unable to transform its political gains in Iraq and the Lebanon. The result was that it slowly found itself overshadowed by a more open and dynamic Turkey and its unlikely alliance with Israel, thus capable of countering any nuclear threat.
The question was whether Islam had the force to pursue its conquests now that Oil Age and its riches were receding into history. The political force of Islam had momentarily been stimulated by great wealth and their confrontation through the intermediary of Palestine with the Judeo-Christian world.
The events which had marked the first half of the century were brought about by the decline of oil, events that transformed the Arab world. The first was the failure of the United States to consolidate its position in Iraq followed by the fall of the House of Saud and a redistribution of power in a new Arabia. The second was the return of the Turks, sometimes referred to as the resurgence of a new version of the Ottoman Empire. The collapse of Syria after the first Water War and the creation of the Greater Levant, under the Jerusalem-Ankara axis, had brought a new peace and stability to the Near East, though recurring drought had impoverished extensive regions lying to the south and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Basin.
The non-development of the Arab and Islamic world had far reaching consequences, forcing the citizens of many of its countries to seek the life that they could not find at home overseas, especially in Europe; the result was de facto colonies in several member states of the Federation, but more in particular in France.
As a consequence a profound change had taken place, in the very heart of Europe and in its civilisation. Islam had taken root in historic France, transforming, under the very eyes of blind politicians and almost without warning, part of Provence into Algharb, an Islamic colony on the northern shores of the Mediterranean.
Ennis
Today, 16 May, after ten days I finally got hold of John Steiner, he’s the producer of Global Focus. It was urgent that I come up with something solid for our Special Feature Report series, ‘Islam, Oil and Algharb’.
Sure there's plenty of content for the series but for the moment it's not really the exciting kind of stuff for the worldwide prime time transmission of Global Focus, ‘consequences and effects’ seems to be vague or elusive. The Islamic stuff is old rope, good for historians and geopolitical specialists, but for our kind of viewers, something new is needed.
“Well where are you? Do I have anything to start with?”
Steiner was giving me shit. The Caliphate was dying on its feet. There was misery, hunger, corruption and the rest, so what! That could be found in any one of a dozen places around the world.
“Look it’s not so easy here, you want me to come up with something serious!”
“Serious ! that I don’t know, we need something to interest our viewers.”
What did he think? That there was a revolution around the corner? I'm an academic, a political analyst, not a fucking variety show scriptwriter. That bastard Steiner's out to make trouble.
“What do you think? I’m a political writer! You know staid stuff, for serious people, not sensational front page stuff.”
“Okay, okay, so tell me what you’ve got, is there anything new?”
“New! Not exactly, but as I’ve just arrived in Algharb it’s not surprising. My first impressions are that it looks very different, it’s interesting, it looks promising I need some time to put my ideas together.” I told him searching around for convincing ideas.
“Okay.”
“I’ve started to prepare something and I think you’ll like it, a sort of contrast, it could be interesting.”
“Contrast?”
“Here it looks something totally different.”
“Tell me about it then.”
“It goes back a long way, I’ve tried to analyse the situation and it does look interesting.”
“What’s your analysis then?”
“First there’s the evident decline of the Caliphate, I mean stagnation, drought, encroaching desert…. Then there’s a kind of a new nationalism in France and Europe.” I tried to sound enthusiastic.
Steiner had heard that one. It had been making stories in the heavier news reviews for a couple of years now. Maybe the moment had come. He knew that political decisions lead down some strange roads. Most of the time things moved along somehow, but from time to time there was a drift to catastrophic change. Steiner felt that Europe was approaching a point where the balance of force could provoke decisions of that nature. In the past there had been enough precedents; Germany, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Iraq. Then there was Israel; he knew, he was a Jew.
“Tell me about it then.”
“You’ve got time?”
“Sure.”
“Well, it seems to me that there is little question that the decline of the Caliphate is not disconnected with the expulsion of the Muslim population from Spain.”
“There’s nothing new in that,” he said without any aggressive sign in his voice. “But go on, tell me why.”
“First was its incapacity to react.”
“React?”
“Yeah, it was powerless, unable to do anything more than make weak political protests and its usual gesticulations, naturally without the slightest effect on the Federation.”
“I suppose you’re right, any threat from them was empty.”
“Of course, they’ve got arms, medium range crap, bought from China, what do you expect, they couldn’t frighten Europe with one of the best shields around.”
The world had looked on as the Caliphate acted in the only way it could, assisting with the means it had in the tragic transhumance from Spain to North Africa. Their navy consisted of a fleet of outdated and poorly maintained vessels. What had once been the pride of El Rashidun was no more than a ragtag assembly of patched-up wrecks, though they were certainly more reliable than the flying coffins of the Caliphate’s air force, planes that even their pilots had refused to fly, built in Egypt under licence from Turkey.
“I imagine that there was a certain air of revenge in the Federation?”
“They loved it. As soon as oil and natural gas no longer counted the Arabs had had it as far as they were concerned.”
“You’re right there, luckily for us the world’s transport, power and heating doesn’t need their oil any more, they had it good for over a century. Now that demand has gone down so have their revenues!”
“You’re right there.”
“The newly rich have become newly poor,” Steiner laughed.
o0o
It was a fact that over the years fossil fuels had been progressively replaced by a variety of alternative energy sources. Each country made its contribution, probing the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies. Europe opted for improved and cleaner nuclear power generation utilities feeding the electricity grids that interlinked the member states of the Federation, others experimented with bio-fuels for urban public transport. The USA concentrated its efforts on the development and application of fuel cells and plasma generators. The new motors that now equip goods vehicles and automobiles run on cheap, abundant, hydrogen gas produced by onboard electrolysis of ultra-pure water.
The major oil companies had had no choice but to diversify into new energy industries. They invested in the construction and operation of production plants for ultra-pure water and hydrogen gas, and the development of new chemical compounds derived from the plasma processes.
The remaining oil rich countries had integrated their oil resources downstream, it still remained an important raw material for the petro-chemical refining industries, which were delocalised from Europe and rebuilt near to the major oil wells.
What was once the nightmare of Europe, an oil embargo, had faded like a mirage and the advantages of relocation became evident, the obvious being finally admitted; petro-chemical and refining industries were highly polluting, and worse the profitability had waned. It was a gift from heaven for the major oil companies who proudly proclaimed their commitment to the env
ironment by their decision to close their polluting refineries in Europe and the USA.
The refineries were shut down and shipped to the oil producing countries where they were re-built to continue their operations. The leaders of those countries were delighted to announce the creation of new jobs. For the consumers in the West the advantage were double, not only have they rid themselves of a polluting industry but also the cost of imported oil based products went down. The refineries are now operated with cheap local labour and as a result lower prices for their products.
o0o
“That's exactly what happened! In the majority of cases they’ve become poorer.”
“Unfortunately for them demand has started to decline and will continue to do so.”
“Tough luck. Listen, replacement of fossil fuels by alternative energy sources, everybody knows that. What we want for Global Focus is something with punch, something that’s worth bouncing across the link to our subscribers. Remember ninety-nine point nine people on this planet are still concerned with their daily needs, resources, food, water, peace.”
“Well we can reassure them.”
“We don’t want to reassure the bastards. We want to frighten them into buying news, news on a changing world, a menacing world.”
“Yeah, hang on, let me think about that, my business is finding the facts, yours is putting a story together.”
“Okay, okay.”
“The younger viewers don’t know the complete story today, it could be interesting.”
“Good, something to get them to tune into Global Focus.”
“Well, what happened to oil changed the world.”
“What’s going to happen next, what’s going to ruin their holidays?”
“Let me explain.”
“What happened to the petro-dollars for example?”
“Let me tell you, they spent them. There’s nothing left, at least almost. Oil’s been replaced in most of its traditional uses, such as for plastics, by other abundant raw materials, bye-products of the hydrogen and oxygen production processes. All that’s a result of progress in science and technology in the West!”
“Get on to something interesting.”
“Well now the Europeans are getting aggressive, exerting their recently rediscovered power.”
“Okay.”
“I think it’s good to get into the history of it a bit.”
“It could be interesting. Look, get some notes and ideas over and we’ll talk about it as soon as I’ve read them, break the thing into several clearly defined chapters, after all it is a series!”
o0o
The fall of Saudi Arabia seemed like a good starting point - an outline of the causes that had led to the decline in the demand for oil and how the fall in prices had upset the balance of power in the Middle East. Explaining how it had affected the economies of the petro-dollar kingdoms and how it had progressively reduced the advantages of the welfare state and the subsidies that enormous revenue in petro-dollars had allowed countries like Saudi Arabia to lavish on its citizens.
It seemed to him that it would be good to recall to the viewers how the Universal Caliphate of Mecca had replaced the House of Saudi in Arabia was essential an essential part of the story, it was not only a pivotal moment in the history of the Middle East, but a drama with good viewing sequences.
It was important to dramatise the series with archive films describing how economic pressures had progressively weakened the Royal Family’s hold on power. There was a lot of powerful footage available documenting how a group of army officers, who had called themselves the Young Arabians, mostly drawn from the middle classes, had attempted to install a modern democratic society through a coup directed against the regime that they accused of corruption, greed, hypocrisy and immorality. The drama had unwound with their attack on the Royal Palace in Riyadh; it was a blood bath that ending in the death of the King and a great many members of his extended family.
Then there would be an overview of the background events that gave rise to the political instability that was now threatening the European Federation with new forms of Nationalism. Explaining how and why it was linked to North Africa and the Middle East.
The events of recent decades would form the geo-political background to the series. John Ennis had spent the last weeks interviewing the key actors and studying the consequences of those events. A mass of documents and reports had been accumulated and many of the sites visited. What did it all mean? He felt sure that the answer lay there before him in Algharb.
In a little more than a week he would be back in Boston. It was urgent to finalise the definition of the ‘consequences’ that would form the backbone of the series. The problem was that the obvious consequences could be seen but where would they lead to? That's what people wanted to know. Events that could have seemed isolated over a period of time were part of a greater change that was redefining the relations between the Western and Oriental worlds for generations to come.
The more he thought of dramatic changes in Arabia the more he realised how it had set the scene for another about turn in history. At the outset the Young Arabians had been supported by elite army elements from Oman and the Emirates whose motives were a mixture of Pan-Arabism and a desire to control the still significant oil wealth of Saudi Arabia.
He remembered the during the confusion of the five-day battle for control of Riyadh, as rebels and army units loyal to the King were locked in combat, Islamic forces, whose vision of the future was completely different, infiltrated the country from the Yemen seizing the Holy City of Mecca and then Jeddah on the Red Sea. Medina had quickly sided with the Islamic forces, to the north the Iraqi Revolutionary Army took advantage of the turmoil and swept down the east coast taking control of Dhahran and other key ports on the Persian Gulf.
Ennis felt it would be interesting would be to try to unravel the exact order of events that followed, most of which still remain under a cover of rumour and mystery, but in any event it was now clear was that the forces that were to form the Universal Caliphate of Mecca had been in the wings waiting for their moment to come. They had immediately taken the advantage of the bloody collapse of the house of Saud and the confusion that ensued, sweeping up the Red Sea coast taking the elitist Young Arabians by complete surprise and quickly gaining control of the centre and south of the Arabian Peninsula.
Immediately the Holy City of Mecca had been secured the Islamists forces declared a Universal Caliphate, which initially included the Yemen, but also appealed to the faithful of Iraq, Syria, Jordan and all the other states of the Arabian Peninsula to join them against the unbelievers. The Caliph of Mecca, the successor of Muhammad and spiritual head of Islam, called on the believers to obey God, and obey his Messenger and those in authority, and to join them in a sacred jihad, the goal of which was to unit all the believers under the banner of Muhammad, against those who refused to obey the word of God as written in the Holy Koran. Thousands of princes and their families were then massacred in an indescribable reign of terror with public beheadings.
The House of Saud had seriously underestimated the power of Islamic politics and the loyalty of its common subjects in a period of growing economic crisis. The loyalty to the King had been gravely undermined by the growth of the immigrant population, non-citizens, thirty percent of the population, mainly Muslims from Pakistan and India, who had little civic or political rights in the kingdom, though it was they who had long provided the manpower and efforts to build the country into a modern state.
What would be interesting for American viewers would be to be to elucidate how the USA government of that time had been taken by surprise and the speed of the events, with previously unsuspected forces emerging and transforming the Kingdom into a new Caliphate almost overnight. Washington had been powerless before the fait accompli, but to the general astonishment to the world, after decades of interventionism, the administration attached a low degree of interest in the events, which in fact signalled the end
of the de facto American protectorate.
It would be necessary to point out how the roots went back to 2001, when the USA had been first been confronted with a painful truth, discovering that fifteen of the nineteen terrorists who had attacked the Twin Towers were Saudi nationals. The Kingdom that they had considered as one of their closet and privileged partner was in reality a hotbed of militant Islamism and one of the most intolerant regimes on the planet, financing and promoting radical Islamic parties from Africa to Asia.
During the East-West Cold War, Saudi Arabia had been the principal source of energy for the USA and a valuable ally. It was an arrangement that suited both countries, as the petro-dollar revenues were recycled back to the USA, either by the sale of arms, or by the investment in Treasury Bills, or in the New York Stock Exchange.
At the same time when the majority of Arabs had lived in distress and misery the countless princes and princesses in the Saudi royal family led a life of extraordinary luxury in the playgrounds of the rich in Europe, a life style that was exactly opposite to that preached by the Koran. Saudi Arabia counted forty million inhabitants, of whom more than thirty percent were unemployed at the time when the decline of oil started to bite. Already the population had seen their standard of living decline with the average salary plunging to a mere twenty percent of what it had earlier known, as the princes continued to shamefully squander the nation’s wealth in a frenzy of spending on yachts, jets and palaces. Fabulous sums of money were thrown away on the tables of the most exclusive casinos in France and Spain, as princes with their extravagant entourages lived for months at a time in luxury hotels and palaces.
Arabia as a result was separated into two new states, totally opposed to each other, the Universal Caliphate based in Mecca, and the Greater Arabian Emirates. The latter a federation of states, composed of the Nejd, Al-Hasa, and the Gulf coastal region under Riyadh that were joined by the United Arab Emirates with Muscat and Oman to the east, and Kuwait to the west. It was a union of fear with the constant threat from the Revolutionary United Iraqi forces, forever seeking revenge for their past humiliations, under yet another dictator, a brutal Iraqi leader whose pretended friendship with the USA was nothing more than a façade, dissimulating Baghdad's eternal dream of re-establishing a great and glorious Caliphate under their own leadership.
Iraq, exhausted by decades of turmoil, had fallen into the hands of a pseudo-Islamist tyrant, a revolutionary who threw off Iran’s influence, jealously building his own power base on the divisions of the Shiite population, rallying the Kurds, who had not realised their dream of independence, and on the dollars that continued to flow from the still significant oil wealth the country possessed.
What irked many Americans was the fact that