Differences With US On Gaza As Israel Lobby Works Over Time

Differences With US On Gaza As Israel Lobby Works Over Time

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

A brutal tragedy is being played out on an epic scale between Israel and Gaza. Though the scale is truly epic, it still constitutes but a sub plot in the cosmic drama of a hegemon’s fall, to describe which Milton’s description on another epochal fall is apt:

“From morn till noon he fell,

From noon to Dewey eve.”

This is a particularly poignant moment for the US because at least two of its stellar proteges are at risk. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is riding a tiger. Should he dismount, he will be devoured – so he must continue pounding a hapless people.

The other protégé, Volodymyr Zelensky is running around, cap in hand: “Please Sir, may I have some more.”

The genocidal war continues but US would not like to be seen to have pressed for a ceasefire without terminating Hamas. The absurdity of this war will dawn on Tel Aviv and Washington when the guns fall silent, because Hamas will still be there possibly more rejuvenated.

In Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata, named after the Emiliano Zapata who led a peasant revolt against a corrupt Mexican landlord, the army surround the hero (played by Marlon Brando) and pump a hail of bullets in him to make absolutely certain in their state of funk that Emiliano is dead. In a symbolic last shot Kazan focuses his camera on Emiliano’s trusted white stallion dancing in the hills. The Idea of Zapata will ride on.

Netanyahu and his fearsome right wing make rational debate impossible. US displeasure matters not a jot to them because Israel, by their lights, is not protected by the US. It is protected by books of the Old Testament contained in the Torah.

This reminds me of a huge distortion in the Idea of Israel that has always puzzled me. The projection of the conflict in Israel in Muslim-Judaic terms is patently false.

In Andalusia, Spain, Jewish philosophers like Maimonides who complied the Mishneh Torah, were much celebrated during the long Muslim rule. During the “Reconquista” when Muslims and Jews were hounded out by the Inquisition, Jews found refuge in Morocco, where the Royal Palace to this day invites representative form the world Jewry for an annual jamboree. I interviewed the second most powerful man in the Kingdom, Andre Azoulay, a Jew, principal adviser to the King.

This explained photographs of King Hasan V on the walls of many Sephardic Jews in Jerusalem. This is only one of the social habits which separates Sephardics from the Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from Europe and Russia. They control most of the levers of state power. Prime Minister Menachem Begin was leader of Irgun the avowedly Israeli terrorist organization responsible for blowing up the British headquarters at Jerusalem’s King David hotel killing 96 British subjects in 1946.

This digressive flourish simply to provide perspective. And now that president Biden is unequivocal that Israeli bombing of Gaza is “indiscriminate” I suspect he has gone as far as he can. But will the Minister of Defence, Yoar Gallant and Minister for Internal Security Ben Gvir take note? Their support base flaunts Biblical guarantees to neutralize most US advice which moderates hardline “Bibi” Netanyahu’s position.

Very often Washington has to look over its shoulders at the all powerful Israel lobby before outlining serious policy options on Israel. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s classic “The Israel Lobby” is strewn with nuggets on the Lobby’s extraordinary influence. An American participant at Camp David in 2000 told the authors: “Far too often, we functioned as Israel’s lawyers.”

It is established beyond the shadow of a doubt that on matter relating to Israel, the Lobby can trump any policy. Remember how Barack Obama’s opposition to a Netanyahu visit was thwarted: the Israeli Prime Minister sailed over the president’s head and addressed a joint session of Congress.

Biden’s words of caution to minimize civilian deaths have been largely ignored during the current Israeli brutalities. In this operation as in previous ones, Israel derives its impurity largely from the Lobby’s capacity to manipulate the US establishment.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s signal to Netanyahu two weeks ago was clear: you must complete the operation of “destroying” Hamas within limited time. Civilian deaths on this scale are leading to a collapse of support worldwide. The ground situation shows Dresden like destruction, but there is no evidence of Hamas having been destroyed.

To the contrary, the Chief Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Hossein Salami says Israel are in a “quagmire” because “Palestinian youth” are adopting new methods. “So far 180 of their 1,600 tanks have been destroyed.” The number of dead Israeli soldiers is in three digits.

This is a do or die situation for Israel as well as its patron, the US. Vladimir Putin, whose nose the West was determined to rub in the dust ever since the “Special Operations” began in Ukraine on 24^th February, 2022, looked none the worse after nearly two years of military operations, even as he visited Saudi Arabia and UAE and received Iran’s President Raisi in Moscow. Meanwhile a high powered EU delegation, European Council President, Charles Michael and European Commission President, Ursula Von der Leyen trooped in to meet President Xi Jinping and implored him to use his influence in Moscow to end the conflict in Ukraine.

Just when Ukraine and Gaza were both looking unmanageable, Nicolas Maduro has opened up a front claiming 61,000 km oil and gas rich disputed Essequibo enclave on the border with former British colony, Guyana.

Venezuela is right under the US’s nose. Moreover, just a year ago Washington had produced from its hat one Guan Guaido as its preferred President. The country is oil rich, you see. The eager beaver initiative was abandoned because it was so patently childish. Now Maduro’s move has invited a tepid response from Secretary of State Blinken. He turned up in Guyana but said not a word about the disputes. President Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson once famously thundered. “The Monroe doctrine is still alive.” Really?

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Post Gaza Query: Israel In New World Order Minus The Hegemon?

Post Gaza Query: Israel In New World Order Minus The Hegemon?

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

When the dust settles on the Israel-Gaza war, Israel will be confronted with an existential question: should it redesign itself to harmonize with the region and beyond? Or continue in old, exceptional ways?

The exclusive Israeli-style vengeance witnessed in the 51 days of bombardment, a jaw for a tooth, was possible only with the US hegemon standing four square behind all of Israel’s actions.

The situation today is this: BRICS are standing firm while G7 are falling apart even the issue of the Israel-Gaza conflict. A target must quickly swim into their ken to keep the G7 in anxious huddle.

What might this target be? Who knows Islamic terror may well spiral upwards from the ashes of Gaza. This is a plausible line of speculation. An initiative to resurrect Islamic menace has already been taken by Noor Gilon, the Israeli Ambassador to New Delhi. With considerable alacrity, he has sought to enlist India’s support for the project by fulfilling his end of the bargain: Israel has recognized Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organization. It has thereby poked two fingers in Pakistan’s eye. This, the Israelis assume will please New Delhi so much that it may be moved, by way of reciprocation, to proscribe HAMAS as a terrorist organization.

In other words, Israel proscribes Pakistan based LET as terrorist but India shirks from casting HAMAS in similar terms. Some may not spot the non sequitur. The media, particularly in the West, in its current form must not be expected to insert the umpteen arguments New Delhi may have for its equivocation. Israeli ambassador’s initiative falls far short of the florid imagery employed by the Ukraine ambassador to describe Russian troops in Ukraine: “Like Moghul massacre of Rajputs.”

The Israeli initiative came at a time when HAMAS was more in the news than ever before but so was Gaza, with optics so horrible as to make the Israeli sales pitch unbelievably insensitive. Across the globe, television viewers in countless millions, see HAMAS and Palestinian resistance as one. It must all be extremely embarrassing for Mahmoud Abbas, the notional leader of the Palestinian authority whom US and Israel hope to foist as leader, quite incongruously, of men holding wounded babies in their arm, women carrying their meagre belongings to few know where, bombed hospitals and scenes of horror like Dresden in the movies. Those bearing the pain don’t know Abbas.

The idea to resurrect Islamic terror as the last ditch effort to patch up a crumbing world order has many takers but credit for its earliest authorship goes to former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He was fiercely opposed to picking quarrels with Russia because that would divide Europe, he argued. Islamic extremism attracts a wider coalition which, according to him would include Russia and China. After all, the last two countries had their own “Muslim” problems in the Caucasus and Xinxiang.

In disgrace for having fudged an official document to go to war in Iraq, Blair persisted nevertheless: the West will pay a heavy price for not entering the war in Syria, he warned.

Blair was a holdover from the George W. Bush era, the Sole Superpower moment. In fact the Anglo-saxon trio of Bush, Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard were in the vanguard promoting post 9/11 Islamic terror as a suitable substitute for the vanished Soviet Union cast as the enemy to sustain Western cohesion. AUKUS has the same three in concert. The concept seemed valid until the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Francis Fukuyama’s End of History proved wrong.

Antecedents to the post 9/11 Islamophobia could be traced to 1973 Yom Kippur war when the Arabs did so well as to give the Gulf States the self confidence to quadruple the price of oil. Pockets bulging with petro-dollars, the Shaikhs of Araby turned up in London to see the rain. Savoy and Dorchester hotels had “full occupancy” notices hanging in the lobby, all booked by the Shaikhs. Marks and Spencer had signs in Arabic. Savile Row oversold. Anti Christ had entered the citadel. To get even, publishers gave hefty advances to V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie for Among the Believers and Satanic Verses.

The booming economies of the Gulf States attracted Indian labour primarily from Kerala. The State’s neat, austere skyline began to be dotted with garish “Dubai houses”. Resentment at Muslims (mostly) acquiring new prosperity spilt over into communalism. This coincided with Gen. Zia ul Haq beaming Nizam e Mustafa from Pakistan, tremors from the Meenakshipuram conversions – all boosting communalism locally which was, in due course, to tie up with global Islamophobia, one reinforcing the other.

It was thick saffron on which Narendra Modi climbed to power in Gujarat in October 2001. On October 18 that year began US fireworks over Afghanistan. The media space was saturated with rocket attacks on Kabul, boosting Islamophobia sky high. Under this canopy, the Gujarat pogrom of February 2002 appeared to have international endorsement. Hindutva basked in the thought that the war on terror would help it prosper. But it was soon noticed that war on terror created more terror.

Egged on by the neo-cons seeking comprehensive global dominance, Washington’s lightening war on terrorism began with Afghanistan. It ended ignominiously with the messiest departure from a country the US had occupied for 20 years.

By now the decline of the US, rise of China, emergence of a multipolar world, weakening G7 and an expanding BRICS were all causing anxiety. After the Afghan debacle, westward expansion of NATO upto the Ukraine-Russia border became the provocation for another war. Russia would be brought down on its knees, Putin’s nose would be rubbed in the dust and, willy nilly, a victory would be manufactured to resurrect the hegemon. Alas, victory eluded the US once again.

All of this imbues the current round between Israel and Gaza with consequences way beyond the immediate. Either a beginning towards a two-state solution softens the Arab view of Israel. Or Israel continues looking for support for all its tantrums by a hegemon which is in retreat.

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Decoding Nasrallah’s Speech And Blinken’s Frenetic Diplomacy

Decoding Nasrallah’s Speech And Blinken’s Frenetic Diplomacy

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

The speech last Friday by the Hezbollah Supremo, Hassan Nasrallah, arguably the most popular leader in the Arab street, has evoked mixed responses. The less familiar with the caverns of West Asian affairs expected the speech to be a precursor of greater fire power in support of Hamas to deter more Israeli barbarity being visited on the Palestinians in Gaza.

This view obscures the reality that more firepower will only aggravate the suffering of Gaza without promise of any alteration in the direction of events. It is the new direction that Nasrallah is interested in.

Nasrallah’s reputation is not built on his eloquence and rhetoric alone but on his credibility: he does what he says. He demanded an immediate ceasefire to end the unspeakable suffering of Palestinians. He talked of the “constructive ambiguity” embedded in his statement. What could that be? He was clear that all options, which presumably includes full scale war, were on the table.

Delay in ceasefire augments the ranks of martyrs and lights prairie fires of revulsion against Israeli barbarity encouraged by the US wherever people watch television. In other words, the publicity war has been lost – and losses will mount unless Israel cuts its losses. What will follow a ceasefire? All denominations involved have their preferred scenarios for the Day of Judgement.

Moves on the regional chessboard by the US have been reactive, not innovative at all. At the September G20 summit in New Delhi, the US launched the idea of a New Delhi, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Europe corridor modelled quite unabashedly on China’s Belt and Road initiative.

The initiative to be credible required a Riyadh-Jerusalem rapprochement. This was problematic because a completely contradictory rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran had already been put in place under Chinese auspices. Saudi strongman Mohammad bin Salman would have to be unbelievably fickle to unclasp Tehran’s hand and, like a trapeze artist, clasp Tel Aviv’s.

This is not what was happening in any case. MBS, as the Saudi Crown Prince is called, has evolved impressively in statecraft from his earlier brash days. He was not in the deal at the behest of the US for a blind date with the Israelis. He would have spelt out conditions for normalization. In spelling out conditions he would have taken into account Iran’s firm stand on Palestine. The October 7 startling attack by Hamas and Israel’s horrendous retaliation has clearly ensured the closure of the America’s Saudi-Israel file – for the near future atleast.

With the expiry of the initiative, the post October 7 scenario with global public opinion ablaze against the Israeli-US duet, groups other than Hamas who are harvesting wide sympathy are all associated with Iran, Hezbollah, and a web of Popular Mobilization Fronts like Hashd al Shaabi in Iraq and their look-alikes across Syria, Yemen, Lebanon. These militias had been knit together by the late Iranian Commander Qasim Suleimani. Such a menace had these militias become that western intelligence had to eliminate Suleimani by a drone attack outside Baghdad airport in January 2020. Suleimani was the author of the kind of military preparedness which Hamas demonstrated in its attack. The secrecy and the professionalism are all derived from Suleimani’s book.

Since the success of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the West has harboured an interest in playing up the Shia-Sunni divide for its own and Israel’s advantage. At one stage even thinkers like Henry Kissinger advanced the thesis that the Arab world was exhausted with the Palestinian issue. It was much more focused on the Shia-Sunni divide. Without much attention to detail, the media propounded the idea of “a Shia arc” which encircled Israel – Iran, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria and, incongruously, Hamas which is anything but Shia.

Hamas is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammad Morsi of the Brothers was removed as Egypt’s Prime Minister by a coup in 2013 and General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi installed instead, after some wrangling between the State Department and the Pentagon. Morsi was removed for two reasons – Muslim Brotherhood’s continuity from Cairo to Gaza was a “threat to Israel’s Security.” Also, the Saudis were having kittens with the rise of the Brothers in the most powerful Arab country.

Egypt is not exempt from the unprecedented anger in the Arab street, and basement, at the inhuman pounding of Gaza by Israel. Sisi, therefore, must be an extremely anxious man today.

It is understandable that in an atmosphere of mass anger, meeting President Biden would have been the kiss of death for Arab leaders. Normally Secretaries of State paved the way for Presidential meetings. In a strange reversal of roles, Biden having drawn a blank with his favoured Arabs, Anthony Blinken is hopping from one Muslim capital to another to retrieve an irretrievably lost glory.

What is the theme of Blinken’s frenetic activity? Iran, Hezbollah and, indeed, the Shia arc will be cajoled and threatened not to expand the conflict. Nasrallah was specific that all scenarios are possible if the pummeling of Gaza does not stop. Expansion of the conflict will also draw in powers from outside the region.

The backdrop to Blinken’s diplomacy is the unannounced reversal in Ukraine. US’s continued role in Ukraine is more an evidence, of its deep pockets than its capacity to deliver victory to a demoralized Zelensky.

It is commonly accepted that the US will now onwards be one among equals in a multipolar world with a proviso – it remains militarily the world’s most powerful country.

One consequence of US’s new condition may well be isolationism. This would depend on the turn competition with China takes. Israel’s greatest worry is US isolationism, its attention focused elsewhere. Israel is secure so long as it continues to be Imperialism’s outpost in West Asia.

Clearly, Blinken would like to bring together Sunni Arab states into a responsible role in Gaza. But can these moves be in harmony with the outraged public opinion in the Arab world?

How can the present public mood be kept in alignment with the continuation of, say, Sisi and Mahmoud Abbas, two individuals on whose heads redundancy looms.

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Putin, Jinping Not Attending G20: Modi Sole Voice of Global South?

Putin, Jinping Not Attending G20: Modi Sole Voice of Global South?

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

The absence of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping from the G20 Summit opens the field for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to play the sole voice of the “Global South”. Given his talent for choreography, he will rise to the occasion. Indeed, Modi will make it an event more spectacular than Independence Day at the Red Fort when he walked down the blazing red carpet with athletic bounce.

His media advisers will anguish over a different matter: how to balance his solo performance with the state visit of President Joe Biden, the world’s most powerful man struggling not to be seen in decline. The G20 will be his event too.

The twin events, in days of yore, would be an editor’s nightmare. President Kennedy shot dead in Dallas. This coincided with an Indian tragedy: five generals of the Indian Armed Forces died in a copter crash the same day. Editors anguished: which story should they lead with.

No such anguish in store for the editors today. They have been downgraded by the channels. The channels will receive instructions from the minions of the master choreographer. It will be fascinating to see how anchors conceal their obsequiousness.

Once the dust settle on the G20, both, Modi and Biden, will be staring at their 2024 election prospects. Biden’s deadline is fixed: elections in November, next year. It is ofcourse a matter of interest whether Biden will be able to bag the Democratic nomination.

Modi by now is an expert handler of American Presidents. He has come a long way from the early “Barack, Barack” days when someone tried to drape him in a pinstripe suit with his name embroidered in between the stripes.

At the “Howdy-Modi” event in Houston, 2019, he was audacious enough to put his arms around the then President Donald Trump and proclaim “Abki baar, Trump Sarkar”. Which meant that his “hope” for the 2020 US election was that Trump would win.

Trump didn’t. Indeed, when Biden won, Pundits, generally off the mark, thought the new President would be cold to “Modi”. The configuration of global power play since the US’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and rank miscalculation in Ukraine has placed India in a sweet spot: it is wooed by the US as well as Russia. Since Russia and China are sworn to a friendship with “no limit” Modi may be tempted to take temporary risks with China. Russia will be expected to bridge the New Delhi-Beijing distance should it increase, say, in the context of the Biden visit.

Washington’s wishlist from the Summit would include a mention of Ukraine in the final communique, a statement by Volodymyr Zelensky at least virtually, give Modi’s dexterous navigation between BRICS and QUAD a nudge towards the grouping designed to encircle China.

New Delhi too will be reading the fine print of US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen’s talks in Beijing. On her heels, virtually, was Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimando, looking very chastened as she engaged her Chinese counterpart. Not to be left behind was James Cleverly, British Foreign Secretary. The Beijing-Washington traffic is soaring. Military intentions are not on show. Even containment should be made of sterner stuff.

What then, does one make of all the anxious punditry coming out of US think tanks that the US is making a bad bet on India if it imagines that the country will ever be part of military action against China. The grouse in these US circles is that the word “alliance” is anathema to New Delhi. Washington on the other hand does not feel secure enough with terms like “partnership”, within which even “interoperability is taboo. The fear is that New Delhi will tease but not go to bed. After the consistent Washington-Beijing exchange of high level visits, in the bargain in any case is not a commitment in perpetuity. This three way pirouette is as much a test of affections as of stamina.

The outcome of the summit as well as the crucial bilateral visit will be determined not by what happens but how the western media plays up the event. It must project Biden carrying away a bagful of goodies. What will these be?

Much greater urgency attends what Modi is seen to be carrying away. For the first time in the recent past will an Indian Prime Minister be projected by the media, which is already in his thrall, as one at ease and familiar with the world’s most powerful leaders? Will Modi come across with a sufficiently stellar performance enabling him to advance the date of the 2024 elections. He will thus be able to avoid head winds that possible defeats in the four state elections might generate.

It is another matter that for the first time since World War II, that halo which marks the most powerful will be absent. Indeed the leaders will look as diminished as the collective West does and which has been in decline since the financial crisis of 2008.

Pick them out one by one, beginning with France’s Emanuel Macron. Just consider the egg on his face in Francophone Africa. Burkina Faso, Mali now Niger, one coup after another. The US has a military base in Niger. What for?

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa invited 35 African countries to the recently concluded BRICS summit in Johannesburg. The leaders acquainted themselves with the rapid expansion of BRICS as their emancipators from the colonial, hegemonic world order which filled western coffers and left Africans in poverty.

As focus turns to Africa, a new colonial, imperial chapter is opening up. We are told that western troops in Africa were fighting Islamic terrorism. Really, or were they supervising western loot? The US had built a $110 million drone base in Agadez, Niger. It is the largest drone base in the world. Over 1,000 US soldiers are deployed in the country. All this exertions to fight ISIS and Al Qaeda?

Why do these coups resonate well with the people? In Niger, thousands turned up to register for army duty as demanded by the coup leaders.

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Why Putin Will Not Attend G20; Will Xi Jinping?

Why Putin Will Not Attend G20; Will Xi Jinping?

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

It was known that President Vladimir Putin will not attend the G20, but will Xi Jinping attend? Let me take up Putin first:

Putin did not attend the Bali Summit last November. The reasons that kept him away from that meeting have not gone away. Why then would he have acted differently on this occasion?

Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, attended in his place. When he got up to speak, participants from the West walked out. The western media, in the drill for just such an event, took the focus away from all the wonderful things Indonesian President, Joko Widodo was planning for his guests.

Putin is a target in another league. He has been thoroughly demonized, painted in the most lurid colours as one whom Senator Lindsay Graham wanted to be assassinated and who the US President himself called “butcher, butcher...” so many times that this security staff were sprayed. Putin’s appearance would have inspired the media to a higher level of defilement. Never mind if the next morning serious G20 events appeared in very small print. Putin would have been splashed all over looking like Mephistopheles. So, just as well he skipped the meeting.

For the New Delhi summit President Joe Biden has already announced his participation. Indeed, he is arriving a day earlier. He will have enough time to twist Modi’s arm. Biden and his cohorts had more or less given notice that should Putin as much as peep into the summit through a crack in the door, they will raise such hell that Narendra Modi’s party will be spoilt.

There is sufficient trust between Modi and Putin that the latter’s non appearance will be seen for what it is. This outcome will also demonstrate a certain ambidextrous finesse on New Delhi’s part:

Sheikh bhi khush rahe

Shaitan bhi naraaz na ho

(Pleasing God without offending the devil)

The takeaway for Putin is the non mention of Ukraine in the final communique. European diplomats, with the Germans taking the lead, had tried every trick, at every level in South Block, to somehow insert Ukraine in the final document.

Even psychological games were played. “Indian position on Ukraine is changing” went the whisper in the galleries. Before this one had subsided, another rumour was floated, “Russian position is changing so a mention of Ukraine in the final document will be appropriate.” South Block has most skillfully walked through the minefield.

Regardless, the pressure from the West is relentless. “Can Volodymyr Zelensky be invited?” or “can he atleast make an appearance?”

Enabling Ukraine’s President to gatecrash into summits is not just an imaginary happening. The script was played out at the summit of the G7 at Nagasaki. Japan at the outset apparently said “no”.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has mastered the art of playing both sides of the street. Not surprising then that an official, French aircraft landed at Nagasaki with the embattled President of the Republic of Ukraine, Zelensky, holed up inside. Zelensky was not embarrassed; he appeared at the summit.

Similar maneuvers are on to give him entre at the New Delhi venue too. Modi, a master choreographer, is not going to allow any amount of arm twisting to spoil the décor of his show. But supposing he is presented with a fait accompli: Zelensky has been delivered at the main gate by, say, the Germans. Will the gate remain shut?

Xi Jinping’s arrival or non arrival is a different story. Modi and the Chinese leader met on the margins of the Bali summit as well as during the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. Peace and tranquility in the border areas and respect for the LAC were stressed. “Unresolved issues” are India’s concern and the two leaders agreed to work towards disengagement and de-escalation.

If Xi does not undertake the journey because of “other pressing matters”, the signal will be that the delegations are inching towards an agreement. As soon as the gap between the two sides closes, it will be Modi’s call – when to celebrate?

Now? Before the 2024 elections or afterwards?

Spokesmen for Xi and Modi cannot look credible saying the same thing from Bali, Johannesburg and now New Delhi. What is in the bargain is not just a border issue but what course lies in store for two ancient, proud civilizations, countries with the world’s two largest populations, vastly in excess of a billion each. These are easy comparisons. Thereafter, the complications begin. China is miles ahead of India in economic and military power and social cohesion.

India would obviously like to catch up. Towards this end it keeps a very firm line of friendship with the US which, unlike European nations, sees China as a threat.

As palpitations on account of China’s rise have picked up in Washington, so has the price tag on India’s friendship gone up in value? During his visit to Washington in June Modi picked up some rewards of goodwill. Rewards will keep increasing so long as India sustains its adversarial stance with China.

Against this background, all this talk of Xi and Modi walking under banners, buntings, confetti after a border deal is sealed, disturbs Washington, which bestowed on Modi the sort of defence technology deals which are meant only for close allies. The term “alliance” is anathema to New Delhi. It prefers “partnership”.

In its sole superpower moment, Washington had the might to obtain signatures even on blank affidavit papers. No longer, particularly after the drubbing the hegemon’s image has received in all its military outings since the Vietnam War, climaxed by the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and now fighting to the last Ukrainian towards heaven knows what end.

An anxiety riven headline on the cover of the Economist, “What if China and India make up?” comes across as a function of an acute lack of self confidence. In this state of mind, a Washington-Beijing entente, on the other side of the horizon, is not unthinkable.

The late T.K. Kaul’s description of the New Delhi, Beijing and Washington equation as “the tantalizing triangle” was apt.

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From Pakistan To El Salvador: The Bleak Future Of Liberal Democracy

From Pakistan To El Salvador: The Bleak Future Of Liberal Democracy

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Liberal democracy, the one that is yoked to capitalism, already in hopeless disrepair worldwide, received another drubbing next door in Pakistan. With innovative audacity, the establishment attempted to play Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. The Prince, in this case, has been locked up in jail.

It happened like this.

The Pakistan Cricket Control Board produced a video clip on the history of Pakistan cricket. This was in preparation for the World Cup being played by 10 teams across 48 matches in every available cricket stadium in India from October 5 to November 19.

The existence of the video was brought to popular notice by the legendary Pakistani fast bowler, Wasim Akram in a tweet. Soon upon landing in Sri Lanka to cover one of the warm up matches for the World Cup, Akram received what he described as the “greatest shock of my life”: he found the “great Imran Khan’s” name missing from the video. And, Imran it was who, as captain, won the 1992 World Cup for Pakistan. How obviously malicious.

Whatever the political differences in Pakistan, said Akram, no one disputes the fact that Imran Khan is “an icon of world cricket and it was he who developed Pakistan into a strong unit in his time and gave us a pathway: PCB should delete the video and apologize to Imran Khan.”

Such spontaneous outburst from Wasim Akram, himself one of the all time greats of world cricket, could not have remained a solo reaction. Thousands of Akram’s follower who woke upto the scandal because of his tweet, have obviously saturated the twitter space with protests. How long does it take for such anger to spill onto the street or simmer in the basement?

The strength of popular mobilization behind the Tehreek e Insaf supremo must have hit the Pakistani establishment between the eyes. The PCB, in a state of funk, decided to take corrective action by resurrecting Imran – giving him his rightful place in the world cup 2023 promotional video.

The shoddy effort to deny Imran Khan a place in the cricketing universe is not dissimilar to the establishment hounding him out of the political turf on which Imran Khan happens to be the most popular politician in Pakistan’s history. Apparently the Board of Control for Cricket in India has measured upto their Pakistani counterpart. In their promotional video they have left out Babar Azam, world’s number one ODI batsman.

A bright 11^th grade schoolboy, a cricket freak, stumped me with his question: “If Imran Khan is the most popular politician in Pakistan, why is he in jail?”

Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, Establishments have increasingly replaced the people as arbiters of electoral outcome. If people had been the arbiters, Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK would have defeated their rivals by wide margins.

A Fox News poll published in 2016 showed that Bernie Sanders had at +28 rating, above all US politicians on both sides of the political spectrum. This prompted Trevor Timm of The Guardian to do some plain speaking: “one would have thought with numbers like that Democratic politicians would be falling all over themselves to be associated with Sanders, especially considering that the party as a whole is more unpopular than the Republicans including Donald Trump. Yet instead of embracing his message, the Establishment wing of the party continues to resist him at almost every turn.”

Let me give you just one tiny example of how establishments assert themselves in determining electoral politics. During the primaries for the democratic nomination in 2020, as in 2016, Sanders was galloping ahead of others in the field. To arrest his advance, Michael Bloomberg, billionaire and former Mayor of New York, entered the race. His entry had to be played up. Appeared two full-fledged op-ed columns by the NYT’s Thomas Friedman, who began one of his columns….”I like Mike because……..etc.”

Similar maneuvering in 2016 had the effect of bringing Donald Trump to power. John Kerry, Secretary of State, could not bring himself to consider Trump a serious happening. He met statesmen across the globe who, he said, were bewildered at the prospect of Trump entering the White House. Columnist Surjit Bhalla went one better: he lamented with all the amplifiers on, “Trump’s victory will be the end of western civilization.”

My stand had been straightforward. “If you make Sanders impossible you will make Trump inevitable.”

In the context of Pakistan, a variant of the same formulation applies. “If you make Imran Khan impossible, you make Army rule inevitable.” India qualifies for a critical appraisal too. It requires a separate column in greater detail.

Acquiescence in this general hollowing out of democracies will deliver us to a destination which the 11^th grader of this narrative will find deceptively attractive. The headline in a recent issue of the Economist is scary, and not only for Latin Americans. “Young Latin Americans are unusually open to autocrats.” The infection is spreading.

In a recent international poll in Latin America, respondents were asked to rate their approval of 17 world leaders on a scale of one to ten. On a list which included Pope Francis and Volodymyr Zelensky, guess which world politician has the highest approval rating among people across Latin America? This approval is even stronger among the young.

This extraordinarily popular leader surfaced in 2019 as 37 year old Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador wearing on his sleeves the promise of eliminating gangsterism, which is endemic in his country.

With such impunity did he embark on “gang crackdown” in March 2022, that 87 people were murdered in a single weekend. More than 70,000 young men are in prison. Bukele, who calls himself “The World’s Coolest Dictator”, is readying himself for 2024 general elections. With an approval rating of over 80 percent, the backwards baseball wearing dictator prepares himself to drive a nice, long nail in the coffin of liberal democracy, even as a peace of the graveyard descends on El Salvador. Remember, the President is only 41.

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Response To No Confidence Debate: Modi’s 2024 Election Speech?

Response To No Confidence Debate: Modi’s 2024 Election Speech?

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

Shart e saliqa hai har ek amr mein,

Aeb bhi karne ko hunar chaahiyey

                                                      Mir Taqi Mir

(There is a condition: you need skill,

Even doing the bad thing well)

The no confidence debate in Parliament was the opposition’s plan B. Since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi obstinately refused to make a statement on the three month long violence in Manipur, the opposition set up a debate as a frame within which it could slot Manipur.

In other words, Manipur would be a square on the chessboard and speakers on both sides of the aisle would have all the 64 squares to amble or sprint on in the course of the debate.

The strategy provided Modi with the opportunity to tease and taunt the opposition, to strut all over the board for 90 minutes of his 120 minutes speech without as much as mentioning Manipur. Only when an exasperated opposition walked out and the Prime Minister saw the last few opposition members sulking out that he swiftly switched to Manipur.

It was like a prank: I shall starve you of my voice on Manipur. Only when I see the backs of you will I give the House my take on the North East.

In the latter part of his speech, as in the earlier one, he proceeded to joust with the Congress and I.N.D.I.A., alternately. He extracted a giggle for his take on I.N.D.I.A. as “two Is inserted in NDA.” The Is, he suggested, stood for the all important Ego.

The second I presumably stood for Indira Gandhi who became the prime target as he turned his attention to Manipur. On 5 March 1966, according to Modi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered aerial bombardment of Manipur. He did not spare Jawaharlal Nehru either.

What was Nehru to be blamed for? Well, during the 1962 debacle with China in a radio broadcast Nehru said his heart went out to the people of Assam. Not a word about the North East.

When Modi had a formidable list of Congress misdeeds in his bag he started trotting them out, one by one. What followed sent something like this:

Modi: Who ordered air strikes on Manipur?

Treasury benches in chorus: Congress!

Modi did this serially, his MPs picking up the cue like they had been in the drill for years. I doubt if Lok Sabha had ever witnessed such a circus. And the performance was only for the TV cameras. The opposition had walked out by now.

Modi’s control on his flock is breathtaking.

Opposite this brigade, in perfect lock step, was the nascent I.N.D.I.A. alliance, the glue still fresh between the crevices.

Modi almost gave notice that he will do his best to disrupt the new alliance. A simple ploy to keep the alliance unsettled is to project the 2024 general elections as a Modi versus Rahul Gandhi contest. The allies will be scared stiff at this projection and some may even jump off.

It is a disruptive issue to be raised at this stage of the proceedings. That is why it suits Modi’s election machinery of which a large section of the media has chosen to be a part, to play Modi and RG as principal combatants in the 2024 electoral Kurukshetra.

There persists, nevertheless, a coterie of the impatient who privately believe this projection is valid. Why not, they ask, after the new image RG has acquired? Which new image? Well, RG’s image has received a considerable boost after the success of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Also the smooth functioning of Malikarjun Kharge as party President and RG as one team is laudable.

Descendants of Ram Manohar Lohia’s socialist party are now in the new alliance. They were reminded by Modi of Lohia’s sharp criticism of Nehru, including the latter’s neglect of the North East. This is just a foretaste of the assaults on the alliance which will become sharper as campaigning picks up. In many ways Modi’s response to the debate was his first 2024 election speech. The slogan for the campaign was clear as daylight: give me a third term and I guarantee that “we shall be the world’s third greatest economy.”

There are minefields I.N.D.I.A. has to go through before it welds into a stable front. One example of a mine which could impede progress is the Congress’s equation with, say, TRS (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi). Pundits had earlier placed Congress at number 3 in the race. The real tussle was between TRS and the BJP. More recently punters are changing their bets. The closest contest could be between TRS and the Congress. How will these swords be placed in the same scabbard? Contradictions are strewn all over the turf which straddles I.N.D.I.A.

In the three day debate why did RG choose to make an appearance on the second day when a large number of TV watchers did not expect him to? There was great expectation on the first day. What was the advice from the media team, assuming that the party has one? By switching his slot to the second day, RG, Congress and I.N.D.I.A. lost hundreds of thousands of viewers.

There are two broad questions being asked of his performance. Does he have the making of a statesman of gravitas who marshals his facts and develops the architecture of his presentation in a forum like Parliament?

The other is: Has he outgrown his somewhat boyish demeanour? Let us face it, with considerable brevity he was able to pin Modi down with sharp questions. Why have you neither visited Manipur nor spoken on the state which has been burning for three months? And, why are you trailing, with a matchbox in hand, the kerosene (communalism) you have sprinkled across the country? Ofcourse, Modi said nothing.

Sadly, there was no one in the opposition ranks or on the treasury benches who could ask RG and his cohorts “Why have you not visited Haryana which has been on fire since July 31 – it is barely an hour’s drive from New Delhi?”

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Communalism In Haryana Wasn’t As Catastrophic As Its Authors Intended

Communalism In Haryana Wasn’t As Catastrophic As Its Authors Intended

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

If the purpose of the communal flare up in several districts of Haryana was to condition the electoral trend in Rajasthan, create the “suitable” mood for the 2024 general elections, boost chances of Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s third term and spread some tension in the National Capital Region, I am afraid the BJP will have to do better. This soufflé did not quite rise.

Much to BJP’s chagrin, an obstacle in their path is the evolving Jat-Muslim social cohesion. This almost organic Jat-Muslim evolution has to be disrupted to make way for politics of polarization.

Effort is on in Haryana to create a cleavage between Muslims and Jats. At Mandkola, a Jat village in Palwal, a gathering was addressed by the members of the Bajrang Dal exhorting “Hindus” to consolidate against Muslims.

The divisive effort did not go very far. A panchayat in the neighbouring Muslim village of Kot the very next day was devoted almost entirely to maintaining communal harmony at all costs. That it was a Muslim village is misleading. Let me explain.

A Paal in the local system is a part of a “Khap” a Jat or Meo group which maintains the tradition social hierarchy. At the panchayat in Kot, the Muslim “Paals” – Shiklot, Magariya, Damrote and Hindu “Paals” – Rawat, Saushet, Sahrawat, jointly endorsed “harmony at all costs.” The infection from Kot and Mandkola will spread making wider concentric circles.

What must remain a puzzle to people who, over the past 40 years, have grown accustomed to Hindus and Muslims at loggerheads, is that the two major communities in a neighbouring state under BJP rule have established a bond of peace.

One reason for this harmony in the past centuries was the Meo’s unabashed contemplation of themselves as converts from Hinduism – they took pride in the culture derived from their Hindu ancestry.

A progressive Meo I met retained his name which clearly revealed his ancestry – Zafar Meo Yaduvanshi. In our caste-religion ridden system, the integrated aspects of Meo culture have not found multitudes of admirers.

The surge of Muslim reform movements had their impact. The reformist “Mullah” found Meo culture too “Hindu”. Hindu society gradually under the spell of Arya Samaj and later political Hinduism found the “reformed” Meos “too Muslim.” Buffeted from both sides, some Meos began to change.

I remember distinguished Meo lawyer, Ramzan Chaudhry, make a clear admission. “I was embarrassed that my mother did Goverdhan puja.” Despite all the exertions for the “Islamization” of the Meo and Hinduization of the Jat, how have the two come on the same side?

A simple reason for Jats being against the Centre is official indifference to the agitation for Jat reservation.

Second, and much more important in welding Jats and Muslims, was the Kisaan Andolan or the Farmers’ agitation in which the Meos stood four square with the Jats. In this regard the Jats of Palwal, Sohna, Gurugram sentimentally remember “our Sikh brothers”. The generosity with which they opened “langars” or feeding centres is the stuff of legends in the Jat belt.

To run these large feeding Centres over months, the Sikh organization occasionally needed help from Jats. In one instance the Centres needed hundreds of litres of milk.

Jats, who once kept cows and buffalos have, in many instances moved on to other means of livelihood. Gujjars now keep dairy animals but they are traditionally opposed to Jats. They refused to help in this instance. The shortfall in milk was made up by Meo Muslim dairy farmers, a fact that the Jats will never forget.

In the recent agitation by women wrestlers, who happen to be Jats, the community again had total support from Muslims.

In other words Jats and Muslims are arrayed against the Bajrang Dal’s efforts to consolidate the Hindu fold. Brahmins, Thakurs, Gujjars are on the opposite side.

There is a huge lesson in the Meo-Jat bonding. This is the secularism of joint struggle and common purpose, infinitely more durable than the shallow secularism of mutual tolerance. There are some vulnerabilities. Saturation coverage given to the foul allegation during the peak of Covid pandemic that Muslims in the Markaz at Nizamuddin were deliberately spreading the virus, had its fallout in Haryana too. Anyone who looked like a Muslim was avoided by all Hindus. Jats were no exception.

How did the trouble begin?

Society, Andy Warhol said, had reached a stage when everybody will be famous for a few minutes. The most notorious Bad-Men in Rajasthan and Haryana at the moment are Monu Manesar and Pintu Bajrangi. They are alleged to have burnt alive two Meo-Muslims in Rajasthan last May. The incident itself and subsequent police lethargy ignited Muslim anger in the entire Mewat belt.

Anger simmered. Then, in late July posts on facebook announced Monu Manesar and Pintu Bajrangi’s participation in a Vishwa Hindu Parishad sponsored yatra starting July 31 from the Nalhar Mahadev temple in Meo dominated Nuh in Haryana.

Facebook posts by Monu and Pintu asked people to turn up in large numbers to garland them. They taunted the Meos to receive their “Jijaji” or “brother in law” with some fanfare. Meos sent back equally vicious rejoinders.

When the procession started, Muslim youth pelted stones but their principal targets were the elusive two – Monu Manesar and Pintu Bajrangi. Where were they hiding? Maybe in the cars parked nearby. The cars were burnt.

In a small living room of a local Jat leader, both Hindu and Muslim lawyers, social activist, panchayat leaders spoke in and out of turn, each being the other’s proxy.

They all seemed to say the same thing:

Jats took no part in the yatra which was armed with swords and rods. The Muslims, also armed, were in a position to surround and kill indiscriminately. “The Bajrang Dal plan was to have atleast a hundred martyrs, their bodies to be paraded throughout the Hindi belt” – Godhra on a larger scale.

Muslims showed restraint even though Muslim shops, houses were gutted.

There is curfew in several districts. Mosques have been burnt. Communal clouds still hover.

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Pivot To Poland: Is That The Trajectory Of Ukraine War?

Pivot To Poland: Is That The Trajectory Of Ukraine War?

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

The Ukraine war has already yielded one of its most important outcomes even though the western media does not dwell on it with enthusiasm. It is now confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt that US hegemony has been irreversibly replaced by a multi polar world. G7 are a grouping in decline; BRICS is the expanding reality.

In this altered order, nations are busy consolidating their slots. The Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan took another turn in his pirouette: he lifted his objection on Sweden joining NATO and received Volodymyr Zelensky. He repatriated five commanders of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade in clear breach of his understanding with Russia, agreed to support Ukraine’s membership of NATO. His recent alliance with Russia has been more or less discarded.

He likes the multi polarity, but to play a regional role he would not like to be painted on the same page as, say, Iran. Russia is acceptable as a regional power but not as a victor over Ukraine. That would make the Black Sea its lake. Erdogan’s stakes in the Black Sea are considerable.

Turkey’s U-turn is not without reasons: economic crisis, spiraling inflation, unemployment, weakening currency and, above all, falling investments. Apparently his outreach to the Gulf States did not spur investments. Hence this westward lurch. There were speculations in Ankara that he would play the Swedish card if the issue of Turkey’s entry into Europe were reopened. This, if true, is a foolish dream. Former French President Giscard d’Estaing was blunt. “Western civilization is Christian; Turkey can have no place in it.”

Talking of Muslim states and their compatibility with Europe, consider this: when Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to the Balkans, settled the issue of Bosnia’s statehood he tied a part of it to a district of Serbia – a sort of three legged state, its Muslim identity totally in check.

An unadulterated Muslim Bosnia was not in order. Ironically, a Muslim Kosovo was carved out of Serbia. The Orthodox Church and the Slavic links with Russia create a special bond between Belgrade and Moscow. When Kosovo was being carved out of Serbia without as much as a Russian nod, Russian tanks gatecrashed the US supervised party and occupied Pristina airport.

Diverse policies in Kosovo and Bosnia were explained those days as part of bitter differences between Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Holbrooke.

So proud was Albright of her Kosovo initiative that she asked her Director for Policy Planning, Morton Halperin, to commission a special study of “The Kosovo initiative”. Richard Ullman, a distinguished professor of International Relations at Princeton and a former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, was provided with space in the State Department to embark on this research. No one has ever heard what happened to the research launched with such fanfare.

There is reason for this extended focus on the Balkans: should the conflict be expanded as a regional destabilization project, the Serbia-Kosovo section lends itself to much mischief. It is a maze of criss crossing interests involving the US, EU, Russia and Turkey which, in its Ottoman Avatar, ruled over large parts of the region. Troops from different European countries guard distinct parts of Kosovo, including the most revered monastery of Dejan.

A daily ritual at Dejan is emblematic of the deep and abiding grudges in the region. Every evening a muscular young priest carrying a heavy rattle called the tallantone runs around the main church in the compound. The noise from the rattle is supposed to alert the inmates against the “Turk”, the eternal threat.

Recently, Zelensky, a Jew, ordered Orthodox priests to vacate Ukraine’s grand churches. The reason for this harsh order? The Orthodox Church has links with its counterpart in Moscow. This link can undermine Ukraine’s war effort, it is argued.

Even otherwise, there is enough conflictual material in the region. Just as Turkey unlocks the gate for Sweden to enter NATO, Sweden emerges in bold relief as the state authorizing Quran burning, enraging Muslims worldwide.

Hezbollah’s supreme leader Hassan Nasrallah has already called for Sweden’s ambassadors to be expelled from Muslim countries. Provide fuel to this and Islamophobia may well be on the way to being resurrected. Are there powerful interests working towards this end?

All of this may be bleak speculation, but the recent NATO summit in Vilnius rubbished any positive spin the western media may have placed on the West’s gains in the war. Public fireworks lent themselves to photographs which were not flattering to NATO at all.

One photograph shows NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg virtually pushing Zelensky off the stage. Apparently Zelensky, angry because Ukraine had been denied immediate membership of NATO, had clambered onto the stage like an irate heckler.

His protests caused British Defence Minister, Ben Wallace to virtually scold Zelensky. Wallace thought Ukraine should express more appreciation to its supporters.

The rejoinder from Zelensky was sharp. “He should write to me about how he wants to be thanked.” Wallace himself was none too happy because his candidature as the next Secretary General of NATO had been scuttled by the only authority more effective than Britain in the conclaves of NATO – the US.

A prominent Ukrainian activist, asked US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan a question, in these words, “how to explain to my son, who is sleeping in the corridor due to air raids, that Biden isn’t ready to accept Ukraine into NATO.” She added “Is he afraid of Russia – are there back channel negotiation with Russia and Ukraine’s NATO hopes are a bargaining chip?”

Such scandalous talk plus the Anglo-American differences on Wallace’s candidature as the next NATO Secretary General must have been honeyed music to Putin.

Meanwhile, Putin revealed that reliable intelligence gathered by the Kremlin confirm US plans to insert into western Ukraine a Polish expeditionary force “for a subsequent occupation of these territories.” Should this happen, a part of Ukraine, to be absorbed into Poland, will automatically have NATO protection under chapter 5. What a development.

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