Jasmine El-Gamal: Middle East conflicts spread globally

AlArabiya English

Conflicts in the Middle East rarely stay contained and often spread and affect regions far beyond, analyst and former Pentagon Middle East advisor Jasmine El-Gamal says.

Transcript

00:00Sure, so it sounds like, you know, by saying what we gather he's going to say, King Abdullah

00:04tomorrow, he's going to say this idea is a recipe for radicalism that will spread chaos

00:09through the Middle East.

00:10I mean, he may try, mightn't he, to sell it to President Trump, that not just destabilizing

00:16the region and causing chaos in the region, but this could boomerang back and actually

00:20affect U.S. national security.

00:23Absolutely.

00:24I mean, we only have to look back, you know, we don't have to look back very far to look

00:28at how conflict in the region has always spread outside of the region.

00:33You can't contain violence in the Middle East.

00:35I was working at the Pentagon when the Syria conflict first started, when those peaceful

00:40protests in Syria against the Assad regime turned violent, when the state used its weapons

00:47against those peaceful protesters.

00:49We saw what happened.

00:50We saw the recruitment of fighters into the country.

00:54We saw the refugee crisis that spilled over into Europe.

00:58We saw the impact that that conflict had on countries far beyond the borders of the Middle

01:04East.

01:05Same thing happened with the Iraq war.

01:07And so it's absolute madness to think that conflict in the region that is stoked by things

01:13like displacement and terrorism and occupation and all of the things that we're seeing play

01:19out right now are going to only affect people living in the region.

01:24For more UN videos visit www.un.org

Category

Transcript

Recommended