By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer
Today there are two wars being waged in the world: one between Hamas and Israel, the second between Ukraine and Russia. Hamas is a Muslim organisation, Israel is a Jewish State. Both the Muslims and the Jews claim descent from a common ancestor: Father Abraham. The leader of Ukraine and the leader of Russia have similar sounding first names. This indicates their common Slavic roots. Ukraine declared itself an independent state on August 24, l99l, when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Putin apparently wants to reverse this. In other words, this too is an internal conflict which has managed to draw other nations of the world into its vortex.
In the past, the rest of the world could ignore such fraternal struggles. Today, however, the entire globe and everything on it could suffer.
Having said that, we recall the consequences of the Irish potato famine of 1845. The whole of Ireland in that year was part of Britain, but the Irish were much poorer than the English and their staple diet was the potato. The potato crop was attacked by the fungus Phytopthera and people starved, holding the government responsible. The English Protestant rulers reacted by denying Irish Catholics the right to be elected to Parliament. The Irish Catholics revolted and fought the British by forming their own resistant group called The Irish Republican Army. Two million Irish migrated to the USA. These included the Kennedys and the Bidens. Those who remained behind broke away from British Rule and formed The Irish Free State on 6th December, 1922.
The world should then have learnt that it is not wise to suppress minorities. But not everyone did. The hard working Tamil minorities of Sri Lanka revolted against the dominance of the Sinhala majority. This Civil War cut down remittances to Sri Lanka because much of the country’s earnings come from tourism and tea exports. Tourism fell drastically because of the war and the exports were affected by the reduction of Tamil labour. Sri Lanka was forced to raise a loan of US dollars 2.6 billion from the IMF in 2009. The economy of this beautiful island never really recovered and when the hawkish Chinese moneylenders moved in there was a further set-back. The economic recovery of Sri Lanka became a distant and uncertain dream.
Such dreams once held by the green-eyed women of Afghanistan, were shattered when the Americans decided to abandon that mountainous land. The bigoted Taliban moved in and imposed their version of Islam on the people of Afghanistan. Women, according to them were the new minority. They were forced into a rigid jacket of prohibition: very limited education, virtually no employment and subject to the punishment of public beatings if they dared to step out of the rigid confines of this male dominated society. The women became the new, deprived minorities of Afghanistan. This had a devastating effect on that nation’s economy. The GDP fell by 5% in one year. According to an estimate made by the UN, the Afghan economy could lose US $ 1 billion because of the exclusion of women from the workplace.
Similarly, the USA would like to exclude Hamas from the Gaza strip but they have controlled it since June 2007 and as the 300 year old legal phrase puts it “possession is 9 points of the law”. But legal niceties apart, the bombardment and explosion resulting from war will affect many more nations than those engaged in hostilities. Today, the dust, smoke and debris resulting from hostilities will affect the entire globe. The high winds of the globe will carry them far and wide, obscuring the sun and hastening the arrival of the ogre of climate change.
This is why we say that even the smallest, most insignificant, local war will have an effect on the whole earth. Every war will touch the life of every person on earth. In our age of instant global communications, the smallest minority group can feel agitated enough to raise a ruckus. Spin doctors, jumlas and rent a crowd tamashas can no longer hide the result that the smallest local wars can have the largest global consequences.
(Hugh & Colleen Gantzer hold the National Lifetime Achievement Award for Tourism among other National and International awards. Their credits include over 52 halfhour documentaries on national TV under their joint names, 26 published books in 6 genres, and over 1,500 first-person articles, about every Indian state, UT and 34 other countries. Hugh was a Commander in the Indian Navy and the Judge Advocate, Southern Naval Command. Colleen is the only travel writer who was a member of the Travel Agents Association of India.)
