“Homeland Season 5” continues to clock high TRP ratings with a massive loyal audience who thinks that it is one of the best things to have happened on television. It is particularly meant for the intelligent and smart viewer who yearns for meaningful content.
If you thought that the first four seasons pretty much covered the entire gamut of issues related to US foreign policy and military establishment, think again!! The dire circumstances forces Carrie Mathison to re-enter into the world of intelligence gathering, drone strikes and counter terrorism operations.
There has been an ongoing debate about whether Homeland has wrongly portrayed the middle-east or is it taking side on complicated geo-political issues. Here are 5 ways in which Homeland will bring you closer to the reality:
- Syrian Refugee crisis:
The focus of this season is how Syrian civil strife has caused a full-blown refugee crisis and how the West gets embroiled into the entire fiasco. The west is caught up in a fix between a devil (Assad) and the deep blue sea (Militias).
- Islamic State is a global threat:
The show demonstrated the evil designs of ISIS or ISIL as they threaten to terrorize a European city, if the United Nations fail to recognize its Caliphate in 24 hours.
- Illegal Cross-Border Surveillance:
The show broached the subject of illegal mass surveillance done by intelligence agencies of different countries to get around with the laws of host country. It was shown that CIA has a surveillance pact with the Germans where they collect the data of German citizens and share it with the German government.
The classified files of this programme got leaked to a hacktivist as he breached the CIA firewall. In real world, Edward Snowden leaked this piece of information to the Guardian newspaper.
- Greatest Penetration in American Intelligence History:
In the show Allison Carr (CIA Berlin Station Chief) is suspected to be a Russian agent working in American intelligence apparatus for decades, passing classified information to her Russian counterpart, much like soviet agents in cold war era.
- Use of Chemical weapons:
The Islamic radicals are shown to have used Sarin gas on an American spy, subsequently releasing the video to spread terror and fear of Islamic State. In the real world, Assad’s regime was accused of using chemical weapons against its own people, but it’s speculated that radical groups like ISIS may have done it to paint Assad as a monster who must be ousted.
