OIC peacekeeping forces needed
Faisal Tahir Khan
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Human civilization has reached to a point where people and nations have realized that wars, conflicts and aggression against each other will harm social development and with good intentions have formulated international laws and developed international organizations that can act as a watchdog in order to prevent circumstances that can escalate those conflict to a level that leads to human suffering.
In the past, wars were triggered for different reason, among them were religious ideologies, access to markets and trading routes, oil and gas reserves and its transit routes, global hegemony and so forth. At times logic or reasoning was bulldozed by political and military might of nations and left scars on the sanctity of international law and many unanswered questions for the current and future generations.
It’s a fundamental right of every nation to fight for its legitimate rights and have a strong mechanism to defend its rights from those who intend to violate it preferably by diplomatic means and, if left no option then, as a last resort, show its muscles to achieve the goals that are needed to be achieved. Unfortunately, in recent times we have witnessed Muslims killed brutally in some parts of the world and the international community has been complacent in saving their lives. Yes they may have shed a tear, but I doubt that if tears could have saved the child who was burned alive. The current global politics and international relations have been driving nations and communities to form groups and clusters of economic and military powerhouses to protect each other’s interest by scratching each other’s back when and where required.
Similarly, 57 OIC member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have developed great economic strength but it’s not translated into an institution that can defend its rights and counterattack or prevent any external or internal threat harming its interest. Such an institution is the need of the hour to help prevent genocide, human rights violation, conflicts and protect its members territorial sovereignty by developing self-reliant model of peace-keeping forces collectively raised from its 57 members countries as they have the right mix of manpower, technology and resource to build state of the art peace-keeping forces. Such examples already exist in the world so, in essence, there is hardly any need to reinvent the wheel.
Such an institute will not only safeguard the rights of the OIC members-countries from any external threat but will also bring sanity and prudence among the member states if any power try to divide and conquer them by igniting sectarian violence or due to any other reason. This institute can also have the powers to discipline its member countries on resolving internal conflicts among themselves.
Resources of OIC member-countries have been spent on wars and the cost of human lives is mind-boggling, particularly in the last 100 years. If the same resources were spent on human resource development, the current situation among the 57 OIC member countries could have been much different. But still it’s never too late. We can still develop such institution that can safeguard our rights and will minimize our dependency on leased foreign forces at a high cost.
Yes, on the face of it, this idea appears to be idealist and far from reality, as each individual member country in the OIC has its own issues in terms of governance structure, dependency on foreign aid, loans from international institutions and so forth. But I believe this step will strengthen their position economically and militarily. All that is needed is leadership and political will to implement this idea and iron out any problem that comes on the way.
I am sure that my brothers and sisters living between Casablanca and Jakarta would humbly request the current and future kings, presidents, prime ministers, ministers of defense and chiefs of arms in the Naval and Air forces to uphold the sovereignty and dignity of our generation on the basis of self reliance. I am sure if we were able to build this institute our territorial sovereignty will not be targeted by drone planes remotely controlled thousands of miles away and we will be capable enough to secure our territory and deal with any external or internal threat by ourselves.
— Faisal Tahir Khan is an entrepreneur and consultant. He can be reached at think.fikr@gmail.com
OIC peace-keeping forces needed | Opinion | Saudi Gazette
