Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli Former Minister of Oil

MANY refugees from Arab countries like Syria, Sudan and Eritrea, as well as from Islamic countries like Afghanistan, went through a lot of difficulties and adventures in which they almost lost their lives just to reach the ‘Jungle Camp’ that is located in Calais, northwest France — opposite the English Channel. For the Jungle dwellers, reaching Britain or what they call as the ‘promised land’, is their ultimate dream.

Hundreds of youths are seen on the road heading to Calais port. These youths or children try to stop trucks heading to Britain, so they could hide in them until they reach what they regard as their ‘promised land’.

Residents of Calais are anxious and afraid of the strangers — refugees. They don’t want these strangers to threaten their security, property and the image of their town. Hence, the destiny of the ‘Jungle’ became a national concern in France. Rightists and extreme rightists benefitted from it to taunt the government for its inability to preserve reverence of the State.

This has prompted French President François Hollande to visit Calais and he promised to get rid of the camp. The concerned authorities in France started working on this last Monday.

I read this famous news, although we hear similar news daily and our emotions are not shaken. Apparently, the issue of displacement has expanded from being common among Palestinians only. Our Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Eritrean, Sudanese and Afghan brothers and sisters, among others, are currently experiencing this phenomenon.

We, or some of us, have contributed, as individual or countries, to the destruction of their (the displaced) countries and in their displacement by fueling revolutions against regimes and supporting, sometimes financially and sometimes for humanitarian reasons, this faction against another just like what is happening in Syria and Iraq.

After destroying those countries, as well as the displacement and migration of their people who are not to be blamed, we turned our backs and we did not welcome any of them, apart from a few countries such as Lebanon and Jordan.

We have forsaken countries in which we contributed to their destruction. Majority of the displaced were forced to turn to Western ‘Christian’ and ‘infidel’ countries, because we neither received nor welcomed them to our countries which have a long span in their dispersion.

They headed to the European promised land where they will be given residency and humane treatment. Perhaps, they will be naturalized after living there for a certain period of time. All these will be done by Christian countries and the refugees are Muslims.

This reminds me, with bitterness, about the law endorsed by one of our parliaments in the 1980s which prevented the naturalization of anyone who is not a Muslim. As a result, no non-Muslim was naturalized after the endorsement of that law.

If only the civilized countries or international human rights organizations had known this abhorred racist law, Kuwait would have been at the bottom of the blacklists of these institutions and organizations.

All these prove that Donald Trump, the US Republican presidential hopeful, did not come with anything new in his outrageous animosity towards foreigners — Muslims are on top of the list.

He was preceded by the racist and fascist ‘Trump Kuwaiti’ who proposed amendment of the embarrassing citizenship law in order to prevent naturalization of non-Muslims.

By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli

Former Minister of Oil