IN the 1956 cult science fiction movie Forbidden Planet, an ancient civilisation has destroyed itself by creating weapons that amplified emotions to produce terrifying ‘monsters of the id’. Out of control, these invisible electro-magnetic creatures have killed all living beings on the planet.

Although I saw the movie many years ago, it has stayed with me because of the very real possibility that our race, too, could create instruments that would lead to the end of life on Earth. But looking back over the last half century, I can see we don’t need alien weapons to self-destruct: history, prejudice, ideology, faith and sheer barbarism have brought us to the brink.

If you think I’m exaggerating, just look around. Across the world, tensions, conflicts and wars are tearing us apart. More and more states are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. As the population of the world grows inexorably, we are facing shortages of water and arable land. Fleeing from violence and collapsing law and order, millions are fleeing their homes.

And as the poor and the oppressed vote with their feet and flee their homes from Pakistan to Libya, walls in the developed world are going up, and ‘No vacancy’ signs being placed at border crossings. All parents want the best for their children, and failing states are no place to bring up a family.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, there was a brief moment of hope that with the end of the Cold War, we would finally have a peaceful world. Optimists thought that without the two superpowers engaging in proxy battles across the globe, we could finally settle down to solving the problems of poverty and ignorance. There was much talk of a ‘peace dividend’ as defence spending would be slashed. Dream on.

What we discovered was that once repressed nations became free, they asserted age-old ethnic and territorial claims. The Serb attempt to wipe out their Muslim Bosnian neighbours was a harbinger of things to come.

Freed of the need to consider a Soviet response, the United States embarked on an aggressive campaign to contain Islamic radicals. The first invasion of Iraq in 1990 to free Kuwait triggered a reaction among Muslim fighters who had battled Soviet forces in Afghanistan. This ferment was fuelled by strong anti-America sentiments among an entire generation of Muslims from London to Lahore.

The 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq sharpened and deepened the conflict between the West, led by the US, and numerous radicalised Muslims. Increasingly, young Muslims are seeing their own leaders as puppets manipulated by Washington to block a popular Islamic resurgence.

The destabilisation of Iraq, Syria and Libya has unleashed both ethnic and sectarian conflicts across the region. In many cases, these tensions have spilled over into non-Arab Muslim states like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in a proxy war across much of the Muslim world.

While reacting to events in the region, the West wrings its hands and complains about what is widely viewed as a ‘backward religion’, politicians and pundits alike forget what has triggered the violence. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq do not figure in their analyses, and neither does the meddling in Libya and Syria. The hollowness of the concept of Responsibility to Protect has been proved as intervention has proved to be far worse than the problem it was attempting to solve.

Any hope that the Arab world would put its despotic past behind during the quickly extinguished Arab Spring was laid to rest by the Egyptian army: now, Muslim radicals have valid reservations about democracy as a viable path to the future. For them, the system is rigged to foil their aspirations. In Algeria, Gaza and Egypt, elections saw the victory of Islamic parties; in the former and the latter, the army intervened and in Gaza, Hamas is treated as a pariah.

But the turbulence does not begin and end in the Muslim world. Tensions are rising from the South China Sea to Ukraine where an all-out war threatens to break out. And if the delicate negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme fail, the very real possibility of an Israel-inspired attack looms over the region.

Meanwhile, the global economy is spluttering along, threatening to stall any minute. Millions of people are out of work, and even in developed economies, the cost of health care and pension schemes now consumes an increasing proportion of national budgets as people live longer than ever before.

And as legal and illegal immigrants are perceived to impose a growing burden on social care, the appeal of right-wing parties increases. From Sweden to Britain, politicians with anti-immigrant slogans are imposing their agendas on the mainstream. Islamic radicalism in these countries helps to fuel these right-wing tendencies.

As the weather changes and the oceans rise, we continue to ignore the writing on the wall, refusing to curb our addiction to carbon-based fuels. Already, South Asia faces the threat of reduced water flows from our glaciers that are melting away at an alarming rate. As China builds dams on the Tibetan plateau to divert some of the rivers that presently flow into South Asia, hundreds of millions will face periodic droughts.

The good news is that most of our present woes are entirely man-made, so logically, they can be fixed through cooperation, intelligence and political will. Of course the bad news is that thus far, we have been incapable of demonstrating any of these qualities.

These last few days, when thinking about these problems, I recall these lines from the old Beatles song ‘Let It Be’:

“When I find myself in times of trouble/ Mother Mary comes to me/ Speaking words of wisdom: let it be.”

Published in Dawn February 23rd , 2015

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