Fallout From Iran, Ukraine Wars: Rich Seek Doomsday Hideouts

Fallout From Iran, Ukraine Wars: Rich Seek Doomsday Hideouts

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

The rumour that Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammad al Qasimi, ruler of Sharjah was opting out of the United Arab Emirate because of policy differences on the Iran war, was actually based on a misunderstanding.

The Sharjah Sheikh was buying thousand of hectares of prime farmland in New Zealand. In doing so, he was only following a trend. Time was when the Sheikhs of Araby eyed property in Europe, the UK or California. That no longer is the trajectory. The current trend is being propelled by chants of Armageddon, the Second Coming, “Qayamat” and Doomsday, all rising to a crescendo.

The favourite destinations of yesteryears, whether in Europe or the US are being overlooked because these precisely are being seen as the flashpoints of the coming catastrophe.

The Sheikh of Sharjah, by the way, already maintains in his Sheikhdom the world’s largest cow farm partly because he is obsessed with the notion of food security in a dangerous world.

Even so, purchase of farms in the remote country in the South Pacific is not for food security only. Being as far as possible from the world’s possible flashpoints is a compelling incentive. Ofcourse, the New Zealand government having its eye on the main-chance has relaxed rules for purchasing property provided the buyers also help the host country’s economy.

Just in case I have created an impression that only the Sheikhs of Araby are salivating on the New Zealand option let me insert some legendary names from the Silicon Valley who have invested heavily in New Zealand – Sam Altman and Peter Thiel. Themes are developing which will surely be snapped up by futuristic cinema on an epic scale. Billionaires are contemplating underground palaces for extensive stay to keep themselves insulated from nuclear radiation, should the world reach that terminal.

So far the land of pretty dales, snowlines, lakes and pastoral farms touching the horizon has retained its pristine beauty. Once the big media picks up the story, its pristineness will surely be compromised.

The rumour of Sharjah’s possible unease in the UAE is largely because of Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed’s eccentric, pro Israel politics, out of line with the rest of the GCC.

The GCC was formed in response to two traumatic events in the region, both in 1979 – Islamic Revolution and the capture of the Mecca Mosque led by an extremist anti monarchy group with Juhayman al Otaybi as leader.

Since the Ayatollahs replaced the Shah, the West’s most reliable guardian of the Persian Gulf, the West played up the turmoil in Iran as the greater danger although the occupation of Mecca Mosque signaled a much greater internal vulnerability of the Sheikhdoms.

To add to the troubled times, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. Every step had US approval. Being plugged into Washington became a goal.

Top bracket West Asian diplomats divined that the secrets of purposeful hospitality in a capital like Washington was to fall back on the Arabian Nights mode. Lavish parties by the Shah of Iran’s Ambassador, Ardeshir Zahedi boasted of Henry Kissinger and Elizabeth Taylor, for example, as regulars.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan feted several Presidents. His intimacy with George W Bush was such that the highest echelons of Washington often addressed him – “Bandar Bush”. No one quite as illustrious has recently represented the Saudis possibly because the hands-on Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman may be averse to Ambassadors in key locations upstaging him. But the “Alif Laila” culture of lavish hospitality in the tradition of Zahedi and Bandar Bush has been sustained and refined by Yousef al Otaiba, the UAE’s Ambassador.

He is extraordinarily well plugged into all the power points in Washington including, quite ironically, key figures in the Israeli lobby. The pronounced pro Israeli slant in UAE’s foreign policy multiplies Otaiba’s power in Washington but only as long as the patrons of this tilt have Washington in their grip. This fact may not be a constant with recent trends going in Iran’s favour.

Otaiba is not the only one in this predicament. The other power battery in Abu Dhabi is Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater, the world’s biggest mercenary armies on sale. Because of some legal difficulties in the US, Prince shifted his base in 2010. Sheikh Zayed used his talent in setting up mercenary armies. An 800 strong special force consisting only of foreign soldiers from countries like Colombia and South Africa has been incharge of Sheikh Zayed’s security for years.

The Sheikh had specifically requested the force to be non Muslim. Only a non Muslim force, according to him, could be relied upon to quell any Muslim uprising. In Bahrain where 80% of the population is Shia and therefore treated as the opposition by the Sunni rulers, recruitment to the police force is mostly from Pakistan but with a peculiar twist: the recruits have to be from those areas of Pakistan where their mettle has been tested in violence with Shias. When I was in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, the watchman guarding the Indian Embassy was a tall Pakistani.

Two conflictual moves are currently afoot. Trump is trying to keep the Abraham Accords alive. This would have the effect of giving Netanyahu’s drooping morale some support and provide company in the GCC to the UAE which is otherwise a lonesome GCC member in the Israeli camp.

Iran on its part is being straight as an arrow with Gulf countries. It has placed UAE and Bahrain in the enemy camp, but accelerated a furtive diplomatic initiative with all the others.

In the West Asian theatre as well as in Ukraine, the drift of events has recently been against the West. There is therefore a ganging up in Europe to roll back the Putin juggernaut by arming Zelensky under expert guidance. Pushed to the wall, Putin could widen the war across Europe. In West Asia, a nuclear armed Israel as a wounded tiger remains a menacing presence. The ultra rich have clearly taken all factors into account and, with cunning native to the richy-rich, located a doomsday hideout with a sense of purpose and security in the farthest edge of South Pacific.

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Is The Economist Cover Still Valid: Advantage Iran

Is The Economist Cover Still Valid: Advantage Iran

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

I would never have expected the liberal right wing, Israel friendly news magazine, The Economist, to have on its cover a headline in large fonts – Advantage Iran. There is now a willingness in the ruling class circles to accept Iran’s upper hand in a conflict with Israel (and the US). This totally contradicts Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (or Bibi, as he is called) persistent sales pitch with Trump that joint Israel-US bombing of Iran will cause the Iranian regime to collapse.

Reports have now surfaced in the Israeli Press of Vice President, J. D. Vance having taken Netanyahu to task for having sold a line which had zero chance of proving right. That Vance is now smelling of roses signals a crack in Trump’s White House team. The point of contention was the US fighting Israel’s war with Iran.

This war within the Washington establishment adds to mounting anxieties on account of the widening cracks in Trump’s MAGA base. Israel’s war with Iran and Trump’s willingness to take a leadership role is creating turbulence in MAGA.

A fact, among many, which make Trump so willing a champion for an Israeli war is his Jewish son-in-law Jarred Kushner being “chummy” with Bibi. Kushner is virtually “Bibi’s” man in the White House.

Bibi has the kind of influence on the extraordinarily powerful Israel lobby in the US that no Israeli leader has ever had. And little wonder too. He has degrees from Harvard and MIT. Add to this network his experience as Israel’s ambassador to the UN for four years, keeping him amidst the world’s second largest Jewish population after Tel Aviv.

Trump disguises it by his bluster but he is torn between the Israeli lobby and the MAGA base which sees a betrayal of the America First project bound around Trump as its leader.

A President with a character as doubtful as Trump’s may not turn out to be as reliable as his MAGA followers expect him to be. The real danger lies elsewhere. A President in his second term can be willful and self-serving because he sees no occupation of the White House after 2028.

A MAGA ideologue Trump respects, Steve Bannon, told The Economist editor-in-chief, Zany Minton Beddoes in a podcast that “Trump will be President beyond 2028” because “the American people want that to happen.” How would that be possible when the 22^nd Amendment to US Constitution restricts a President’s terms to two.

Bannon said “the American people will find ways around the Constitution.” Bannon’s hyperbole was stunning. “Trump is like Moses leading his people out of Egypt.”

This excessive praise of Trump, let it be added in parenthesis, predated the war with Iran. Trump’s stock is much lower among MAGA now primarily because “American blood is being shed for Israel’s war.”

Vice President J.D. Vance giving a dressing down to Netanyahu for having misled the President on the war, that once the top Iran leadership was decapitated the Iranian would rise to a man. Israeli intelligence had predicted such an almighty popular uprising not just against the Ayatullahs but in favour of Trump. What happened was exactly the opposite. Iranians rallied around the regime most demonstrably.

Even before this division in the White House inner circle about Israel’s influence on Trump was the rupture in the MAGA base. It became headline news with the murder of a prominent activist and Trump’s friend Charlie Kirk during a talk on Turning Point America at Utah Valley college. MAGA is supposed to be America’s “Turning Point”.

The murder acquired sinister undertones because it took place in the period when Kirk had become vocal against the US-Israeli build up for a war in Iran. At the heart of the opposition to the war the same fear – its Israel’s war.

The needle of suspicion pointed at Israel but the police picked up a 22 year Tyler Robinson who was heard by witnesses expressing anger at Kirk spreading too much hate.

Fractures appeared in the US Intelligence community including at the highest levels. Joe Kent, Director of National Counter Terrorism Centre was keen to explore some leads which pointed to a “foreign hand” in Kirk’s murder. He was blocked by authorities not to pursue his line of inquiry. Kent resigned.

Kent’s resignation opened up a serious problem in the US Intelligence community. Kent has acquired star ratings for his candid, full disclosure interviews with such super stars as Tucker Carlson. A distillate of what he says points to an American intelligence community which may have begun to be dangerously reliant on Israeli intelligence.

This fracture in the intelligence community is no trifling matter. Suddenly the social media with ideologically motivated journalists like Tucker Carlson have mushroomed to flaunt stories of deep Israeli penetration of the US establishment.

That Trump had turned his back on Europe is well known. Rather than have the albatross of Western decline around US’s neck, MAGA strategized differently: it parted company with Europe to find itself in solo splendour as the world’s richest and militarily the most powerful country. The sole super power moment had passed most decisively when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. Western decline become the chant which grew in decibel level.

Division in Trump’s close circle, in the MAGA base, within the Intelligence community, harsh exchanges with NATO and individual European nation are all signs of irritation which has one source – the Iran war. What should alarm Bibi is this – all plaintiffs are opposed to US fighting “Israel’s war.”

If this grows, as it will because of high costs on account of the closure of the straits of Hormuz and possibility of returning body bags, should US ground troops be deployed, Trump’s popularity will fall even as the mid-term elections approach in November.

The burden of all this will strain US-Israel relations as never before. The very thought of US distancing itself from the West Asian theatre will pose for Israel its first real existential crisis.

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Has Iran Won? Why Did We Not See It Happen?

Has Iran Won? Why Did We Not See It Happen?

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his comrades, martyred or killed, must be laughing their heads off at the ponderous pundits puzzling over the outcome of US and Israel war with Iran. “Its over” they must have whispered to each other.

Their audacious, grizzly by some definitions, attack on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis excluding the 251 taken hostage, was not the clarion call for war or victory. It was a trap to invite Israeli retaliation on a scale which would make them pariahs globally.

Ironically, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s support base, indeed Israelis, were the last to get a whiff of this revulsion wafting in the air. Netanyahu fell back on the chant “they are amaleks (sub humans)”. It is a Judaic duty to destroy their animal’s homes, women and children “who will otherwise grow up to be our permanent enemies.”

In the US Bible belt where the Judeo-Christian belief in Armageddon or the “Second Coming” has not yet amalgamated with this maniacal hatred, it was possible for Trump, Jarred Kushner and neo-cons like Marco Rubio to play footsie with the triumvirate – US Israeli lobby (in conjunction with 52 Israeli billionaires, Netanyahu and the Trump entourage.

The war with Iran has strained relations between the three entities in this triangle to a point of rupture. Netanyahu’s pressure on the Israeli lobby and the lobby’s on Trump may have weakened. This is a hugely important development.

What is cracking up is Trump’s Make-America-Great-Again (MAGA) base. Let me give you examples of rupture, earthshaking in the midst of a war which is reshaping world order like never before.

On September 10, 2025 Charlie Kirk, 31, founder of Turning Point America, an activist close to Trump was shot dead by a sniper while given a talk at the Utah, valley university. Kirk was a prominent figure and his murder would have made news in any case. But a major controversy got attached to the murder because he had become a vocal opponent of “America fighting Israel’s war with Iran.” Suddenly the ranks of Kirk’s supporters swelled. The needle of suspicion began to point at Israeli intelligence.

One Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested because he had been heard ranting that “Kirk was spreading too much hatred.”

An hourlong Tucker Carlson interview with Joe Kent has poured more oil on the flaming cauldron. Kent, Chief of the National Counter terrorism, a slot at the highest level of US intelligence, resigned from his job for reasons which impinge on Trump’s Iran policy. Kent had seen no confidential reports which would tally with Washington’s case for supporting the war on Iran. No case for regime change in Tehran and there was no shred of evidence that Iran was embarked on a nuclear weapons programme.

Worse, Kent as an intelligence man, was blocked by authorities from pursuing important leads in the Kirk murder case. These leads implicated a “foreign” hand.

The break up in the MAGA base had manifested itself most dramatically in December, 2025 in Phoenix Arizona. The mainstream US media, hand in glove with Israel lobby, did not play up the growing isolation of Trump from his own base because of his insistence on dancing to Netanyahu’s tune 24/7.

The headline in The Guardian, London summed up the story.

“Gripes and Infighting on Display as MAGA stars gather at the Turning Point USA conference” in Phoenix, Arizona. Turning point USA was a successful movement with 83 chapters nationwide, started by Charlie Kirk. The deck line to the Guardian article furnishes revealing details:

“figures at event include Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Trump Jr.: cohesion of political right shows signs of stress.” The headline does not mention far right but pro Israel activist and journalist, Ben Shapiro who in fact started the fire works by attacking Tucker Carlson. He poured vitriol on Carlson for having interviewed anti Israel icon Nick Fuentes. That Fuentes is a top rank racist does not incur Shapiro’s wrath. In fact on that count the two are soul mates.

Fuentes has a reputation for being a supremacist ofcourse but is additionally a notorious anti semite and a holocaust denier. That Carlson promoting him on his podcast was reason enough for Ben Shapiro to unfurl his pro Israel leanings, Genocide in Gaza notwithstanding.

In fact he persistently leans towards Israel in his publication The Wire. Shapiro was biting in his criticism. “Building up Fuentes is moral imbecility on Carlson’s part.” Shapiro boomed. This rupture is for real and places Trump’s friendship with Netanyahu delicately in the balance.

The tone and tenor of the Phoenix event shows how the Genocide of Gaza has damaged the conservative right’s ability to be seen with Israel. Let us now revert to the war.

In a sense, keeping Iran under pressure and isolated has cost the US-Israel dear. Armed to the teeth with the latest military technology and an impressive array of lethal weapons, the combine has forced Iran to be inventive and thrifty.

The homespun nature of Iranian drones and missiles has caught the combine flat footed. Now comparisons are being made. US action in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Lebanon are all very telegenic: plumes of smoke, mountains of debris, the homeless on the march.

The Military Industrial Complex has in its inventory enough to destroy cities. But that was achieved even in Dresden 80 years ago. How does America break its duck and learn to win wars or better still refrain from them if only to recover prestige?

No war resembles a boxing ring where pugilists knock each other out. The remarkable thing about this war is that folks are waiting for victory which has happened but outside their definition of winning and losing.

Yahya Sinwar and his gang must be smiling at the outcome.

Who had ever imagined the war will lay the foundation for Israel to be a country on its own, not America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier as Ronald Reagan’s Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger had famously said. And then, enters Palestine, centre stage as never before.

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MAGA Ideologue Calls Trump “Moses Leading His People To Promised Land”

MAGA Ideologue Calls Trump “Moses Leading His People To Promised Land”

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

There are identifiable reasons why international affair are difficult to comprehend in the age of Trump. One is, ofcourse, Trump himself, the miasmal mist he sprays around his pronouncement, a bewildering mix of unpredictability and unreliability.

Another reason for consistent puzzlement is the habitual reliance by a large body of opinion makers on sources of information set up to serve the Sole super power moment which lasted from the end of the Cold War to the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The stance struck in the euphoria of the superpower moment needed change but making readjustments was resisted because alternations would be an acceptance of decline. Some of the difficulty in comprehending world affairs at this precise moment is also because initiatives and plans set into motion three decades ago, for another time, are being tried today when the times are out of joint.

To cope with western decline, the US chose to wrench itself away from Europe rather than be one, at the head of the western alliance in decline. The US chose to go solo, thereby becoming more equal than others in a triangular world order, China and Russia being the other two poles. Rather than acquiesce in the emerging multipolar world order as one among others, Trump and his cohorts in MAGA are projecting a world order in which the US, unencumbered by alliances, would be economically and militarily more equal than others. MAGA planners have dreamt up an exclusive area of influence which would be named Donroe Doctrine, a more muscular version of the Monroe doctrine.

Enunciated in 1823 by President James Monroe, the doctrine kept European powers out of the Caribbean and Latin America. Which powers does Trump intend to keep out of this “backyard”? China and Russia. Surely Trump knows that both are very heavily invested not just in Venezuela but in all of Latin America. Indeed, 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed up with China’s Belt and Road initiative.

How will Trump cope? Heaven knows what ideas may be in the offing.

Henry Kissinger’s triangular world order sought to widen the breach which had surfaced between Moscow and Beijing. He succeeded. Trump’s sketch of three super powers US, China and Russia has no apparent breach he can widen. He has to first create a hairline fracture between them. He is much more of a sledge hammer man than one who can handle with delicacy fine knives and needles.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, a milestone in the West’s downward slide, coincided with NATO’s Bucharest summit where Georgia and Ukraine were listed for membership. Even as Putin, present for the NATO-Russia Council meeting put his foot down quite firmly. NATO at Russia’s border was an existential threat for Russia, he emphasized.

Francis Fukiyama impatiently wrote a book: End of History. His thesis fell miles on the wrong side of history. But there were others like media magnate Rupert Murdoch whose triumphalism at Soviet fall led him to expand tabloids as a means of thwarting authoritarian regimes. But authoritarianism was not being replaced by a liberal order. Populist Nationalism was the unintended consequence.

Murdoch sought to block authoritarian regime but it also ended up placing road blocks in the way of anything progressive like Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in UK. I wrote in 2017: “if you make Sanders and Corbyn impossible, you end up making Trump and Nigel Farage inevitable.” In his interview to the Economist, MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon was confident that Nigel Farage would be the Prime Minister of the UK after the next elections. Bannon’s political projection may be flawed but his utterance does clarify his political inclinations.

European leaders already in power or knocking at the gates whose ascent would please Bannon and Trump are Victor Orban (Hungary), Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini (Italy), Marine Le Pen (France), Geert Wilders (Netherland), Santiago Abascal (Spain) and Herbert Kickl (Austria). All these leaders have been cultivated by Bannon during his trips to Europe.

The earliest lucid enunciation of the Trump establishment’s appraisal of Europe was spelt out by Vice President J.D. Vance. His speech exactly a year ago, February 14, 2025 at the European Security Conference at Munich left the European Grandees, the top military representatives gasping.

“The threat to European security is not from Russia or China or any other external actor.” The danger Vance said, “was within”. Vance explained, giving examples. In December 2024, a Romanian Constitutional Court took the unprecedented step of annulling the Presidential election on the eve of the final run off. Russian interference was allegedly the cause for the annulment which was applauded by the EU.

Bannon and Vance have not left Europe in any doubt. European liberalism is not their meat. For Europe Victor Orban of Hungary is their role model. Europe had to shuffle itself out of its liberal coil to be coherent with Trump’s US. The “erasure” of European civilization by an open door policy towards migrants was anathema to MAGA ideologues.

I have been intrigued by two back to back podcasts with Bannon interviewed by Zany Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of the Economist. She described it is a “terrifying” experience but which was also important because it drive an important section of opinion in the US.

Bannon counts Trump as one among the three great US Presidents who gave the nation a certain direction – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and, yes, Donald Trump.

Bannon placing Trump by the side of history’s most iconic Presidents is exaggeration, ofcourse, but what does one make of Bannon giving him a seat with Prophet Moses “leading his people into the promised land.”

The huge agenda Bannon has set for Trump cannot be completed in the three years left for his term.

With a wave of the hand, Bannon puts that question aside.

“The American people will give Trump another term. Yes, they will upturn the constitution to give him a third term.”

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Mark Tully and the BBC radio were synonymous all over the subcontinent

Mark Tully and the BBC radio were synonymous all over the subcontinent

                                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

In the front seat, with the driver, was Mark Fineman of Los Angeles Times, when their car was stopped at an improvised toll barrier outside Lord Krishnan’s town, Mathura.

“Mark” an Indian reporter in the rear seat shouted. “Tell him you are a journalist and he will let you go.” The toll keeper had heard the name, Mark. His eyes lit up. He waved to his friends smoking bidis on a cot by the roadside. They leapt to their feet and surrounded the car. ‘Mark Tully! Mark Tully!’ Before the impersonation travelled, an infuriated Mark Fineman pulled out a ten rupee note and threw at the toll keeper.

“Here’s your f…..ing toll and let me go.” 

Fineman was probably scarred for good. In the ranks of foreign correspondents, there would always be one above them—Sir Mark Tully. And he was on a higher pedestal for good, professional reasons—balance, dependability, diligence and a distinct personal charm which attracted all shades of people, intellectually lively in most cases, to his Salon, first in Jorbagh, facing Safdarjung Tomb and later Number 1 Nizamuddin East.

The character of his salon changed over the years. His Wife, Margaret, from whom he had two sons and two daughters, was a lively Victorian lady of the style his father would have approved of. The senior Tully whom Mark always referred to as ‘Burra Saheb’ of Gillanders Arbuthnot, headquartered in Calcutta, which is where Mark was born. Quite predictably, he attended St Paul School in Darjeeling as a boy, before he was transferred to Marlborough College which experience he was more proud of than the next station, Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he studied theology. His career as priest was grounded partly by himself and more by his tutor at trinity hall, Robert Runcie, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury.

“Master Tully,” Runcie told him, “You appeared to be more suited to the public house(pub) than to the pulpit.” Although this was said in ample good humour, Mark spotted in Runcie’s observation a grain of truth.

Yes, Mark did enjoy his beer. Since his favourite, flat, bitter beer was not available in India, he even run through a spell of trying to brew at home. Eventually, he made compromises with Lager which he had in his range of pewter and in sundry China mugs. All of his life, Mark remained torn between his early Christian training and his real life which was seldom free of fun, frolic, mischief and a personal morality which he found hovering on what his faith had told him was sin. For instance, in the second half of his innings in Delhi, he fell in love with Gillian Wright, writer who, translated classical novel like Raga Darbari and Adha Gaon. Mark, even though he lives with Gillian, he was always afflicted by a certain guilt. He never divorced Margaret, with whom he reinvented a life of laughter and affection which I was witness to in their house in Hampstead, not far from the Washington pub, which became our rendezvous. 

I can put a date when Mark’s romance with Gillian burgeon—April, 1979. I was to accompany Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Peking, China. Since the visit was coinciding with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto’s case reaching a crescendo, I decided to pick up another story in Islamabad on my way to Peking. To my delight, I found myself in the Flashman’s hotel, in Rawalpindi where Mark was also staying in the adjacent room. In those days, Gillian used to write letters in Urdu but in the Roman script. In this fashion ‘Gilli’ became something of a bridge between the Englishman, who was keen to deepen his understanding of the country he had made his home. On this count also, Mark was torn: he remained an Englishman who loved India. There is poetic justice in the fact that he received Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan as well as a Knighthood.

My room at Flashman’s had a clear view of the procession of contacts visiting Mark. Many of them belonging to orthodox sects of Islam. I felt secure that even though I had no connections in Pakistan, I will nevertheless be able to pick up the story from Mark on whether or not Bhutto is to be hanged.

At the crack of dawn, one morning, a cousin of mine in Karachi called me up.

“Bhaiyya, I am sure you have got the story of Bhutto having been hanged since you are staying in the same hotel as Mark Tully.” I was hurt. Mark had filed what was clearly one of his many international scoops and yet I had the foolish expectation that he would tip me off. When I complained, Mark was blunt with me.

“I am a professional, Saeed and my loyalty on that count is with the BBC.”

An Indian’s loyalty is to his village. My friendship with Mark and Gillian acquired a new dimension when they accompanied me, for Moharram observances, to Mustafabad, my village past Lucknow, Raebareli and Unchahar railway station. Since the extended families of the Naqvis, a total of about 50, scattered all over northern India, congregated in Mustafabad for Moharram, Mark and Gilli endeared themselves to the whole Qasba which is, after all, a network of cousins. All of Mustafabad was flattered that the two visited the Qasba several times. Gillian even became a fixture reciting passages from Anis’s Marsiya on the Mimbar, the pulpit.

The fact that he was expelled from India during the Emergency interfered with his balance when he returned to cast his eye on a somewhat altered India. He began to see Nehruvian secularism as inimical to India’s ethos which was primarily religious. That this was the thin edge of wedge of Hindutva was something Mark needed to clarify.

The reach and credibility of BBC radio in the subcontinent and across the globe is owed to Mark and Mark alone. During an election survey, Mark, Waqar Ahmad, and Mark’s trusted deputy Satish Jacob travelled to a village near Mahmudabad. We approached an old man lying on a cot. We tried to engage him.

“We are trying to find out which candidate would you and most of this village vote for?”

The man got up, frowned.

“I will tell you nothing until I have heard the BBC.” He said pointing to the transistor kept neatly near his pillow.

It would be a surprise if there is no response in Kashmir to Mark's departure. In their perception, the BBC was only reliable outlet. 

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What Election Results Mean; An Example From My Files

What Election Results Mean; An Example From My Files

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

A creeping cynicism about elections, including the recent Bihar outcome, had begun to seriously afflict me after the 2018 assembly elections in Tripura. Covering elections over decades had caused personal likes and dislikes to fade somewhat. This is why my sudden personal interest in the Tripura contest deserves an explanation.

One day my neighbour in South Delhi, a former Director General of Police in Tripura, B.L. Vohra dropped in. He was all wrapped up in nostalgia about his innings in Agartala, during the Chief Minister, Manik Sarkar’s term in the state. A decorated officer, Vohra spoke of Sarkar with admiration bordering on reverence.

Turning the pages of Vohra’s book on his years in Tripura, the following was quite extraordinary.

“Manik Sarkar was definitely unlike any Chief Minister whom I had seen, met, worked with and heard about. He was honest personally and that had percolated down to all echelons of the government. One cannot find any examples of his ilk unfortunately in the country.”

The universal assessment of Manik Sarkar even among opposition leaders in Tripura would flatter any politician. It was not just that he was himself a gentleman but he appeared to have instilled his qualities in his cabinet colleagues and the administration across the board. By all accounts his predecessor and Guru, Nripen Chakraborty, was even more worthy of emulation. The staff in the Chief Minister’s house had never ever dreamt that they would serve a boss whose groceries were purchased on a ration card and who never saved enough money to open a bank account. This may be syrupy stuff in an era when an increase in the number of billionaires is a matter of pride.

It is elementary that 25 years of CPM rule could not have lasted only because of the leadership’s decency. Despite the economic crunch, the government in Agartala implemented every central scheme with greater efficiency than any other state: 96% literacy for instance. The gender ratio was something of a record. That is how Tripura’s middle class was created. True, having created a new middle class, the government found itself flat footed. It could not cope with the next stage of aspirations. It produced distributive justice but found itself bereft of ideas to generate wealth to accommodate the educated unemployed. It could not promote two wheel drivers to the four wheel level.

Upon arrival in Agartala I was able to find accommodation only in a government guest house. When I asked the CM if the absence of reasonable hotels was state policy, he was frank: “we are not in a position to cope with social imbalances that come with five star hotels, bars and restaurants.”

After the end of Left rule in West Bengal in 2011, the CPM in Agartala had no structure to lean on. In this friendless era it was exposed to hostile TV bombardment. Riding the crest of economic liberalization, market fundamentalism galloped at breakneck speed to accommodate advertising for rampaging consumerism marketed by dream merchants, architects of plush malls and multiplexes. Hindutva flourishes when rampaging markets determine the pace of life.

CPM Chief Minister, Manik Sarkar’s controlled austerities withstood this barrage of televised razzmatazz for 25 years. By this time another generation had arisen, torn between a lifestyle of simplicity and the Eldorado on the horizon that metropolitan centres of control teased and tempted them with.

After the Left defeat, Agartala was in trauma. Before they found their feet, the stunned CPM cadres were having to adjust to another reality: Party sympathizers were suddenly not making eye contact with them. Some, with an eye on the main chance, even joined the mobs attacking CPM offices, or pulling down Lenin’s statue.

To a considerable extent, the outcome in Tripura and elsewhere was the Congress’s gift to the BJP. Himanta Biswa Sarma, brilliant in electoral management, walked out of the Congress because he could not bear Rahul Gandhi’s insulting silences. Tarun Gagoi, the former Assam Chief Minister, was eager to make his son Gaurav the Chief Minister. This would cut out Sarma whose political skills underpinned the latter half of the Gogoi years.

This kind of a dynamo, backed by money power and an adversarial centre controlling the purse strings – this is how the Left was uprooted in Tripura. Just imagine, when state after state was implementing the 7th pay commission, Tripura found itself stranded at the 4th pay commission. CPM dogma also stood in the way: “7th pay commission made some demands which were anti people.”

I have dug up my Tripura file as a metaphor, an additional story to mull over while the Bihar verdict is being digested.

The State had been ploughing its furrow diligently with some quite extraordinary results on the Human Development scale which the mainstream media never discussed. Yes, the State with a population of 40 lakhs was small. Only Sikkim and Goa were smaller. Or was the media squeamish about applauding a State which for 32 of the past 37 years has been under Left Front rule?

Some of its records are amazing. Its 96 percent literacy makes it the country’s most literate State. Literacy rate in Gujarat is 83 per cent.

Instead of beating its breast and flailing its arms around for being short changed by the centre, the regime picked up all the Central and State schemes, put its head down, called in the officials, party cadres, involved the three tier Panchayati Raj system and gave a sense of real participation to the elected Autonomous District Councils which cover two thirds of the State and all the Tribal areas of Tripura.

The impending change of cultures was imminent from the day the BJP planted Tathagata Roy as Governor of Tripura. The genteel tone of Chakraborty-Sarkar gave way to a inelegant vocabulary. “They should be buried head first in pig’s excreta”, said the Governor by way of a recommendation for dealing with terrorists.

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Thrusting Victory On Netanyahu Trump Plan Has Chosen Narrative Over Facts

Thrusting Victory On Netanyahu Trump Plan Has Chosen Narrative Over Facts

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

Muslim countries assembled at Sharm al Sheikh in Egypt, to endorse Trump’s Peace Plan were Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan. None among these participated in the two year Israeli-Gaza conflict.

Muslim countries in the region that fought for the Palestinians were not present. These countries were Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen. Two other countries left out were Bahrain which has an overwhelming Shia population and Kuwait which has a substantial Shia population. The Shias in these Sheikhdoms are on a short leash.

In brief, countries which gave military and political support to Hamas, and therefore the Palestinian cause, were all Shia and were not present at Sharm al Sheikh. Would Hamas or the Palestinians leap with joy at a plan in which neither they nor their supporters have any space?

To widen the Shia-Sunni divide has been a western pursuit for decades. I remember the late Henry Kissinger describe the sectarian divide as the dominant theme defining West Asian politics which subsumes the Palestinian issue. Whoever scripted Trump’s plan had this long term perspective.

When the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia returned in February 2011 from convalescing in Germany, he found that two pillars of the West, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia had become casualties of the Arab Spring.

King Abdullah rained $136 billion on his people. He worked behind the scenes to ignite the Syrian Civil war in 2011 as the first phase of disrupting what was named the Shia arc – Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and, the ultimate trophy, Iran.

If the Saudi population was so agitated by the Arab Spring as to warrant the showering of billions to calm them, surely a two year long genocide of Muslims next door would have caused greater agitation among the Saudi public. Was all the speculation about Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman straining at the leash to rush into relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords not tinged with wishful thinking? Chinese generally get involved in initiatives after carefully weighing the consequences. They are invested in a Riyadh-Tehran rapprochement.

A Palestinian state in any form is anathema to Netanyahu and Israel’s Right. What then is the basis for any speculation of a Saudi interest in the Abraham Accords “unless Israel accepts a two state solution?”

Even though Hamas was ideologically a direct descendent of Hasan al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, its Sunni antecedents were seldom underlined for emphasis because that would confuse the theory of the Shia arc.

The Times of Israel has touched a very raw nerve in the Jewish state. “Hamas isn’t behaving like a defeated force, which puts the entire Gaza ceasefire at risk.” Why? Because the Israelis know that victory has been thrust upon them by the Trump plan.

This means that considerable care was taken for the tamasha mounted in the Israeli Knesset on October 13 to make it an occasion for Israeli victory. Three distinct forces were brought together. It were these three who coordinated action to make possible history’s greatest televised genocide for two years.

The three forces responsible for the genocide had all been carefully assembled that day in the Knesset – Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Miriam Adelson whom Trump introduced as “Miriam, with $60 billion in the bank”, obviously a pillar of the celebrated Israel lobby in the US.

When this, the most powerful trio was celebrating Trump’s peace plan, and the fact that “all of Netanyahu’s war aims had been achieved”, it was required of Hamas not to celebrate the return of Palestinian prisoners. The narrative of Israeli victory had to be amplified to such a pitch that facts are drowned.

Facts on the ground were that Netanyahu failed to bring home the hostages. It was Trump’s peace plan which facilitated the return of the Israeli hostages. He destroyed Gaza and assassinated regional leaders and scientists. Is that the stuff of victory?

Netanyahu also failed to exterminate Hamas. A pronounced schizophrenia afflicts Israel’s attitude towards Hamas: ceasefire has to be negotiated with the group but once peace has been established. Hamas must magically disappear.

The truth being obscured is this: Israel will never be able to commit the atrocities on Palestinians on the scale the world has seen on their TV screens these past two years. No genocide anymore.

The unspeakable brutality in excess of anything since the Naqba (catastrophe) in 1948 when the Jewish state was founded, will become an impossibility for two reasons: public opinion in the US, has turned against unstinted American support for Israel’s inhuman behaviour with Palestinians.

Secondly, the US is rapidly losing its position as the global hegemon. The imperial hegemon which supported all Israeli impunities as a matter of policy is no longer powerful enough to ignore world opinion.

US and Israeli impunity was at its peak in the decade between the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and 9/11. This was the period when dreams of the American century received a fillip.

We now have it on good authority that in November 2001, Benjamin Netanyahu handed a list of seven west Asian countries where regime change would be affected.

Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO commander, was handed the list by an officer in the Pentagon. The list was Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and the ultimate trophy, Iran.

Netanyahu had spotted the sole superpower moment to have his wish list implemented. A powerful neo-con lobby in the US backed him to the hilt.

Israel lobby, Neo cons, Netanyahu had sketched their design for the future of West Asia in the sole superpower moment. Europe’s delusionary dreams of a post Ukraine “weakened” Russia are also anchored in the sole superpower moment which alas has passed. The stalemate which is holding up movement in Ukraine as well as Gaza is an enormous waste of time and hundreds of thousands of lives. The new world order may be in the distance but watch the horizon carefully and hazy outlines of it are already emerging in Silhouette.

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