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Don’t Go There, It’s Too Dangerous

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by Amina Khan

“The more they tell me I can’t go somewhere, the more I need to see what it’s really like.” 

More often than not, tourists refrain from going to the Middle East because of the looming negativity illuminated on the news from these countries. In doing so, the portrayal of people who live in these countries is viewed with suspicion and wariness.

Alex Hill, a photographer, rejects these morbid assumptions and reveals the compassionate and humane side of the Middle East through his photography.

Hill has been volunteering for refugees in Istanbul, Turkey. For World Refugee Day he focused on the pure faces of refugee children marred by the horrors of war. The innocence etched on these portraits are threaded with catastrophes no child should witness at such a young age; yet, still shine brightly illuminating a sense of hope. It is clear the refugees in Istanbul and beyond are not letting war devour their ability to seek a brighter future. Hill reaches the heart and soul of these children through his photography to ultimately raise awareness to not forget a growing generation of high hopes.

In recognition of World Refugee Day, I’m posting some portraits (not all of which are traditional face portraits) of refugee kids we’ve been trying to help in Istanbul. Most of them are from Syria, but this city also has Iraqis and Afghanis fleeing from war. Feel free to share, comment, and use these images to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by refugees, especially children,” Hill wrote on Bored Panda.

In choosing to emphasize children for World Refugee Day, Hill exceptionally juxtaposes the harsh realities of war in order to summit the core of innocence and reason to be aware of what’s going on in the Middle East. It is clear in Hill’s photography and small but effective captions of each child, that the passion and grit enabled in these young children will get them to where they want to be.

War has painted Syrian, Iraqi, Afghani refugees as some alien breed that one can only feel sorry for. It is almost as if being ignorant on the matter means we have accepted that their doom only awaits them, completely rejecting that these are humans with a hopeful future. Hill captures the shining faces of refugees in order to purely bring awareness to the everyday life of a refugee and how it mirrors the everyday life of any child living in America, minus the morbid atmosphere of war and being enforced to labeled as a refugee.

Hill has also traveled to Mecca, in order to show the ordinary lives of Muslims roaming around their holy city. His photography instills a warmness in the heart to see a non-Muslim revel in and accept the beautiful religion of Islam with an open mind, amidst the negative portrayal in the media.

Instagram: @alexhillphoto 

Facebook: @alexhillphoto

 

qatar

Qatar and the Escalating Tensions and Infighting in the Persian Gulf

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by Saeed Khan

Qatar has emerged as the latest pariah state in the Middle East; its crimes? According to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it has been a sponsor of entities they deem to be terrorist organizations, including HAMAS and the Muslim Brotherhood. The powerful Gulf emirate is also accused of being too friendly with Iran, an unpardonable sin for the Sunni Arab nations. The Saudis and the UAE, joined by Bahrain, Egypt, Somalia and others, have cut ties with Qatar and instigated a blockade of the country by land, sea, and air. All Qatari nationals have been ordered out of the boycotting countries within 14 days and the region has become less stable with the uncertainty of a diplomatic solution, if at all, in the near future.

Qatar has the world’s highest per capita income, at approximately $130,000 USD for a population of 2.7 million. The tiny emirate’s income is almost entirely from energy; its petroleum reserves and natural gas cache account for 13% of the global supply. It is also a strategic asset for the United States, which maintains an air force base in the emirate. From 2003 to 2009, in the aftermath of the second Gulf War with Iraq, the Pentagon placed its CENTCOM (central command) in Qatar. Currently, 11,000 US troops are stationed there.

The current tensions among the Gulf States is hardly a new phenomenon; conflicts among Bahrain, Qatar and the various sheikhdoms that currently comprise the United Arab Emirates were mediated by Great Britain in the 19th Century, with the burgeoning empire serving as protector of the various territories, in some cases until 1971. Of course, keeping the peace among the states served the British strategic interests as they fortified their imperial priorities and as petroleum became a viable reality as an energy source. At the same time, the current isolation of Qatar is because of the country’s refusal to hold the party line among Gulf states to oppose Iran and endorse an escalation of hostilities with the Persian power.

So-called Arab unity has been an elusive commodity. The last serious effort to do so was attempted by Gamal Abdel Nasser when he was head of Egypt. He tried desperately to keep the Arab world out of the Cold War, asserting the need to maintain a non-aligned policy as “third world” nations. The one outlier was Iraq, heavily wedded to British influence from its leadership and the fact that it was a creation of the Mandate era. When Iraq signed the Baghdad Pact in 1955, the Cold War’s version of NATO in the Middle East, Nasser did leverage his considerable influence to encourage a coup d’état, proving to be successful in 1958 when King Feisal II and Prime Minister Nuri al-Said were both deposed and executed.

At the behest of the Saudis, and with more than just a tacit blessing from the White House, the Gulf States were hoping to be the core of, not an Arab, but a “Sunni NATO,” a conglomerate of Muslim countries, bonded by sectarian commonality, established to combat the alleged “Shia” threat posed by Iran and its allies in the Middle East. Given the relative size of the Gulf States, most of the proverbial “heavy lifting” would be borne by countries with larger armies and an actual history of military experiences like Egypt and Pakistan. Of course, Qatar has shown it is not interested in such an arrangement, preferring to take a neutral posture rather than frame the Saudi-Iranian conflict along differences of denomination. This is one of the reasons why Qatar is now facing the ire of the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

But Qatar is not the only nation to be resisting a Sunni NATO. Pakistan has thus far resisted sending troops to the Gulf in support of Saudi Arabia, either in the current tension with Qatar or previously, when the Saudis formally requested Islamabad to deploy armed forces to Yemen as Riyadh conducts operations that many analysts contend are tantamount to war crimes. For Pakistan to defy a Saudi request comes with a certain level of peril. The country is heavily dependent on aid from Riyadh, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars annually along with petroleum subsidies. In addition, over 3 million Pakistanis work in the GCC, over half in Saudi Arabia alone. The remittances they send to their families in Pakistan constitute a much-needed multi-billion dollar influx to the South Asian country’s GDP. Defiance of directives from Riyadh or Abu Dhabi is always regarded with consternation that Saudi Arabia or the UAE could deport Pakistani expatriates as a retaliatory measure, severely impacting livelihoods and the Pakistani economy.

Then there is Turkey, which has authorized the dispatch of 20,000 troops to Qatar, in support of the Gulf nation’s like-minded posture of neutrality regarding Iran. President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan has offered his stature and resources to help mediate a negotiated reduction in tensions among the various parties. In the interim, Ankara has embarked upon a campaign reminiscent of the 1948 Berlin Airlift to send food supplies to Qatar, a country that exports 90% of its food needs, of which 40% enters the nation through its land border with Saudi Arabia, currently blocked by Riyadh to all transportation.

Heresy is a term mostly confined to religious debates. But in the current Middle East conflicts, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have declared Qatar to be a heretic for breaching the GCC unity against archenemy Iran. Suspicions abound that they felt emboldened, or even urged, to act by President Trump, given the timing being shortly after his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. If that indeed were the case, it would be a terrible misjudgment, both by the Gulf States and the US. Qatar is far too critical a country for its geostrategic and energy credentials for war to be in the cards. Cooler heads will invariably prevail; but with most things involving the Persian Gulf, the climate doesn’t allow for the temperature to come down quickly enough for comfort.