January 29, 2009 — vol. 44, no 24
High cost of lost opportunity in Mideast conflict
GENEVA — Violence in the Middle East has cost the region around $12 trillion in missed economic growth and development over the last two decades, a Swiss government-sponsored report said last Friday.
Israelis, Palestinians and people in every country in the region have lost out as a result of conflict, according to the report, which argues that it is in the interest of the whole world to step up peace efforts.
The election of President Barack Obama in the United States “provides a window of opportunity” in 2009 to press for peace, the report said.
The research team realized that the costs of war go beyond destruction, damage and death caused by the conflict, said lead author Sundeep Waslekar, president of the Strategic Foresight Group, a Mumbai, India-based think thank.
So the team of more than 50 experts from the Middle East and elsewhere also tried to calculate the benefits that may derive from peace, noting that during relatively peaceful periods in the 1990s, both Israel and the Palestinian territories had good economic growth rates.
“It should have been possible for all countries to grow at the average rate of at least 8 percent per annum in the last two decades,” the report said.
Instead, the number of Palestinians living in poverty soared from 23 percent in 1998 to 35 percent in 2005, it said. Over 91 percent of Israelis said they felt insecure because they feared terrorist attacks.
“How can you have a sustainable society with 91 percent of the population living in a sense of insecurity?” asked Waslekar.
The income per capita in most countries in the region today is half of what it would have been in the absence of war and violence, Waslekar said in presenting the 173-page document.
“We asked ourselves, had there been peace achieved in 1991 … where would the Middle East be tomorrow?” he said.
The total projected cost of lost opportunity, amounting to $12 trillion, includes Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates from 1991 to 2010.
Iraq has been the biggest loser, the report said, noting that it had been in three wars — with Iran, Kuwait and the West — since 1980.
It forecast Iraq’s actual Gross Domestic Product next year to be $59 billion, and said its opportunity loss since the first Gulf War of 1991 has been $2.3 trillion.
The report, which was supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, the ruling AK Party of Turkey and the Qatar Foundation, includes graphs and calculations based on figures from the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and research institutes.
(Associated Press)
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