‘Poverty fuels extremism’
‘Downtrodden easy prey for exploiters’
“THE leftist Palestinian researcher Salama Kaila penned an article for the Al-Arabi electronic magazine on Oct 13, 2014 under the title ‘The Mujahedin between the Ideology and the Reality from Afghanistan to DAESH’. This article deserves to be read indeed,” columnist and former Director of the Culture Department at the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters Waleed Al-Rujaib wrote for Al-Rai daily Sunday.
“In his article Kaila emphasizes on the impact of poverty, ignorance and the reality which currently prevails in the Arab countries and its role following the appearance of the Jihadist organizations in this part of the world. He hinted most of the jihadists hail from poor and marginalized environments to such an extent we venture to say these people are living out of civilization and as such anybody who studies the social belonging of these people will observe the above.
“They actually belong to marginalized environments, particularly in terms of their educational level and their ability to get access to social links with others. Hence, the foregone conclusion is that this type of people becomes easy prey for the secret service agencies to mobilize, train, finance and arm them.
“Such being the case these people are the ones who promote the ‘Mujahedin’ phenomenon. However, if we deal ‘dialectically’ with this phenomenon as Kaila suggested, then we cannot turn our backs on the reality of the Westerners and intelligence agencies recruiting them because this socalled ‘backward’ environment is the reason why they are exploited using religion to strengthen their ruling regimes and keep abreast with the Western interests.
“Given the above, we found that this environment has produced rich people from among the fundamentalists and among them are those who are involved in financing the jihadists and those who believe the leftist and nationalistic thoughts are a menace against Islam. However, the Arab backward and dictatorial political regimes look at it as a danger to their ‘thrones’.
“Certainly these regimes have benefitted from social and cultural backwardness by promoting hatred among various components of the communities based on certain fatwas (edicts) which call others infidel.
“Moreover, we found the Western secret service has failed to find recruits among the democratic and civilized communities in the region but rather these intelligences services found what they were looking for among the backward communities to promote the jihadist thought that was exploited by internal and external powers particularly since we know that there is a close relationship between Western imperialism and the backward and dictatorial Arab regimes to achieve their mutual interests either in terms of boosting the said regimes or in terms of exploiting the peoples and their national resources.
“In this context, we say prior to and post the Cold War, the Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Somalia and so on had witnessed the appearance of religious schools and universities that were mostly engineered to apparently promote Islam and produce extremist Islamists in secret. Not just that, these countries had also established charity foundations to finance the extremist Islamists and the Jihadists.”
Also: “The recent past has actually witnessed significant changes in the United States of America’s strategy in the Arabian Gulf region which mostly concentrates on minimizing the US military presence in our region and in other tense regions of the world due to strategic and economic factors,” columnist Wojdan Fahd wrote for AlKuwaitiah daily Sunday.
“However, this development coincided with the enormous appearance of cross border groups and organizations which adopt the ideologies which contradict with the relevant States’ nationalistic principles.
“Not just that, these groups and organizations have become a menace that threaten the security and stability of the relevant countries — groups such as ‘The Islamic State’ or the socalled ‘DAESH’, ‘Al-Nusra Front’, ‘Hezbollah’ and so on. This has coincided with change in terms of security and small States following the end of the Cold War and its associations and repercussions on the Arabian Gulf region in general and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in particular.
“It is needless to say the GCC States have been classified as small States in terms of their geographical areas or their limited population. Not just that, these States have found it difficult to defend themselves without weaving regional or international coalitions and this has resulted in us always finding ourselves before a problem of how to defend ourselves or protect our existence, security and stability.
“In this context, we say the tragedy of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 is a clear example when it comes to defending the challenges faced by the Arab Gulf States at a time when some regional parties are striving to expand their influence without taking into account the security and sovereignty of the small States.
“Apart from the above, the small states may find themselves struggling although they don’t like to be involved in any issue but it happened during the Iraqi-Iranian war from 1981 to 1988, when the GCC States had found themselves a party to the struggle although they were not among the warring parties. Moreover, these States were definitely not striving to promote said war.
“Anyway, in conclusion, we suggest that the GCC States should abide by the unified policies to protect themselves and deter any force that may try to manipulate their security and stability.
“In the meantime, we should keep in mind that the cost of ignoring small States has proved to be very exorbitant in view of the relevant events and their impacts on the entire global scene.”
“The little girl Malala Yusufzai received the Nobel Prize two years after she was subjected to a murder attempt in Swat Valley in Pakistan in 2012 just because she was defending the right of the girls to education,” columnist Dr Mohammad AlRumaihi wrote for Al-Kuwaitiah daily.
“The murder attempt on this child was real because ‘they’ wanted to prevent her from going to school. She was transferred from her homeland for treatment, unconscious, and none of her parents thought that she would make it.
“The lessons we can learn from honoring this girl are many; the first message is the importance of knowledge in this era and the importance to know that without knowledge civilizations cannot survive.
“The weapon people should be armed with these days is knowledge. The second most important thing is women should be educated because they are the ones who raise the generations.
“It is obvious an ignorant woman will raise an ignorant generation. The girl Malala said the day she was attacked she just came out with her friends from school and suddenly she found a bearded man standing in front of them asking them if they are from the Khoshal School. And then another wearing a mask showed up and fired three shots in an attempt to kill her and her two friends. Her friend told her after she recovered that while the man was pulling the trigger, his hand was shaking.
“Her story is full of lessons and I wonder how in such a community, there could be such intolerance not only against women but against knowledge. This question needs years to be answered.”
“Apparently, the government officials and the MPs are concerned about the shortage in the general budget. They are also worried about the national income particularly during these days,” columnist Abdullatif AlMed’aj wrote for Al-Qabas daily.
“They know very well that the public fund is depleting due to the current circumstances — positions and policies. They have also realized that downward trend in the oil prices or even if they remain stable, the income will not meet the requirements of the future generations if the expenditure runs at the current pace. Therefore, they are looking for alternative resources to generate money apart from oil.
“Unfortunately, our officials are looking everywhere for alternatives and solutions without taking into account the Kuwaiti citizen as if he is out of the equation and away from the problem and the solution.
“Strange enough, our officials instead of looking for alternatives to generate income particularly after the oil prices fall ostensibly, they are looking in the other direction and also not ready to ask the citizens to make sacrifices by reducing their expenditures but to the contrary putting the responsibility on the shoulders of the expatriates in spite of the fact it is the Kuwaiti who is the source of the problem and the solution.”
“The Washington daily recently published an article titled ‘Who first benefitted from the air-strikes?’. The article fiercely criticized the policies of the United States of America for using air-strikes against the ISIS to the extent that even the moderate Syrian Opposition or Turkey are not supporting such a move,” Zayed Al-Zaid wrote for Al-Nahar daily.
“USA targeted their air-strikes on the oil installations, storage facilities and power stations under the control of ISIS. However, it resulted in the shortage of supplies and price hikes in the areas controlled by the moderate Syrian Opposition. The actions of USA are negatively affecting the ordinary Syrian citizens more than the militias who are receiving financial support.
“At the start of the campaign against the ISIS, the American missiles landed on the areas controlled by the Free Syria Army. From the way the situation is being dealt with currently, the objectives of USA seem to be completely different from what we assume. Time will tell.”
“Mossad is an international network that is responsible for recruiting people affiliated to Zionism irrespective of whether they are Jews or not. They have a unified intelligence system that is aimed to destroy the countries of the Middle East through wars, chaos and terrorism. They are keen about creating a new Middle East based on a map that was created after the initial one based on the Sykes-Picot treaty,” Abdullah Qallaf wrote for Al-Watan Arabic daily.
“These conspiracies and plots are aimed against the Middle East. They were all unveiled after a long time by the concerned leaders after their goals were achieved in order to boast about their success in destroying the countries, accusing innocent people and displacing nations.
“For example, the 9/11 incidents revealed plots and conspiracies of chaos plotted to create civil, racial and sectarian wars in the Arab and Islamic world. Al-Qaeda network, which was accused of being responsible for this incident, has expanded, producing several branches such as DAESH, AlNusra and many others which carry out atrocious acts in the name of Islam and Jihad.”
“The Council of Ministers and the Supreme Planning Council during its historic meeting last week launched the wheel of promised economic reform by issuing plenty of decisions such as lifting the subsidy on petroleum products and proposals to increase the prices of electricity and public services provided to citizens based on studies prepared by economic committees in the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Planning Council and studies submitted by select international organizations,” columnist Abdulmohsen Juma’a wrote for AlJaridah daily.
“The historical economic decisions will raise the prices of electricity according to the categories which will make the owner pay the bill if the mother cannot control her children in the house of limited income people while those who are rich will illuminate their palaces.
“Therefore we say again and again that economic reforms are based on the pockets of the limited income peoples. This will put a burden on a young man who wants to build lifetime house for his family because the price of everything will shoot up including cement which will automatically target the stability and security of the country.”
“Education is one of the most important rights given to individuals. It is the original right of every human being. Moreover, it is a religious duty according to Islam,” columnist Mubarak Al-Ahmad wrote for AlWasat daily.
“This is in addition to the international human rights declaration which calls for equal rights for everyone in all things and this includes also the education.
“According to international declaration for human rights education is the first priority and it must be given to all free of charge, but here in Kuwait our Ministry of Education prevents the bedoun children from joining private schools and the government also prevents the bedoun from joining its schools if the mother is not Kuwaiti.”
“The intention of the government to form a committee to revise the subsidies and cancellation of some of them should be a serious national effort. We all know that the US has declared that it has developed a new technology to extract shale oil and talks about how it will have an impact on the income and the economy especially of the OPEC countries it seems it will affect more the economy of the GCC countries. What is important is not to look at the oil discoveries of the US but rather look at the waste of our resources and energy in a manner that negatively affects our way of living,” columnist Dr Hassan Abdullah Abbas wrote for Al-Rai daily.
“Given the international and regional angle, the Gulf states are considered as having a direct contribution to what is happening around the world including wars and energy exhaustion, and it should be known that all wars that took place starting from the first and the second Gulf War to the Syrian crisis are expenditures that have exhausted our economies to feed hatred and evil conspiracies, while on the local level, the lion’s share goes to the wrong local policies especially laws issued randomly without studying them based on logic and objectivity.
“Stopping waste is a must and compulsory to move and think seriously to rescue what remains, and we should know that Kuwait needs two things, one, invest more in humans to make them more productive and, two, look for other sources of income since that is the only thing that we have at the moment.”