DR. AHMED AL-KEDIDI
Hope for the Future: The New Silk Road
[Print version of this article]
This article was published in Arabic in several Gulf newspapers on May 22, as President Trump visited the region to meet heads of state of Arab and Muslim nations. It has been translated and edited by EIR. The author, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kedidi, is a former Tunisian diplomat and former advisor to the Emir of Qatar, and is now resident in Doha, Qatar.
 Schiller Institute
Dr. Ahmed Al-Kedidi
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May 21—Certain important events this week brought joy to me personally, because they confirmed for me that I was right in taking the decision, three decades ago, to join in the project to change the evils of the unjust trans-Atlantic world order, and replace it with a new and just world order established on the foundations of cooperation and inclusion of all nations in development, and achieving lasting peace on the basis of connecting nations and continents through railway networks, bridges, and tunnels, and facilitating the movement of people, goods, and ideas on land, sea, and air.
What is odd in our recent history in Tunisia, is that when my friend Mohammad Mazali became Prime Minister in 1980, he worked in this correct direction, and we were all committed to follow his sound path.
He established the education system on the method of Arabization. He then opened the door of south-south cooperation, and we reached agreements with China and Turkey. We opened banks and corporations in cooperation with the Gulf countries, and enhanced exchange and integration among Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco—which was politically and culturally diametrically opposite to the methods of President Habib Bourgiba, whose policies were solely based on the connection with France as a doctrine of dependency, not national interest.
For our efforts, we were persecuted by those who benefitted from putting Tunisia under the arm of France. We endured the witch-hunt of Interpol with patience, and had to suffer fifteen years of exile, our families separated, and our homes confiscated.
The cultural option we joined, traces its origins from the Silk Road, which was under the patronage of China many centuries ago, and which constituted a belt of economic, commercial, and cultural exchange among nations.
One of the new events which has brought renewed hope to my soul, is the participation of my honorable friend, Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and chairman of the international Schiller Institutes, in the Beijing Forum for International Development last week at the invitation of the President of China, Xi Jinping. The Forum focussed on the theme of reactivating the Silk Road, and had the participation of many statesmen from different continents, to launch a new era, an era not controlled by the powerful trans-Atlantic financial and war lobbies that have controlled the world economy since the end of World War II.
I have known Mrs. LaRouche personally since the early 1980s, when I was holding some strings of power in my homeland, and I fought hand in hand with the Schiller Institute, which is an international center of thought (think-tank), and participated in its scientific and political seminars in Washington, Paris, Rome, Düsseldorf, and many other cities. I had at the same time an intellectual and friendly relationship with Mrs. LaRouche and her husband, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, the economic advisor of former President Ronald Reagan, and was often invited for lunch or dinner in their residences in the U.S.A. and in Germany. Mr. LaRouche is American and Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche is German, and they brought together America and Europe in one bond through their long struggle for the New Silk Road and the belt of economic development. My friend, the Iraqi intellectual Hussein Askary, and I, have been the only two Arabs fully committed to these principles and values to this date. And today, I feel joy and pride that these principles have finally achieved victory after three full decades.
Second, I rejoiced this week over the participation of his excellency the Minister of Transportation of Qatar in the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, upon the recommendation of His Highness the Emir of Qatar.
Third, I received a gift this week from my friend Hussein Askary—the new book, published recently by EIR with the title The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, in an Arabic version translated by Askary. This is a gigantic book, which presents the details and the intentions of the alternative world order, through detailed maps, precise numbers, clear projects, and the facts of multinational agreements and commitments—making the reader fully aware of the truth that the dream which we had in the 1980s is now transformed into a practical program and an applicable mega-project that is capable of transcending borders, ideologies, political conflicts, and the remnants of sectarian and ethnic struggles, and overwhelming the whole of mankind, with its blessings, through an international network of true solidarity and means of transcontinental communications.
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In this book (of which privately donated copies have been sent as gifts to hundreds of prominent Arabs through their embassies), the public can read how security and peace can be established among nations with the tools of international cooperation, especially in our Arab-Islamic regions. Hussein Askary explains, in Part Six of the book, the types of connectivity projects among nations, the connections that existed before the suppressive trans-Atlantic system severed them to usher the region into the new cold war, openly threatening the world with a third, this time nuclear, world war.
These projects are:
• The Berlin to Baghdad Railway,
• The Hijaz Railway through the countries of the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula,
• The Orient Express, connecting the Middle East to North Africa,
• The Zubaida Road, the old Kufa-Mecca pilgrims’ road, from Baghdad to Najaf, Hail, and the Holy Al-Medina and Mecca,
• The Nile Route connecting Egypt and Sudan to the Great Lakes nations of Africa, and finally,
• The Arab Maghreb Route that constitutes a regional belt connecting Alexandria, Tripoli, Sfax, Tunis, Algiers, and Fez.
I truly believe that this just and alternative world order is founded on a completely different set of international relations, exemplified by the recently established group of nations, composed of China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa—the BRICS.
President Trump has been considering joining this caravan and said so during his meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Lavrov, last week. This new world order must be the key item on the agenda of the G-20 Summit, which will be held on July 7-8 in Hamburg, Germany. We require a total mutiny against the evils of the Euro-American system that has dominated the world in the past 70 years.
