The age of consequence
By Agbo Agbo
There are certain times as a writer when you’ll simply “go blank.” I felt that way during the holiday. Nevertheless, I still used the period to recap on past knowledge; but this time in a “lazy” way.
I closed my books, kept my pen and one part of my laptop aside, watched loads of documentaries and reflected deeply on a wide range of issues they threw up. I’ll share some in this first part.
I started out by watching two documentaries on World War II. The first – ‘The Best WWII Documentary Ever’ – is a straight two hour long documentary.
The second – ‘The Apocalypse: World War II’ – is a more detailed six part series. Both chronicled events leading to the war tracing it as far back as the end of WWI in 1918.
I followed up with “The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia,” another detailed and comprehensive six part documentary produced by the BBC. “Firestone and the Warlords,” a documentary about the civil war in Liberia and how the American tyre giant, Firestone was caught up in the crosshairs followed next.
Expectedly, since it was difficult to fully grasp a documentary about the civil war in Liberia without connecting it with that of Sierra Leone, I had to watch a gruesome and graphic documentary of one of Africa’s most barbaric civil wars.
“Meltdown: The Men who Crashed the World,” a four part documentary detailing how a handful of businessmen and corporations crashed the world economy in 2008 also caught my attention. It showed how powerful businessmen and corporations control governments in the west.
I equally watched a series of 9/11 documentaries and how the hijackers used US resources to train as pilots and later hijacked the planes they crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon.
The drama continues with a chain of events which practically changed the face of warfare in the 21st century. Rather than engage in a dramatic show of strength by amassing troops in friendly nation to invade Afghanistan and crush the Taliban regime; the US used a handful of CIA operatives to carryout pinpoint intelligence before a few hundred Marines moved in to topple the Taliban regime. It was quick, swift, effective and caught the Taliban regime totally off guard.
The intelligence warfare continued when ten years later two dozen crack Navy Seal commandoes dramatically stormed the Osama bin Ladin’s Abbattobad hideout in Pakistan and killed him.
This was a huge national embarrassment for Pakistan which was further compounded with the leak of the entire report of the commission of enquiry set up to investigate how the US violated its airspace without early detection warnings.
So, what were my takeaways’? In the WWII and Yugoslavia documentaries, one thread connects all the stories: the overbearing and conspicuous influence of just one man! During the WWII it was Adolf Hitler and with Yugoslavia it was Slobodan Milosevic.
The actions of Hitler led to the death of 80 million people while Milosevic’s action led to the death of over a hundred thousand people. How did both men have their way?
Rather than act decisively and when necessary, European leaders of the time chose to appease Hitler after he conquered parts of Czechoslovakia and marched into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone after the end of WWI.
Even when Hitler later conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia and marched into Austria, the weak European leaders still felt something can be done on the diplomatic front to prevent war. It wasn’t until Hitler invaded Poland preparatory to invading the Soviet Union that the scales fell off their eyes.
They declared war on Hitler effectively kick starting WWII. The lesson learnt is to act decisively against tyranny, dictatorship and oppression. Tyranny and dictatorships often creeps in gradually, and sometimes legitimately.
The lesson was not learnt five decades later when the former Yugoslavia began unravelling. Again, one man held sway. As president of then Serbia and Montenegro, Slobodan Milosevic was the most powerful man after Yugoslavia – established by the late Josef Broz Tito – disintegrated into its constituent parts.
The flashpoint was Bosnia-Hezegovina. While other republics declared their independence and moved on, that of Bosnia-Hezegovina was not that simple because of its ethnic and religious composition. Bosnia is home to a mixture of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks – the majority being Muslims.
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Milosevic’s determination to back the Bosnian Serbs in his drive toward creating a ‘Greater Serbia’ led to a brutal civil war.
Its ethnic cleansing policy against the Muslims only ended after the west entered the war by bombing Serbian and Bosnian Serb targets. Milosevic – who later lost power and was arrested – was tried for genocide and war crimes alongside Radovan Karadzic – the Bosnian Serb leader – and Ratko Mladic – the Bosnian Serb military commander. However, he died shortly before sentencing after being found guilty.
The problem of Bosnia- Herzegovina still persists to date as there remain three presidents for each of the ethnic groups.
‘The men who crashed the world in 2008’ was quite a depressing watch. It shows that the rich and powerful can commit offences and get away with them. It began with an unfettered banking sector granting loans to people ill equipped to make repayments and then trading these toxic debts thereby almost dismantling American financial foundation.
It eventually cost the US a whopping $8.5 trillion in bailout funds yet no one was prosecuted or jailed! Millions of Americans lost their homes in the foreclosures that followed. Some lived in their cars while others ended up on the streets. Its effect ricocheted globally. Nigeria was miraculously insulated. One thread runs through this as well: Man’s insatiable greed for power and wealth.
I recollect vividly how the top executives from Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Bank of America and others approached former president Barack Obama to seek out bailout funds. While covering the talks with Obama, the major news networks sent crews to the airport to capture how all the top executives flew into Washington in their private jets.
They had each collected huge benefits and bonuses despite the crash. They got the message. The next time they flew to Washington for talks, they either chartered planes or flew first class on commercial planes.
They got the bailout they all requested for after subtly threatening that the government would have a revolution in its hands if they are allowed to fail because of the millions that would lose their jobs.
They literally told the government that their failure will bring the entire American, and invariably, the global economic house down. The documentary followed the money to Panama where shell companies were established with the sole purpose of hiding looted funds from prying tax eyes. Others were traced to Dubai where ‘cranes never sleeps’ because of the round-the-clock property boom.
It wasn’t all gloom and doom as I also watched great documentaries on some marvelous engineering feats carried out by man. They include the construction of a deep-sea highway -15 meters beneath the sea – at Busan, South Korea and the Kansai International airport at Osaka, Japan.
This airport was built on water. The same human mind that has great capacity for evil and greed also has capacity for good through problem solving. This was evident in the building of the deep-sea highway in Busan, home to 4.2 million people and the Kansai International airport.
Osaka was the former ancient capital of Japan. It is also home to 2.6 million people. In other to prepare the city to be the commercial and industrial hub of western Japan, it had to find a way to bring in more people, the magnet for big businesses and investors.
The answer is a much bigger airport. But where do you find a flat land in a mountainous region. The answer came with the construction of a man-made island to house an airport five kilometers off shore. Construction of the $15 billion began in 1987 and seven years later it became a reality. It is considered one of the most incredible engineering feats of the 20th century.
While wishing all readers a prosperous 2020, I pray we all use our minds for good deeds.