in Israel, where his first long encounter with Middle East and its tumultuous history, political complexities and religious conflicts, reinforced his desire to specialise in the languages and history of the region. He continued his studies at the University of London then went on to Oriental Languages at the Sorbonne.
After graduation and acting as a freelance journalist he travelled extensively in the Middle East, earning enough to pay his way, adding valuable practical experience to his academic qualifications. It was during the turbulent period of the Palestinian revolt in the early years of the century that his reports and analysis were published in The Times of London.
Ennis then joined the Middle East desk at the International Herald Post in Washington where he slowly gained the respect of his colleagues not only by his objectivity, but also because of his language skills and knowledge of the complexities of the Islamic world.
A reputation was established with the publication of his essays and books, the first real success being a book on the future of oil and Islamic relations with the West. It was a warning to Western governments of the rapidly growing radicalisation of Arab political thought towards a totally Islamic society. A political concept he had alluded to as being more suited to an 8th century Arabia, though in spite of that certainly more relevant to the Arab world’s historical and cultural traditions as it was not born of foreign ideology.
The Arab world's rejection of Western political philosophy was in a great measure due to their difficulty to democratise their institutions and modernise their economies, but also the inability of the West to help them to resolve their conflict with Israel, which had burnt for more than a century.
Ennis then joined the team of WWN, the leading worldwide news channel, which brought its viewers to the heart of the world's hot spots in real time with TS Vision. He contributed, as a Middle East specialist, to the WWN series, Global Focus that analysed the events behind major international developments.
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With nothing more to do he passed the time putting a little order in his notes, his professional instinct obliged. Each day he prepared notes and ideas for the series based on his interviews and observations, he prepared a background presentation of the relevant reference material that could be used for the viewer’s comprehension of the sequence.
First he scribbled the outline in an old fashioned note pad, then worked over the details, formatted it on his portable, before finally transmitting it by a secure uplink to the team in Boston, who then assembled relative archive footage and other material, which would form the base for the series once he had returned home.
He ordered a light meal in his room and reflected on the last weeks he had spent travelling across the Caliphate. It nagged him that the theme of the series seemed to be inconclusive; there was a lack of something solid, something that would hold the attention of the viewers.
An hour later he abandoned hope of a obtaining a secure uplink to Boston. He stood up and admired the night view across the harbour and looking up at the sky, mused that with a permanent station on the moon and manned flight to Mars, Medina Hurriya had not even a normal uplink to Boston, though it could have been a political issue. He figured that he would no doubt find the answer to that question the next day.
He took the last beer from the mini-bar and dropped onto his bed. He was tired but pleased to have almost completed his job with the perspective of returning home in just a few more days. He sipped his beer and took a last look at his notes before calling it a day.
Memorandum
WWN Boston
To: John Steiner
From: John Ennis
Global Focus Series - Special Feature Report
Islam, Oil and Algharb
The Decline of Oil, Consequences and Effects on the Arab World
The object of our new Special Report series, now in preparation, is to present the viewers of Global Focus, in association with the International Herald Post, an understanding of how the decline of oil, as a low cost energy resource, has effected the events that have led up to the present day situation in the Arab World, the birth of the Caliphates and Algharb, and consequences oil has had in relation to climate change.
The report will be broken down into a four or five part series that features the changing political role of Islam in the new Caliphates with an overview on the progression of Islam in Europe and more notably in Algharb.
The series will examine step by step the effects of the decline of oil on political development and the progression of nationalism as it stands in the European Federation today. To this effect I have composed my description with a series of background segments to be developed so as to provide explanations that would assist viewers in the understanding the geopolitical transformation that has taken place in Europe. These features are based on archive material and on my field research in the Caliphate and Algharb together with discussions held with the production team.
The recurrent need to explain to each generation the reason why the world is what it is and where it is and to predict where it is going is the role of serious analytical journalism. Why the world is polarised into an endless conflict between religious and political philosophy.
Oil had given an exaggerated political and strategic importance to the Middle East for more than one hundred years compounded by the State of Israel. Until the end of WWII the Suez Canal had been critical to the British Empire's link with its possessions and dominions. Without free access through the canal and the Red Sea India, Malaysia, Hongkong, Australia and New Zealand would have been more distant from England. It was necessary therefore to control the strategic ports and lands along the shipping routes to the East: Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Aden.
The end of WWI saw the conjunction of two new elements: the acquisition of new territories, chiefly Iraq, and the discovery of oil in Persia. This extended Britain's strategic needs to the control of the Persian Gulf. The importance of the Arabs grew, as they were critical to the stability of the numerous interests in the region.
After WWII all the countries of the Middle East gained their total independence from the colonial powers. They also gained control of their resources that included oil and the Suez Canal. With the Cold War, the East and West vied for influence and control in the region, money and arms flowed in as oil prices rocketed in the seventies.
All that should have led to development in those lands, which had been traditionally poor in revenues and influence, but somehow things went wrong. The question was what exactly went wrong?
The population of the Arab countries totalled nearly seven hundred million who were endowed with a rich cultural heritage, a great religion that had spread out in all directions from its source in Arabia, and beyond the Arab world to countries as far and as different as Indonesia, Nigeria, the Balkans and Russia.
Rarely a leader of any of the twenty-two Arab states voluntarily gave up power, democracy was non-existent in the Western sense, elections were a sham. The rulers used the obeisance of Islam to smother all forms of free expression or legitimate protestation from their people especially their youth, stifled by the burden of conservative religious tradition.
Economic and industrial development outside of oil and gas was rare with the exception of a few minor emirates. More than thirty percent of men of working age were unemployed, even more were underemployed, whilst the majority of women were confined to the home, almost none existent in the work place in most of the Arab countries.
Non-existent economic growth with a burgeoning population was a formula for disaster. Most Arab countries were governed by men who were chosen for the relations and not their capacities to govern, it was as if the ancient tribal system governed by patriarchs continued, totally unsuited to the vast populations that had sprung up with accelerating speed over the previous two or three generations.
Whilst the Arabs were generally passive - from their earliest age they are taught to respect tradition, authority and Islam - they were highly volatile when provoked.
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Little of the petro-dollars trickled down to the ordinary man; one fifth of the population lived on less than two Euros a day. The vast armies of unemployed and embittered Arabs turned towards the hope offered to them by the Islamic revolutionaries such as Rashidun.
At the beginning of the century the Arabs governments cracked down with extreme severity on Islam, an attitude that was little understood by their populations, who saw Islam as the foundation stone of their world. The Islam that preached justice, peace, tolerance and charity, which had above all defended Arab values and the Arab world against infidel invaders. The American intervention in Iraq linked with the widespread lack of political freedom led to economic disaster as the wave of upheavals and change flowed across the Arab world.
Oil with its petro-dollars had powered a revival of Islam for a century after the fall of the first Ottoman Empire. The re-emergence of the Arab's and their religion had marked the twentieth century's history of the Middle East. Their religion had become a world religion spreading across Asia to the frontiers of China and deep into Africa, it had made new in-roads into Western Europe where it had struggled for centuries to establish itself.
Iran, dependant on oil revenues, in its confrontation with the West found itself encircled and