Helga Zepp-LaRouche Says, Fight IS by Development, Greening the Desert

September 11, 2014 • 9:42AM

In one of her many interviews with media in China in the first week in September, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche was asked the crucial question: How do you fight 'ISIS' and like terrorist groups? Zepp-LaRouche, who has been a champion for decades of what is now China's 'New Silk Road' policy, answered that long-term and high-technology economic development is the key. Her question was from China Radio International interviewer Zheng Chenguang.

CRI: "So far for all these Western governments, the only available solution to solve the ISIS is just bomb them, but that will not solve the problem at its roots. So you were talking about some more cooperation and coordination from different countries to solve the problem. Can you put your finger on some of the more concrete efforts that can be made to contain...

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: "Well, already in November 2012, the Schiller Institute organized a conference in Frankfurt, where we presented a comprehensive peace and development plan for the entire region, from the Caucasus in Central Asia to Afghanistan to the Gulf, to the Mediterranean. So this entire region must be taken as one. Then the Silk Road must be extended to all of these countries. And if Russia, China, India, Iran, hopefully the United States, the European countries, cooperate and declare a war on the desert — like if you look at the map you can see that from the Atlantic coast in Africa, the Sahel zone, Sahara, the Saudi Peninsula, Iran, to China, you have one big strip of desert. This is practically not livable for people, there is no agriculture, no cities.

"So we have prepared a development plan, which basically would extend the Silk Road, or as we sometimes call it, the Eurasian Land-Bridge, into this area to develop the desert by three methods: You can use the water from the aquifers, you can redirect some rivers, you make dams, but most importantly, you have to have peaceful nuclear energy for large-scale desalination of ocean water, and then use this desalinated water to green the deserts. And that way, you can have also agriculture, industry, you need to build up infrastructure in this entire region, as densely as it is, for example, in Germany....

"So if you have that kind of approach, that way you give a perspective of future economic prosperity for the young people in this region, because many of them would not be joining the terrorists if they had some economic hope for the future. So the solution has to be peace through development."

Ironically, the Washington Post posted a long story Sept. 10 which accused China of building a high-speed rail "new Silk Road" through some of the Mother Nature's most inhospitable regions, Lanzhou to Urumqi, and on to Europe, "to cement China's control over its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region through investment and economic growth ..."