Winners And Losers In Trump’s Peace Plan

Winners And Losers In Trump’s Peace Plan

                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

What is the urgency driving Donald Trump to push his Gaza peace plan, even by dishonest means if necessary. In his eagerness to bid for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump resorted to subterfuge, straight forward knavery. Even more compelling than his yen for the Nobel was the pressure of global public opinion which chastises the US collaborating with Israel’s unspeakable brutality, the genocide of Gaza, frame by frame on live TV.

A peace plan developed with representatives of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan attending the UN General Assembly, was further discussed by Trump and Netanyahu in the White House.

At a parallel meeting in Doha, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman, Al Thani and Hamas leaders were perusing the 20 points under the microscope. At this point the text of the 20 point plan with Netanyahu in the White House and the Qataris was the same.

Then Netanyahu, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, a Zionist trio, got into a huddle. The text was radically altered in favour of Netanyahu, enabling him to boast in a video on the journey back to Israel. In a statement in Hebrew for Israeli television viewers, he said.

“Who would have believed this.?” Says he triumphantly. “After all the people constantly saying – you must accept Hamas’s terms, get everyone (IDF) out (of Gaza). The IDF should withdraw, Hamas can recover and it can also reoccupy the strip.” He then exploded, “No way. That’s not happening.”

He was asked if he agreed to a Palestinian state? “Absolutely not. It’s not written into the statement, but there is one thing we did say – we would strongly oppose a Palestinian state.”

This diplomacy by deception is for a singular purpose. The pariah status that is sticking to Israel and the US in equal measure has to be shuffled off somehow. The mainstream media will be required to build the narrative that Netanyahu is trying to implement the 20 point but Hamas is obstructing. A follow up meeting, one of many expected is going on in Egypt.

Fortunately for the Palestinian, this media’s credibility is at its lowest for having been consistently in the service of establishments.

In the plan is an idea to have a “Board of Peace”, with Trump as its Chairman and President. In an aside he said he may not have the time to be hands-on all the time. It was for this reason that former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair will be on the “Board”.

There is no guarantee that the Trump plan will fly, but it does provide a clue to the plan having been tailored for right wing Zionist acceptability. The response from the Iran Supreme leader’s office hits the nail on the head: the plan gives to Netanyahu what he could not achieve on the battlefield: return of the hostages and an end to Hamas.

The irony is that the plan, even with this interpretation, is unacceptable to the Ben Gwir-Smotherick duet who want the Palestinians to disappear or live in other countries. Even though the plan gives to Netanyahu all that he could have hoped for, there remains a vast stretch on Israel’s Right, Far Right and Far Far Right capable of throwing a ginger fit if anything short of the Biblical plan for greater Israel is accepted.

Palestinians may be forgiven for being shocked at Tony Blair being inserted in matters concerning their future. Trump would have to search all corners of the globe to find a western leader more despised by Palestinians than Tony Blair, an exceptional favourite with Zionists.

Blair’s other claim to fame is the way he was chastised by the Chilcot report. Sir James Chilcot, after a six year investigation, shamed Blair for having misled the British public for joining the Iraq war in 2003. I remember him crying with copious tears for having been caught cheating.

The idea of privatizing the administration of Gaza at some later date is not without precedent. A plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan was drawn up in 2017 by Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater, the world’s biggest outlet for mercenary troops. Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief of Staff, in Trump’s first administration forwarded a 100 page project to the White House suggesting that the US should hand the Afghan responsibility to private hands.

The British Raj’s administration was in the hands of the Viceroy. That precisely was the model offered by Prince. The project would cost 5 trillion, after which, in the hands of merry capitalism, the investment would start showing returns.

Astonishing though it may seem, this over-the-top plan had acquired life in the corridors of the White House until Secretary of Defence Gen. Jim Mattis shot it down.

If Hamas returns the hostages, what leverage will be left with it to deal with unreliable adversaries? The next hand has to be played in such a way as to retain global sympathy that Palestinians have earned by suffering genocide for two years.

It is a tough gamble. If Hamas returns the hostages, it loses leverage against a heartless opponent. If it does not return the hostages at this sensitive moment, it begins to lose global sympathy accumulated over two years of suffering.

When Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas commanders shook the world by their audacity on October 7, 2023, what were they looking for? Surely they were not embarked on a quest for quick victory over the region’s most powerful nation.

They had with clever deliberation provoked Israel expecting retaliation on a massive scale. If this indeed was their calculation they have succeeded in igniting world public opinion against Israel and its material, moral and political supporter – the US.

An opiated world has been woken up by Israeli genocide, non stop for two years. Even a Zionist supporter, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to blurt out the truth, unpalatable to the Zionists surrounding Trump. “Israel is no longer liked in America.” The great Israel lobby in the US will probably get into a huddle and sink in the deepest layers of thought.

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West Will Lose Power But Will Leave Mess Before Giving Up

West Will Lose Power But Will Leave Mess Before Giving Up

                                                                                Saeed Naqvi

President James Monroe must have turned in his grave at the Monroe doctrine, named after him being desecrated by rank outside powers, China and Russia. The two are standing four square behind Venezuela strongman Nicolas Maduro even as the US is embarked, for the umpteenth time, on an audacious regime change operation in Caracas. Monroe doctrine was designed to keep outside powers from what the US considers its backyard.

Prof. Jeffery Sachs of Columbia describes the developing tension around Venezuela as a “turning point in international affairs that will reverberate through Washington, Latin America and indeed across the global stage.”

“Caracas has opened its doors to Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi, finding in them not just as buyers of oil but also shields against economic warfare.” The mention of New Delhi in his appraisal is intriguing.

Four days ago, US sank two Venezuelan ships allegedly ferrying narcotics, a charge denied by Caracas. Prof. Richard Wolf of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has joined the rising chorus in support of Venezuela.

The CIA, Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad have, over decades of practice, mastered regime change operation but they have hit a rock: they failed to dethrone Hugo Chavez and now his successor, Maduro.

In desperation, they innovated. Instead of going through a two-stroke operation i.e. first removing Maduro and then installing someone of their choice in Caracas, they experimented with a new formula: simply ignore Maduro and anoint 41 year Juan Guaido as President recognized by Washington. By this amazing sleight of hands an “authoritarian” leader will have been replaced by a “democratic” one.

For months and years poor Juan Guaido lived in save houses in Caracas and Columbia, waited in corridors of power in Washington. Not for the first time the world’s most powerful nation ignored the elementary lesson: there are limits to all power.

Limits to power or not, Juan Guaido, his eye on the main chance, has a CV more impressive than it might have been before his Presidential talents were noticed by Washington. Juan Guaido’s CV describes him as ex-President Venezuela (2019-2023). You will notice, he had bipartition support; he was the apple of Trump’s eye as well as Joe Biden’s.

 

Heaven knows where Guaido is hiding, but no sooner had the democracy enthusiasts in Washington developed amnesia about the Guaido initiative, the agencies were at it again.

 

Last year, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp told Parliament that Venezuela opposition leader Edmundo Gonzales had sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Caracas, another casualty of Presidential aspirations stoked by Washington.

 

Trump’s National Security Adviser in his first term, John Bolton while in that office salivated on Venezuela. He wanted a full fledged invasion. Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was another great votary of the Monroe doctrine. “Monroe doctrine is alive and kicking” he thundered when a reporter questioned its validity today.

 

Discussing the subject with officers in the state department, Trump’s shifting stand on issues came up for mention. “The President”, he thumped the table, “is a moron.”

 

How is Trump likely to respond to the double fisted punch China and Russia have landed on his chin.

 

On the face of it, his style remains the same. Americans vacated Afghanistan, including the Bagram air base. Trump suddenly has a revived interest in Bagram. He wants the Taleban government to give it back to him. Otherwise, “very bad things will happen.”

 

The new warmth in friendship with Pakistan may well have an Afghan dimension. Who knows, unexplored rare earth deposits in Balochistan may be in focus in addition to much else.

 

Alliances splintering, new business vistas opening are all symptoms of a settled order mutating into something else.

 

Among the incidents of note in the recent past was Field Marshal Asim Munir lunch at the White House even though Trump knew how this gesture would register with Narendra Modi. Soon Pakistan was in global high profile again having signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia. Riyadh possibly comes under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella to meet the threat from Israel, an unlikely scenario though.

 

Tehran is unlikely to have sleepless nights on this score. Beijing has already arranged for Riyadh and Tehran to reduce hostile perceptions of each other.

 

Events in Africa have for a long time indicated a shift in global equations. Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traore has struck a unique deal with Pakistan: a fleet of jets, tanks, naval equipments based on Chinese technology will be built in Burkina Faso. At the outset of the Ukraine war Macron was the most vocal on Russia: Europe must talk to Putin. But as soon as Russian interests advanced in former French colonies, Macron lined up with the European consensus hostile to Putin.

 

Macron was among the first to grasp the implications of not just the outcome of Ukraine war but also of Israel-Palestinian mega eruption. Russian troops moved into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In September of that year Macron assembled all his diplomats, the Armed Forces and senior bureaucracy and showed them the writing on the wall as he saw it then. “Over 400 years of western domination of world affairs was coming to an end.”

 

Prof. Grahame Allison’s study “the Thucydides trap” is being cited. Peloponnesian wars authored by the Greek historian concludes that Athens rise created such insecurities in Sparta that war became inevitable. Is it inevitable that China’s rise and the West’s decline must lead to war? The war between Sparta and Athens was a conventional military and naval engagement.

 

Allison, whose earlier work, Essence of Decision, a study of decision making during the Cuban missile crisis, is considered a classic. In his latest study he has taken 15 historical case studies since the 16^th century.

 

Examples like Germany’s rise to power: this challenged British dominance. The interplay was one of the reasons of World War I. The abundance of nuclear weapons makes the present situation unique to be assessed in the framework of the great Greek historian. Will the West commit suicide to remain on top?

 

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Record Audiences At Separate Venues For Two Historians In their 90s

Record Audiences At Separate Venues For Two Historians In their 90s

                                                                                 Saeed Naqvi

New Delhi witnessed two extraordinary events, on successive days, at different venues by two of the country’s celebrated historians – Prof. Irfan Habib and Prof. Romila Thapar, both in their 90s.

What they said was important enough but what could not escape notice were the multitudes who thronged to the venues much in advance and yet found themselves unable to enter. Even the aisles were packed with students balancing their notebooks on their knees.

The human spillover must be seen as evidence of an enormous hunger for alternative discourse, along with multiple other reasons.

Prof. Thapar read an elaborate paper at the India International Centre, on a theme identified with her – Present colonizes the past: future forsaken.

Prof. Habib’s talk was circumscribed by the occasion – death anniversary of CPM General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury. His theme was Communists and the national movement. The points he dwelt on will be discussed within CPM of which he remains a life member. That the venue, Harikishen Singh Surjeet Bhavan off Rouse Avenue could accommodate so many was, to me, a revelation.

“The Communist party asked Muslim members to join the Muslim League; Hindus to join the Congress.” Prof. Habib dismissed this party line of the 1940s as “an enormous error.” The line, enunciated by the Party General secretary, P.C. Joshi, “divided communists on communal lines” he said. It also cast the Congress as a “Hindu party”, which was a faulty appreciation of the INC.

The issue will surely be debated both, within the party and outside. A Joshi loyalist would probably defend the line as a tactic to advance the cause of communists in both the parties at a critical moment in history.

Prof. Habib quoted Rajni Palme Dutt’s India Today. There is a whole chapter (written in 1945) in which Dutt “laid out why India should not be divided on communal lines.” Dutt was, after all, “a major communist spokesman of the time in both England and India.” Prof. Habib’s anger was most pulpable when he attacked the communist leadership of the day. “Either our leaders did not read Dutt or there were other reasons why the communist party at the time decided to treat the Congress and the Muslim League in the same way?”

Trust a historian of Habib’s vintage to enunciate with such passion the “grievous mistake” his party made (then the CPI) in the 40s. He insisted, the issue “be debated and corrected by the party.”

It turns out that great historians too, in their lighter moments, fall back on anecdotage. His father Prof. Mohammad Habib was in 1960 visited by his former student, who had reached the highest echelons of Pakistan’s public life. Because of his training as a communist, the Muslim League found him exceptionally capable. His rise, first in UP and subsequently in Pakistan was meteoric. He visited Irfan Habib’s father to ironically complain of the absence of a soul in his post communist, pure Muslim experience.

Also under his scanner was the CPI’s shift in its attitude to World War II, at a time when the Congress had given notice to the British in 1942 – Quit India. There were two issues involved. First, it was an intra-imperialist war until Hitler launched operation Barabarosa in 1941. The world’s principal Fascist power had attacked the world’s only socialist power, the Soviet Union.

It was no longer an intra imperial war, Habib argued. It had become a peoples War, the criticism heaped on the Communists for this “shift” notwithstanding.

What complicated matters was the Congress call to the British in 1942 to Quit India. Habib questioned Congress sagacity in asking the British to Quit just when the Japanese army was “knocking at our door.”

“If you look at Jawaharlal Nehru’s own papers, far from opposing the British at the time, he was worrying on how the Japanese invasion would be tackled by Indians.”

Japan was the enemy in Nehru’s mind at the time. Habib expressed surprise that “Nehru concurred” when the Congress passed the Quit India resolution. The communists needed to question the wisdom of the Congress giving a clarion call to the British to Quit India when the axis power, Japan was about to invade India.

A compromised judiciary being a theme of contemporary saliency, Habib’s story of Justice Suleiman, one of the judges for The Meerut Conspiracy case of 1920 deserves mention. He told the British lawyer for the prosecution that “what you are saying is absurd. “What you are alleging the communist did was physically not possible.”

The English Chief Justice summoned Justice Suleiman. “Your name has been sent up for appointment to the “Federal court”, today’s Supreme Court. The hint was -don’t mess up “your future” by making an error in the crucial conspiracy case.

Justice Suleiman took the hint. He salved his conscience by reducing the sentence, but he kept his eye on the main chance by “not exposing the fraud.” He became a judge of the federal court and, later, Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim university duly rewarded for being a compromised judge.

Prof. Thapar kept a steady gaze on history written by a professional historian i.e. sifting the evidence and rigorously analyzing it. She was anguished at historical research being discounted in favour of history by social media.

Two theories in particular are in favour and which were deeply ingrained in Indian history. These were the Aryan theory of race and the two-nation theory. The Aryan theory assumes that history began when the subcontinent was settled by the Aryans. The other theory was, of course, the much better known two-nation theory initially set out by James Mill in 1817. India consisted of two nations, the Hindu and the Muslim, and that they were permanently hostile to each other. This theory ignored the fact that a nation depends on drawing diverse people together whereas religion segregates them according to belief. There are these two contrary processes but they've been bundled into one by James Mill. “Can nationalism therefore be qualified by a religious identity?”

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Ukraine, Gaza Wars Will End With A Bang Not Whimper

Ukraine, Gaza Wars Will End With A Bang Not Whimper

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

Ukraine and Gaza are TV serials streaming interminably on our screens because the authors do not know how to script the final scene. The general drift of the story is known but not the end.

The end to the Gaza war is in perpetual delay because both, the US and Israel are embarrassed admitting that global exceptionalism for one and regional exceptionalism for the Jewish state ring hollow with global power shifting rapidly from the North to the South since the collapse in 2008 of Lehman Brothers.

It had taken decades to recover from the Vietnam syndrome, the deep resistance US public opinion developed to foreign involvements after the debacle in Saigon in 1975.

Post 9/11 wars caused an adrenalin rush as the neo-cons embarked on expediting the American century. With the US embroiled in numerous wars, big and small, maintaining 760 bases worldwide, candidate Trump asked President Jimmy Carter: “China is going ahead of US; what should we do?” Carter’s response was precise. “Except for a skirmish with Vietnam in 1978, China has not been at war; we have never stopped being at war.”

US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was, in many ways, even more destructive of American, indeed Western, self esteem than was the Vietnam debacle 50 years ago. Indefatigable Vietnamese nationalism was a factor, but it was American public opinion, stoked by outstanding journalism by anchors like Walter Cronkite which helped precipitate the dramatic end.

In Afghanistan the mainstream media played a negative role. It covered up. Indeed one of the current tragedies of the West is the collapse of the credibility of the western media. There is a complex bunch of reasons for this enormous reliability deficit but let me touch on two.

A uniform Murdochization mistook the fleeting Sole Superpower moment as a more durable happening. Editorials in the Washington Post in their general drift became indistinguishable from, say, Le Monde. Even though the unipolar world passed, the media has remained frozen in its habit. It still deludes itself that it is in the service of a unipolar moment.

Also, when wars break out the war correspondent in any case becomes a propagandist and mythmaker. Since the US has been continuously at war from the 1990s, journalists have tended to be propagandists’ sans credibility.

The narrative in both the wars is in conflict with the ground realities. The narrative, amplified by the media dreamt up a scenario in which Putin invaded Ukraine without any provocation to fulfil his “imperialist dreams.”

Forgotten were the promises to Gorbachev made in 1991 by Secretary of State, James Baker that “NATO would not move by an inch any closer to Russia.”  At the Bucharest Summit of NATO in 2008 President George W Bush virtually poked Putin in the eye by announcing that Georgia and Ukraine would join NATO. This Red line, Putin would not allow to be transgressed. For Russia this was an existential threat.

There were worse provocations, including the coup in 2014 in which elected President Yanukovych, who sought neutrality, was replaced by a West friendly candidate. All this and much more the western media developed an acute amnesia for.

Likewise, on the Gaza front Israel’s genocide and mass murder by starvation, spread over two years are justified as punishment for Hamas’s temerity for having murdered 1,200 Jews and taken 251 hostages with stunning audacity on October 7, 2023.

In Ukraine the might of NATO, EU, Europe and the US are all pitted against Russia. What has thrown a monkey-wrench in western plans against Russia is the friendship “with no limits” which Russia and China announced earlier in the same month that Russian troops moved into Ukraine.

What is actually fueling the two wars was blurted out by Boris Johnson when he, trapped in partygate, scuttled a deal arrived at as early as April 2022 in Istanbul. According to a Foreign Policy article Johnson turned up in Kyiv to stay Zelensky’s hand. “The West was not ready to end the war yet.” To him, the war was not about Ukraine but western hegemony.

The casualty figure of Ukrainians is 1.7 million. By all reliable accounts the Russian advance on the battlefield is relentless. The seven leaders of what Donald Rumsfeld disparagingly described as “old Europe”, chaperoned Volodymyr Zelensky to the Trump Durbar in the Oval office with what purpose? Please don’t talk to Putin? Don’t end the Ukraine war on Putin’s terms. Cite European security even though it is western hegemony which is on the line.

On the Gaza front, nearly two years after the October 7 “Al Aqsa flood” attack, what is the scorecard? Hamas’s audacious, bold, bleak attack was not designed to inflict defeat on Israel but invite Israeli retaliation. The Jewish state walked straight into the trap with such unspeakable barbarity as to make the world gasp and close its eyes.

Supposing Hitler had survived in some Satanic scenario, would he have been welcome in any post war assembly. The answer, obviously, is a resounding No. Why would any other logic apply to the apartheid state which has perpetrated genocide, murdered by starvation on live TV and whose only expertise in war is to assassinate popular leaders.

The day after this war is over, I cannot visualize Netanyahu being showered with petals. Neither he nor the “river to the sea” project he strives for has survivability.

How will the West cope with two more defeats – one in the heart of Europe and the other in its most powerful outpost in West Asia? This will not be allowed to happen easily. There has been talk of Taurus missiles and medium range missile to bolster Ukraine. In desperation these could be brought into play with cameras prepositioned around Moscow and St. Petersburg for fireworks which will temporarily drown out the reversal on the ground. Israel, with its back to the wall, may target Iran with something, more lethal. The world will keep a steady gaze on Moscow and Tehran in mortifying suspense.

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Mourning And Celebrations: The Climatic Day Of Hussain’s Martyrdom

Mourning And Celebrations: The Climatic Day Of Hussain’s Martyrdom

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

Sunday, July 6, will be the tenth and the climatic day of Moharram which this year, has a unique feature, something that has never happened in history. A sizeable section of the world will, mostly, wear black, the colour of mourning and yet they will celebrate. In total contradiction of the Western media, the celebration will be for Iran having taught Israel a lesson.

The celebrations will be alongside the mourning for the tragedy of Karbala more charged this time than ever before.

For the uninitiated, the solemn observances of Moharram centres around the tragedy of Karbala which took place in 680 AD, barely 48 years after the death of Prophet Mohammad.

To escape the frenetic pace of messengers from Damascus seeking Hussain’s “bayat”, or an endorsement of Yazid’s usurpation of the Caliphate, Hussain decided to leave Medina, for an indefinite period. His daughter Sughra was too ill to travel. The poignancy of the tragedy begins here.

What Hussain’s plan was has remained shrouded in a series of speculative thesis. All one does know is that the epic scale of the high tragedy was eventually enacted in Karbala. Members of Hussain’s family, his close friends and dedicated followers were a band of 72.

Armies of Yazid, numerically much larger, zero onto the group after having cut off water from Euphrates for three days in the torrid heat of Karbala. This is how the blockade of water, food and medicine to Gaza resonates with those observing Moharram.

On the tenth day of Moharram Hussain sees all options of peace closed, except one – endorse Yazid’s rule. Ali’s son would never compromise core principles.

Hussain look the decision to allow male members of his entourage to proceed one by one for single combat as was the custom then. The West has never understood how deeply embedded in the Shia psyche is the notion of martyrdom. Every combat became an epic in the hands of poets hundreds of masterpieces on such varied themes as honour, valour, separation, horsemanship, swordsmanship, relations between brother and sister, aunts, nieces, horse and master, all in dirges, nohey, songs of mourning and, above all, marsias measuring the greatest in world literature, particularly in the hands of such masters as Mir Anis.

The focus this Sunday, 10^th of Moharram will be on Hussain’s passionate pursuit of peace when principles are in the bargain. Martyrdom emerges as the paramount theme in this sequence. The remarkable paradox this Sunday is that the mourners of the martyrs of Karbala will also, in undertones, be celebrating their having shattered the myth of Israel’s invincibility. For them Netanyahu will have donned the colours of Yazid. I recommend my friend Pravin Sawhney’s “three essential videos” on the 12 day Iran-Israel war which confirm my own observation on the war.

Israel and its western supporters with the US in the lead has a different narrative: Iran’s nuclear project has been “obliterated” to use Trump’s words.

A great tragedy that has befallen the West and which the West has chosen to ignore, is the collapse of the credibility of the western media. The media carries on regardless without qualms, not shedding spurious punditry.

Almost oracular in his pronouncements is the senior guru of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman. He is quite stunning in the authority he has given himself: he talks of “Putin’s kleptocracy which he compares unfavourably, of course, with God’s gift to good governance in the persona of Syria’s Ahmal al Sharaa who mutated from Abu Mohammad al Jolani on whose head there was a bounty of $10 million because he was a certified terrorist and whom Friedman describes delicately as “the new, frail, democratic government of Syria.”

Friedman is rejoicing not just at the transformation of Sharaa. He visualizes a lot of Sunnis and Shias in Lebanon and Iraq quietly rooting for Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Really? I thought they were being berated for genocide. For the first time in decades, a Syrian state and a Lebanese state are being rebuilt by decent leaders, he continues.

Jolani or Sharaa or whatever name he acquires in the future would never have dreamt in his wildest dreams that he would ever qualify to be called “decent” by a pundit who pontificates from the pinnacle.

I wonder what Robert Stephen Ford, US Ambassador to Syria during the Arab Spring, would have to say about Friedman’s ecstasy. The wonderful thing about American officials is that the day they retire, they acquire the right to sing like canaries. Ford revealed in a recent speech, that a British Intelligence outfit asked him to “groom” Sharaa “diplomatically”, “socially” and “sartorially” to be able to play a bigger role in Syria.

Rather like the moods in the French and the British camps on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt as sketched in Shakespeare’s history play, Henry V, Israel and Iran offer two distinct civilizational visions to compare and contrast at this moment of war and mayhem.

When spaces of apartheid and separate development are expanding like dark shadows, it may be useful even for enemies to know a little more about each other.

I have been travelling to Israel since 1968 when an Australian set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque. A country of soft, socialist Kibbutz seemed quite agreeable. My untrained eyes were unable to spot the nasty works of Zionism behind the curtains.

Israelis and their cohorts may find it useful to keep a steady gaze on Aashura, the tenth day of Moharram this Sunday in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrein, Dammam in Saudi Arab, Kuwait and significant minorities in Pakistan and India. The tendency to ignore or downplay Shia history and influences are self defeating. For instance how can one ignore the Fatimid rule which founded Cairo in the 10^th century, expanded to Tunis. It is a forgotten story that Moharram processions were regular for 150 years of Fatimid rule in Palermo, the capital of Sicily.

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Khamenei Has No Links With India But Khomeini Did With Barabanki, UP

Khamenei Has No Links With India But Khomeini Did With Barabanki, UP

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

An implausible story in making the rounds on social media which has its origins in an extraordinary initiative External Affairs Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, his Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta launched in 1979 when New Delhi’s relations with Iran suddenly evaporated with the fall of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s ascent to power in Tehran.

Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini, the first Supreme leader of the Islamic revolution spent years in exile in Najaf (Iraq) and, towards the end at Neuphle le Chateau outside Paris.

What is generally not known is the fact that Lucknow and Qasbahs around were centres of Shia learning since he mid-18^th century. This was when Nawab Saadat Ali Khan, the first Nawab of Awadh or Oudh as the British spelt it, established the Shia kingdom, first in Faizabad, and later moved to Lucknow. Saadat Ali Khan traced his origins from Nishapur, in Khorassan, South of the Shrine in Mashhad of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of the Shias.

The last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah reveled in cultural commerce between communities. He himself played a rather portly Radha while the Kathak Guru Pandit Binda Deen, great, great grandfather of the late Birju Maharaj, danced as Krishna.

Under the Awadh Nawabs composite Ganga-Jamuni culture flourished. Along with song, dance and theatre, centres of Shia learning also mushroomed in Lucknow and its vicinity, including Kintoor in Barabanki district.

When the Ayatollahs came to power in Iran, a very pertinent question posed itself. Since Lucknow at one stage was the “markaz” or centre of Shia theology, were there any linkages between this centre and the rising power in Iran. Until Saddam Hussain’s fall in Iraq a bequest worth “six million rupees” was credited to the Nawabs of Awadh for the upkeep of Shia shrines in Najaf and Karbala. India’s charge d’ affaires in Baghdad during the Saddam Hussain period, Rajendra Abhyankar was among the last to operate the account by way of stipend for Indian students at Najaf and Karbala.

After the fall of the Shah, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Jagat Mehta, tossed a question at me: “any possible links between Lucknow and the new rulers in Tehran?”

It turned out that there were links. Clerics from Lucknow had visited Khomeini in Najaf and, more recently, outside Paris. Indeed, Khomeini had very distinguished theological scholars as his ancestors from Kintoor. One of the lesser known clerics, Agha Roohi Abaqati was in fact even related to Khomeini.

Abaqati became the peg around which a high powered delegation was arranged by Mehta. The delegation was to be led by the socialist leader Ashoke Mehta. Badruddin Tayyabji was chosen for his flair. Abaqati would be an escort.

The Indian embassy in Tehran was alerted. Ayatollah Khomeini’s office at Jamaran, outside Tehran would receive the delegation. Between the interview being arranged and the actual arrival of the delegation something happened, something quite unforeseen.

Ambassador Ahuja was not in Tehran. It fell to the lot of Kuldip Sahdev to accompany the history making delegation to the Ayatollah’s office.

What awaited the Indian delegation was a novel experience. What had emerged in Tehran had no parallel anywhere, except perhaps The Vatican, where the Pope rules supreme.

The delegation entered the hall where the Ayatollah sat at some distance. By a gentle gesture, Khomeini asked for the delegation to wait near the entrance. He then asked a black turbaned, black gown waring aide to ask Abaqati to come closer.

Abaqati probably expected the founder of the Iranian revolution to hug him as a long lost relative. What followed were fireworks. To the Indian delegation’s consternation, Khomeini gave Abaqati an earful. The supreme leader was at his invective best. In deathly silence, the delegation walked backwards towards the cars waiting for them. All meetings in Tehran were cancelled. They caught the earliest flight to Delhi in silence, chastened by an unexpected diplomatic reversal.

During a subsequent visit, an Ayatollah in Qom explained to me why the Abaqati initiative had collapsed.

“It is a vulnerable revolution with enemies in unexpected places.” That the leader of the Islamic revolution which has upturned the power structure in a civilizational state had “foreign roots” could be lethal ammunition in the hands of “our enemies”.

Abaqati was escorting the delegation on the strength of the fact that he was from a family of distinguished clerics from Kintoor and a chip of the sams block as Imam Khomeini. This may have been the truth but its amplification was anathema to the keepers of the revolution at this stage.

This was in the earlier stages of the revolution. In this context, something extraordinary happened at a reception hosted by Iran’s popular ambassador, Gholamreza Ansari. In his welcome speech he dwelt at length on the civilizational ties between India and Iran.

“Even the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini had roots in India” he said to a packed hall at the Leela hotel. Ambassador Ansari thought the tentativeness of the revolution’s earlier years “were a thing of the past”. The establishment in Tehran was now very secure.

Cultural links between two civilizational states, always reminds me of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to Hafiz’s tomb in Shiraz. Adjacent to the tomb is a small library. On the cornice of the library is a remarkable photograph. During his visit to Iran, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore made special arrangements to visit Hafiz’s tomb in Shiraz.

The photograph on the cornice shows Tagore going through the ritual of opening the “faal”. Open any page of a holy book or verses by a “seer” or a poet, the first line is supposed to give you a clue to whatever you seek to know. It is not a matter of faith but poetic indulgence, an excuse to quote verse as a point of departure for a conversation.

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Promote Nationalism, Undermine Globalization: How Is Trump’s Mantra Working In Europe?

Promote Nationalism, Undermine Globalization: How Is Trump’s Mantra Working In Europe?

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

 

“Rav mein hai aaj Trump kahan dekhiye thamey

Na haath baag par hai, na pa hai rakab mein.”

(Trump is in full gallop, who knows where he’ll stop?

Reins are not in his hands, nor feet in the stirrups)

Traumatic turn the world order is taking place in the time of Trump tends not to make much sense unless, from the pandemonium one sifts out a policy statement. Vice President J.D. Vance’s chastisement of Europe at the February 14 speech at the Munich European security conference is one such statement.

“Europe’s enemy’s are not Russia or China; the enemy is within” he said. Europe was scared of its own people, its voters who were turning to parties the European establishment was averse too. He made a pointed reference to leaders who had not been invited “to this very important conference”.

In ample demonstration of what he meant, Vance went onto meet the leader of Alternative for Germany, the far Right anti immigrant party which, before recent elections, was advancing in the popularity stakes. All other disparate political parties come together to form “a wall” against the Alternative for Germany. This is precisely the manoevre to thwart the popular surge, according to Vance. Readers may yawn because Trump has churned the universe with a thousand decisions and indecisions that his next moment will reverse. But Vance’s speech, mark my word, is a marker.

I have revisited the Munich conference with a purposes: it was not a stand-alone outburst by Vance. It was a continuation of a process started by Trump’s ideological mentors, and companions to undermine the European union, promote “nationalism” in European nations and puncture the balloon of globalization which weakens the nation state and, thereby, nationalism.

Terrifying tariffs as tactics in the new order were not spelt out, per sey in Vance’s speech which was heard by a hall packed with European grandees with open mouthed wonder.

It was not an off the cuff statement. Trump’s principal philosopher and friend, never mind if he served a brief jail term, Steven Bannon had been criss crossing Europe since at least the first Trump Presidency meeting, promoting, creating a chain of far Right leaders, bringing them in line with what was to emerge in bright silhouette as Trump’s project of remaking Europe as a fulcrum for the new world.

It was all clear as daylight from the start but you did not see it because the western media, the one that the Indian media supinely follows, had switched off its cameras on the story. In 2016, it was in the thrall of Hillary Clinton, front runner against Trump. For that reason, it was a target for “Russian interference” throughout the 2016 campaign. How pulpy American democracy looked when the US Deep State was seen wringing its hands on Russians “effectively” interfering in elections to defeat Hillary Clinton. And the media was swallowing these yarns hook line and sinker. I watched that story close.

https://naqvijournal.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-view-from-new-york-loft-devils-own.html

Around 2013, there were two maestros with parallel agendas hopping from one European capital to the other promoting competing visions of the architecture western capitalism should create.

George Soros, the philanthroper was on a contrary path. He was out to strengthen globalization, the European Union in the liberal mode. He did everything possible to block Brexit. His “open society”, was not “closed” and circular; it leapt out of the stage like a ballet dancer.

Brexit produced panic headlines rather like the ones after Trump’s tariffs. “A calamity” screamed the New York Times. “Global panic” was the more moderate headline in London.

While Soros lamented Brexit, Steve Bannon was delirious. The Right-Wing Group he had formally registered in Brussel’s in 2017 was named “The Movement”, a counter point to Soros’s Open Society.

Hungary’s Victor Orban, Frances’ Marine Le Pen, Italian Mateo Salvini, UK’s Nigel Farage, Netherland’s arch Euro sceptic, Gaert Wilters and a host of others were enlisted.

Some of these leaders are a trifle hesitant because of “The Movement’s” American sponsorship. They see a clear contradiction. What kind of hybrid nationalism was being promoted in which Steve Bannon, an American plays a key role. This issue is being sorted out, but the broad ideological line is consistent – anti LGBT, anti abortion, anti immigrants and, strewn around Bannon literature in very small print, “anti Islamization”. This last one will be brushed up to help remove the taint of genocide which has stuck on the faces of Netanyahu and his supporters in the US and the Israeli lobby in America. The Alternative to Germany has most tenaciously latched onto this one ever since Angela Merkel, following her instincts as a Vicar’s daughter, humanely opened the door to Syrian refugees fleeing the outside imposed civil war in their country.

Trump minced no words. His high decibel MAGA chant was his anti globalization drive. Hare brained takeovers of Panama, Greenland, Canada were preceded by an even sillier plan some year ago to “administer Afghanistan just as the British ran India under a Viceroy.”

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the world’s biggest supplier of mercenary soldiers, was the author of the scheme which, through Bannon, reached The White House. The Pentagon shot it down.

“The hegemon is in decline; he is coming down like a falling star.” This tiresome chant was another irritant to cope against which MAGA came in handy. Before obituaries are written on the old world order Trump has decided to dig out the pitch and initiate a totally new game. There will be no reordering of the world order which, in his mind is now extinct. He is for a world in which the US is more equal than others.

From inside fortress America, its walls ever higher, Trump’s teams will got out to promote nationalism and smash regional or global groupings which are the stepping stones towards globalization. The experience with Europe has been heady.

Wait a minute. Reports suggest that Trump’s demolition work in Europe is causing the nation states to recluster and rapidly:

See-Saw

Margery Daw

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Trump, Be Warned, Yemenis, Like Vietnamese, Afghans Will Not Give Up

Trump, Be Warned, Yemenis, Like Vietnamese, Afghans Will Not Give Up

                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

President Trump, who promised to end wars and never start one, has travelled 8,000 miles to bomb Yemen. If he continues, Yemen will be his Vietnam and Afghanistan. In many ways they are similar countries, populated by dogged fighters. Since the President and his team know not a jot about its history, sociology, topography, herewith, a brief note from my travels.

At a height of 8,500 ft, the old city of Sanaa, capital of Yemen, has a magical air of leisure, its maze of lanes, lined with multistoried mud and brick mansions, decorated with exquisite mosaic.

But the peace of Sanaa disguises the storm clouds of conflict, every bit as complex and dramatic as Afghanistan. The reason why Yemen conflicts do not dominate our TV screens is easily explained. The theatres of conflict in Saa’da, for instance bordering Saudi Arabia, are bare, steep and craggy mountains, suited more for rock climbers than TV crews.

That Wahabi rulers from adjoining Saudi Arabia in the 19^th century destroyed Najaf, the Shrine of Ali, and Karbala, gives clues of the theological Saudi-Yemeni conflict which remains unresolved to this day.

How did a system of Imams find root in Yemen? Prophet Mohammad’s son-in-law, Hazrat Ali is the first Imam for the Shias. Sunnis revere him as the fourth caliph. Somewhere there lies the roots of Shia-Sunni tussle. Ali was sent to Sanaa by the Prophet as Qazi or Judge.

Ali’s oldest son, Hasan, is the second Imam. Younger son, Hussain, the martyr of Karbala is the 3^rd. Hussain’s son, Zain-ul-Abedin was the only surviving male relative of Hussain at Karbala because he was ailing and could not go into battle.

He recovered and became the fourth Imam. His two sons Baqar Ibne Ali and Zaid Ibne Ali differed in their response to the Battle of Kabala. Baqar’s was the more Gandhian approach. He believed that martyrdom of Imam Hussain and his family at Karbala had already spurred a massive revival of Islam. Zaid thought the Omayyad had to be defeated. Zaid’s follower set up their Imamate in Yemen, much the more civilized part of the Arab peninsula.

Post Ottomans, Yemen remained two countries, north Yemen with a population of 20 million, with its capital at Sanaa. South Yemen, with a population of four million had its capital at Aden strategically local at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden.

The British therefore held onto it tenaciously until Arab socialism swept the Arab world under Nasser. The socialist ferver ousted the British in 1967. In the context of the cold war, raging then, Southern Yemen came under Soviet influence.

Here let me insert another detail even on the pain of complicating the narrative. When the last Imam Yahya, was under pressure from the Ottomans he bargained with the Saudis, his northern neighbour for peace. Under this bargain, two districts of Nigran and Jizan were given to the Saudis on a sort of renewable lease.

According to Dr. Nasr al-Naqeeb, a well known Sanaa intellectual, the two districts are “oil rich”. Otherwise why would the Saudis accept two Shia dominated Yemeni towns next door to the militant Shias called the Houthis. Houthis derives from name of their leader Malik as Houthi.

Now, let us pick up the narrative chronologically from 1980s after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The US, Saudis and Zia-ul-Haq started manufacturing extreme Islamists in countless Madarsas in Pakistan for which that country is paying the price to this day.

For Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, Saudi Interior Minister, the Pakistani Madarsas were not enough. Thoroughbred Arabs had to be trained in militant Islamism too. Just as the Afghan Mujahideen would expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, their counterparts would strive to unsettle pro Soviet Nasserism in Aden.

What better place to open training camps than in neighbouring Yemen, particularly since South Yemen was close to the very Soviets the militants were being trained to oust out of Afghanistan. Yemen President Saleh’s half brother Ali Mohsin al Ahmar took local charge of all the training camps. Look at the concept: bases for Islamic extremism would check wherever the Soviets reared their heads. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the picture has changed radically. It is this Arab component which is at the heart of what is called Al Qaeda as different from the Pushtoon dominated Taleban.

In 1990, therefore the South lost its principal Soviet support with the fall of the Soviet Union. The South could no longer resist unification. Saddam Hussain played a leading role in unification of Yemen in 1990.

Since Saleh, Yemani strongman in Sanaa at the time was beholden to Saddam Hussain, he opposed the wars on Iraq bringing him on a side opposed to the Saudis.

Taking advantage in a chill in Riadh-Sanaa relations, the Shia’s (Houthis) bordering Saudi Arabia stepped up their “Shiaism” on both sides of the border. This offended the Saudis. The decade old Saudi-Yemen war destroyed Yemen but never defeated the Houthis. This despite air and intelligence support from the US and UK. Take note, President Trump.

There were once reports, put out by US intelligence, that 400 Hezbollah fighters were, at one stage, present to fight alongside the Shias. These fighters have since been withdrawn. In any case, there have been atleast five full fledged wars against Sanaa since 2002.

International pressure caused the two sides to sign a six-point peace agreement. One of the points was that the Shias “will refrain from attacking Saudi territories”. This led to a kind of peace which I witnessed.

In the old town of Sanaa people sat around in circles chewing Qat, a bunch of leaves, a sort poor-man’s non-addictive cockaine (imagine paan with an intoxicating edge), spending their days in this legally sanctioned national habit, very easily oblivious of the storms which in their collective memories have hovered over them for as long as they can remember. The threat of raining “hellfire” is one such President Trump.

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Clue To The Conflict: Gaza Sits on Trillions Worth of Gas

Clue To The Conflict: Gaza Sits on Trillions Worth of Gas

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

It quite beats me that President Donald Trump is willing to go thousands of miles across the oceans to empty Gaza of Palestinians, and take it over to develop the seafront as a Riviera. “Beautiful, beautiful” he said smacking his lips.

He will be poaching in land promised by the Bible exclusively for Jews. Well, Miriam Adelson, Billionaire-owner of Las Vegas Sands, a Jewish philanthropist who donated $100 million to Trump’s campaign can be enlisted as a partner for the Riviera project. The Biblical Red line will then not be crossed.

I was puzzling over the theme when a study by UNCTAD swam into my ken: “Unrealized Potential of Palestinian Oil and Gas Reserves.”

“Geologists and resource economists have confirmed that Mediterranean off the Gaza strip has 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.”

The study concludes: “What could be a source of wealth and opportunities can also prove disastrous if these common resources are exploited individually and exclusively without due regard to international law and norms.”

On June 2024 Israel gave preliminary approval for the development of a gas field off the Gaza strip. Benjamin Netanyahu told Reuters that the “Gaza Marine Project” would require security co-ordination with the Palestinian authority and Egypt. Was Netanyahu’s approval of a project which sidelines the Palestinians from their natural wealth a provocation which caused Hamas to fast forward the October 7 attack which must have been in the works for years?

The intriguing fact is that this gas and oil angle to the Gaza story is nowhere in focus even though the Israel-Hamas war, the relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza have received unprecedented media attention.

According to Reuters its reporter drew a blank when he asked the Palestinian Authority for a comment: “we can’t take positions based on a statement made to the media.”

Hamas official Ismail Rudwa was blunt: “We reaffirm that our people in Gaza have rights to their natural resources.” And this barely three months before October 7.

If the mother of all gas finds is in the bargain, why would Israel make a gift of it to those who Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich consider “animals” or “Barbarians”? The holy scriptures sanction the territory for Jewish people only. The two State solution would give the Palestinians exclusive access to the gas.

Trump’s outrageous plan for a Riviera of the Middle East in Gaza should be seen alongside his interesting 1987 book The Art of the Deal. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing to get what I am after.” Who knows, he may have thrown a boulder in the pond to see how far the ripples go. Netanyahu and his extreme right cabinet colleagues have been mollified.

“All hell will break loose” should Hamas not release all hostages by Saturday, he thundered. In his book Trump talks of hyperbole as a tactic. Faced with this threat Hamas has not exactly buckled. They have not announced the release of all the hostages as “ordered” by Trump but only three as the agreement stipulates. Will this much keep Trump in humour or as per his tactics in the book he will “push and push”? Will he tactically blow his top if all hostages are not released as demanded by him?

One of the principles enunciated by him is that the “best deal is one in which both sides get something.” So, hope is not exactly out of order. The Saudi foreign ministry has stated that they will not participate in any post war program for Gaza that removes the Palestinian population.

Is this Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s final position? Or is he amenable to persuasion? There is a persistent chorus in the western media about the need for new energy to place the Abraham Accords on track against. The process has no meaning without Saudi Arabia being enlisted.

There are reasons why the Saudis cannot come on board easily. The gruesome pictures of genocide in Gaza have shaken the Arab, like people everywhere. Saudis are not exempt from the guilt that all Arabs passively watched the brutalities heaped on the Palestinians in Gaza for full 17 (seventeen) months. Arab regimes are now lining up against the Resistance movements who did help Gazans.

Also it is not easy for the Saudis to abandon the entente with Iran which has been diligently supervised by China. Saudi-Iran rapprochement is bad enough for the West and Zionism combine, what riles them more is the Chinese sponsorship of it.

In the backdrop of recent conflicts has been the echo chamber resonating with the chant of western decline – the loss of global dominance. Those uneasy with this trend are unsettled even more when the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks of a multipolar world order. This is a shift in US position.

Enthusiasts of the Arab Riviera in Gaza are trying to persuade MBS that his NEOM project, the futuristic city on the Red Sea will be splendidly coherent with the Riviera in Gaza. More US pressure on MBS will manifest itself when the time comes for him to make a bid for the Saudi throne after the ailing King Salman. A Crown Prince does not automatically become King as the Crown Prince’s own experience shows.

After King Abdullah’s death Prince Muqrim became Crown Prince. After three months he was replaced by Prince Nyef. On June 21, 2017, Nyef was deposed. Prince Mohammad bin Sultan’s ascension was followed by high drama. Guests at Riyadh’s luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel were hurriedly parceled off to other hotels. Nearly 300 of the Saudi elite, royalty, businessmen were detained in Ritz Carlton apparently on charges of corruption. Although speculation was that the move forestalled rebellion.

When the time of reckoning approaches, MBS will need all manner of support. The US, which is an integral part of the Saudi system, will have a trump card then.

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