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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Palestinians Want Peace: Will Netanyahu Agree on Terms Acceptable To Hamas?

Palestinians Want Peace: Will Netanyahu Agree on Terms Acceptable To Hamas?

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

There is a growing school of thought that the West, led by the US, is fighting with its back to the wall in West Asia and Ukraine not to obtain victories in these theatres but to protect Western hegemony now in free fall.

All eyes are on Trump, how will he cope with this predicament? By erecting safety nets to cushion this fall or by making fortress America great again, lapped by the two oceans. The latter course implies less interest in foreign expeditions. This would hit Israel where it hurts.

For the past 40 years at least US foreign policy has been navigated by Israel or Israeli interests. Should Washington begin to look inwards, Israel will become the tail with no dog to wag.

It is a foregone conclusion that the West has lost in Ukraine, pending the final agreement to bring about peace. Remember Defence Secretary Lloyd Austen’s most self assured statement: “We want to weaken Russia.” There was modesty in Austen’s utterance compared to Senator Lindsay Graham’s bombast: “Lets assassinate Putin.”

A reversal like Ukraine in the heart of Europe was bad enough. Even more mortifying are electoral verdicts coming out of central Europe. That which Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed was “New Europe”, America’s very own carved out of the former Soviet Union, was now turning its back on the West.

Results are pro Russia, anti NATO and EU. It is another matter that every result causes the pro west losing candidate to throw a ginger fit. “Fraud” chants the crowd mobilized towards this end. As my leftist wag remarks: “democracy is legitimate only when people vote for the West’s agenda.”

However galling it might be for the Western media, all truth cannot be suppressed forever. It must have been with a heavy heart, the Editor of The Economist cleared the headline for its January 11, 2025 issue.

“Putinization of Central Europe.”

The editorial sheds copious tears at the “rise of Herbert Kicked, leader of Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party.” The writer of the edit mollifies himself that Austria is a country of only 9 (nine) million. But come the German elections in February, Europe’s largest country is expected to bring the far-right alternative for Germany to power. What then?

Another, of the same ilk as Victor Orban of Hungary, Robert Fico of Slovakia, is Andrez Babis who is likely to win in the Czech Republic. This is not all. Lost to the West are Georgia, Moldova, Romania and more coming. How long will Emanuel Macron of France, menaced by the fascist Marine Le Pen on the right and a powerful Communist-Socialist coalition on the left, keep playing one against the other without going under.

The rout in Europe would have demoralized all those busy shoring up US and Israeli interests in the many conflicts in West Asia in which the spider in the web is the Jewish state.

Given their current score in Europe, who knows the Russians may have struck a clever bargain by keeping away from the mess that Syria is guaranteed to descend into. Their bases in Latakia and Tartous are intact. A tired Bashar al Assad, politics thrust upon him by his elder brother’s death, can now attend to his wife’s cancer in Moscow.

Moreover, by creating the illusion that Assad has been handed to them as a trophy, the US-Israel combine might see a stimulated victory. This will enable them to come out of the blinding rage which impelled them into the world’s only genocide on live television. They are impaled on the world’s TV screen as blood thirsty men.

Ofcourse, October 7, killing of 1,200 people, the taking of 200 hostages was a huge provocation. Surely Yahya Sinwar and his compatriots did not calculate that October 7 would bring them victory, a Palestinian state. It was a trap. It was an invitation so the Israel-US could expose themselves as genocidal murderers, atleast one of them, Israel, certified as such by the International Court of Justice.

When lady Macbeth would not stop washing her hands after Duncan’s murder, Shakespeare had created a woman, hard as nails, and yet human enough to break down with guilt. But Benjamin Netanyahu, his far right colleagues, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are of another ilk. During the monstrous war, how many times were Palestinian described as “amalak” who have to be blotted out of Jewish holy lands.

Now that peace is nigh, people will ask: who won? The western narrative is already in full spate: Hamas and Hezbollah have been thoroughly “degraded”. Iran has been weakened and the Palestinian resistance groups no longer have Syria as the conduit for arms from Iran. It is against this weakened lineup the Hamas has been compelled to sue for peace.

The other narrative sees this line of thinking as western propaganda. After all the reason that Netanyahu sustained his genocidal destruction of Gaza for so long was because his war aims had not been fulfilled. Even today neither has Hamas been destroyed nor have the hostages returned.

Also, Hezbollah is nowhere near being defeated. Israelis have not returned to their homes in northern Israel. The number of Israelis fleeing Israel because of the seemingly endless war. How many Israeli soldiers killed?

Peace is not a good time for the belligerent who has had to conceal the truth.

At the first inkling of a ceasefire, the Palestinians in Gaza came out dancing in jubilation on the debris and mangled steel which was once their home. They have nothing to hide. Their tragedy was seen by millions worldwide.

The mood was somber on the Israeli side. Should peace really descend, skeletons will come rattling out of shelves and cupboards. The people want peace, but do the leaders?

Neo cons encircling Trump (all Israel’s proxies) are fixated that Riyadh reach out to Jerusalem. Abraham Accords are their panacea for the region. First, Mohammad bin Salman is unlikely to ditch China and Iran in one dark move. Supposing he does, he will demand the Palestinian state as a pre condition. What then Netanyahu?

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