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| Source: www.wupr.org |
By Olumide T. Agunbiade
According to the National Intelligence Council, terrorism
will come to an end by 2030. And that seems reasonable. What room will there be
for head chopping barbarians in the enlightened world of tomorrow where food
comes in pill form, flying cars take you around the country in a minute and
everyone follows international law? By 2034, the last murder will have taken
place and by 2042, a scientific cure will be found for crime. By 2051, even bad
thoughts will have been eliminated.
For me, by 2030, there will be countless emirates,
many no more than small terrorist groups, but some of which control sizable
territories. Mali shows us how a dedicated Islamist militia backed by oil money
can create its own Afghanistan and now we have the dreaded Boko Haram sect. And once
it has its emirate, then like any good bunch of robber barons, the Islamist
militia will take a cut of the drug trade, kidnap foreigners for ransom and
shake down the international community for foreign aid.
By 2030 there will be a hundred miniature
Afghanistans across Africa and the Middle East, with peacekeeping forces
composed of a combination of local militaries and NATO troops trying to push
them out. There will be drones over the skies of a hundred deserts fighting
Toyota pickup trucks with bands of hooded men firing machine guns. There will
be wire transfers from a dozen Islamic finance institutions wending their way
from the great oil economies of the Persian Gulf, and American soldiers, most
of whom will have more in common with the special forces operator than the
infantryman, who have never seen a conventional war fought in their lifetime, heading
in on another rescue mission in the territory of a Terror Emirate.
