I was planning on writing about the clashes which erupted in Beirut between Hezbollah and the Ahbash association, seeing how they revealed the size of the “buried” tensions between the Lebanese sects. The last clashes which claimed the lives of four elements from both sides, clearly showed the size of the domestic tension and the “frailty” of the civil peace blockading Beirut’s neighborhoods in a way heralding the detonation of major disputes and conflicts, which a country like Lebanon will not be able to handle. However, last Thursday, two unfortunate photos carried on the front page of the Saudi Al-Jazirah newspaper grabbed my attention.

The first showed a Pakistani young girl kissing her baby sister which was only a few days old. It was as though this child was speaking to the world and asking for assistance and help for a devastated country, while at the same time – through her innocent kiss to her baby sister – wanting to heal the wounds of this newborn during “catastrophic” days. It was as though she were saying “we are awaiting a “white” future different from the “dark” present in which the country is oscillating between terrorism, catastrophes and floods.”

The newspaper then wrote the following sad caption beneath the picture “I have nothing in terms of pleasures of this life except for this kiss, my sister.” As for the second photo, it showed the corpse of an Iraqi girl who was one of the victims of the suicide operation in the city of Kut (southeast of Baghdad). This operation had claimed the lives of more than fifty people and injured around 200 others in a series of attacks that targeted Iraqi police posts and checkpoints six days before the official announcement of the end of the combat operations of the American troops in Iraq. In the bright picture, there are numerous states, at the head of which is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, deploying massive efforts to help the stricken Pakistanis. On the opposite side and in the “malevolent” picture, the Taliban movement announced the targeting of the members of foreign relief associations who were providing help to the victims. In other words, the Taliban will not spare the people from its evildoings even in the bleakest humanitarian crises.

There are palpable efforts, popular campaigns and field hospitals being provided by Saudi Arabia to help Pakistan, based on clear instructions from the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz to console the Pakistanis in this “destructive” ordeal, heal the wounds of the afflicted and help them overcome this crisis which is carrying wide-scale damages. Unfortunately, Zardari’s government is still registering one failure after the other at the level of its internal and foreign policies, while its reaction is still slow and meager in the face of such a major humanitarian catastrophe. This would have been a total “catastrophe” if not a “mark of shame” on the face of Zardari’s government due to its shortcomings, had it not been for the intervention of states and international relief institutions to contain the crisis affecting the country.

Nonetheless, despite the deployed efforts, the help and the dispatched aid, Pakistan is still calling on the world, its people are still screaming and the live footage and pictures aired from it are showing the size of the catastrophe. Indeed, the United Nations has estimated that around one million people were displaced from the Sindh province (south of Pakistan) during the past days, in addition to six million others who left their homes due to the floods which have been invading the country for about a month. Moreover, UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Mogwanja, warned that 72,000 Pakistani children were facing death due to malnutrition and the lack of medical care.

On the other side, the light is still pale as Baghdad is still swimming in pools of blood and moaning from the numerous wounds and fractures caused by the terrorist operations and the spread of chaos in a country that is neither safe nor stable and where the people are “frustrated” and “pessimistic” about the terrible security situation and the “poisoned” Iranian interference.

There is also the “failed” Mogadishu which is still falling behind the rest of the world by hundreds of years while its consecutive governments are “failing” to achieve security and stability for people who have become accustomed to seeing death and slaughters. The country has been witnessing violent battles and wide-scale terrorist attacked waged by rebels, by the disgruntled and by pirates both on land and at sea. In Somalia, the battles are expanding, the arms are spreading, the combat fronts are widening and the arenas of fire and rockets exchange are “open” to hotels and homes to claim lives and terrorize the safe. For its part, the “terrorist” Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen does not hesitate to kill children, persecute the population and undermine all signs of life.

Between this and that, the picture looks “bleaker.” Between failure in Somalia, the catastrophe in Pakistan, terrorism and partisanship in Iraq, the Palestinian division, the Lebanese sectarian conflict, the brutality of Al-Qaeda, the “insanity” of the rebels and the inability of the wise to contain the losers and those rejecting security and stability, the tragic scenes are repeated even if at different points in time and in different locations due to the popular and governmental failure.

Can we imagine what these states, the failure of their governments, the status of their people and the course of chaos in them would look like if the world were to lift its hands off them indefinitely? Would they continue fighting with each other or would they become certain that the world has turned its back on them and that there can be no safe life without concord and national unity instead of political divisions and sectarian and partisan disputes? Would they start enhancing their security bodies, immunizing their domestic institutions and unifying their national rhetoric so that a new picture is drawn to express hope and optimism instead of the incumbent “bleakness”?