I am stuck in the Frankfurt airport on my way to Cairo (again) because of a snowstorm, and was reading this future studies article on what the Middle East will be looking like fifty years from now. The scenarios outlined are quite grim. Most of them involve a combination of large-scale and extended droughts, environmental degradation (salinity and rapid urbanization are rapidly killing the Nile Delta), water shortages (San’aa, the capital of Yemen will be the first city in the world to completely run out of water by 2020– that’s in 7 years), water wars, demographic explosion, urban unrest in sprawling slums, large scale unemployment, violence, etc. This brings me to the subject of the survival of the Desert Arabian horse in its original homeland, which is seriously threatened. It reinforces my belief that the valuable genetic material still available in the Middle East will need to find its way to more stable parts of the world (like the USA or Canada, because I just don’t see Western Europe on a path of long term stability) where it can be preserved for generations to come. I am not talking about the high-end, overbred, delicate Egyptian Arabian horse creatures that grace Egyptian and Gulf studs; the blood of Nazeer, Moniet, Bukra, etc, is all over the world, and it’s not…