A Proxy War Could Not Oust Assad; Can It Defeat Russia?

A Proxy War Could Not Oust Assad; Can It Defeat Russia?

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky’s nearly three hour talks with President Biden in the White House ended with a press conference. Biden, replying to a question, showed a chink in his armour which his western cheerleaders have for obvious reasons not amplified.

Just as the US President was carrying on about the assistance in arms, including Patriot anti missile batteries, a reporter chipped in: “When the full scale invasion started, US officials said that Ukraine cannot receive Patriot because it might be seen as unnecessary escalation. And now, right now it is happening. Clearly Ukraine desperately needs more capabilities, including long range missiles.”

The reporter then produced the punchline:

“Can we make this long story short and give to Ukraine all the capabilities it needs to liberate all the territories sooner rather than later?”

This stumped Biden. Short of words, he points to Zelensky – “well…his answer is yes.” This produces laughter. Reporters on beats like the White House or those travelling with their President, generally have a “whiff” of details not otherwise available. Laughter at that particular juncture, when the President is tongue tied and weakly points to Zelensky, is revealing. Obviously during the talks Zelensky asked for arms more lethal than Patriots and Biden said no.

Biden then proceeded to explain to the press his restraint in supplying “everything” for Ukraine’s victory.

The US is “not giving Ukraine everything for two reasons. One, there is an entire alliance supporting Ukraine which must not break up. And the idea that we will give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different from what is already going there (this shift) would have the prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world.”

“We’re going to give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself, to be able to succeed in the battlefield.”

Second, Biden said, that he had “spent several hundred hours, face-to-face with our European allies and heads of state of their countries” towards one goal: to persuade them how it is fundamentally in their interest that they continue to support Ukraine in this war.

Then comes Biden’s key utterance: while they understand the importance of western unity, “they’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third world war.” He concludes, “I think it can all be avoided by making sure that Ukraine is able to succeed in the battlefield.” Zelensky is being bluffed?

The US President, faced with a blunt question from a reporter, blurted out things a diplomat would have kept to himself.

Why would Biden spend “several hundred hours face-to-face with” his European allies trying to convince them that it was “overwhelmingly in their interest to continue to support Ukraine?” How reluctant must the allies have been to warrant this kind of persuasion by the world’s most powerful nation?”

Quite unmistakably the impression is that allies or partners did not quite follow the Pied Piper; they were nudged if not dragged into this predicament. In diplomatic parlance, it was heavy arm twisting that they were subjected to. As a consequence, chants of “unusual western unity” are marketed as not cacophonous with France, Germany, Hungary, Italy etcetera singing their own, individual hymns of a post Ukraine vision.

Ukraine, Europe and the US are dancing together but to different rhythms. I have already quoted Biden: yes World War III will be avoided but Ukraine will be helped to win in the battlefield. In other words, the US, with very deep pockets, is looking for a never ending war, a war of attrition. Having failed to defeat Putin, the idea is to outspend him, bleed him economically. What will happen to Europe in this process? Considering that there is no evidence of Russia on its knees quite yet, what does one make of lamentations all over Europe? An endless war will certainly break up the alliance.

Differences within the alliance had begun to surface at the very outset, in fact the moment it dawned that the war was not about Ukraine but about a new world order.

In the vanguard of those with blueprints of a multipolar world order was France’s Emanuel Macron. As early as September this year he told a conclave of French diplomats that the “300 year old western hegemony was coming to an end.”

He could not help taking a jibe at Biden. For the past three centuries of western dominance, he said, France, England and the US had contributed, in that order, culture, industry and “war”. Within western countries, “the many wrong choices the United States has made in the face of crisis have deeply shaken our hegemony.”

Where Macron differs from his Anglo-Saxon partners is his frank admission that “China and Russia have achieved great success” under “different leadership styles.” Totally absent from his serene stance are expletives like “butcher, butcher” which Biden employed once for Putin, rather like a street fighter.

In Macron’s framework European security is unthinkable without Russia being integral to it. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, host to 20,000 US troops since World War II, cannot unhinge himself from the US. He delineates a security architecture for Europe of which the US is a critical part. This, despite the historical Anglo-American suspicion of the German Nation.

Not to learn from its own recent wars must be put down as another category of American exceptionalism. The day Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, with an imperious wave of the hand asked Bashar al Assad to “get out of the way”, the telecast coincided with my column on Syria. Reversals in Afghanistan and Iraq after decades of occupation should have taught the Americans a lesson. If war aims could not be achieved by full fledged occupation, how would cross border terrorism oust Assad? True, Syria like Iraq and Libya, has been destroyed, but Assad still rules the country. If Assad cannot be ousted by a proxy war, can Russia’s formidable war machine be neutralized by one?

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Messi, Mbappe, World Cup Are Nuggets On Qatar’s Super Exceptionalism

Messi, Mbappe, World Cup Are Nuggets On Qatar’s Super Exceptionalism

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

The family sat around the TV set as around an altar or a God during the football matches until the curtain came down on history’s greatest final in front of the 88,966 strong in the Lusair stadium in Qatar and an audience of incalculable billions worldwide.

The Cassandras were proved wrong as Qatar successfully continued to wear its own brand of exceptionalism on its sleeve. History will remember it as a superbly arranged event.

Qatar’s exceptionalism is quite breathtaking. Central Command is calmly headquartered in Qatar. Riyadh was in the eye of a storm because Osama bin Laden would not tolerate US troops in the Kingdom.

GCC had come into being in 1980, with major US prodding, as a group in simulated fear of the Iranian revolution which had replaced the West-friendly Shah. To the Arabs, indeed to the West, the Ayatullahs came across as a strange apparition. Except the Vatican, nowhere else in the world had the clergy taken over reins of power for the country’s governance.

Iran has a tremendous sense of self as a civilization and a modern westward looking state. In both senses, clerical rule sits uncomfortably on the society. Since Iran under the Ayatullahs was an ideological Shia state, this fact itself rang alarm bells in, say, Riyadh.

Emergence of the Islamic state introduced a certain bipolarity in the Muslim world. Wahabi Riyadh, with its control of Mecca and Medina was challenged by Shia Tehran as a pillar of the Islamic world. Tehran’s first attack was on the House of Saud – Islam in its genesis was anti monarchy.

This put the fear of God into Saudi hearts. They promptly declared themselves not Kings but Keepers of the Holy Shrines. Over time this title has once again fallen into disuse.

Qatari exceptionalism was in play all along. When all of the GCC was quaking at Iran’s emergence, Qatar maintained very practical trade relation with Iran. Relations with Iran burgeoned when the GCC, out of inexplicable pique, cut off land routes to the Sheikhdom.

Since Riyadh was the leader of the GCC an awkwardness in relation with Qatar had muddied the equation from the very beginning. Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the present ruler, ascended the throne by staging a coup against his father. This was a terrible example for all the monarchies. Saudis even planned to reverse the situation militarily. Against that background it is impossible to imagine the two in a loving embrace.

Qatar, meanwhile, will not stop wearing its exceptionalism even on sensitive Israeli-Palestinian issues. For instance it pokes the global establishment in the eye and thereby also their GCC colleagues by being exceptionally chummy with Hamas, leaving the Americans and the Saudis flat footed. Israelis even more so because they, along with the Americans have a puppet in Mahmoud Abbas whose writ does not run even in Ramallah.

Since the day Israel was created as a Jewish homeland, the principal issue pre occupying the Arab world and beyond, has been the Palestinian cause. It turns out to be an unforeseeable reality of a world in flux that the birth of an Islamic Iran caused lobbies working for Israel to divert attention to Shia-Sunni schism as the principal faultline dominating the Arab mind. A regular Shia axis was delineated – Iran, Hezbullah, Syria, Hamas, which threatened Israel. How, pray, does Hamas strengthen the Shia axis? Gaza is saturated with Hamas which happens to be a virulent form of the Muslim Brothers, Sunni to the core, focused on Israel which it believes dispossessed it of its lands.

By befriending this variety of Brotherhood, Qatar was once again declaring its exceptionalism. If Iran is a thorn in all sides including the Saudi’s, the Brothers are even more so. The 1979 Islamic revolution of Iran coincided almost exactly with a truly traumatic event for the Muslim Umma. This was the occupation of Islam’s holiest mosque at Mecca by Juhayman al-Otaybi and hundreds of his supporters. Their demand was not dissimilar to the Iranian’s. Islam was opposed to Kingship. The “King” of Saudi Arabia could therefore not be the Keeper of the Holy Shrines.

To complicate matters further, Saudis did not have the technology to flush the militants out. French soldiers commandeered for the purpose, ran into another obstacle. Non Muslims are not allowed to enter the holiest of all mosques. Instantly, a few Mullahs were enlisted to make the Frenchmen recite the “Kalima” which would qualify them to enter the mosque as bonafide Muslims.

Otaybi’s companions were all an extremist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. This influential organization is widespread in Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It is thus a greater threat to the House of Saud and other monarchies and Sheikhdoms. Rather than point to the much more dangerous threat at home, the Saudis, advised by the Israelis and the Americans, have chosen to target Iran for strategic reasons. Qatari exceptionalism plays footsie with the Brothers as well as Iran.

It was Saudi wealth which created the Mujahideen in the 80s to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, and function as a Wahabi bulwark against Shia Iran. Those Mujahideen have mutated into today’s Taleban. And lo and behold when matters come to a head it is the exceptional Qatar which gives life to the Doha process, even as the Saudis look on.

There is no end to Saudi mortification even in the field of the media. Does the Al Arabiya channel launched by the Saudis have any credibility? By contrast, Qatari exceptionalism has done the impossible with Al Jazeera. It has persuaded the connoisseurs of liberalism in the West to believe that an authoritarian Sheikhdom can own a “liberal” TV channel with an almighty proviso: don’t criticize Qatar nor its close interests.

But its leap of exceptionalism reached glorious heights with the World Cup which will linger long in the minds of billions. It will become a collective nostalgia decorated by Messi, Mbappe, the orderly crowds and wondrous Qatari order and management – exceptionalism again.

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An Eerie Silence Over Afghanistan Could End With A Bang

An Eerie Silence Over Afghanistan Could End With A Bang

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

Ever since the Americans left Afghanistan, in August 2022 after a 20 year occupation, the country has become something of a black hole, informationwise. Sporadically wire services report that armed gunmen had targeted a hotel in Kabul popular with the Chinese. Earlier Russian journalism were searching for details on a blast in the Russian Embassy. The embassy has never been so targeted.

Shia places of worship have been frequently attacked, a sacrilege that must distract neighbouring Iran which has been in the grip of protests which do not seem to end.

Am I cherry picking by mentioning China, Russia, Iran, all countries which the West has lined up on the other side for the new Cold War? You will notice that the incidents mentioned above are short on details. Isn’t it strange that for the entire 20 years when the Americans occupied that wonderful country there was considerable media presence, mostly from the US and the UK. At the outset, when the US signaled comprehensive global dominance by fireworks on an unprecedented scale, the stars of the western media were paraded from Kabul to Tora Bora caves. The journalist who remained etched on my mind – and I have written about him often – was Geraldo Rivera who would flourish a gun in front of the camera. “This is to shoot dead Osama bin Laden.”

As the initial triumphalism of which the Rivera exuberance was a part, gave way to a sense of being bogged down, the Anglo-Saxon media did not quite feel upto reporting stories of diminishing US popularity. As Green on Blue picked up in frequency, US military appeared to have put a blanket on all negative stories. Green on Blue was a term used to describe Afghan soldiers, trained by the NATO alliance, open fire and kill western soldiers.

By any yardstick this was a story to be analyzed: Afghan self respect and pride and the incapacity of the Americans to strike any rapport with the local population except with middlemen and touts. In other words, stories which glorified the West were amplified, the ones that embarrassed were toned down and killed. Against the backdrop of the high moral ground the West occupies as the sole protectors and promoters of democracy, western hypocrisy stood out.

Most international news since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been about western military action – incursions, invasions, air strikes. These stories automatically become a western monopoly. If the US is waging war against a third world country, western military protection becomes an essential precondition for a western journalist to function.

Dick Cheney regularized a system of embedded journalists to cover the April 3, 2001 invasion of Iraq. It did not affect, say, Indian journalists because there was no Indian journalist covering foreign affairs. He mechanically extended his hand to seek alms by way of news from any western source – AP, Reuters, AFP, BBC, VOA, New York Times, etcetera. Did not the great editors spot an almighty gap, the singular absence of an Indian perspective in the coverage of foreign affairs? Is it not a shame that the India media has no bureaus in any SAARC country which includes Afghanistan?

It is the black hole of Kabul which I find so frustrating that I have meandered all over the place throwing mud on the western media which has failed us in a crucial story.

The other day I was introduced to a “diplomat from Afghanistan”. Who do you report to? Taleban is not recognized by any state. So, who does the diplomat do his diplomacy with and on whose behalf? The diplomat finally spoke, “we represent Afghanistan.”

Youtube the next day was quite startling. The Afghan Ambassador to New Delhi was being interviewed by a reporter in the Chanakyapuri embassy premises. The Afghan flag fluttered behind him. The Taleban do not recognize this flag. More incongruous was the photograph of President Ashraf Ghani mounted behind him. But Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan with a helicopter full of dollars? What on earth was going on?

The mystery gets deeper when you are told that 70 such ambassadors are floating around. The Afghan seat occupied at the UN has not been vacated by the Ambassador of the defunct regime.

Who pays for their upkeep? The other day, the US representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, Zalmay Khalilzad’s replacement, was conferring with the Ambassador at the UN. According to my UN source he was travelling to New Delhi and then to Japan which he visits often. There is obviously considerable pressure on Japan to make investments in Afghan infrastructure, a field in which the Chinese are running away with the show.

Conjecture comes in when facts are absent or vague. There is after all, Quad to be activated. The purpose of Quad was to neutralize China. India too is in Quad.

Meanwhile diplomats are mulling over the talks in Moscow last month between India, Russia, and Iran. Why was Iran not so pampered when the National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval invited other Central Asian states to discuss Afghanistan.

It turns out, then, that news from Afghanistan is percolating through very slowly. At the same time reasonable diplomacy is afoot but without any tangible outcome. The Taleban has not incorporated other ethnicities into the Kabul apparatus. This, ostensibly, is the reason why Kabul under Taleb government has not been recognized by other states. Not for the first time, Indian representatives have been meeting Taleban but there is no movement which promises the emergence of a multi ethnic entity in Kabul.

In essence Russia, China, India, Iran and other central Asian republics are trying to stabilize Kabul. The US and its NATO allies are touching bases towards their strategic ends to deftly neutralize Russia and China. What was the outcome of Xi Jinping’s meet with the Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida? Does that neutralize US initiatives or is Japan playing both sides of the street. Why have regional diplomats been mentioning the Durand line ominously?

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Lavrov: Not Russia alone, Europe too is US target.

 

Lavrov: Not Russia alone, Europe too is US target.        

                         

  Saeed Naqvi                                                          

The spectacle of the US fleeing Afghanistan in August 2021 became the inflection point for a changing world order.  This was followed by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signing a historic document in Beijing on February 4, announcing a “friendship with no limits”, .further confirming the trend.

The earth was spinning on its axis like a potter’s wheel. A new order was taking shape. The west had to take action, provoking what would be advertised as Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine.

The change in world order entailed gains and losses in global stature. The west, led by the US would, sooner or later lose its hegemony. The instruments it had developed to advance its control of the world order would now be employed to arrest its decline –  accelerating expansion of NATO, eastward.

NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay had outlined the purposes of the Military Alliance most succinctly : to keep the Soviet Union out of Europe, the Americans in and the Germans down. In a most lucid opening statement before the media on European security issues, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov made good use of the Ismay quote to explain his understanding of the Ukraine conflict.

“What is happening now is nothing short of returning to the Alliance’s conceptual priorities from 73 years ago”. He repeated for emphasis: “Nothing has changed”. Infact, NATO is determined to keep the Russians ‘out; while the American dream of keeping not only the Germans but the whole of Europe “down”. Lavrov was particularly severe : the US has infact already enslaved the entire European Union”.

Since Germany was on the opposite side of the Allies during the two world wars, a degree of anti German  prejudice was passed on everywhere even to our schools in the former colonies. India was the principal one among these. A great deal of the prejudice was drawn from war movies, of great escapes, clever spies, in each one of which the Germans were the butt of malicious humour.

During the cold war, Germany receded as an issue but surfaced again once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991-92. What was the need for NATO now? During a visit to Finland, Mrs Thatcher was pointedly asked : “The Soviet Union no longer exists, what then is the need for NATO and for Britain’s nuclear arsenal”?

“We still have a problem in the Middle East”, she snapped back. Informed circles in London and Washington had begun to touch on the German question in a new context. The collapse of the Soviet Union was cause for celebrations in the west, ofcourse, but the fall of the Berlin wall had caused the west to take note alarmingly of a reunified Germany.

A reunified Germany may be tempted to seek a greater role in the post Soviet World order. This idea must not be allowed to germinates. It was to nip it in the bud that Operation Desert storm was conceived and launched in 1991. It was ostensibly to free Kuwait which Saddam Husain had occupied. Had he misread a signal from April Gilespie, the US Ambassador in Baghdad?

A key event (or non event ) cited as one of the causes of Operation Desert Storm is to this day shrouded in mystery. In a routine conversation with Gilespie, Saddam Husain complained of Kuwait encroaching on Iraqi oil bearing land. Wikileaks has made public the memo ambassador Gilespie sent to the state department based on her conversation with Saddam Husain. “The US government takes no position on Iraq’s border dispute with Kuwait”. This much is on record. Was Saddam guilty of having moved into Kuwait assuming that the “US took no position” on the dispute?

It turns out that it was not a story relevant to West Asia alone, Mrs Thatcher and President George Bush Senior drummed up an International Coalition of the Willing to oust Saddam out of Kuwait. With Soviets out of the way,it was said then, wars would now not be between the West and East.They would be between North and South. Is Ukraine an exception?

President Mitterand of France who probably understood the real game, initially refused to be part of the “coalition” which was being dilegently put together by the two Anglo-Saxon cousins separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

In Baghdad I realized how Mitterand had gauged the “coalition’s”  intentions right. During military action there were two separate briefings – one for American journalists and another for British.The rest of the world press twiddled its thumb on the margins of action.

The other key instrument the west was to use to control the post Soviet World order was  inaugurated in Baghdad.  It was the global media, exactly the one that has been brazenly used since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

Peter Arnett of the CNN beamed from the terrace of the Al Rashied Hotel a war in real time. This was the first time that a war was brought live into the world’s drawing rooms. This was to become a great  resource for mobilizing public opinion across the globe.

 By the same token, it had the power to divide the world, pit one group against the other. Just one telecast of Desert Storm divided the world into two inimical and sets of audiences – the triumphant west and a defeated, humiliated Iraq a country which had the sympathy of the entire Muslim world. Some of this stimulated antipathy gave a shot in the arm to Muslim terrorism.

Let me end with Lavrov’s perspective on the origins of the conflict.

“ In 1990, at the closing stage of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Summit in Paris, US Secretary of State James Baker warned the US President that the CSCE might pose a  threat to NATO.  It revealed the US mind set, says Lavrov.

By persisting with NATO expansion from 16 to 32 states James Baker’s intellectual descendents are averse to anything resembling the CSCE becoming a genuine bridge between East and West. The pursuit is for war to avert the end of western hegemony.

 

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If Congress Tumbles, It Has Bharat Yatra To Dream About

If Congress Tumbles, It Has Bharat Yatra To Dream About

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

I could swear I saw Rahul Gandhi swoon in ecstasy or aastha as he slid into a sashtang at Ujjain’s great Mahakal temple. Sashtang, the highest form of supplication, is equal to a yagya where priests sit around a pit-fire, pouring ghee, chanting vedic verses for all the boons and blessings to be piled onto the devotee, in this case Rahul Gandhi.

Having walked a part of the 3,750 km Bharat Jodo Yatra for over 90 days, across 36 districts spread over 7 states, Rahul probably needed to recharge his physical and spiritual batteries before he smeared his forehead with some more vermilion paste and resumes.

His conscience keeper, Randeep Surjewala, who first declared him a Janeudhari Brahmin some years ago, a detail his parents were forgetful about, must be keeping count of all the “punya” he has accumulated by now. This will be the Brahmastra, the ultimate weapon, which will rout the BJP in 2024.

Mandiron mein jo subah o sham rahe

Aisa Rahul zaroor jeetega

(Rahul’s temple hopping round the clock

will help him score in election knock.)

It is true that the supposed religiosity of the Gandhi sibling is kept somewhat excessively in focus because of the compelling quaintness of it all. The siblings are still not persuasive enough as persons of faith or classical devotees. They both come across as ethnic tourists, dipping in holy waters, supplicating at temples. Also, they avoid Muslim bustees like the plague. And for sound electoral reason. Proximity with Muslims would give the BJP a handle to polarize the vote.

After a successful campaign in Ahmedabad in 2017, a media event was arranged at the Radisson Blue. Facing a battery of TV cameras sat Rahul, flanked by Ashok Gehlot, Randeep Surjewala, Rajiv Shukla and a host of others. “But where is Ahmed Patel?” I asked. A Congress volunteer leapt to his feet. “It’s a secret but he is in the hotel.” The most recognized Congress leader had been shut out of view so that the BJP does not polarize. It probably worked because the Congress put up a good fight. It is the durability of such brazen tricks that will be on test this time.

One must give it to Narendra Modi for having sprayed so much saffron in the air that it is impossible for any political party to survive without inhaling and exhaling the same air. This does not mean there was not plenty of saffron in the atmosphere prior to the advent of Modi. There was and a lot of it. If we put aside our amnesia, there looms the figure of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, four times President of the Congress and concurrently founder of the Hindu Mahasabha. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, as the leading light of this group, developed Hindutva which, over a period, was adopted as the way forward by Modi. In the history of Hindutva, Modi’s name will be written in bold, dark ink.

To Modi goes the credit of a having made a sharp break from past confusion in his very first speech in Parliament. “We have to come out of twelve hundred years of subjugation.” Never were India’s experience with the British and Muslims placed in the same bracket. That the Congress thought differently was never made explicit; no Congress MP ever offered a ringing rebuttal in the House.

Aam Aadmi Party too has to play the electoral game under a pall of saffron but its class orientation is very different from the BJP and the Congress. The two parties represent the Hindu ruling class, one in power and the other its loyal opposition. Both hate AAP more than they do each other.

AAP’s origins are confusing, with Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev and Aamir Khan clustered on the same stage at Ramlila ground, but its record of rapid growth, eversince it won 67 out of 70 seats in Delhi in 2015, is quite exceptional.

Political parties in power in the Hindi belt invoke caste to access the poor. AAP proceeds the other way around: it approaches the class in need of good government schools, neighbourhood clinics, free water and electricity. In this process if it nets lower castes too, well, then the political sociology sanctifies the Lohiaite dictum that caste and class are often coterminous in India. For “people like us”, accustomed to the ruling class parties, AAP’s challenge is unsettling.

In its religious policy, AAP is not peddling Hinduism with a sense of dedication. Hinduism for AAP is a strategy to deny the BJP any kind of monopoly on such iconic figures as Rama. “You build the Rama temple; we shall arrange Ram Darshan, for the devotees.” The latter is a continuous activity.

It is not promoting the Hindu card; it is diluting the BJP’s monopoly of it.

Little wonder it makes the BJP go mad. It places all the arsenal on the Delhi Lt. Governor’s shoulders and fires relentlessly to immobilize AAP. Gujarat and Delhi Municipal Corporation results will determine future politics to some extent. Despite the Bharat Jodo Yatra, temple hopping and holy dipping, why is there no threat from the Congress corner?

An ironical twist attends the Congress fortune in the coming days. Should the Congress come a cropper in every outing in the coming weeks, all the regional parties will come running for cheap bargains in preparation for 2024.

Hopes may be dashed because there may be no bargains to strike. The Congress may take the position that Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi Municipal elections were not what the party was preparing to showcase. Mallikarjun Kharge as party President was yet to find his feet.

Above all, the Rahul loyalists are so cock-a-hoop about the Bharat Jodo Yatra which is expected to climax in January-February when it reaches Jammu and Kashmir. What will be the mood in the valley? How will the Kashmiri Pandits regard a Congress led yatra? And what if the BJP stokes its variant of nationalism by screening the Kashmir Files in Jammu?

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