Not In My Backyard – Destroying Syria’s Chemical Weapons in Albania

We do not hear much about Syria these days. It seems that the agreement to remove and destroy the chemical weapons of Syria has removed the threat of an intervention by the Western democracies which will now not bomb Syria and add their own destruction to the destruction and death that they Syrians are inflicting upon themselves, with a little help from their friends. 

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have gathered together the chemical weapons and plan to destroy them outside the borders of Syria. Someone (mainly the USA) thought that it would be a good idea to destroy these chemical weapons in, of all places, Albania. Now the Albanians were assured that these weapons would be safely destroyed and would not cause harm to the country, but Albanians are no fools. They noted that Britain, France, Spain, The USA and Russia did not seem to be interested in safely disposing of these chemical weapons, and objected to the plan. The people demonstrated against it and  the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama  finally pronounced “It is impossible for Albania to get involved in this operation,” to the obvious relief of his people.

I suppose that it is natural that the big rich nations of the world are very good at pushing the garbage of the world onto the small and poor nations. Perhaps it is the manifest destiny of rich powerful nations to uphold the principle of “not in my backyard”.