TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Sleep­less nights un­der the thun­der of in­ter­cept­ed mis­siles have be­come rou­tine for some Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als liv­ing in the Mid­dle East, as the con­flict in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States, Is­rael and Iran in­ten­si­fies with dead­ly con­se­quences.

In­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies re­port that hun­dreds of peo­ple have been killed since the lat­est es­ca­la­tion be­gan, in­clud­ing women and chil­dren caught in strikes on res­i­den­tial ar­eas and near mil­i­tary tar­gets. Hos­pi­tals in parts of the re­gion are said to be over­whelmed, with im­ages cir­cu­lat­ing of in­jured civil­ians and dam­aged neigh­bour­hoods. While the fight­ing has cen­tred on strate­gic in­stal­la­tions, civil­ian ca­su­al­ties have deep­ened glob­al con­cern and out­rage.

For T&T na­tion­al Fi­az Ma­hamood, a di­rec­tor at Kuwait Drilling, the war is be­ing mea­sured less in sta­tis­tics and more in sleep­less nights.

“Well, to be hon­est, I go to sleep like 3, 4 am be­cause when they in­ter­cept these bombs, it makes quite a loud bang … So every time it hap­pens, it wakes you up. So there’s not much sleep.”

Kuwait has large­ly de­fend­ed it­self against Iran­ian at­tacks, with most pro­jec­tiles in­ter­cept­ed be­fore im­pact. Res­i­dents in ar­eas host­ing US Army Cen­tral say they have heard sirens and ex­plo­sions.

De­spite this, Kuwait has not ex­pe­ri­enced the lev­el of dev­as­ta­tion seen else­where in the re­gion. Is­rael and parts of the Gulf have sus­tained heav­ier dam­age and ca­su­al­ties as ex­changes con­tin­ue.

Ma­hamood, who lives near Kuwait City, in­sists that dai­ly life con­tin­ues and is con­fi­dent in the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus.

“Se­cu­ri­ty is quite tight. And we are very con­fi­dent with the Mid­dle East se­cu­ri­ty. I mean, it’s al­ways wor­ry­ing when there are bombs fly­ing around. But for us, we feel a sense of com­fort. We would love to come back to Trinidad be­cause it’s not re­al­ly a nice thing to ex­pe­ri­ence. But some of us have jobs which re­quire us to be over here.”

He main­tains that many of the at­tacks are con­cen­trat­ed around US mil­i­tary bases and key in­stal­la­tions, with in­ter­cep­tions pre­vent­ing wide­spread de­struc­tion. From his van­tage point, he says, the sit­u­a­tion ap­pears less dire than por­trayed abroad.

“We hope things will get bet­ter. It doesn’t look like it will es­ca­late too much.”

More than 200 T&T na­tion­als are be­lieved to be spread across Kuwait, Qatar, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and oth­er parts of the re­gion.

Ma­hamood says they re­main con­nect­ed through What­sApp groups and have for­mal­ly reg­is­tered with the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs in case evac­u­a­tion be­comes nec­es­sary. They have al­so been in con­tact with Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and of­fi­cials at the UK con­sulate.

While those abroad re­main cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, the mount­ing civil­ian death toll has fu­elled back­lash here at home over the Gov­ern­ment’s ear­ly sup­port for the US po­si­tion.

De­vout Mus­lim and agri­cul­tur­al ac­tivist Shi­raz Khan yes­ter­day con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance.

“I’m very dis­ap­point­ed in our Prime Min­is­ter. All of a sud­den, you’re sup­port­ing that man for what he has done. I find that is pa­thet­ic. What sort of hu­man be­ings do that to chil­dren and kids?” Khan said.

“I mean, you see, that has to be re­al­ly ab­surd for any­body to sup­port that. I think there are lead­ers now in of­fice, ei­ther they’re go­ing se­nile, ei­ther they’re just pa­thet­ic or down­right doltish.”

Khan al­so con­demned the si­lence of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein and Deputy House Speak­er Dr Aiy­na Ali.

“I am very con­cerned that Sad­dam Ho­sein and Ms Ali, sis­ter Ali, will stay qui­et on some­thing like this be­cause they’re in our of­fice. So, no­body can talk to the prime min­is­ter? Is she the same type of bul­ly (Dr Kei­th) Row­ley was to his cab­i­net?”

Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild pres­i­dent Im­ti­az Mo­hammed al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for speak­ing too quick­ly.

“That was very dis­ap­point­ing … I think that was very care­less of them. If they didn’t have the facts, then they should not have put out any re­lease.”

Both Mo­hammed and Khan have al­so re­newed calls for en­gage­ment with the Prime Min­is­ter on the long-stand­ing is­sue of T&T na­tion­als held in de­ten­tion camps in Syr­ia. Those na­tion­als had trav­elled to join ISIS years ago and have been de­tained since it was dec­i­mat­ed in that coun­try.

“It’s high time. There’s al­ways promis­es and oth­er ex­cus­es that, you know, the is­sue of the lo­gis­tics, et cetera, were pos­ing a prob­lem, and so on, and so on. But I think that, yes, we as lead­ers in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, we have our con­cerns. We think that, you know, they should re­turn home,” Mo­hammed said.

Khan not­ed that the camps are man­aged by Kur­dish au­thor­i­ties and US forces, and that oth­er coun­tries have repa­tri­at­ed their na­tion­als. He said fam­i­lies are pre­pared to co­op­er­ate with any con­di­tions set by the State for rein­te­gra­tion.

Mean­while, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert An­tho­ny Gon­za­les warns that the Gov­ern­ment’s in­creas­ing­ly vo­cal align­ment with Wash­ing­ton could ex­pose T&T to diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty. He dis­missed fears of lo­cal “sleep­er cell” re­tal­i­a­tion and an­tic­i­pates min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to Cari­com trade, ar­gu­ing that re­gion­al eco­nom­ic ties are large­ly mar­ket dri­ven.

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned what he de­scribed as an im­pul­sive for­eign pol­i­cy ap­proach.

“What are we get­ting from the Unit­ed States? We run the risk of not get­ting the gas when we go at­tack­ing Venezuela (ver­bal­ly). So, I re­al­ly can’t un­der­stand what is de­ter­min­ing for­eign pol­i­cy,” Gon­za­les said.

“You have to be very care­ful about for­eign pol­i­cy. Every­thing you say has some kind of im­pact. It af­fects some­body … So, you have to be very care­ful.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Sobers were un­suc­cess­ful.