My rant on Refugee crisis (second one)

Few points were mulling around in my head after continuously reading comments & social media posts that Muslims & Arab countries are not doing enough to ease the refugee crisis from Iraq & Syria:

1. Muslim countries have taken millions of refugees:
Although, Muslim countries can certainly do more, they are/have done a lot already. Syrians are taking refuge in Turkey (1.9 million refugees), Jordan (650K), & Lebanon (1.3 million) for the past 3 years. That totals up to 4 Million refugees in 3 Muslim countries alone. Source: UNHCR

From a Sept 4th article on Bloomberg, "Nabil Othman, acting regional representative to the Gulf region at the United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, told Bloomberg there were 500,000 Syrians in that country [Saudi Arabia]. Saudi Arabia, like all of the Gulf states, is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention, so these displaced people are not officially designated as refugees." Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait & UAE have not taken refugees themselves, but UAE, Kuwait & Qatar, for example, are providing financial help to refugees through UNHCR. These countries have donated millions of $$$. These countries are smaller in size & cannot cope with a large influx of refugees. Those refugees will overwhelm their local economies & labour markets.

2. Quite a few of the refugees entering in Europe are actually just getting there to search for a better economic life. They are taking this issue as a perfect opportunity to enter Western developed countries without all the hassles of immigration process. They are not running away from Syria to save their lives. For example, the instigator of this issue, Abdullah Kurdi's family (Aylan Kurdi's family), was already safe in Turkey since 2012.

After all, why are Afghanis & even Pakistanis & Bangladeshis are in these refugee crowds who are trying to enter into Europe. Afghanis have claimed asylum in Pakistan & in Iran for decades, now. It's easier for Afghanis to enter into Pakistan & Iran as refugees than go all the way to Europe. Same question can be asked for Pakistani & Bangladeshi "refugees". These are not refugees. They are "economic opportunists." That's why, European government leaders are now trying to distinguish between the words, "migrants" & "refugees". Angela Merkel even said that all those "refugees" from Balkans will be sent back (which emphasizes my point that people into Germany & Austria are not all "refugees"). David Cameron emphasized that UK will only take "refugees," & not migrants looking for a better life.

3. Pope's call is similar to all those Christian missionary teams which used to go to Africa, South America, South East Asia. It was famous that these missionaries were brutal in their faith conversion tactics; accept Christianity & we will give you food & shelter or don't accept Christianity & you won't get anything. Of course, Pope's call is not that radical, but there are already stories coming out that some Iranians & Afghanis are converting to Christianity. (Source: Daily Mail) Their thinking is that as Christians, they can easily claim asylum in Europe by claiming that they fear persecution in Middle East.

4. Germany is taking almost 800K refugees because it has a hidden agenda: Germany is running a huge shortfall of labourers & it needs low-tech workers for its workforce. Every refugee wants to eventually work, & unlike, Arab countries, where the majority of population is young & educated, European countries are aging & need younger workforce. Although, Jordan, Lebanon, & Turkey are housing these refugees, these refugees are not allowed to work there. Most of the Western countries, depending on their own labour markets & economies, will either permanently resettle some refugees or send these refugees back to their countries of origins after a certain amount of time has passed.

Robert Fisk in Abu Dhabi: The acceptable face of the Emirates

My questions after reading this opinion piece from Robert Fisk are:

1. How Oriental & Western paintings, & Gauguin, Picasso, & Poussin art is going to help educate the Arabs?

2. What's the point of this education when it doesn't help broaden the mind to discuss political, social, cultural, & religious matters openly (instead of one family dictatorship rule)?

3. What's the point of all this educational institutions when Arabs, & Muslims, most likely, have forgotten how Prophet Muhammad used to live & they are spending billions on gigantic mosques to show what to whom?

As Mr. Fisk very aptly asks, "what to make of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque? The truly gigantic carpet, the chandeliers, the fact that it was constructed by men & materials from Morocco to China & can hold more than 40,000 faithful – all give it the feel of cathedrals built in the Middle Ages. It has avoided the gruesome, concrete pseudo-modernism of the Saudi-built mosques of Bosnia, but is it art? Or, with its gold and precious stones, is it a message about the power of wealth as well as the power of God? The Prophet Mohamed was a businessman & he would, I suspect, have rather liked Abu Dhabi – but Mohamed was also a humble man. Is this mosque humble?"

And while UAE spends billions on grand mosques & building Louvres & Guggenheims "for educational purposes," thousands upon thousands of Muslims are getting killed in South East Asia (Rohingya) to Iraq to Libya, & millions more are refugees. I am not even going to discuss the plights of Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, & Xinjiang etc.

4. What's the point of this education when those same Arab elites are forcing thousands of foreign workers from South & Central Asia to work in extreme heat of the Middle East, to build these grand mosques, museums, roads, buildings, & essentially, whole cities in the middle of desert, for meagre wages & at great risks to their lives?

5. What's the point of such education which doesn't help one learn the meaning of justice, equality, & basic humanity?

I guess, I can't really pin that one on Emiratis or Arabs only, since this is all over the world. There are far more "educated" people now in this so-called "modern" world than, say, 1900s, but the suffering & plight of our fellow human beings have increased that much in only a century.

Didn't this modern "education" increase injustice, inequality, & erased the meaning of humanity from the public's minds?

So what's the point of such education when it only increases suffering, further traps the public in the flawed system (poor can't get good quality education because of its unaffordability & the rich don't really need it in the first place) & the overall system doesn't change at all since education doesn't help in broadening the mind?
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/robert-fisk-in-abu-dhabi-the-acceptable-face-of-the-emirates-10211050.html

The Abu Dhabi Louvre looks like the top of a giant, primordial eggshell pushing its way out of the sand. Its giant dome already glisters under the sun, its construction workers moving like spiders over 5 layers of cladding, steel & aluminium which will give this extraordinary museum a combined weight of 7,000 tons, just a little less than the Eiffel Tower. Already the concrete base of a man-made lake spreads around the construction, for architect Jean Nouvel's Louvre will be on a miniature island, its works of art transported to its gallery through an underground tunnel, light sprinkled into its interior as if through the fronds of palm trees.
 
Very romantic. Very French orientalist, I say to myself. Very Arab too, perhaps. The idea is that art will move chronologically through centuries inside the new Louvre, oriental & Western paintings next to each other.
 
But won't Abu Dhabi have a few problems with nudes, with Gauguin or Picasso or Poussin? No, says my companion, as he explains the double insulation & the cladding which will ... prevent water spewing on to the Louvre's greatest masterpieces. "All that is accepted. This is art. This is for education." Contemporary art will be inside the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim a few hundred yards away, still just a sand-pile of dumper trucks & bobbing labourers' hats.
 
... so many people in Abu Dhabi don't like their names being revealed – my companion included – for they live under a form of autocracy; not the dictatorship of Saddamite or Mubarakite or Ghaddafite political power, but the dictatorship of money. Abu Dhabi is so rich, & its ambitions so mystical, that people speak in whispers. If the Abu Dhabi Louvre has already purchased Gauguin's Breton Boys Wrestling ... & Magritte's The Subjugated Reader ... then perhaps some miracle has taken place.
 
But if all this is educational, what to make of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque? The truly gigantic carpet, the chandeliers, the fact that it was constructed by men & materials from Morocco to China & can hold more than 40,000 faithful – all give it the feel of cathedrals built in the Middle Ages. It has avoided the gruesome, concrete pseudo-modernism of the Saudi-built mosques of Bosnia, but is it art? Or, with its gold & precious stones, is it a message about the power of wealth as well as the power of God? The Prophet Mohamed was a businessman & he would, I suspect, have rather liked Abu Dhabi – but Mohamed was also a humble man. Is this mosque humble?
 
That's the catch in Abu Dhabi. When you own 9% of the world's oil & close to 5% of the planet's natural gas, you have to decide whether you shout about it, display it before all with Saudi abandon, or send it off to fund charitable projects or cult-like Islamist militias. Abu Dhabi has stuck to charity, avoided the darkness of Wahabism, ... but can't shake off the need for ostentation. And the Emirates Palace Hotel is an obscenity. I've stayed there twice ... & I've written of its imperial architecture – Mogul-Gothic Lutyens, I suppose, with just a hint of Saddam & just a dangerous flavour of Titanic.
 
This is egregious affluence on an unprecedented scale, real gold on the walls, doors & fittings, 1,022 crystal chandeliers & a guest list of Hollywood-Bollywood glamerati who've taken rooms at up to £10,000 a night. So gargantuan is the wretched hotel's size that no guest can escape walking 2 miles a day; the Egyptian & Russian staff call it the "Hotel Sporto" because most have to walk between 10 & 15 miles a day escorting guests.
 
This, however, is being picky. Old Sheikh Zayed, the founder of Abu Dhabi, his son & successor, the current Sheikh Khalifa, & now his brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, have all said that the Emirates lagged behind in that most precious, & largely absent, commodity of any Arab state: education. Now that Abu Dhabi had "a lot of wealth" ... the emirate needed to invest in education, Prince Mohammed told a summit 2 months ago. "Maybe in 50 years, we might have the last barrel of oil. The question is: will we be sad? If today we are investing in the right sectors, we will celebrate at that moment."
 
Abu Dhabi is the sensible, adult version of Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, smaller than its neighbour, but probably the wealthiest city in the world. It's still ruled by the al-Nahyan family whose Bani Yas tribe migrated to the north Arabian peninsula Gulf coast, opposite what is now Iran, in the late 18th century. So rich is Abu Dhabi, with an oil producing capacity of 2.3 million barrels a day, that even its total investments – statistics it prefers to keep secret – must be calculated to the nearest £70bn. The total figure is probably close to £650bn.
 
In the awful corporate language that crown princes now feel constrained to speak, Prince Mohammed said that, while Abu Dhabi possessed oil & gas for the present, "We need as of today to stress that learning outcomes should create human capital that is able to serve us for the 50 years & beyond." In other words, education, education, education…

What on earth, I asked Zaki Nusseibeh, one of the advisers to the government's cultural affairs ministry, was Prince Mohammed banging on about? "The Arab peoples in their revolutions asked for dignity," he replied. "They asked for a future. But… you need to create the 'custom' for discussion & for accepting other people's point of view. All that is happening with religious ideology in this part of the world is a fascist movement. Teaching is by rote – I mean this, by rote – & people are not encouraged to have critical thinking. They don't listen to music at a young age or know what it's like to go to a museum. Sheikh Zayed said this as early as 1968."
 
Mr Nusseibeh sits on a Rhodes Scholarship committee & says how rewarding it is to see two young UAE students competing with international students, to see them go to Oxford to get their Masters. So Abu Dhabi & the other emirates must have good universities, he says, fine schools, a commitment to "education & culture". Investing in the future, every Abu Dhabi government official will tell you, is also about renewable energy, solar energy, but it's primarily about education.
 
"Political ideology has taken over from education," Mr Nusseibeh says of recent Arab history. He talks of the museums & the Biennale in Sharjah & Abu Dhabi & then blurts out one of those clichés which always make me suspicious: that Abu Dhabi must be "a role model for the societies around us – look at the media, the internet city, the communications infrastructure…"

It's not long ago that the West told the Arabs that Turkey should be their role model – until Recep Tayyip Erdogan started going bonkers, talking about plots & locking up journalists & turning into a role model for the Mubaraks & Ghaddafis that had already passed into history. Yet it's not difficult to see what Abu Dhabi is trying to do. If Saudi Arabia is the empire of prayer & Qatar the empire of television ... then Abu Dhabi runs the empire of higher education, the one commodity which has always failed the Arabs, or which the Arabs have always failed to take advantage of.
 
From education comes dignity & from dignity comes justice. But this is surely too sentimental. It's glorious to know that in Abu Dhabi there is an Abu Dhabi Choral Group, an Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, an Amadeus Music Institute, a House of Oud, studying the Arabic stringed instrument which is a distant relative of the lute, the International Music Institute & the Modern Art Music Institute. But then I find Abu Dhabi's version of Time Out lists 108 bars & nightclubs in its entertainment inventory. Is it trying to imitate Dubai? Can there be two Dubais – or two Abu Dhabis – in the Emirates?
 
And who are they ultimately for? Not for the 4 million foreign labourers, of course. Nor for the middle-class elites who arrive from the West & from the rest of that amorphous "Arab world". An Iraqi high-up in the medical profession in Abu Dhabi – which is why he, too, asked to remain anonymous – explained his relationship with the Emirate in surprisingly frank terms. "We all came here by choice," he said over the hottest coffee I've ever tasted in Arabia. "I made an informed decision – I believed I would have a better life here. I'm very happy with the way they run their country."
 
He paused here, I think because – as a doctor as well as an expatriate – he didn't want to give Abu Dhabi too clean a bill of health. "The deal is this: 'We're going to pay you money & you can have the lifestyle you have chosen – but you have no rights.' A non-Emirati cannot go to a government school. You can only go to a government hospital in emergency. I'm here as a servant of the country. I know if I don't want to be a servant any more, I can get on a plane & go home."
 
Then he thought for a moment & captured the venality of it all. "We're all here by invitation – or temptation."

Global weapons trade targets Africa as imports to Algeria & Morocco soar

Well, I have blogged several times before this post, how & why developed countries export arms & weapons to the developing countries. Developed countries need wars & conflicts in the developing world to drive up their production, exports, & GDP. Best private sector jobs in the developed world are in military-related industry.

So, don't just assume that people in the developing world are "barbarians" who love to fight all the time. They are being provided the WMDs (all weapons are weapons of mass destruction) by the developed world, & (as one of the opinion pieces in Independent from April 2015 stated) when a civil war or terrorist-related activities happen in those developing world, the developed world looks in horror.

People in the developed world so naively want "peace in the world" but then close their eyes & ears, when their own governments sell weapons, by the billions, to the developing world, which in turn, destroys any chance of peace ever taking place.

"The institute estimated the value of the world’s arms trade in 2007 at more than $50 billion, with the US selling $12.8 billion of weapons, making it the leading global exporter. Russia ranked second, with $7.4 billion in arms sales, followed by France with $6.2 billion, Israel with $4.4 billion & the UK with $4.1 billion."

And countries in the developing world can never actually develop & hence, compete at the same level as the countries in the developed world, when they are spending billions on arms & weaponry.

"India imported the most arms between 2010 & 2014, followed by Saudi Arabia, China, the UAE & Pakistan. These 5 countries accounted for 33% of all arms imports over the period, Sipri said."
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2015/mar/20/africa-arms-imports-algeria-morocco-global-weapons-trade

The global arms trade has grown by 16% over the past decade, with military hardware including tanks, missiles & artillery flowing to African countries faster than to any other region, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
 
African governments & rebel groups imported 45% more weapons in 2014 than in 2005, Sipri reported in its latest arms transfers database. Weapons sales to the Asia & Oceania region grew by 37% over the same period, while the Middle East bought 25% more weapons.
 
Sipri’s data, which accounts for purchases of military hardware including tanks, aircraft, radar, artillery, rockets, missiles & ships, is measured over five-year periods because weapons orders can fluctuate significantly from year to year.
 
Violence & destruction associated with rising arms imports into Africa costs the continent an estimated $18 billion (£12.1 billion) a year as infrastructure is destroyed, businesses are closed & children are kept out of school, said Martin Butcher, arms policy adviser at Oxfam. “Burundi spends an average of $5 a year on healthcare for each citizen, but the cost of treating a victim of armed violence in Burundi averages $165 a year,” Butcher explained.
 
The leading African importers of military hardware were Algeria, Morocco & Sudan. Many countries used soaring oil revenues to buy weapons, but a sharp drop in the price of oil has cast doubts on their ability to continue heightened defence spending.
 
Driving arms purchases in the continent is Algeria’s long-standing rivalry with Morocco & Uganda’s involvement in South Sudan’s civil war, according to Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at Sipri. Cameroon & Nigeria showed “urgent demand” for weapons in their fight against Islamist rebel group Boko Haram, Sipri said. The involvement of Uganda, Ghana & Kenya in military operations mandated by the African Union & the UN also contributed to a rise in arms imports.

“Competitive acquisition plays some role in [rising arms sales to Africa], but concerns over domestic insurgencies are becoming increasingly important in shaping what the military buys,” said Malcolm Chalmers, director of UK defence policy at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence & Security Studies.
 
But Sipri is not able to include imports of small arms – widely used in civil wars such as those in South Sudan, Central African Republic & Somalia – in its data. “We do recognise the importance of small arms imports, especially in a region like Africa, where major arms are not so widely available. Alas, we cannot record them in the way we would like to,” Wezeman said, noting the limited transparency of military spending as another impediment to the accuracy of Sipri’s data.
 
Russia sold the most arms to African countries, mainly to Algeria, while France’s sales to Morocco made it the second-largest arms dealer to the continent.
 
Worldwide, the biggest arms exporters were the US & Russia, which accounted for more than half of all weapons sales between 2010 & 2014, the data showed. China’s arms sales have soared by 143% since 2005, making it the world’s third largest arms dealer. In contrast, Europe’s arms exports fell by 16%.
 
Wezeman played down the link between rising African arms imports & China’s soaring arms exports. “Chinese arms exports are still very much going to a small number of states – mainly Pakistan followed by [Burma] & Bangladesh,” he said.
 
The biggest importers of US arms were South Korea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) & Australia. Russia sent the bulk of its arms shipments to India, China & Algeria.
 
India imported the most arms between 2010 & 2014, followed by Saudi Arabia, China, the UAE & Pakistan. These 5 countries accounted for 33% of all arms imports over the period, Sipri said.
 
Sipri takes the production costs of a set of commonly used weapons & analyses arms deals to calculate the “transfer of military capability”, Wezeman said. “We do not look at the financial value that has been agreed between the recipient & the supplier … because quite often weapons are transferred for no price at all.”

The institute estimated the value of the world’s arms trade in 2007 at more than $50 billion, with the US selling $12.8 billion of weapons, making it the leading global exporter. Russia ranked second, with $7.4 billion in arms sales, followed by France with $6.2 billion, Israel with $4.4 billion & the UK with $4.1 billion.

“The US has long seen arms exports as a major foreign policy & security tool, but in recent years exports are increasingly needed to help the US arms industry maintain production levels at a time of decreasing US military expenditure,” said Aude Fleurant, director of Sipri’s arms & military expenditure programme.

Difference of development between Karachi & Dubai (1950s - 2014)

This picture is recently making rounds on Facebook. So 2 questions conjured up in my mind:
 
1. So, do we blame "democracy" & praise "dictatorship"?
On one hand, Pakistanis are protesting to bring in a democratic government under the leadership of Imran Khan, but on the other hand, want development of countries, which have dictatorial rule (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Singapore etc.).

2. As we all know, labour costs money. It's a major expense, beside materials, for any business or government. Middle Eastern countries (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia etc) pay next to nothing (virtual slavery), to the foreign labour from South Asia, Africa, & Philippines etc, which built their countries & their own citizens don't even need to work (they get government checks under the oil profit sharing program).
 
Pakistan's situation is not that different. A miniscule elite is awash in money (like Arab Sheikhs but Sheikhs still have far more money ... Forbes billionaire list has Arab Sheikhs, but no Pakistani leader) & the majority population is toiling for a few pennies. Difference: that majority population is citizenry of Pakistan & the "slaves" working in middle east are devoid of any citizenship & any rights it affords.