Middle East on fire
The terms "Near East" and "Middle East" refer to the same region of Southwest Asia which includes: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Palestinian Territories), the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. A part of the world that since the Roman Empire has been defined as the Orient or the place where the sun appears every day.
A region that grows and develops around the also called Eastern Mediterranean and its surrounding lands. A region that has been the origin and source of cultures, wealth, empires, developments in science or religion and, above all, of confrontations not only between the natives and neighbours of the place but, on many occasions, with implications for the rest of Europe and in the last hundred years, also for the United States.
You don't have to be a lynx or a geopolitical specialist to know that this area is constantly a boiling cauldron where many international agreements, conventions, treaties and implications are cooked up and that it has increased its interest, importance or depth since the discovery of oil and its energy derivatives.
It is enough to look at the press and have a little knowledge of recent history to understand that political tensions and warlike confrontations over territorial claims or the exploitation of resources in the area are constantly increasing and decreasing between the different countries in the area and with more or less strong direct or indirect implications from international organizations or non-aboriginal countries, which maintain or encourage changing support or reactions according to their substantial vested interests in the area.
Plagued by major and bloody wars opened for decades or falsely closed; failed states; dangerous alliances; constant aspirations for the achievement of zonal dominance; a constant search for and exploitation of energy resources or the dominance of neighbours; fratricidal religious struggles; needs to create protection or buffer zones around their borders; unusual and disproportionate arms races - Saudi Arabia was the world's largest purchaser of arms last year - and the much sought-after search for and increase or improvement of nuclear weapons through enrichment laboratories or plants that provide them with the necessary fuel.
This is an area where the traditional great powers (Russia and the United States) maintain conflicting policies, based on their own permanence, international prestige, and as a means of promoting the need to create the necessary support in their search for arms markets and prolonged dependence on technology, protection and security. A wide and increasingly rich market where to be able to buy and export products of all kinds, for which lately it begins to wake up the interest of the main negotiator at good price, China, that tries to satisfy its inexhaustible energy needs and to promote diverse investments for this way, to be able to establish itself in a permanent way filling the holes and spaces that the rest can leave.
With too many roosters in the same or limited corral (Israel, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia) pretending to dominate it, or at least to benefit from the profits derived from the extraction of its oil products without limit in time and in great quantity. With the relatively recent appearance in the international arena of countries that were nothing more than poor desert spaces and an endless number of dry sandy areas with some palm groves; but that now, after the appearance of oil and its derivatives have become, in very few years, rich and leading countries that talk about you to the rest of the world and already dare with everything, even to scrutinize the space world (Iran, Arab Emirates and Israel).
Although there are many countries and conflicts in the area, nevertheless, I would like to highlight some of them that due to their idiosyncrasy, transcendence and importance, continue to get fat and annoying, because someday they may splash us and because if they do not stop or finally appease, they may evolve worse or in such a way that their complications may bring harmful results for the rest of humanity.
First of all, we should mention the inexhaustible and always hot conflicts in Syria and Libya, which have become even more internationalised and in which Erdogan's role is becoming increasingly important as he runs out of excuses to take part in them and is forced, especially in Libya, to deploy his own forces disguised as mercenaries, so that they do not come in for further criticism from the international community.
Turkey itself and its drift towards strict Islamist religiosity, contrary to the legacy of Atatürk; a country that does not cease to seek internal and external conflicts with all its neighbours and allies, such as its efforts to exterminate the Kurds, or with the United States by buying weapons from Russia (S-400) in a kind of Erdogan's attempt to recover part or all of the power and dominion that the Ottoman Empire exercised for more than six centuries; empire, which reached the border with Morocco in the west, Budapest in the north, Iran's eastern border in the east, and the westernmost tip of the Arabian peninsula in the south.
Its great international step in the religious aspect has been to convert Hagia Sophia, 15 centuries after its construction as the Basilica of Constantinople, into a mosque, having been in recent decades World Heritage Site by focusing its use and employment as a museum open to all people regardless of race or religion. A very well known place worldwide, which has been a place of worship for both Orthodox and Catholic Christians as well as for Muslims, has been under the control of different empires and has suffered repeated transformations.
However, perhaps the most burning issues currently in their hands are the agreements with Russia regarding the passage of products through its territory and the controversy caused by the exploitation of energy resources under Cypriot or Greek waters. The latter issue, which could trigger any kind of military confrontation between the two countries involving the EU (France is already genuinely involved in the conflict with naval and airborne material moved into the area) despite the fact that both countries belong to NATO.
It is worth mentioning the internal and external political evolution and ebullition of the Arab and Persian countries; as well as, with the issue of the hidden confrontation in Yemen giving place to a bloody war for the predominance, expansion and final settlement of religion, according to their own interpretation and the suspicions created this very week with the agreement - announced by Trump - between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel to seal the peace between both and establish diplomatic relations with the exchange of embassies.
The agreement constitutes a geostrategic turnaround unprecedented in a quarter of a century in exchange for achieving the normalization of Israeli ties with a third state in the Arab world - after Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). Although much remains to be developed, clarified, defined and tied up; according to the agreement itself, Israel agrees to suspend (officially, delay in time) the partial annexation of the West Bank as foreseen in the peace plan drawn up under the patronage of the American president and presented in Washington last January.
The agreement, in addition to being a great political asset at the domestic level for Trump - involved in an electoral process that has been made very difficult for him due to his poor management of COVID 19 with the highest total number of deaths in the world (170,000) and the fact that the US economy is not doing as well as expected - aims to establish a new roadmap for the Middle East with the idea of unlocking and implementing the "great economic potential of the region".
Although the previous steps were not very well known, this agreement has not appeared by spontaneous generation; the attitude and diverse implications of Iran in the issue of security in the region and the debacle of the so much touted nuclear pact - lately denounced by several of its signatories and the IAEA, so it can be considered dead de facto - has been moving, first underground and then in a more official way, Israel and the Gulf monarchies to maintain for decades, relations in economic cooperation issues, but fundamentally, in those related to security.
It is very possible that this Arab-Israeli peace and cooperation agreement has been accelerated, among other internal factors, by Iran's growing military presence in the Syrian and Yemeni conflicts, as well as by its support for Hezbollah (Lebanon) and Hamas (Gaza), which implies a greater need for the rapprochement of positions between both actors to face the emergence of a common enemy that, in addition, acts or deploys at the gates of their respective borders.
This peace agreement and normalisation of relations represents, in principle, bad news for Iran. This country rejects any relationship or contact with Israel and permanently advocates the material and physical elimination of the "State of Israel" due to the occupation of historic Palestine. Neither has it served as a balm to calm the rarefied political mood in Israel (instability of the government after so many failed elections and the management of the COVID) nor has it been well received by a large part of its population as a result of the aforementioned cession in the territorial aspiration, although it is seen as temporary, and yet, in a matter of hours, it has been very celebrated and applauded by both the UN and the EU.
The recent explosion of tonnes of old, highly explosive material, badly stored and uncontrolled in the port and city of Beirut, has been an unprecedented disaster in the stricken country; external aid initially estimated at more than USD 20 billion will be needed for its reconstruction.
The serious incident was coupled with the political instability that has prevailed in Lebanon for many months. Its untimely appearance had increased it by leading to major uprisings among the civilian population. Thus, the civilian grievances and riots that followed led to the rapid and forced resignation of the Government as a whole, and we will see if, in the near future, it does not serve as an incentive or entry point for Hezbollah to take back the reins or play a major role in the political instability of the country and, consequently, of the entire region.
This explosion is a clear example and a clear illustration of the fragile situation in an area where everything is going in the opposite direction, pinned together and where any kind of spark is enough to cause a catastrophe with serious local and global consequences.
In Iran, in addition to the problems already mentioned and those derived from the constant failure to comply with the famous nuclear program after the abandonment of this program by the United States in May 2018, we must add the already prolonged issue of the seizures and signaling of oil tankers by the Iranians in their passage through the Strait of Ormuz or, recently, of their own ships seized by the Americans when they intended to supply oil derivatives to Venezuela. In addition to the above, it should be noted that Tehran remains committed to continue its programs of armaments and missiles of various types and ranges.
The long and bloody latent conflicts, although very hot, both in Syria and Libya allow several actors to carry out their more or less hidden agendas. Among all the actors, Russia and Turkey stand out. The former seeks to occupy the spaces of leadership abandoned by the United States and improve its passage to the Mediterranean, as well as its settlement there by establishing permanent bases in Syria; Turkey, for its part, carries out harassment and extermination actions against the Kurds in the border area with Syria as a way of weakening the Kurdish workers' party (PKK) that causes so many problems in its country and as a way of intervening in the international solution of regional conflicts to show its predisposition to opt for the aforementioned leadership in the image and likeness of the role developed during the Ottoman Empire.
In addition, Russia has a great interest in improving and expanding its growing relations with Turkey, as it is aware that this will make its passage through the Dardanelles easier and will make a cumbersome and at the same time powerful ally within NATO even more unavailable. An organisation which, as is well known, has not been very interested in the area lately and furthermore, is not going through its best moments in terms of funding, cohesion and even with a view to its future in the not too distant future, which, although they are only postures or rumours, have been leaving very clear marks for more than two years, and which are already being expressed in writing, albeit in a literary work of personal memories.
Without trying to lengthen the story too much, it is worth bearing in mind that the Middle East is not an isolated hot zone in a sea of calm and prosperity. To the East, it has Afghanistan, Pakistan and India with their corresponding local and neighbourhood problems that drag on for many years and, from time to time, resurface like the phoenix to sow concern for world peace. In the South-West, it borders the Sahel, a hot and boiling area where the problems following the transfer of the jihadist terrorists from the Islamic State and the different marks left by the former Al-Qaeda sow horror among the local peoples and tribes; tribes or peoples that were already involved in conflicts of varying intensity and that are the origin of most of the immigration that reaches Europe from the south. Its western flank is North Africa; an area that has been undergoing a series of important changes and revolutions following the death and/or overthrow of old leaders who for many years maintained their positions firmly and who may now be the seed of another series of internal conflicts or in their neighbourhood relations and pretensions in the form of a holy war or simply to make themselves known.
Not to mention Morocco itself; a country that has been in an unbridled arms purchase race for years and has signed certain industrial and military cooperation agreements, mainly with France and the USA, and which, to make matters worse, has just agreed to a system of support and even mutual military exercises with the United Kingdom in order to convert its relations into preferential ones after the Brexit, by way of a pincer with Gibraltar to the north. His recent skirmishes or short incursions into airspace and certain unilateral claims over Spanish jurisdictional waters - which include a large part of the Canary Islands - based on certain claims of exploitation of subsoil resources and which go against every international treaty and convention on the subject, are not a trivial issue, nor do they form part of a programme of personal entertainment for the Moroccan monarch or to keep his people distracted. This country, which has been dragging the conflict over the Sahara and its independence since 1975, is still cornered in the drawers of the UN, but has become a great grain or divisive that one day may explode.
To all this, we must add the dangers and derivatives, not yet fully developed in the whole area, from the COVID-19 pandemic. If the pandemic becomes stronger and more highly developed, it will undoubtedly cause massive movements of infected personnel towards the north or west, depending on the case, in search of salvation and health support.
The EU is neither in a position nor willing to do anything in the international arena. Having left this section in Borrell's hands, they have made sure that it will be impossible in the coming years, which will be very hard and inexpensive in view of what has been seen, except for what is necessary to save the Union's own skin in economic terms; therefore, it will not move beyond good words, good wishes, recommendations and little else.
Spain, which has part of the problem very near or even at home already, continues to whistle and look the other way; with a foreign minister very ill-prepared for deep or profound issues and with a government incapable of handling any type of national or international crisis. A government that has taken us to the highest levels of incapacity for foresight and management, with the highest number of deaths and infections, and which has turned the country into a plague from which, in these dark days, the few tourists who had risked coming are fleeing, and to which the vast majority of friendly or allied countries have placed it on the blacklist of those places their citizens should not or cannot visit.
We are nothing politically or economically in the world or in Europe, we have become a wimp and to top it all off, we have a falsely smiling president, who wanders around in the corridors of Brussels and accepts everything that is given or given to him; totally dependent on the help of European partners and without the capacity to invest in matters of defence or even of our own or collective security. Furthermore, however, it may be that in these difficult situations we find ourselves alone and isolated if, at some point, part of what is described in this quilombo of risks and threats affects us directly and someone comes up with the idea of passing the bill on to us and making us pay.