ISHMAEL N. DARO
CUP Opinions Bureau Chief

If countless politicians are to be believed when they insist that young people are the future, then it would seem the future belongs to Afghanistan, where the median age is 17.

By contrast, Canada’s median age is a creaky 40.

Afghanistan is not alone. About two-thirds of the population throughout the Middle East is under 30 years old. This so-called “youth bulge” could change the face of this volatile region in less than a generation.

Young people in the Middle East, as in Canada and everywhere else, are more connected and better informed than ever before. Last year’s Green Revolution in Iran following the fraudulent presidential election may have been a harbinger of things to come.

Sure, Twitter didn’t topple the Ayatollah’s regime, but change is definitely in the air. Authoritarian regimes from Syria to Saudi Arabia are increasingly faced with young and educated populations pushing for more democracy and freedom.

About two-thirds of the population throughout the Middle East is under 30 years old. This so-called “youth bulge” could change the face of this volatile region in less than a generation.

Reform is underway throughout the region, but that reform is often economic in nature. Political change is considerably slower and it may be some time before there are any Jeffersonian democracies in the Middle East. But there is still much to be hopeful about.

In Egypt, for example, people are finding ways to connect and get information through over 40 million cellphones in the country despite a state crackdown on communications ahead of November elections. The United Arab Emirates leads the world in cellphone usage, ahead of even South Korea and Japan, with over two phones per person in the tiny country.

Not surprisingly, the UAE government has recently tried to force BlackBerry maker Research In Motion to let it spy on its citizens, guessing correctly that the spread of technology will eventually lead to greater calls for reform.

Even in Afghanistan, a country seemingly doomed to perpetual war and misery, there is hope amid the ongoing instability. Over 2,577 candidates ran for office in the September parliamentary election — 405 of them female — and independent media outlets have sprung up and rekindled a civil society that had been utterly devastated by the Taliban. Young Afghans are leading the charge, yet only a decade ago, to speak of free expression or women’s rights in Afghanistan would have been unthinkable.

These developments abroad will have consequences for us in Canada, too. One of the greatest concerns for Western nations is the threat of Islamic extremism, which finds its strength in disillusioned young people. An increase in both economic and political freedom will help quell the flames of violent jihad and drown out the voices of extremists.

And given the anemic birth rates in most developed nations, immigration will become ever more important, particularly as our population gets older and heads for retirement. Attracting the best and brightest to fuel our economy will not only be smart, but also necessary.

Young people may indeed be the future, but it may be the youth in other parts of the world that decide the direction and shape of that future.

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Photo: Asim Bharwani