Expansion of conflict in Gaza

Jan 22, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths…

Kaieteur News – The farther East that one visits via global communication networks, the more menacing and volatile the circumstances confronted.  I discern a broad region, with a swath of countries, locked in a tense embrace.  In addition to countries, there are those that I would call irregulars, be they in the form of aggressive adversaries, hostile tribes, or bands of paramilitaries.  All are armed to the teeth, and all backed to the hilt by one or the other sponsor, usually a power of considerable strengths.  Though all the way over there, the world is in a tricky, shaky, slippery place.  I recall how some shots fired in Sarajevo at a Crown Prince over a hundred years ago resulted in the conflagration that became the first so-called Great War.  Though there is appreciation for the nuanced meaning of great in the context of conflict, there is still trial with how there can ever be anything that is great about war on a scale that killed and maimed millions.

The world is on tenterhooks. A powder keg it has been since that fateful border crossing on October 7th that led to the deaths of over 1200.  The Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and that vital canal are under assault, with the angles of possible attack and configurations of numerous approaches being calibrated.  Shipping is an even more hazardous operation; the seas are slick with peril.  It means risk, which means insurance premiums, and which means, most of all, supplies of the commodity on which the world floats.  Puncture a hull, and more than crude oil rushes out.  Hopes deflate, for hard times could be in the making.  There is something else that everybody knows, but almost all are fearful of whispering. Prices.  One missile striking, one boat bombarded or boarded, one mistake, and there would be mayhem the world over.  I am focused on Guyana.

I read that Guyana’s output is of great sensitivity to the world.  Even if it was not, it still would have been part of the considerations in the schemes and games worked out in hypothetical developing and difficult scenarios. In the event of things going over the top, over a hundred dollars for 42 gallons looks like a bargain.  But how many can afford that on an extended basis?  What started out as a one-on-one battle is now sucking in players who were thought to be on the periphery.  There are those airstrikes from Pakistan.  There is another strike that killed five senior advisers of Iran.  As if Syria and Lebanon were not enough, there is now Iraq drawn into the vortex, and Israel always at the apex.  The centrifugal forces are pulsating, almost irresistible to some itchy combatants, and prospective ones.  In cultures where martyrdom is the essence of the heroic, I think that the world is poised on the cusp of some serious trouble.  Vengeance is always a stirring proposition in hearts and preoccupations in that part of the world, what propels beyond the brink.  Who can contain what then?  Since nobody is talking to anybody, the tripwires are begging for any kind of movement.

In all of this all the way over there, I am thinking about dear old Guyana.  First, there is the economics of the situation.  Supplies come under pressure and prices head for the roof, and there would likely have to be a new budget, many challenges.  One is enough, given its stings and thorns.  But all the calculations and visions could come under siege should there be a showdown involving a host of participants in that edgy section of the world.  The environment is crowded, the targets inviting, and everybody has what it takes to inflict some grave damage.  Second, there is that fine gentleman next door, who has to be monitoring the situation in the territories where he has some brotherhood, and friends of the same spirit.  Let’s hope that while the world is engaged that he doesn’t get any ideas.  Think something sneaky, rich with the intrusive and the aggressive.  Third, considering the vital interest that Guyana has become in the eyes of its new benefactors and protectors, I guarantee that the product from under the seas will be secured.

My concern is who will secure the circumstances of the Guyanese people to manage with what could be, should all hell break loose past the Rock of Gibraltar. This conflict has all the signs of a disaster waiting to break loose.

I am deliberately presenting today in a different manner: tempered and tailored, as a way of keeping a lid on potential fears, ever-present alarms.  Guyanese should have been harvesting the upside of their discoveries, but there is no such reality.  Should matters get out of hand across the oceans, then they will be forced to coexist with a different degree of steep economic downside.  In the delights and drooling over rich budget provisions for the well-favored, this effort is more of an inconvenience, a definite wet blanket.  To one and all in the domestic habitat, I limit myself to two words.  Be careful.  If that fails to inspire, here are two more: be sensible.

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• the context of conflict, The Red Sea

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