The new world disorder

Indigenous lone wolves, wreaking havoc in the West

The year was 1971. As a young man, I hopped on a Pan Am flight to New York with my eventual destination being Port Huron, Michigan. Port Huron, a small town on the US-Canadian border, then had a total population of around 40,000. I land at JFK, finding it to be an entirely different world. I was guided by a pretty airline staff attendant into taking an earlier flight to Detroit. After two days, I took a Greyhound to Port Huron.

I disembarked the coach carrying some of my luggage and kicking the rest all the way to a coffee shop near a bridge that went over a small canal. I was welcomed with greetings, smiles and winks by older people.  For a while, I forget about home. What a friendly and warm nation, I thought; so welcoming to a newcomer. From the coffee shop I was told how to reach St Clair County Community College, where I was received by a very pretty welcoming secretary of the dean, who took me out for my first McDonald Meal.

My two years at Port Huron were the most wonderful years of my life and at times, I go back in time to reminisce the lovely memories. The Vietnam War had just ended and many of the boys who served in the war and who had impaired hearing and eyesight, were my colleagues at the Junior college. None of them understood the purpose they fought for, what their country had achieved by sacrificing so many young American lives and an unaccountable loss of Vietnamese life. Many of the injured war veterans could be seen on crutches and wheel chairs. The aggressive policy of the US and EU countries transformed their own societies from friendly and peace-loving, to arrogant, prejudiced and aggressive, losing their civil liberties due to their own policies. Or was it a deliberate attempt to control the common man in Europe and America under the dictates of a handful of government functionaries at the helm of affairs?  Was it a strategy of a handful to transform the societies of the developed countries in these last 40 years to become aggressive, gun-slinging nations?

It seems that the term ‘custodian of human rights’ has been long forgotten. Considering itself the ‘policeman of the world’, instead of policing for peace, the US has become the opposite, following the concept of ‘might is right’.

The Soviets were invited by the Afghan government to be countered by a joint US-Pakistan partnership. Mujahideen were trained and funded by the US and Saudi Arabia. A propaganda machine of madrassas and religious schools was created in Pakistan, from where Mujahideen were recruited and trained to fight the Soviets and the then Afghan government.

It was a fight against infidels and all those who fought this war and died were labelled ‘martyrs’. Thousands went from Pakistan to Afghanistan to fight the battle with the Soviets, in the name of jihad.

The then illegal and undemocratic military government of Pakistan most willingly became a frontline state proxy in the war against the Soviets to open its borders to Afghans, while hundreds of thousands of refugees flooded into Pakistan. After the US shifted its gaze from this battleground, the Mujahideen became Taliban and ruled Afghanistan for a short period before the country was bombarded and subsequently occupied by NATO forces and a banana republic was set up to rule Afghanistan. Pakistan faces the aftermath of terrorism brought from Afghanistan due to an influx of refugees.

Bush attacked Iraq under the pretext that it had weapons of mass destruction, but none were to be found. Saddam was charged with using chemical weapons, but drones attacks on civilians be justified? So many innocent lives of women and children in South Asia and the Middle East have been lost.

Many irregularities were committed in Iraq, the most prominent by a member of the US-made Iraqi Governing Council of Paul Bremer. One of its members, a good friend of Bush, violated the U.S. Government’s Policy in Iraq by unilaterally signing oil deals with the Kurds, bypassing the Iraqi government.

Unfortunately, the actions and policies of NATO countries have backfired. It lead Russia and China to form a bloc to counter US aspirations to a military and economic monopoly. There is a gradual paradigm shift in Middle Eastern and South Asian countries to support this bloc. Discriminatory policies of US, supported by EU countries, have lead to disturbances in the Middle East, resulting in the influx of refugees to Europe.

The worst is expected, with the gradual transformation of a civilised ‘West’ into a prejudiced and violent and aggressor which picks on weaker nations around the world. There appears to be a creation of indigenous lone wolves in America and Europe, who have already started to wreak havoc within these countries. Unfortunately, the United Nations is also being gradually rendered ineffective and transformed into a toothless body like the League of Nations.

Will the EU countries with the US government as their leaders continue to adopt the law of the jungle, or will they learn to work towards a goal whereby peace can be brought to this world? I am sure that friendly folks, such as those whom I met in Port Huron still exist all over the US as well as Europe, but unfortunately, the difference is that they will probably face many undesirable calamities due to the negative policies of their own governments, who in turn will blame radical Islam.

The phrase ‘do more’ resonates, but can they themselves ‘do more’ to bring about a positive transformation?

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2016.

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