civilization? Contemporary global affairs warrant intelligent and competent leadership not kings, not military dictators or dull princes occupying splendid palaces away from the people. Leaders manage the crisis when facts of life warrant change and adaptability to the future. Often crisis unity people of reason but not the Arab rulers.

The Syrian war will end as it cannot go for ever. Its ripple effects will haunt present and future generations. The people’s struggle could soon move to other neighboring Arab societies encouraging masses to rise against the authoritarian regimes for people-oriented Islamic governance. The super powers and Iran appear to be on the wrong side of time and history. If Iranian had Islamic consciousness and unity of the Ummah (nation) as its policy aim, it was immaterial whether Assad remains in power or not. Professing sectarian shiisim and taking sides with monsters of history and talking about Muslim unity make no sense by the Iranian speaker of the Majlis. They all breathe in self-geared illusions of wishful thinking. While the concerned mankind is shocked by the atrocities and horrors carried out by the Assad regime and Russians, ironically in West Aleppo others are celebrating the victory of insanity over the humanity. History speaks its own language that all those leaders and nations claiming to be most powerful on the planet were destroyed by their own designs and wicked strategies. Those dictators and political monsters that willfully brutalized the humanity should not go unchallenged for their crimes and accountability.

 

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012. His forthcoming book is entitled: One Humanity and The Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution

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Refugees or Humanity Marching Under Razor Wires – Cyrano’s Journal Today- USA: 9/9/2015

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 
     

Cyrano's Journal Today

 
 

Refugees or Humanity Marching under Razor Wires

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RefugiadosYbuscadoresDeAsilo

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

[Photo courtesy Cath News USA.]

Besieged Humanity: From Nowhere to Nowhere

International institutions for peace and security are fraught with indifference and incapacity to deal with the emerging humanitarian crises. What led to the making of Two World Wars is happening again to repeat the history. Humanity is victimized and its freedom is barbed wired to seek help. With marked difference, refugees are often identified as “economic migrant” as if Europeans were the glittering gold mines of the 21st century economic prosperity. The EU has policies and practices, but not for the Arab-Muslim refugees to come to Europe. Nobody dares to face the pertinent reality ahead of the global political changes–mostly Muslims and highly cultured and civilized people dragged at gunpoint out of their ancestral homes into the nowhere. Sailing on rubber dingys across oceans because unwanted wars and conflicts made them displaced and unwanted everywhere. Umm Abdullah 28 and alone, Syrian mother of two starving and sick kids ages 2 and 4 years consoled them at Lesbos – Greece Island as if she knows what is next under the open sky. A Syrian father of two toddlers took bodies of his children and wife to bury them back in Kobani after they drowned on the dingy at Turkish island. There is no place for the living and dead- a reality that haunts the human consciousness. Where do they go when they are nowhere on the planet. The world political governance is systematic and conducive if they were not Muslims or Arabs refugees. Hungarian leadership made it known “they don’t want Muslim refugees” to crossover its borders onward to the EU countries. French spokesman described the Hungarian border razor wires “not even suitable for animals.” Hungarian leaders blame Germany for enticing the Arab refugees to march through the barbed wires. Conscientious of the humanitarian saga, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the only leader to envisage a peaceful place for the war torn refugees from the Middle East. Out of the stubborn and boxed global politics, Angela Merkel certainly made Germany look abroad and remarkably above the European pride and prejudices towards Islam and Muslims. There are numbers and people in search of compassionate mankind. Do the States and leaders have human conscience? Or is it an abstract entity of the philosophical paper-based dry ink substance?
West Europeans lack unity and vision to deal with such large unwanted and colored humanity wanting to live amongst them as if they were the role model for the rest of peaceful humanity. The EU members are one with diversity of nationalism, cultures and varied civilizations. West Europeans do have unity of the minds but it is focused on competitive security, militarization and animosity factors if some would challenge the EU security and cultural homogeneity in a fast changing global theater. Ostensibly, some EU leaders are taking the back seat on the current crisis of unthinkable humanitarian proportion and not necessarily within their perceptions and means to tackle. They don’t have to and is not their national priority. Is it an exclusively West Europeans states and people’s responsibility to deal with the Arab-Muslim refugee crisis? What about the affluent and prosperous oil-exporting Arab-Muslim countries? How come they are not coming forward to even talk and say anything rational about this humanitarian tragedy of their own making? Why have the war and killings and forcible displacement of people gone so long for 12 years in Iraq and Afghanistan and five years in Syria? Are they living in a floating utopian bubble not to imagine the consequences of their wrong thinking, wrong actions and wrong outcomes? What good do the Arabs have if they cannot settle few millions of oppressed and war-torn displaced refugees? How come it is always the Christian world – the Western nations demonstrating humanitarian compassion and generosity to welcome strange and unknown refugees? Glaring examples of human compassion and reception for incoming refugees are witnessed at Munich railway station by common German citizens, and so are thousands of Austrian, Serbians, Hungarian and Swedish common people and elsewhere in Europe. Pope Francis asked all the Catholic followers to take at least one refugee family into their homes and heart. The Arab leaders exhibit dead-conscience towards their own fellow Arabs in distress and pains. To oust one egoistic and authoritarian Bashar al Assad, millions and millions are charcoaled daily by cluster bombs and chemical weapons prohibited by the so called Geneva Conventions and the spectator like UNO. One finds two critical issues appearing vital to humanitarian concerns:

  1. The displaced people are result of the failure of global political institutions and leadership to find peaceful resolution of the Iraq-Syrian wars.
  2. While the EU members and others are well versed in warmongering and responding to competitive security threats, they lack vision and capacity to resolve humanitarian issues as was the case during the First World War and the Second World War. Humanity suffered and continues to be in pains because there are no leaders to lead the living humanity.

In Search of Global Humanitarian Leadership

One wonders, if there are any global leaders to extend humanitarian moral security to the helpless refugees going from nowhere to nowhere in search of home? Global political affairs are fast becoming a theater of absurdity. In a rational spectrum, leaders are not leading; large segments of the global population are enduring unthinkable moral and intellectual sickness as humanitarian and political problems are pilling up to crush the human soul and body. All wars affect people. The ongoing wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen have catastrophic impacts on all aspects of human life. These conflicts were planned and sponsored by the US and West Europeans for economic and political reasons.
There are laws of humanitarian intervention but not for the Arab-Muslim world to safeguard the civilian population. For centuries, Arabs-and Muslims were used as raw material and commodities to build the European empires and draw economic benefits to divide and rule the impoverished humanity. The informed global community wonders where to look for change and peacemaking that is nowhere visible on the global horizon. Man-made conflicts have disoriented and dehumanized the entire Arab region lacking optimism for sustainable future. More unthinkable conflicts originating from the Arab world are becoming clear menace to peaceful future-making. Those democratically chosen and self-styled leaders talking of global peace and harmony but in reality are selling weapons of mass destruction and continue to terrorize the global humanity. None seem to have any imagination for human unity and peacemaking. All man-made problems are resolvable by people of knowledge, proactive vision, integrity and discipline. The Arab leaders are engaged in tribal warfare enflamed by the US and Europeans to market their obsolete weapons. None of the Arab conflicts make any sense when Islam sought Unity of Faith. Arab people are the net victims everywhere, be it in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, North Africa or elsewhere. What is the workable remedy? How could the global systems of governance of the few could be challenged and changed by the global agitating masses?

Towards Rethinking of Global Leadership from a Brand New Breed

“There are the times that try men’s soul”, noted Thomas Paine in his famous “Common Sense”, the lifeline to American freedom and intellectual development. In situations of adversity and crises, leaders represent optimism and hope for change, not egoistic agenda and confusion. The US and some European leaders are engaged in fueling the Arab world crises with the sole aim of further militarization of the region and selling more weapons. There are no practical movements or new initiatives of any kind to address the real issues and come to terms with strategies for conflict management and conflict resolution. Could the animosity lost for ever? Despite time, enormous wealth and human resources, oil exporting Arab leaders ignored the importance of societal peace and problem-solving. There is not a single institution across the Arab world to analyze political crisis and to workout peaceful measures for political change, normalization and enhancement of dialogue for conflict management. All abnormal developments are becoming normal occurrence of human affairs as large parts of the Arab-Muslim world are entangled in foreign-generated conflicts and sectarian warfare. Often political blame game is preferred than facing the reality. At times, Western leaders blame Russia and China for the prolonged warfare in Syria and Iraq. Did the Western leaders workout and implemented any useful plan to restore peace and human dignity in the Arab world? Human cruelty knows no bound as deaths of civilians and destruction of the civic infrastructures are common place across the Arab societal setting. Most political problems stem from the authoritarian rule and indifference towards public interest. Everywhere egoistic dictators indulge in wickedness and treachery to human dignity and values
All human cultures and civilizations have drawn essential resources to rebuild their presence and progress via migration. Strangely enough, in the 21st century of knowledge and human ingenuity, we lack workable mechanism to encourage and welcome new talents and enriched human resources from other parts of the living planet. Most EU and Arab leaders exhibit ignorance and indifference to see the mirror and take history as a living entity for future-making. Hungary is not the mouthpiece of the EU but its geography is a vital connecting dot for refugees to travel onward to other destinations in Northern Europe. Could the EU come up with a refreshed agenda to tackle the humanitarian crises? What went wrong with modern Arabs not to take few millions of displaced human beings? Once upon a time, Arabs had moral distinction in human thinking, policies and behavior. But today, they are so entrenched in seclusion, ignorance and sectarian warfare, they just cannot see outside the self-perpetuated bubble. How can we imagine a new world of human dignity, values and tolerance? To change the world, it is incumbent upon the intellectuals, academics, visionaries, poets, philosophers and the thinking people to perceive and articulate new and creative ideas, new political imagination for the 21st century organizations in submission to the laws of the One and Only Creator. 
What is the cure to raging indifference and cruelty to the displaced refugees? The informed global community must come to terms to evolve a workable collective consciousness of the root causes of the problems and humanitarian discourse. If there were no economically perpetuated wars and obsessive militarization of the Arab region, and given a defined mechanism in place for conflict management and protection of the civilians in combat zones, these dehumanized refugees would not have left their ancestral homes and families to march on to Europe for a new life. Who is responsible for the crimes against humanity? One major factor encouraging the global superpowers to go freely and unchallenged out of their own hemisphere to far fetched lands and commit massacres and destroy human habitats, is the obvious corrupt system of global peace and security operated by the UNO. It is nothing more than a debating club overwhelmed by the few – the five obsolete global powers at the UN Security Council to claim legitimacy to rule the nations of the world. The UNO Secretary General relies on issuing paper-based statement and does not have the moral and intellectual capacity to foresee beyond the obvious and make his presence in situations of unusual societal conflicts and peacemaking endeavors. The UN Organization is in a desperate need of new thinking, reformation and perhaps a New Organizations for the future.
Time and encompassing opportunities warrant new thinking, new leaders and new visions for change and the future-making. But change and creativity and new visions will not emerge out of the obsolete, redundant and failed authoritarianism of the few insane leaders. None have the understanding of neither peace nor respect for human life and co-existence in a splendid Universe. To challenge the deafening silence of the global political systems, Arab leaders and some West Europeans for global peace and security, the humanity must find ways and means to look beyond the obvious and troublesome horizons dominated by the few warlords and continued to be plagued with massacres, displacement of innocent civilians, barbarity against human culture and civilizations, destruction of the habitats and natural environment as if there were no rational being and people of reason populating the God-given splendid and living Universe.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012.

 

 

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