BY Adel Darwish
 

You have Just received your copy of  The Middle Analyst Issue no 489 February 2015 by swift electronic mail and your copiers scanned the message electrotelprinting it to a colourful 50 lightweight pages in 3 minutes.

Only half a page is devoted to - yawn yawn - 'another' crisis between the independent state of Palestine  and Israel who will have attained a cold peace with its neighbours for some time. The cross border fire and the causalities persuaded the editor to give, the only too familiar crisis a space at all.

A one page story tray to explain a new Orwellian change of alliances in a conflict spinning off a new awakening of old rivaliers among the regions' core nations, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran. All have by then taking sides in an over zealous international attention focusing on the Persian Gulf and its energy resources.
Another twist will be the involvement of China and/or Turkey  via Israel. Meanwhile the Mafia or a similar Globalised crime organisation will be blackmailing Iran by withholding vital spare parts for the guidance system of its Cruise Missiles.

However the cover story will be reserved to a scoop: Iraq has developed Missiles capable of reaching America. And like those of Iran's they will be likely to have nuclear, and certainly chemical and biological warhead.

Have we over indulged our hangover's imagination following The Middle East's new years party?
Not at all these are the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA) predictions for the year 2105.

The CIA 70 page report ' Global trends 2105' will be essential reading for America's first lawyers'-elected-President George W Bush before he takes his very first trip outside the American Continent.

The report - which employed the talents of many committees, experts and think tanks on both sides of the pond, including our very own International Institute for Strategic Studies- suggests that the early years of this century are likely to be filled with both potential and perils.

Since it deals with a relatively short period - 14 years ahead- it is not hard to predict where the prosperity and the potential will be pigeonholed and where the misery, confusion and peril is likely to spread. The Middle East and Africa will bear the brunt of the fallout of the ills of the future.

The report projects a future in which globalisation, whether in the shape of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, giant corporations or terrorist gangs and the Mafia, plays an increasing part in the lives of ordinary people.

The CIA predicted a new era that  may resemble the plot of a James Bond film in which international affairs are increasingly determined by large and powerful organisations rather than governments.

However the CIA plot is much thicker since there will be no clear lines to distinguish '' the baddy'' and from the '' goodies''

The fallout from a predicted trade war between Europe and America will fry the little guys in the Middle East according to the study.

And why not? Notorious Criminal and terrorist organisation will have their own form of globaliastion and will make it pay long before the Middle Eastern autocracies realise the benefit of joining the ' goodies' on the gobalisation train.

'Governments will have less and less control over flows of information, technology, diseases, migrants, arms, and financial transactions, whether licit or illicit,' the report concludes. In addition to confronting the growing economic and military power of China and India and the continuing decline of Russia, the CIA says: 'Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties.'

In particular it notes the growing threat of biological and chemical weapons and 'suitcase' nuclear devices against the United States. Such development will make America decline its role as the world policeman and will fold away its protective umbrella leaving smaller nations exposed to the bullying of  Saddam-type neighbours.

In addition, it expects rogue states such as Iraq and Iran to develop long range missiles in the near future. Iran, it says, could be testing such weapons by as early as the coming year, and cruise missiles by 2004.

Frustratingly for our readers, the CIA, despite its talented foresight, shies away from predicting who will be ruling Iraq by 2015.  This is  extraordinarily suspicious since America's campaign of 10 years have failed to dislodge President Saddam Hussein who appears in good health and in full control. Doctors could testify that his aging mum is  still active showing no sign of ill health despite the excesses of her youthful years.

With the role of Governments diminishing fast as a result of their inability to control the flow of information, the role of cross borders organisations will be ' unimaginably strong.''

These could include alliances between some of the most powerful criminal groups such as the Mafia and Chinese triads.

Such groups, says the CIA, will corrupt leaders of unstable, economically fragile or failing states, insinuate themselves into troubled banks and businesses, and co-operate with insurgent political movements to control substantial geographic areas.

They will finance their operations and make profits, according to the CIA, from narcotics trafficking; aliens smuggling; trafficking in women and children; smuggling toxic materials, hazardous wastes, illicit arms, military technologies, and other contraband; financial fraud; and racketeering. And since many terror groups, especially among Islamic fundamentalists would have had their investment swell by forces of Globalistion, organised crime gangs   and Mafia will be door-step delivering arms shopping lists.

Demographic pressure in the Middle East will generate tension and challenges.

challenges like how to provide jobs, housing, public services, and subsidies for rapidly growing and increasingly urban populations by regimes hell-bent on controlling the population and playing the nanny state.

By 2015, in much of the Middle   East populations will be significantly larger, poorer, more urban, and more disillusioned.
More than half Middle East population are under 20 years of age this will be the same in 2015 with labour force growing on average of 3.1% a year. The weak  educational systems producing a generation lacking the technical and problem-solving skills required for   economic growth.

Attracting foreign direct investment will also be difficult: except for the energy sector, investors will tend to shy away from these countries, discouraged by overbearing state sectors; heavy, opaque, and arbitrary   government regulation; underdeveloped financial sectors; inadequate physical infrastructure; and the threat of political instability.

Regimes in the region extending between Atlas Mountains in  North Africa to the Khybar Pass will have to cope with demographic, economic and societal pressures from  within and globalisation from without.

Speaking of Globalisation, with the exception of Israel, Middle Eastern states will view globalisation more as a challenge than an opportunity.

Although the Internet will remain confined to a small elite due to relatively high cost, undeveloped infrastructures, and cultural obstacles, the information revolution and other technological advances probably will have a net destabilising effect on the Middle East by raising expectations, increasing income disparities, and eroding the power of regimes to control information or mold popular opinion.

Most Middle Eastern governments recognise the need for economic restructuring and even a modicum of   greater political participation, but they will proceed cautiously, fearful of undermining their rule.  Some governments or sectors   embrace the new economy and civil society.

However the nature of many Arab regimes are likely to push them to  cling to more traditional paradigms, inequities between and within   states will grow. Those  regimes will resist such opening with devastating effects on economic opportunity resulting in increasing poverty and alienating the masses.

No single ideology or philosophy will unite any one state or group of states in response to  these challenges, although popular resentment of globalisation - which is perceived in the Middle East as a Western intrusion - will be widespread.

Islamists could come to power in states that are beginning to become pluralist and in which entrenched secular elites have lost their appeal.

Political Islam in various forms will be an attractive alternative for millions of Muslims throughout the region, and some radical variants will  continue to be divisive social and political forces.

The Gulf will remain a focus of tension, attracting more international intervention and seeing new players who never dipped a toe in its warm water before, thanks to its rich energy resources.

Oil revenues anticipated for Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in particular will provide strategic-and potentially destabilising-options for those states.

However maritime lines  with the region will increase - and with it threats from terror groups holding big nations to ransom  by threatening those line. The prediction indicates that new relationships between   geographic regions could emerge between North Africa and Europe on trade. And between India, China and the Persian Gulf on energy in the form of oil and gas;  and Israel, Turkey, and India on economic, technical, and in the case of Turkey, security considerations.

Well, its is not all so gloomy folks, open your eyes now we are still in February  2001.  The 2015 report is an update of a 1997 CIA study into the world in 2010, which it admits failed to anticipate the global economic crisis that occurred only few months later between 1997 and 1998 which had the hardest impact in the Far East and Russia. The new survey suggests a number of alternative scenarios, none of which makes happy reading.