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The price of hegemony: The UK migrant crisis

Countless lies have propelled the United States to rally its allies toward the destruction of countries worldwide, especially in Africa and the Middle East. In 2003, shortly after 9/11, the United States, under George W. Bush’s leadership, launched a campaign against Saddam Hussein, leading to the invasion of Iraq under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and liberating the Iraqi people from Hussein’s authoritarian rule. This has claimed the lives of many Iraqis, leaving deep scars in the country’s heart until today. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found, and the war led to a prolonged and complex conflict that lasted until the official withdrawal of US troops in 2011.

This conflict has led to the migration of Iraqis to other parts of the world, with Europe and America being major targets, due to the economic decline resulting from these wars. The legacy of deep wounds left on the Iraqi people continues to eat into the fabric of the country’s unity and stability, as the US’s adventures have sowed seeds of discord, destabilizing and plundering resources from behind the scenes.

This brutal expedition by the US and its Western allies does not stop in Iraq alone; it has happened in Libya, Syria, Mali, Niger, Sudan, and the list is exhaustive. Evidently, the US continues to spread misinformation to its citizens about America being under threat as an excuse to consolidate power or spread imperialist influence in the Middle East and beyond.

As a population still shaken and warped under the fear of the 9/11 attack, every campaign presented to them on the need to storm into the Middle East to fight a potential terrorist threat receives cheering approval without questions. However, both the American people and their allies have repeatedly either undermined the consequences of this action or simply failed to recognise the downside of military incursion, which is inevitably migration in lands that pose no potential threat to anyone, much less the West.

Due to the Western world’s obsession with proving to be in charge of world politics and custodians of civilization and democracy, they have fabricated lies and sold them to their population, whose taxes fund senseless, inhumane, and brutal wars worldwide to prove a point. Myopic however to the short-term consequences which is migration.

Migration is the consequence of stumbling into people’s homes and destabilizing their countries. For this reason, I dare call out the so-called UK far-right or entire far-rights in Europe who do not like the presence of Arabs, Muslims, or Blacks in their countries. For quite some days now, they have been attacking innocent people due to their extreme beliefs and Nazi inclinations. I urge them to channel the same energy into preventing their political leaders from giving the US ironclad support whenever they set out for a military incursion in the Middle East and beyond.

Furthermore, the Nazi ideologists should have the courage to refuse payment of taxes to a leadership hell-bent on destroying the lives of others just to prove a senseless point and look like heroes in the eyes of a brainwashed, delusional white supremacist citizenry. Otherwise, the far-right has no right whatsoever to frown at a migrant in their country or think they do not deserve the same premium coffee drunk by a Nazi white. Given that the country was mostly built from the sweat and blood of these migrants, whose countries were destroyed by the occult of colonialism and two-faced, dastardly imperialist neo-colonialist powers.

Additionally, the far-right movement should know who their real enemies are: not migrants from Africa, Asia, Middle East Arabs, or Pakistani Muslims, but their leaders in pursuit of grandiosity and forming a perfect heroic image in the eyes of a clueless population to feed their insatiable ego. It is time to employ the same bravery channeled toward hatred of migrants and Muslims to the leaders who destabilise the lives of others at the expense of creating a “Captain American narrative”.

From Italy to Germany to France and now the UK, all far-right leaders or presidential candidates increasingly selling anti-immigrant rhetoric should be ashamed and desist from doing such shameful act of cowardice because they compel a people ravaged by the chains of their military incursions in their homeland to a life of helplessness, displacement, and lack of belonging.

They should be aware that these people whose homelands they ravage will not live on trees but, like them, who have been settlers in Africa and Asia for over 100 years, the wars they create give birth to migrants who will need a new home to rebuild their lives. And if that piece of land is their so-called country, they should have no qualms sharing it with a smile, knowing they can’t fight to maintain a living in their glass houses while pelting stones to break others.

Therefore, considering that migrants are a direct consequence of imperialist actions, it’s essential to acknowledge and address this reality. Furthermore, it’s crucial to put an end to the pervasive Islamophobia. And lastly, if the phrase “Allahu Akbar” is unappealing to European ears and doesn’t fit into their exoticized notion of a civilized landscape, then the resources of the people in these migrant countries should not be exploited either.

 

Sa’adatu Aliyu works as a lecturer at the Distance Learning Centre and can be reached via: [email protected]

 

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