English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 25/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 16/01-12/:”The Lord Jesus said to the disciples: ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. ‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 24-25/2021
Aoun meets Catholic Schools’ Secretariat General delegation over educational sector conditions
Miqati Sources Say Formation Process Leaning to Positivity
Report: Int'l Pressure Expedites Formation as New Draft Line-Up Emerges
Diab Warns Violators as Fuel Distribution Meeting Takes Key Decisions
Hassan Inspects Drugs Warehouses, Finds Tons of Essential Missing Medicines
Lebanon Agrees to Pay World Bank Loan to the Poor in Dollars
Abu Shakra Says Fuel Ships Unloading, Car Lines to Get Shorter
Doctor in Lebanon needs two motorcycles and a car to dodge traffic, reach woman in
Cyprus Sends 88 Syrian Migrants Back to Lebanon
Crisis-Hit Lebanon to Reopen Classrooms Starting Next Month
Strong Lebanon bloc calls for end to feuds over electricity dossier
Army received medical supplies grant from Jordan
ESCWA: $37.3 billion from new IMF allocation offer an unprecedented financing opportunity for the Arab region

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 24-25/2021
Israel's Bennett Seeks U.S. 'Reset' in First White House Visit
Biden administration faces spectre of resurgent al-Qaida
U.S. Ramps Up Afghan Evacuations after Taliban Warn of 'Red Line'
Taliban "Will Be Held Accountable" On Terrorism, Human Rights: G7
Iran admits videos of Evin prison abuses are true
Closing of Rafah crossing reflects Egypt’s attempts to prevent new outbreak of violence
Ethiopia suspected of using Iranian drones against Tigray rebels
Millions in Syria, Iraq at risk of losing access to water
Idlib Blast Kills and Wounds Dozens of Qaida-Linked Militants
Month Of Fighting In Syria's Daraa Displaces 38,000 Says U.N.
Morocco Navy Rescues More Than 400 Europe-Bound Migrants
18 Europe-Bound Migrants Drown Off Libya

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 24-25/2021
With the U.S. Withdrawing From Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran May Reconsider Its Nuclear Options/Andrea Stricker/Policy Brief/August 24/2021
Bennett should not enter talks about compensation if Biden returns to JCPOA/Jacob Nagel/The Jerusalem Post/August 24/2021
Beijing’s American Hustle....How Chinese Grand Strategy Exploits U.S. Power/Matthew Pottinger/ Foreign Affairs/August 24/2021
L’Afghanistan et l’inévitable guerre civile /Charles Elias Chartouni/August 24/2021
Hezbollah, Taliban et consorts, ou les revers de la modernité dans l’islam contemporain/Charles Elias Chartouni/August 24/2021
After the Fall...The people running the country are incompetent. Is there a leader left in America?/Peter Savodnik/bariweiss.substack.com/August 24/2021
The Naqba was justified/Dr. Mordechai Nisan/August 24/2021
How Qatar became the power broker of Afghanistan - analysis/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/August 24/2021
Arabs: Biden Brings Extremism, Terrorism Back to Life/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/August 24, 2021
What’s the purpose of Kadhimi’s regional summit?/Ibrahim al-ZobeidiThe Arab Weekly/August 24/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 24-25/2021
Aoun meets Catholic Schools’ Secretariat General delegation over educational sector conditions
NNA/August 24/2021
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, on Tuesday affirmed that "the difficult conditions that Lebanon is going through should not affect the educational level in its various stages, which has long characterized Lebanon and placed it in the ranks of major countries in terms of the standard of its educational and university institutions."“The difficulties that Lebanon is currently enduring have cast their weight on the conditions of all educational institutions, both public and private, and have negatively affected students and their families, amid the decline in the state's capabilities to intervene and help,” President Aoun maintained. As such, the President stressed that any solution to the educational reality from its various aspects requires a joint effort from the state, educational institutions, educational body and the parents, so that solutions are integrated and realistic to overcome the delicate stage Lebanon is currently going through. President Aoun’s words came during his meeting today at Baabda palace with the new secretary general of Lebanon's Catholic schools, Father Youssof Nasr, accompanied by a delegation of the Catholic Schools Secretariat General, who briefed him on the current prevailing conditions of Catholic schools in Lebanon, in specific, and private schools, in general, at the onset of the new scholastic year.

Miqati Sources Say Formation Process Leaning to Positivity
Naharnet/August 24/2021
The fate of the cabinet formation process will become clear at the end of the week and the atmosphere is leaning to positivity, sources close to PM-designate Najib Miqati said. “There are no disagreements over the interior and energy portfolios,” the sources told the PSP’s al-Anbaa news portal in remarks published Tuesday. Asked why communication between President Michel Aoun and Miqati had moved to the level of envoys and advisers, the sources attributed that to the fact that “most obstacles have been resolved, which requires consultations through advisers to clarify some pending points.”

Report: Int'l Pressure Expedites Formation as New Draft Line-Up Emerges
Naharnet/August 24/2021
International pressure managed to achieve major progress over the past hours in Lebanon’s cabinet formation process, resolving a host of reservations and mutual conditions, media reports said. PM-designate Najib “Miqati informed the ex-PMs that he has become willing to visit the Baabda Palace in the coming hours -- Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday at the latest -- to submit a line-up of 24 ministers according to the 8-8-8 format,” al-Joumhouria newspaper quoted highly informed sources as saying. Miqati will not accept any change to the line-up, “even if that leads to his resignation,” the sources added. The daily added that the U.S.-French pressures pushed President Michel Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement to give up their “provocative” candidates. The remaining obstacles are now limited to the justice, interior, energy and social affairs portfolios after an agreement was reached with the Marada Movement on naming Farid Doueihi as telecom minister, the sources said. Marada will also be allocated the industry portfolio and has been asked to name a Greek Orthodox candidate for it instead of a Maronite candidate, the sources added. Miqati is meanwhile insisting on naming Maj. Gen. Marwan Zein for the interior portfolio, while Aoun wants to name Raimond Tarabay for social affairs amid “Speaker Nabih Berri’s objection” seeing as Tarabay is “a close adviser” of FPM chief Jebran Bassil, the sources went on to say. Aoun is meanwhile rejecting Miqati’s nomination of Carole Ayyat for the energy portfolio, fearing her previous ties to the various oil companies, the sources added. Below is a list of some of the candidates on whom a final agreement has been reached, according to al-Joumhouria:
- Amal Movement: Finance (Youssef Khalil), Culture, Agriculture
- Hizbullah: Public Works, Labor
- President Aoun: Defense (Brig. Gen. Maurice Slim)
- SSNP: Economy (Ayman al-Haddad)
- Consensual ministers named by Aoun and Miqati: Marwan Munir Abu Fadel (Deputy PM), Abdallah Bou Habib (Foreign Affairs), Habib Ephrem (Information)
- Tashnag Party: Youth and Sport
- Miqati: Administrative Development (Nasser Yassine), Health (Firass Abiad)

Diab Warns Violators as Fuel Distribution Meeting Takes Key Decisions
Naharnet /August 24/2021
Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab on Tuesday chaired a Grand Serail meeting dedicated to studying the mechanism of distributing fuel in the crisis-hit country.
“There should be an integrated plan to control the market, monitor the quantities and pursue monopolists,” especially that the partial subsidization of fuel at the LBP 8,000 exchange rate “will cease at the end of September, which means that there will be several attempts to hoard fuel with the aim of achieving hefty profits,” Diab said during the meeting. “That’s why all the stakeholders in the sector -- importers, distributors, gas stations, bakeries and generators -- will be under scrutiny and there will be firm measures” against violators, the caretaker PM warned. The conferees meanwhile took several decisions, including:
- The activation of the joint operations room and using the Grand Serail as its headquarters, with it comprising representatives of all security agencies and the relevant ministries
- Adopting a mechanism for monitoring fuel from the moment it reaches Lebanon until being delivered to citizens and the concerned sectors
- Securing the delivery of diesel to vital sectors (hospitals, bakeries, mills, telecom stations)
- Asking gas stations to use all their pumps to speed up gasoline filling and decrease congestion
- Coordination between the Ministry of Energy, municipalities and security forces to distribute fuel to privately-owned neighborhood generators
- Asking generator owners to abide by the fee announced by the Ministry of Energy
The meeting was attended by the caretaker ministers of defense, interior and energy, the director general of the Ministry of Economy, a representative of the state prosecutor, a representative of the army chief, the heads of security agencies, and representatives of the private oil sector, bakeries and generator providers.

Hassan Inspects Drugs Warehouses, Finds Tons of Essential Missing Medicines
Naharnet/August 24/2021
Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan carried out on Monday an inspection tour of warehouses that store medicines and infant milk in many Lebanese regions. The tour aimed to monitor the selling and distribution of medicines in light of the companies’ remittances received by the Ministry of Health from the Central Bank. Hassan found tons of essential medicines, that are missing in the market, stored in warehouses, as well as large quantities of antibiotics and infant milk. A large amount of medicines was found in a drug warehouse in Jadra, including medicines for diabetes, kidney diseases, blood pressure, blood clots, epilepsy, and also stomach protection and burn medicines, pain relievers, insulin and antibiotics. The minister was accompanied by a patrol from the anti-financial crimes unit of the Internal Security Forces and the file was referred to the judiciary for follow up. Hassan said that the medicines found in the warehouse included large quantities of subsidized medicines, among which are burn treatment creams, “while victims of the al-Tleil explosion have suffered from the absence of medicines to soothe their pain.” He assured that the "investigations will continue in order to identify the culprits,” adding that “the violation is clear” and that “there will be a judicial, financial and administrative process." Hassan also raided a drug warehouse in Al-Akibiya, south of Lebanon, where he found medicines for epilepsy, thyroid disorders and other chronic diseases, as well as a large number of OTC medicines and infant milk.
After contacting the financial prosecutor in southern Lebanon Judge Raheef Ramadan, it was decided that the warehouse will be sealed with red wax. Hassan issued an exceptional decision to sell the medicines to the public and to the pharmacies, especially baby formula and necessary medicines starting Tuesday morning, in the presence of the pharmaceutical Inspection of the Ministry of Health.

Lebanon Agrees to Pay World Bank Loan to the Poor in Dollars
Associated Press/August 24/2021
Lebanon's government agreed Monday to pay tens of thousands of poor families cash assistance in U.S. dollars from a World Bank loan as the country's economic crisis deepens. The decision comes as Lebanon is expected to end subsidies for fuel by the end of next month, a move that is expected to lead to sharp increases in prices of almost all products. Lebanon's parliament approved in March a $246 million loan from the World Bank that would provide assistance for more than 160,000 families. But the move was delayed over the government's insistence on paying it in Lebanese pounds.
Saroj Kumar Jha, the World Bank regional director, tweeted Monday that he received a letter from caretaker Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni confirming the beneficiaries will be paid in U.S. dollars. "This decision would allow poor households to receive full value of the @WorldBank assistance and protect the objectives of" a national social safety net, Jha tweeted. The U.S. dollar is trading at about 20,000 pounds on the black market, negatively affecting the purchasing power of many in the tiny country of 6 million people, including a million Syrian refugees. More than half of Lebanon's population live in poverty.
It was not immediately clear how much money each of the 161,257 families — or about 800,000 people — will receive. The government was earlier planning to give each family 800,000 Lebanese pounds a month for one year with the dollar calculated at 6,240 pounds. According to a World Bank statement in January, a significant portion of the loan — nearly $200 million — will go toward providing cash assistance to around 786,000 individuals through a pre-paid electronic card. Since Lebanon's economic and financial crisis began in late 2019, there have been different exchange rates for the dollar in the highly indebted country, including the official rate at about 1,500 pounds to the dollar, and the black market rate. A new rate of 8,000 pounds to the dollar was implemented over the weekend for fuel imports in an attempt to ease Lebanon's worst fuel crisis in decades. Until Sunday, the exchange rate used for fuel imports was 3,900 pounds to the U.S. dollar.

Abu Shakra Says Fuel Ships Unloading, Car Lines to Get Shorter
Naharnet/August 24/2021
Representative of Fuel Distributors Fadi Abu Shakra confirmed in a TV interview Tuesday that "there will be a follow-up to the security meeting, that was held at the Grand Serail, to control the market,” and that “decisions will be taken later.”Abu Shakra said that “several ships are unloading,” and called on citizens “to be patient,” because “it will take more than one day” to fulfil the market needs. Abu Shakra expected less queues on petrol stations but added that "the diesel crisis will only be resolved when there is less pressure on (private) generators, which can be achieved by improving the (public) electricity supply.

Doctor in Lebanon needs two motorcycles and a car to dodge traffic, reach woman in
Arab News/August 24/2021
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s massive fuel crisis obliged a doctor to use two motorcycles and a car to dodge roadblocks caused by petrol station queues and attend his patient’s urgent delivery operation. In less than an hour, Lebanese obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Julien Lahoud was forced to take unusual commuting methods to reach his patient, who was in labor since 8 a.m. Monday morning. “My patient was in her ninth month, and I had previously operated on her for a C-section,” Lahoud told Arab News on Tuesday, recounting what had happened due to blocked roads.
He said the “patient was in pain, and it took her a few hours to reach the hospital” in Ghazir, eastern Beirut. The doctor had left his Beirut clinic toward Jounieh (around 25 km away) but was stuck in heavy, bumper-to-bumper traffic caused by roadblocks and kilometers-long queues of cars waiting at stations along the Beirut-Dawra-Dbayyeh-Jounieh highway. “Recently, we’ve been seeing cars queueing at petrol stations. As a precautionary measure, I have been keeping a bicycle in my car trunk and have used it for short distances,” said Lahoud, explaining that would not have been an option for Monday’s incident.
Monday traffic was at a near standstill, and the first part of the doctor’s route to Ghazir had to be on a motorcycle. “I arranged for a car ride at some point where traffic had eased up near Dbayyeh. The car moved for some distance but traffic came at a complete halt after the Nahr Al-Kalb tunnel,” he said. Not thinking twice, he opened the car window and stopped the first motorcyclist he spotted.”Without even knowing the motorcyclist, I didn’t hesitate to ask if he could give me a quick lift to the hospital. He instantly said yes,” Lahoud said, calling the motorcyclist “gallant” and a “savior.”
A public health professional, Lahoud explained that his patient’s medical situation was critical, as she had already had a C-section, and time was a major factor.
“Mercifully, I arrived on time and she had a smooth delivery. Her husband arrived late due to traffic.”Lahoud took to social media to share his experience, saying that both mother and child fared well, though the same could not be said of his country. “Lebanon is NOT fine,” he wrote. Doctors have been acutely suffering the effects of the fuel crisis and blocked roads in the past few weeks, Lahoud said. “There are some petrol station owners who used to refuel our tanks, but unfortunately we are hesitant to approach them anymore because they are constantly angered by this ongoing crisis,” he said, explaining that doctors have had to rely on each other up for support. Lebanon’s fuel prices are expected to double after the state decided on Saturday to change the exchange rate used to price petroleum products in a bid to ease crippling shortages that have brought the country to a standstill. Roads have been clogged across Lebanon as motorists have queued for the little gasoline left. Meanwhile, prices soar on the black market, and some confrontations over gasoline have turned deadly.

Cyprus Sends 88 Syrian Migrants Back to Lebanon
Associated Press/August 24/2021
Cyprus on Monday sent 88 Syrian migrants back to Lebanon after they tried to reach the eastern Mediterranean island nation on two boats.
Interior Minister Nicos Nouris told The Associated Press that rescue crews continue to search for one of five men who jumped overboard after police vessels intercepted their boat off Cyprus' eastern coast. Nouris said police picked up four men, but the fifth, who was wearing a mask, flippers and a life preserver, managed to swim away.One pregnant woman and another man who was ill were airlifted to hospital. Coastal radar had picked up two vessels approaching the Cypriot coastline Sunday evening. Marine police vessels intercepted the boats — which carried a combined 48 men, 15 women and 25 minors —15 kilometers (9 miles) from coast. They were transferred to a chartered boat on Monday for the trip back to Lebanon under police escort. Cyprus signed an agreement with Lebanon last year to take back anyone trying to reach the island by boat. Nouris said Cyprus has a right to protect its borders from such irregular migration despite criticism by human rights groups that the deal violates international law because migrants aren't given the chance to apply for asylum. More than 1,337 Syrians have reached Cyprus by sea since 2019. Many more migrants come from Turkey through the ethnically divided island's unrecognized, breakaway north. Authorities say the number of migrants who have either received or have applied for protection in Cyprus now accounts for 4% of the population.Cyprus has asked the European Union's border agency Frontex to stem the flow of migrant arrivals from countries including Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.Cyprus lies 170 kilometers (100 miles) west of Syria and 230 kilometers (140 miles) west of Lebanon.

Crisis-Hit Lebanon to Reopen Classrooms Starting Next Month
Agence France Presse/August 24/2021
Students in Lebanon will return to the classroom starting next month, the education minister said Monday, amid fears an accelerating economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic would prevent schools from reopening. Rights groups have decried an "education catastrophe", with more than a million children in Lebanon out of school since the country's Covid-19 outbreak began in February last year. Other students are at risk of never returning, the groups have warned, due to a financial downturn that has seen poverty rates soar to reach 78 percent of the population. Classrooms will gradually reopen starting September 27, outgoing education minister Tarek Majzoub told a press conference on Monday. The decision covers both private and public schools as well as technical learning centers. All are to reopen by October 4 at the latest, he added. Lebanon had moved to distanced learning in March last year due to the pandemic, with intermittent returns to the classroom for some students. But power cuts, internet outages and the economic crisis have made online instruction a luxury, as families struggle to afford food, yet alone laptops and mobile phone devices.
Schools have threatened to shut because of extortionate operating costs amid rampant inflation. In an attempt to ease their burden, Majzoub said public schools would open to in-person attendance four days a week, with students taking classes online for the fifth day. Private schools are free to determine their own operating schedule, he added.The ministry "is coordinating with relevant authorities and donor countries to settle outstanding financial and economic issues," Majzoub said, decrying "a series of crises" plaguing the education sector. Lebanon's economic crisis, branded by the World Bank as likely one of the planet's worst in modern times, has seen the local currency lose 90 percent of its value on the black market. The crisis has led to shortages of almost everything, from fuel to electricity and even bread, with power cuts lasting up to 22 hours a day and fuel for private generators increasingly scarce. Majzoub said that with international assistance, the ministry has provided donations of textbooks and stationery for public school students, as well as solar panels for 122 learning facilities.

Strong Lebanon bloc calls for end to feuds over electricity dossier
NNA/August 24/2021 
“Strong Lebanon” parliamentary bloc on Tuesday called in a statement issued in the wake of its regular weekly meeting, which was held electronically under the chairmanship of MP Gebran Bassil, for a swift halt to the ongoing feuds over the electricity dossier. The statement suggested that Electricité du Liban should be provided with all the necessary funds for repetition and reactivation — with the help of the Iraqi oil or Egyptian gas at a later stage — in order to be able to provide people with at least 16 hours of power supply hours per day.
“This is the only solution to provide electricity to the Lebanese at the lowest cost possible,” the statement read. The bloc then called on the caretaker government to set up a mechanism to start adopting a rationing system in selling fuel to Lebanese citizens and other concerned sectors concerned, hoping that this would contribute to dwindling queues at gas stations, as well as regulate the high demand for diesel. “Most importantly, such a measure leads to combating illegal storage and smuggling of fuel oil,” the statement added. The bloc finally expressed hope that the Prime Minister-designate, in agreement with His Excellency the President of the Republic, would agree over a new cabinet lineup and issue its decrees this week.

Army received medical supplies grant from Jordan
NNA/August 24/2021
Jordanian Ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Al-Hadid, on Tuesday handed Lebanese Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, a grant of 14 tons of medical supplies from the Kingdom of Jordan to the military institution.

ESCWA: $37.3 billion from new IMF allocation offer an unprecedented financing opportunity for the Arab region
NNA/August 24/2021  
The Arab region yesterday received $37.3 billion from the new allocation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of special drawing rights (SDRs), which amounted to $650 billion in total and is the largest in the institution’s history. Governments in the region should adopt a bold approach to maximize the benefits of this unprecedented financing opportunity, recommends the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in its new policy brief entitled “Special Drawing Rights and Arab Countries: Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond”.
Through granting new SDRs in proportion to member countries’ quota shares at the Fund, the IMF is providing additional means to boost COVID-19 recovery and resilience to new shocks. The ESCWA brief underlines that, except for Palestine which is still not an IMF member, all Arab countries benefited from the new allocation. Saudi Arabia received the highest share, worth $13.7 billion. Together with the United Arab Emirates, they would accrue the same amount of rights as all remaining Arab countries combined. “The decision on how to use SDRs ultimately rests with recipient countries,” said ESCWA Executive Secretary Rola Dashti. “However, bold proposals on rechannelling SDRs should be considered with a sense of urgency to end the vicious debt and underdevelopment cycle,” she stressed. The brief mentions the financial needs of Arab countries undergoing economic crises and conflicts. It underlines that, despite political and economic turmoil, Lebanon would accrue $865 million through the new SDR allocation, a meagre 2% of its rapidly depleting reserves. However, this may provide a much-needed lifeline to the country’s battered economy. For its part, Syria, where 80% of the population now lives in poverty, received $390 million. Yemen, with more than 20 million people in need of some form of humanitarian and protection assistance, received $660 million, which could bridge 20% of the total funding requirements of the country’s Humanitarian Response Strategy. The brief explains that countries may swap SDRs for hard currencies and use the liquidity generated from such exchange to meet short-term import bills, settle outstanding financial obligations, or service or pay off debt. High-income Arab countries can use the new SDR allocations to relax fiscal policy, while middle-income ones may use them to cover recurrent fiscal imbalances that hamper recovery efforts and growth. “Countries with sufficient international reserves may channel unused SDRs at no cost (donating them so to speak) to low- and middle-income countries, especially in the Arab region which is home to 37% of the world’s displaced persons and half the world’s refugee population,” Dashti added, reiterating her call to resort to the Solidarity Fundas a means to support the pooling of both new and unused SDRs allocations and their use to tackle the many development challenges faced by the Arab region.—ESCWA

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 24-25/2021
Israel's Bennett Seeks U.S. 'Reset' in First White House Visit
Agence France Presse/August 24/2021
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett heads to Washington Tuesday for talks with U.S. President Joe Biden, seeking to "reset" relations with Israel's closest ally and reach common ground on arch-foe Iran. In his first state visit since taking office in June, Bennett will meet Biden on Thursday and attempt to mend ties with America's top Democrat, which were strained under former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, accused of openly favoring the Republican party. "Right now the biggest transaction taking place between the two countries is a refresh and a reset of bilateral relations," Scott Lasensky, former president Barack Obama's senior policy advisor on Israel, told AFP. Netanyahu alienated Democratic leaders through his relentless public criticism of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers negotiated by the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president.
Netanyahu's tight embrace of Obama's successor -- president Donald Trump, whom he repeatedly called "the best friend" Israel ever had in the White House -- further rankled Biden's party. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid hinted at a new approach when he met his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken in June.  "In the past few years mistakes were made. Israel's bipartisan standing was hurt. We will fix those mistakes together," Lapid said.
No Iran 'lifeline'
While Bennett may aim to warm the diplomatic waters, he remains a foreign policy hawk staunchly opposed to the Iran accord, which lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful but has progressively withdrawn from key commitments, including on uranium enrichment, in response to sanctions imposed by Trump after he unilaterally yanked the U.S. out of the deal in 2018. "I will tell President Biden that it is time to stop the Iranians... not to give them a lifeline in the form of re-entering into an expired nuclear deal," the 49-year-old Israeli premier said Sunday. Bennett's meeting with Biden, 78, comes two months after talks in Vienna on reviving the deal broke up without any discernible progress.  Or Rabinowitz, an expert on nuclear proliferation and U.S.-Israel relations at the Hebrew University, told AFP she thinks "the Iranian issue will top the agenda" at the meeting. "Israel wants to set a new jargon", or understanding, with the U.S. over what would constitute Iran crossing a threshold toward building a nuclear weapon, she said. Bennett suggested that approach Sunday, saying, "we will present an orderly plan that we have formulated in the past two months to curb the Iranians." He offered no specifics. The Israeli leader will land in Washington amid growing concerns about the prospects of reviving the Iran deal. Ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi took the oath of office in Iran early this month, after winning a presidential election in June.
'Nothing' for Palestinians
Bennett leads an ideologically disparate eight-party coalition that ranges from dovish parties to hardliners like himself, and he has avoided the Palestinian question in favor of consensus issues like health and the economy. Shira Efron, a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said Biden's administration had modest ambitions, mainly focused on undoing some of Trump's moves to favor Israel. "The Biden administration understands this is a shaky coalition," she said. "I don't think Biden is going to push Naftali Bennett to try to restart peace negotiations" between Israel and the Palestinians. Political scientist Ali Jarbawi at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank expected talks between Bennett and Biden would mean "nothing" to Palestinians suffering under Israeli "apartheid". Israel firmly rejects accusations that its treatment of the Palestinians amounts to apartheid. "Biden is not going to solve the conflict," Jarbawi said.  "If they talk about Palestinians at all, they will talk about improving the lives of Palestinians under occupation, so it's the same as it used to be."Biden's administration has restored millions in funding to Palestinians after Trump ended aid including to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. An expected friction point at the talks will be the Biden administration's pledge to reopen a consulate general in Jerusalem responsible for U.S-Palestinian affairs. Trump closed that mission in 2019 after he had moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, bolstering Israel's disputed claim of sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim for the capital of a future state. Eugene Kontorovich, who advised the Trump administration on Israel, said re-establishing the consulate would "almost certainly" feature at the talks, and would likely encounter opposition from Bennett, who "is ideologically and fundamentally committed to the integrity of Jerusalem".

Biden administration faces spectre of resurgent al-Qaida
The Arab Weekly/August 24/2021
WASHINGTON--The lightning-fast changes in Afghanistan are forcing the Biden administration to confront the prospect of a resurgent al-Qaida, the group that attacked America on September 11, 2001. With the rapid withdrawal of US forces and rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, “I think al-Qaida has an opportunity and they’re going to take advantage of that opportunity,” says Chris Costa, who was senior director for counterterrorism in the Trump administration. “This is a galvanising event for jihadists everywhere.” Al-Qaida’s ranks have been significantly diminished by 20 years of war in Afghanistan, and it is far from clear that the group has the capacity in the near future to carry out catastrophic attacks on America such as the 9/11 strikes, especially given how the US has fortified itself in the past two decades with surveillance and other protective measures. But a June report from the UN Security Council said the group’s senior leadership remains present inside Afghanistan, along with hundreds of armed operatives. It noted that the Taliban, who sheltered al-Qaida fighters before the September 11 attacks, “remain close, based on friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy and intermarriage.”
Multiple threats
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby acknowledged Friday that al-Qaida remains a presence in Afghanistan, though quantifying it is hard because of a reduced intelligence-gathering capability in the country and “because it’s not like they carry identification cards and register somewhere.” Even inside Afghanistan, al-Qaida and the Taliban represent only two of the urgent terrorism concerns, as evidenced by unease about the potential for Islamic State (ISIS) attacks against Americans in Afghanistan that over the weekend forced the US military to develop new ways to get evacuees to the airport in Kabul. The Taliban and ISIS have fought each other in the past, but the worry now is that Afghanistan could again be a safe harbour for multiple extremists determined to attack the US or other countries. President Joe Biden has spoken repeatedly of what he calls an “over-the-horizon capability” that he says will enable the US to keep track of terrorism threats from afar. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on Monday that Biden has been clear that counterterrorism capabilities have evolved to the point where the threat can be suppressed without a strong boots-on-the-ground presence. He said the intelligence community does not believe al-Qaida currently has the capability to attack the US.The US is also presumably anticipating that strengthened airport screening and more sophisticated surveillance can be more effective than 20 years ago in thwarting an attack. But experts worry that intelligence-gathering capabilities needed as an early-warning system against an attack will be negatively affected by the troop withdrawal. An added complication is the sheer volume of pressing national security threats that dwarf what the US government was confronting before the September 11 attacks. These include sophisticated cyber operations from China and Russia that can cripple critical infrastructure or pilfer sensitive secrets, nuclear ambitions in Iran and an ascendant domestic terrorism threat laid bare by the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. FBI Director Chris Wray has described that home-grown threat as “metastasising,” with the number of arrests of white supremacists and racially-motivated extremists nearly tripling since his first year on the job.
“My concern is that you can’t compare 2001 to today,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. There is a “much vaster and better organised bureaucracy,” he said, but it is burdened with demands not specifically tied to terrorism. Hoffman said that although he did not think al-Qaida would be able to quickly use Afghanistan as a launchpad for attacks against the US, it may re-establish “its coordinating function” in the region to work with and encourage strikes by its affiliates, a patient strategy that may yet be vindicated.
“Terrorist groups don’t conform to train timetables or flight schedules,” Hoffman said. “They do things when it suits them and, as al-Qaida was doing, they quietly lay the foundation in hopes that that foundation will eventually affect or determine their success.” The concern is sufficiently resonant for Biden administration officials to tell Congress last week that, based on the evolving situation, they now believe terror groups like al-Qaida may be able to grow much faster than expected. In June, the Pentagon’s top leaders said an extremist group like al-Qaida may be able to regenerate in Afghanistan and pose a threat to the US homeland within two years of the American military’s withdrawal.
The September 11 attacks made al-Qaida the most internationally-recognisable terror group, but in the past decade at least, the most potent threat inside the US has come from individuals inspired by ISIS, resulting in deadly massacres like those in San Bernardino, California and Orlando. But al-Qaida hardly disappeared. US authorities alleged last year that a Saudi gunman who killed three US sailors at a military base in Florida in 2019 had communicated with al-Qaida operatives about planning and tactics. Last December, the Justice Department charged a Kenyan man with trying to stage a 9/11-style attack on the US on behalf of the terrorist organization al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida. Now it is possible that other extremists will find themselves inspired by al-Qaida, even if not directed by it. “Until recently, I would have said that the threat from al-Qaida core is pretty modest. They didn’t have safe haven in Afghanistan, their senior leadership was scattered,” said Nathan Sales, former coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department. But, now with the Taliban back in control, “all of that could change and could change very rapidly.”

U.S. Ramps Up Afghan Evacuations after Taliban Warn of 'Red Line'
Agence France Presse/August 24/2021
U.S. troops led an increasingly desperate effort Tuesday to airlift thousands of people out of Kabul, after the Taliban warned they would allow foreign forces to carry out evacuations for just one more week. U.S. President Joe Biden is under increasing pressure to extend an August 31 deadline to pull out American forces, with Britain to lobby at a virtual G7 summit on Tuesday for a longer presence. About 50,000 foreigners and Afghans have fled the country from Kabul's airport since the Taliban swept into power 10 days ago. But crowds continued to mass outside the airport, with Afghans terrified of facing life under the Taliban. Many fear a repeat of the brutal interpretation of sharia law that the Taliban implemented when first in power from 1996-2001, or retribution for working with the U.S.-backed government over the past two decades. "The Taliban are the same as they were 20 years ago," Nilofar Bayat, a women's rights activist and former captain of Afghanistan's wheelchair basketball, said after fleeing and arriving in Spain."If you see Afghanistan now, it's all men, there are no women because they don't accept woman as part of society."
'Red line'
The Taliban, who ended two decades of war with an astonishingly swift rout of government forces, had been publicly tolerant of the evacuation effort. But on Monday they described next week's cut-off date as a "red line." "If the U.S. or UK were to seek additional time to continue evacuations -- the answer is no... there would be consequences," spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Sky News on Monday. He said any foreign military presence beyond the agreed deadline would be "extending occupation."The Taliban achieved their stunning victory thanks to Biden's decision to accelerate a deal forged by his predecessor, Donald Trump, to pull out nearly all American troops from Afghanistan. However he was forced to redeploy thousands of troops after the fall of Kabul to oversee the airlift. Biden and his top aides have repeatedly insisted they are aiming to stick to their August 31 deadline. "The goal is to get as many people out as fast as possible," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. "The focus is on trying to do this as best we can, by the end of the month."But European and British leaders are calling for more time. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Prime Minister Boris Johnson would raise the issue at the G7 virtual summit. Germany also said it was in talks with NATO allies and the Taliban to keep Kabul's airport open for evacuations beyond August 31, while France said "additional time is needed to complete ongoing operations."The rush to leave Kabul has sparked harrowing scenes and left at least eight people dead. Some of have been crushed to death and at least one, a youth football player, died after falling off a plane. The German defense ministry said Monday an Afghan soldier was killed and three others wounded in a firefight with unknown assailants.
- New government -
The Taliban are currently working on forming a government, but two sources within the movement told AFP there would be no announcement on a cabinet until the last U.S. soldier has left Afghanistan. The Taliban have repeatedly claimed to be different from their 1990s incarnation, and have declared an amnesty for government forces and officials.But an intelligence assessment conducted for the United Nations said militants were going door-to-door hunting former government officials and those who worked with U.S. and NATO forces. In the capital, the former insurgents have enforced some sense of calm, with their fighters patrolling the streets and manning checkpoints. But they are also intent on quashing the last notable Afghan military resistance to their rule, made up of ex-government forces in the Panjshir Valley, north of the capital. The Panjshir has long been known as an anti-Taliban bastion. One of the leaders of the movement, named the National Resistance Front, is the son of famed anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Another is Amrullah Saleh, a vice president and head of intelligence in the fallen government. The Taliban have said they have massed forces outside the valley, but would prefer a negotiated end to the stand off.

Taliban "Will Be Held Accountable" On Terrorism, Human Rights: G7
NNA/August 24/2021
An emergency meeting of the G7 leaders on Tuesday agreed that the Taliban will be held accountable for its actions in Afghanistan on protecting women's rights and preventing terrorism."We reaffirm that the Taliban will be held accountable for their actions on preventing terrorism, on human rights in particular those of women, girls and minorities and on pursuing an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan," said a statement issued by Downing Street after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson convened the meeting.

Iran admits videos of Evin prison abuses are true
The Arab Weekly/August 24/2021
TEHRAN —The head of Iran’s prison system acknowledged Tuesday that videos purportedly obtained by a self-described hacker group that show abuses at the Islamic Republic’s notorious Evin prison are real, saying he took responsibility for the displayed forms of “unacceptable behaviour.”The comment by Mohammad Mehdi Hajmohammadi came the day after The Associated Press published parts of the videos and a report about the abuse at the facility in northern Tehran, long known for holding political prisoners and those with ties to the West whom Iran uses as bargaining chips in international negotiations. Writing on Twitter, Hajmohammadi vowed to “avoid the repeat of such bitter incidents as well as confront the perpetrators.”“My apologies to the Almighty God, the dear Supreme Leader, our great nation and the noble prison officers whose efforts will not be ignored because of the wrongdoings” of others, he wrote.State television in Iran also reported Hajmohammadi’s remarks. Hajmohammadi, however, offered no plan on how to address the abuses at Evin. Since its construction in 1971 under Iran’s shah, the prison has seen a series of abuses that continued into the Islamic Republic. After Iran cracked down on protesters following the disputed 2009 re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many of the arrested protesters ended up in Evin. Lawmakers later pushed for reforms at Evin, following reports of abuses at the prison, which led to the installation of the closed-circuit cameras. In one part of the footage, a man smashes a bathroom mirror to try to cut open his arm. Prisoners and even guards beat each other in scenes captured by surveillance cameras. There are images of inmates sleeping in single rooms with bunk beds stacked three high against the walls, wrapping themselves in blankets to stay warm. The footage also shows rows of sewing machines that prisoners use, a solitary confinement cell with a squat toilet and exterior areas of the prison. There are images of the prison’s open-air exercise yard, prisoners’ bathrooms and offices within the facility.
Four former prisoners at Evin, as well as an Iranian human rights activist abroad, said that the videos resemble areas from the facility in northern Tehran. Some of the scenes also matched photographs of the facility previously taken by journalists, as well as images of the prison as seen in satellite photos. An online account that shared the videos calls itself “The Justice of Ali,” a reference to the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law who is revered by Shia. It also mocks Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Several embarrassing hacking incidents have struck Iran amid ongoing tensions over its accelerated nuclear programme and as talks with the West over reviving the atomic accord between Tehran and world powers remain on hold.

Closing of Rafah crossing reflects Egypt’s attempts to prevent new outbreak of violence
The Arab Weekly/August 24/2021
CAIRO--Egypt is trying to moderate the behaviour of Hamas through its control of the Rafah crossing, after recent moves by the militant Palestinian group threatened to undermine the results of Cairo’s mediation aimed at preventing the violation of the ceasefire agreement. Palestinian sources told The Arab Weekly that Egypt’s decision, Monday, to close the Rafah crossing, until further notice, reflects Cairo’s concern that military moves by Hamas could ratchet up tensions with Israel, leading to a fresh outbreak of hostilities. The same sources added that the closure decision came after information reached Cairo that the militant movement was using escalation to sidestep it troubles at home where its hard-line management of many vital issues has led to worsening crises and a rise in popular discontent. A spokesman for the Hamas interior ministry, Iyad al-Buzum, confirmed on Sunday that Egypt had informed the authorities in the Gaza Strip that it would close the Rafah crossing, which links Gaza and Sinai, in both directions, starting on Monday. According to Egyptian sources, the closure was for security reasons following a flare-up of tensions last Saturday between Israel and Hamas, when Israeli planes bombed sites in Gaza following an exchange of fire across the border between the two sides. No official statements were made from Cairo over the likely duration of the closure, indicating that the final decision will depend on a change in Hamas’ behaviour. Cairo had decided to open the Rafah crossing before the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on May 21 in order to send in humanitarian aid and allow the wounded in the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment in Egypt after 11 days of war between Israel and the Palestinian movement. Cairo had believed that the success of its mediation in clinching a ceasefire agreement would lead to a long-term truce in Gaza that would create a new situation in the Strip, reduce divisions between Palestinian factions, help with the formation of a national unity government and allow for the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But Egyptian hopes have been dashed, as Hamas returned to its previous political and security ways in Gaza and failed to respond to Cairo’s proposals on a number of issues designed to usher in greater security and stability in the long run. Hamas’ insistence on giving priority to military moves appeared to abort Egypt’s initiatives, despite the shuttle mediation undertaken by intelligence chief Major General Abbas Kamel last week between Israelis and Palestinians in order to pre-empt the risks of armed confrontation.
Cairo is wary that Hamas’ moves could trigger escalation from Israel, whose new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, wants to prove his firm military resolve, after he passed the first difficult test of cabinet formation. Observers point out also that the circumstances of the transfer of the Qatari grant ($30 million) to Gaza through the United Nations (and the scrapping of the previous mechanism that was supervised by Hamas) have created a major crisis for the Palestinian movement, as the instalment allocated to the salaries of Hamas employees was deducted ($10 million) from the total aid amount.
Hamas resorted to hiking tensions in order to pressure Israel and the United Nations to recover the whole amount of the aid, which would help it contain any discontent within the movement’s cadres. Egypt asked Hamas to stop violent moves, limit itself to peaceful popular protests and also avoid approaching the barbed wire fence that separates Gaza from Israel. But the movement instead pushed hundreds of young people towards the fence who inevitably clashed with the Israeli forces.
Analysts believe Hamas sees no point in continued truce with Israel, which pushed Cairo to resort to pressure by closing the key Rafah crossing. In doing so, Egypt takes the risk of being portrayed by Islamist figures, echoed by Turkish and Qatari media, as bringing about humanitarian hardship in Gaza. But Cairo pereceives its decision as necessary considering its own national security imperatives. It even sees the risk that the simmering domestic tensions in Gaza could lead to a Palestinian rush towards the Rafah crossing without security controls. Nevertheless, Professor of Political Science at Al-Quds University Ayman Al-Raqab said he believed that Egypt has restored relations of trust with the population in Gaza through the efforts it had made to rebuild the Strip, sending rubble removal equipment and pledging generous financial aid to repair the infrastructure. Palestinians in Gaza warmly welcomed Egypt’s help.
He further told The Arab Weekly that Cairo was looking for common ground to resolve the many of the thorny issues, including work on a prisoners’ exchange deal and lifting Israeli siege on Gaza. Egypt wants to ensure the security and stability of the Strip, which are closely linked to Egypt’s own security.

Ethiopia suspected of using Iranian drones against Tigray rebels
The Arab Weekly/August 24/2021
LONDON--When images were posted on social media this month showing Ethiopian premier Abiy Ahmed visiting a local airport, the curious were interested in an small aircraft that could just be glimpsed in the distance. Bellingcat, the Netherlands-based investigative journalism website which specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence, has used further images, including satellite shots, to deduce that the mystery aircraft is very probably an Iranian Mohajet-6 drone, which can be used for both surveillance and to carry two precision-guided Qaem air-to-surface missiles or a bomb load. Designed by Qods Aviation, these Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are produced by Iran’s state-owned Aerospace Industries Organisation. Alongside the drone in the image, Bellingcat pinpointed a portable cabin which it believes is its control centre. The airport being visited by Ahmed has been identified as Semara, the capital city of the country’s Afar province which borders the Tigray region, where heavy fighting with anti-government forces continues..It had not previously been known that Ethiopia had acquired the Iranian drones. However, since last year and the outbreak of the Tigray conflict, opposition sources have been saying the Ethiopian National Defence Force has been using some sort UAVs and claim there have been civilian casualties from their strikes. Bellingcat notes that it is important to check if the Mohajer-6 is armed. Until now the only firm evidence of Ethiopian UAV deployment has been of small unarmed commercial drones made in China operated by both the police and military. The Ethiopian air force’s Major General Yilma Merdas was recently reported in local media saying “Our air force is equipped with modern drones. We have our own technicians and controllers who run and fly them. We don’t need others to help us out with this in our fight against the extremists. We’re pretty self-reliant”Bellingcat said in its findings: “If Ethiopia is indeed operating Iranian-made armed drones, that would represent a significant addition to the list of beneficiaries from Teheran’s burgeoning drone programme. “So far, Iran is believed to have transferred drones, components or designs only to its proxies and allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. The presence of Iranian-manufactured drones has also been reported in Sudan, while the Venezuelan authorities appear to have shown some interest in the Mohajer-6 drone”.Bellingcat continued: “Whether Ethiopia and Iran have struck any military deals remains to be seen. However, in July and August of this year, open source flight trackers flagged the presence of Iranian cargo aircraft at various civil and military airbases across Ethiopia. One of these aircraft was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020 for alleged links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The content of these flights is unknown.”

Millions in Syria, Iraq at risk of losing access to water
The Arab Weekly/August 24/2021
BEIRUT--Millions of people in Syria and Iraq are at risk of losing access to water, electricity and food amid rising temperatures and record low water levels due to lack of rainfall leading to drought, international aid groups warned Monday. The two neighbouring countries, both battered by years of conflict and mismanagement, are in need of rapid action to combat severe water shortages, the groups said. The drought is also disrupting electricity supplies as low water levels impact dams, which in turn effect essential infrastructure, including health facilities. More than 12 million people in both countries are affected, including five million in Syria who are directly dependent on the Euphrates River. In Iraq, the loss of access to water from the Euphrates and the Tigris river, along with drought, threaten at least seven million people. Some 400 square kilometres of agricultural land face drought, the groups said, adding that two dams in northern Syria, supplying power to three million people, face imminent closure. Carsten Hansen, regional director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the aid groups behind the warning, said that for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis still displaced and many more still fleeing for their lives in Syria, the unfolding water crisis “will soon become an unprecedented catastrophe pushing more into displacement.”Other aid groups included Mercy Corps, the Danish Refugee Council, CARE international, ACTED and Action Against Hunger. They warned that several Syrian provinces, including Hassakah, Aleppo and Raqqa in the north and Deir el-Zour in the east, have seen a rise in water-borne diseases. The areas include settlements housing tens of thousands of people displaced in Syria’s 10-year conflict. CARE’s regional chief for Mideast and North Africa, Nirvana Shawky, urged authorities and donor governments to act swiftly to save lives. The latest crisis comes on top of war, COVID-19 and severe economic decline, she said. “There is no time to waste,” said Gerry Garvey of the Danish Refugee Council, adding that the water crisis is likely to increase conflict in an already destabilised region. Severe water shortages have also hit Lebanon, which is mired in the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history, where more than four million people, mainly vulnerable children and families, face critical water shortages in the coming days, the UN’s children agency warned last week. In Lebanon, severe fuel shortages have also halted the work of thousands of private generators long relied on for electricity in the corruption-plagued country. UNICEF called for urgent restoration of the power supply to keep water services running. Lebanon’s rivers are also heavily polluted. Activists have long warned about pollution levels caused by sewage and waste in the Litani River, the country’s longest and a major source for water supply, irrigation and hydroelectricity.

Idlib Blast Kills and Wounds Dozens of Qaida-Linked Militants
Associated Press/August 24/2021
An explosion shook the base of an al-Qaida-linked group in northern Syria on Tuesday, killing and wounding dozens of fighters, opposition activists said. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the explosion at the base of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in the country. HTS is the most powerful group in Syria's northwest. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the explosion near the village of Ram Hamadan was either an accident during training or a drone strike. It said 20 fighters were killed or wounded in the explosion. Step news agency, an activist collective, said at least nine fighters were killed and others wounded in the mysterious blast. Step said it could have been caused when a mortar shell exploded during training. Syria's 10-year conflict has left about half a million people dead and half the country's prewar population of 23 million displaced, more than 5 million of them as refugees outside the country.

Month Of Fighting In Syria's Daraa Displaces 38,000 Says U.N.
Agence France Presse/August 24/2021
Fighting between government forces and former rebels in the Syrian province of Daraa has displaced more than 38,000 people over the past month, the United Nations said Tuesday, as truce talks falter. Daraa, retaken by government forces in 2018, has emerged as a new flashpoint in recent weeks as government forces tightened control over Daraa al-Balad, a southern district of the provincial capital that is considered a hub for former rebel fighters. Clashes, including artillery exchanges, between the two sides since late July have marked the biggest challenge yet to the Russian-brokered deal that returned the southern province to government control but allowed rebels to stay on in some areas. Russian-sponsored truce talks launched in the wake of the latest fighting have made little headway as the government has stepped up its campaign to root out remaining rebel fighters from Daraa al-Balad. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 38,600 internally displaced persons are registered in and around Daraa, with most having fled from Daraa al-Balad. "This includes almost 15,000 women, over 3,200 men and elderly and over 20,400 children," OCHA said. It warned of a critical situation in the volatile district, saying that access to goods and services, including food and power, is "extremely challenging." The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that government forces are restricting the entry of goods into Daraa al-Balad, where it says 40,000 people still live. "They are living under siege with families facing shortages of food, medical services, potable water, power and internet," said the monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria. The Observatory said that many in Daraa al-Balad reject the truce terms being set by the government and its Russian ally.
The pro-government al-Watan newspaper and the official SANA news agency have accused rebel groups of thwarting ceasefire efforts. The exact terms of the proposed truce remain unclear.

Morocco Navy Rescues More Than 400 Europe-Bound Migrants
Agence France Presse/August 24/2021
The Moroccan navy has rescued more than 400 migrants since Thursday, after their makeshift boats ran into trouble on the dangerous sea crossing to Europe, state media reported. The 438 migrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, were given first aid before being taken to the nearest Moroccan port, an officer told the state-run MAP news agency late Monday. Earlier this month, a merchant ship rescued 33 migrants who had spent two weeks adrift in the Atlantic Ocean en route for the Canary Islands. Fourteen fellow migrants lost their lives. Migrant arrivals on the Spanish archipelago have surged since late 2019 when increased patrols in the Mediterranean dramatically reduced crossings there. At its shortest, the sea crossing from the Moroccan coast is around 100 kilometers (65 miles), but strong currents make it very dangerous.
The vessels used are often overcrowded and in poor condition, adding to the risks. In the first six months of this year, a total of 2,087 migrants died trying to reach Spain, according to Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish NGO that monitors migrant flows.

18 Europe-Bound Migrants Drown Off Libya
Agence France Presse/August 24/2021
Eighteen migrants have drowned after their boat sank off Libya, the coastguard said Tuesday, the latest tragedy on the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Europe. Rescue vessels picked up 51 survivors from Sunday night's shipwreck, a coastguard official in the port of Zuwara, 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of the capital Tripoli, told AFP. The International Organization for Migration had earlier reported 16 migrants missing, including a woman and a child. It was not immediately clear what caused the boat to sink, but vessels leaving the North African coast for Europe are often heavily overloaded makeshift crafts, departing at night even in rough weather to avoid detection by the coastguard. Nearly 970 migrants have died trying to reach Europe from Libya since the start of the year. Last month, the IOM said the number of people who had died trying to cross the Mediterranean nearly doubled in the first half of 2021 compared with the same period last year. Despite persistent violence since the 2011 overthrow of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, Libya has become one of the main departure points for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa trying to reach Europe. Most head for the Italian coast around 300 kilometers (190 miles) away. The European Union has for several years supported Libyan forces to try to stem migration, despite often grim conditions in detention centers in Libya. International agencies have repeatedly denounced the return to Libya of migrants intercepted at sea. The Libyan coastguard picked up more than 13,000 people in the first half of this year, exceeding the total figure for 2020, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. That figure has now risen to 20,257, according to the IOM.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials published on August 23-24/2021
With the U.S. Withdrawing From Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran May Reconsider Its Nuclear Options
Andrea Stricker/Policy Brief/August 24/2021
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan bears important implications for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s perception of America as a threat. Encouraged by Washington’s loss of credibility and resolve to counter its adversaries in South Asia and the Middle East, Tehran may calculate that there is no better time to acquire a nuclear weapon.
America’s departure from Afghanistan and planned drawdown of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq come in the wake of Washington’s failure to respond to a series of Iranian provocations, including Tehran’s maritime aggression in the Persian Gulf and attempted kidnapping of a U.S. citizen in New York. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had advanced its work on enriched uranium metal, a key step toward developing an atomic bomb. The agency also reported that Tehran increased its production of 60 percent highly enriched uranium, a short step from weapons-grade.
In this context, Iran’s response to America’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq is instructive. Documentation from Iran’s nuclear archive, seized by the Israeli Mossad from a Tehran warehouse in 2018, showed that the Islamic Republic originally planned to make several 10-kiloton deliverable nuclear weapons by 2003. Yet when the United States attacked Iraq, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei likely scrapped these plans. Washington had attacked Iraq on the basis of ending an alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction, and Tehran’s leaders feared that Iran could be America’s next target.
Instead, the clerical regime — including the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom Israel assassinated last year — held a series of meetings in August and September 2003 and decided to disperse, preserve, and advance a more limited set of nuclear weaponization activities at research institutes and military sites. Simultaneously, Iran would maintain key fissile material production infrastructure and ballistic missile delivery work. These steps would enable Tehran to dash toward a nuclear weapon should it eventually make the decision to do so.
International pressure also influenced Iran’s willingness to develop nuclear weapons. In 2002, the world learned that the regime had two covert nuclear sites — a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water production plant near Arak. Facing global criticism, Iran permitted the IAEA in February 2003 to conduct inspections at these and additional sites.
Since then, Tehran has accelerated its nuclear program at various points to pressure and extort the West but has not crossed the nuclear weapons threshold.
Yet with America’s presence now waning in South Asia and the Middle East and Washington making clear its unwillingness to expend significant national resources to confront regional threats, the conditions that once led the Islamic Republic to slow down its nuclear weapons development may no longer apply. Tehran’s recent provocative nuclear advances suggest it is already testing U.S. and European resolve.
The United States and its European partners must immediately reconstitute pressure on Iran’s nuclear program. They should lead IAEA member states in passing a new Board of Governors resolution this September to demand the cessation of Iran’s threatening nuclear steps and to require Tehran’s cooperation regarding recent IAEA discoveries of undeclared uranium at three sites. Since June 2020, fearful of interfering with now-stalled Iran nuclear talks, the IAEA board has not acted to censure Tehran.
To support these demands, the United States and its partners must be willing to restore UN Security Council sanctions resolutions on Iran lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal.
The Biden administration should also review and enhance its intelligence gathering capabilities on Iran’s nuclear weapons plans. The administration should continue coordinating closely with Israel, which typically gathers top information on Iran’s atomic activities and intentions. Washington should also make clear that it will use military force to stop an Iranian nuclear breakout.
Iran is considering its next moves in the vacuum of America’s presence. Washington and its European partners should make clear that they still have the determination to deny the Islamic Republic a nuclear weapon.
*Andrea Stricker is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where she also contributes to FDD’s Iran Program, International Organizations Program, and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from Andrea, the Iran Program, the International Organizations Program, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Andrea on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Bennett should not enter talks about compensation if Biden returns to JCPOA
Jacob Nagel/The Jerusalem Post/August 24/2021
Iran is the first and only priority for Israel. Never has it been more important for Israel to clarify its positions and the need for the United States to support them.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s first meeting with President Joe Biden is planned for August 26. Israel’s new national security adviser, Dr. Eyal Hulata, recently visited Washington to prepare for this meeting with his counterpart, Jake Sullivan.
Based on the White House readout, both leaders seek to demonstrate the strength of the alliance. However, Biden’s desire to reenter the fatally flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, remains a deep concern for Israel.
It is clear that the regime continues to violate the JCPOA. It is enriching uranium to 60%. It is working on uranium metal. And it is blocking International Atomic Energy Association inspectors from their monitoring mission in Iran. The IAEA, the international nuclear watchdog, confirmed this with its August 16 verification and monitoring report. The E3 (UK, France and Germany) has also expressed its deep concerns about Iran uranium metal work, in its August 19 statement.
Robert Malley, the top American negotiator at the Vienna talks, who appears to be determined to reenter the JCPOA at any cost, has been unsurprisingly quiet about this, and about a request to publish a special IAEA report. But he may have bigger problems on his hands. After six rounds, the nuclear talks are stalled because of Iranian intransigence. While the inaugurated president of the Islamic Republic, Ebrahim Raisi, declared he will send negotiators to continue the talks, he does not appear to be interested in making any nuclear concessions to the West. Rumors suggest that the talks will not resume until September.
In his first press conference, Raisi acknowledged that Iran would never renegotiate a “longer and stronger” deal – a fiction that the Biden team proposed as the next goal after reentering the JCPOA. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei backed up the new president in a statement.
The concern in years past was Iran’s breakout time. Washington’s focus for years was keeping Iran’s breakout time to one year. That’s now impossible and irrelevant. After years of cheating on the margins (and more brazenly lately), the regime will not break out. It will “sneak out” by employing increasingly advanced centrifuges, which are easier to hide because fewer of them are needed.
Any return to the old faulty JCPOA will be worse than the original agreement; it will be “JCPOA Minus, Minus.”
THE REAL challenge now for Bennett is to convince Biden to address all three main components of Iran’s nuclear program: production of fissile materials, weaponization and means of delivery.
Bennett is not expected to argue with the White House. The facts are hard to dispute. The only question now is how the two countries’ policies can align.
Israel’s policy is relatively straightforward. Israel cannot be part of any new agreement that involves returning to the old faulty JCPOA. Israel must maintain full freedom of action to target elements of the Iranian nuclear program, while strengthening its military options for dealing with Iranian nuclear capabilities in the future.Such actions would ideally take place in tandem with the United States. But Israel is very willing to operate on its own, if needed. Should it come to that, Israel will never look for approval from the United States to do so. In fact, implicating America would make it more difficult for the Biden team to assert plausible deniability after a strike. In the meantime, Israel wants to encourage a partnership with the US in gathering intelligence on Iran’s weaponization program. The IAEA should help, too. Washington should not accept Iran’s demands in this area, even in part: not reopening the weaponization file, not using the archive data and not answering the latest IAEA’s findings.
Finally, it is Israel’s fervent hope that Washington does not capitulate to Tehran in negotiations. Iran should not be rewarded for its intransigence. The regime should receive no compensation for abiding by international norms and agreements.
Israel should also not entertain any discussions with the US about a follow-on agreement until Iran agrees to curb its nuclear ambitions and enter negotiations on such an agreement.
Bennett comes to Washington as the head of a coalition that represents a wide array of parties and political perspectives. When he tells Biden why a return to the JCPOA is bad for both the United States and Israel, he will be speaking on behalf of the vast majority of Israelis. All other regional and diplomatic issues between Washington and Jerusalem can be addressed later. Bennett should not mistakenly enter any talks about “compensation” to Israel if a return to the JCPOA will happen.
This is the first and only priority for Israel. Never has it been more important for Israel to clarify its positions and the need for the United States to support them. This is particularly crucial if Israel is to act alone.
*The writer is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a visiting professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. He previously served as acting national security adviser to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as head of the National Security Council. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

Beijing’s American Hustle....How Chinese Grand Strategy Exploits U.S. Power
Matthew Pottinger/ Foreign Affairs/August 24/2021
Although many Americans were slow to realize it, Beijing’s enmity for Washington began long before U.S. President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and even prior to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012. Ever since taking power in 1949, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has cast the United States as an antagonist. But three decades ago, at the end of the Cold War, Chinese leaders elevated the United States from just one among many antagonists to their country’s primary external adversary—and began quietly revising Chinese grand strategy, embarking on a quest for regional and then global dominance.
The United States and other free societies have belatedly woken up to this contest, and a rare spirit of bipartisanship has emerged on Capitol Hill. But even this new consensus has failed to adequately appreciate one of the most threatening elements of Chinese strategy: the way it exploits vital aspects of American and other free societies and weaponizes them in the service of Chinese ambitions. Important U.S. institutions, especially in finance and technology, cling to self-destructive habits acquired through decades of “engagement,” an approach to China that led Washington to prioritize economic cooperation and trade above all else.
If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, however, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside, convert the United States’ vulnerabilities into strengths, and mitigate the harmful effects of Beijing’s political warfare. That must begin with bolder steps to stem the flow of U.S. capital into China’s so-called military-civil fusion enterprises and to frustrate Beijing’s aspiration for leadership in, and even monopoly control of, high-tech industries—starting with semiconductor manufacturing. The United States must also do more to expose and confront Beijing’s information warfare, which spews disinformation and sows division by exploiting U.S. social media platforms—platforms that are themselves banned inside China’s own borders. And Washington should return the favor by making it easier for the Chinese people to access authentic news from outside China’s so-called Great Firewall.
Some have argued that because the CCP’s ideology holds little appeal abroad, it poses an insignificant threat to U.S. interests. Yet that ideology hardly appeals to the Chinese people, either, and that hasn’t prevented the party from dominating a nation of 1.4 billion people. The problem is not the allure of Leninist totalitarianism but the fact that Leninist totalitarianism—as practiced by the well-resourced and determined rulers of Beijing—has tremendous coercive power. Accordingly, U.S. leaders should not ignore the ideological dimension of this contest; they should emphasize it. American values—liberty, independence, faith, tolerance, human dignity, and democracy—are not just what the United States fights for: they are also among the most potent weapons in the country’s arsenal, because they contrast so starkly with the CCP’s hollow vision of one-party rule at home and Chinese domination abroad. Washington should embrace those strengths and forcefully remind American institutions that although placating China might help their balance sheets in the short term, their long-term survival depends on the free markets and legal rights that only U.S. leadership can secure.
In past decades, the United States’ failure to reckon with the ways that American society and businesses were being weaponized to serve the CCP’s long-term agenda might have been chalked up to naiveté or Pollyannaish optimism. Such excuses are no longer plausible. Yet Beijing continues to run this play, turning American money and institutions to its own ends—and making the need for real action from Washington all the greater.
The Art Of Political Warfare
The West’s sluggishness in realizing that it has been on the receiving end of China’s elaborate, multidecade hostile strategy has a lot to do with the hubris that followed the United States’ triumph in the Cold War. U.S. policymakers assumed that the CCP would find it nearly impossible to resist the tide of liberalization set off by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. According to this line of thought, by helping enrich China, the United States would loosen the party’s grip on its economy, people, and politics, setting the conditions for a gradual convergence with the pluralistic West.
That was, to put it mildly, a miscalculation, and it stemmed in part from the methods the CCP employs to prosecute its grand strategy. With enviable discipline, Beijing has long camouflaged its intention to challenge and overturn the U.S.-led liberal order. Beijing co-opted Western technologies that Americans assumed would help democratize China and instead used them to surveil and control its people and to target a growing swath of the world’s population outside China’s borders. The party now systematically cultivates Western corporations and investors that, in turn, pay deference to Chinese policies and even lobby their home capitals in ways that align with the CCP’s objectives.
Beijing’s methods are all manifestations of “political warfare,” the term that the U.S. diplomat George Kennan, the chief architect of the Cold War strategy of containment, used in a 1948 memo to describe “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.” Kennan credited the Soviet Union with “the most refined and effective” conduct of political warfare. Were he alive today, Kennan would marvel at the ways Beijing has improved on the Kremlin’s playbook.
If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside.
Kennan’s memo was meant to disabuse U.S. national security officials of “a popular attachment to the concept of a basic difference between peace and war.” He was hopeful that Americans could shed this handicap and learn to fight in the political realm to forestall a potentially catastrophic military conflict with the Soviets. To a great extent, Washington did exactly that, marshaling partners on every continent to contain Soviet influence.
Today, free and open societies are once again coming to terms with the reality of political warfare. This time, however, the campaign is directed by a different kind of communist country—one that possesses not just military power but also economic power derived from its quasi-marketized version of capitalism and systematic theft of technology. Although there are holdouts—financiers, entertainers, and former officials who benefited from engagement, for example—polls show that the general public in the United States, European countries, and several Asian countries is finally attuned to the malevolent nature of the Chinese regime and its global ambitions. This should come as no surprise, given the way the CCP has conducted itself in recent years: covering up the initial outbreak of COVID-19, attacking Indian troops on the Chinese-Indian border, choking off trade with Australia, crushing the rule of law in Hong Kong, and intensifying a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China.
Hide and Bide no more
Those aggressive moves represent merely a new phase of a decades-old strategy. In writing his recent book The Long Game, the U.S. scholar Rush Doshi pored over Chinese leaders’ speeches, policy documents, and memoirs to document how Beijing came to set its sights on dismantling American influence around the globe. According to Doshi, who now serves on the National Security Council staff as a China director, three events badly rattled CCP leaders: the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square; the lopsided, U.S.-led victory over the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces in early 1991; and the collapse of the Soviet Union that same year. “The Tiananmen Square protests reminded Beijing of the American ideological threat; the swift Gulf War victory reminded it of the American military threat; and loss of the shared Soviet adversary reminded it of the American geopolitical threat,” writes Doshi. “In short order, the United States quickly replaced the Soviet Union as China’s primary security concern, that in turn led to a new grand strategy, and a thirty-year struggle to displace American power was born.”
China’s new grand strategy aimed first to dilute U.S. influence in Asia, then to displace American power more overtly from the region, and ultimately to dominate a global order more suited to Beijing’s governance model. That model isn’t merely authoritarian; it’s “neo-totalitarian,” according to Cai Xia, who served for 15 years as a professor in the highest temple of Chinese communist ideology: the Central Party School in Beijing. Cai, who now lives in exile in the United States, recently detailed her falling out with the CCP in these pages and has written elsewhere that the CCP’s “fundamental interests and its basic mentality of using the [United States] while remaining hostile to it have not changed over the past seventy years.”
Xi didn’t sire the party’s strategy, argues Cai. He merely shifted it to a more overt and aggressive phase. Had observers more carefully pondered the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s precept for China to “hide your capabilities, bide your time,” they would have realized that Deng’s approach was always intended as a transitional stage, a placeholder until China was strong enough to openly challenge the United States.
That moment has now arrived, and Beijing is no longer bothering to camouflage its global ambitions. Today, party slogans call for China to “take center stage” in the world and build “a community of common destiny for mankind.” This point was displayed vividly in Alaska in March, during the first face-to-face meeting between senior Biden administration officials and their Chinese counterparts. In their opening statements, the Chinese took advantage of the international TV coverage of the meeting to lecture the Americans. “I don’t think the overwhelming majority of countries in the world would recognize that the universal values advocated by the United States or that the opinion of the United States could represent international public opinion,” the senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi said as part of a carefully scripted diatribe. Yang juxtaposed “United States–style democracy” with what he called “Chinese-style democracy.” The latter, he contended, enjoys the “wide support of the Chinese people,” while “many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.”
Today, free and open societies are once again coming to terms with the reality of political warfare.
Yang’s soliloquy was so arresting that the most consequential implication was easily lost in the majority of the press coverage: Beijing was using its time in front of the cameras to openly declare its bid for world leadership. Yang was following instructions issued by Xi at the 19th Party Congress, in October 2017, when the Chinese leader called on party cadres to increase their ideological “leadership power” and “discourse power” in defense of Beijing’s totalitarian brand of socialism, according to the China scholar Matthew Johnson. This process of fighting and winning ideological battles on the global stage was also given a name: the “great struggle.”
The Best Defense
Kennan considered economic statecraft a vital component of political warfare, and the CCP’s assimilation of economic weaponry into its grand strategy would not have surprised him. Beijing’s economic objectives are couched in a policy called “dual circulation,” which prioritizes domestic consumption (internal circulation) over dependence on foreign markets (external circulation). A close look, however, shows that this Chinese strategy can really be thought of as “offensive leverage”—an approach designed to decrease China’s dependence on high-tech imports (while making the world’s technology supply chains increasingly dependent on China), ensure that China can easily substitute imports from one country with the same imports from another, and use China’s economic leverage to advance the CCP’s political objectives around the globe.
The CCP has tried to spin these moves as defensive. “We must sustain and enhance our superiority across the entire production chain . . . and we must tighten international production chains’ dependence on China, forming a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability against foreigners who would artificially cut off supply [to China],” explained Xi in a seminal speech last year. In practice, however, China is playing offense. In recent years, Beijing has restricted trade and tourism with Canada, Japan, Mongolia, Norway, the Philippines, South Korea, and other countries in an effort to force changes in their laws and internal political and judicial processes.
The most aggressive of these campaigns is the one the CCP launched against Australia. More than a year ago, Australia proposed that the World Health Organization investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea was supported by nearly all the members of the World Health Assembly, but Beijing decided to punish Canberra for its temerity. China soon began restricting imports of Australian beef, barley, wine, coal, and lobster. Then, the CCP released a list of 14 so-called “disputes” that are, in effect, political demands made of the Australian government—including that Canberra repeal laws designed to counter the CCP’s covert influence operations in Australia, muzzle the Australian press by suppressing criticism of Beijing, and make concessions to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. China targeted Australia with precisely the offensive economic strategy that Xi’s speeches and party documents describe. When it comes to grand strategy, at least, Xi is a man of his word.
Under the Influence
The CCP’s campaign of offensive leverage represents the overt manifestation of Beijing’s grand strategy. But the strategy also relies on covert and invisible activities: information warfare and influence operations designed to subvert the social and political institutions of Chinas’ rivals. The most important element of those efforts is “United Front” work, an immense range of activities that China’s leaders call a “magic weapon” and that has no analog in the world’s advanced democracies. The party’s 95 million members are required to participate in the system, which has many branches, and the United Front Work Department alone has three times as many cadres as the U.S. State Department has Foreign Service officers. Instead of practicing diplomacy, however, the United Front gathers intelligence about and works to influence private citizens and government officials overseas, with a focus on foreign elites and the organizations they run. Assembling dossiers has always been a feature of Leninist regimes, but Beijing’s penetration of digital networks worldwide has taken it to a new level. The party compiles dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world, using the material it gathers to influence and intimidate, reward and blackmail, flatter and humiliate, divide and conquer. The political scientist Anne-Marie Brady calls United Front work a tool to corrode and corrupt foreign political systems, “to weaken and divide us against each other, to erode the critical voice of our media, and turn our elites into clients of the Chinese Communist Party, their mouths stuffed with cash.”
Newer to the party’s arsenal is the exploitation of U.S. social media companies. Over the past several years, Beijing has flooded their platforms with overt and covert propaganda, amplified by proxies and bots, that is increasingly focused not only on promoting whitewashed narratives of Beijing’s policies but also on exacerbating social tensions within the United States and other target nations. The Chinese government and its online proxies, for example, have for months promoted content that questions the effectiveness and safety of Western-made COVID-19 vaccines. Research by the Soufan Center has also found indications that China-based influence operations are amplifying online conspiracy theories, including QAnon-related falsehoods. The Soviet Union could never have dreamed of reaching a mass audience in the United States for its agitprop such as the one Beijing reaches daily through the tools provided by Silicon Valley technology giants. “Currently there is no effective path for the [People’s Republic of China] to wage effective global information operations and increase its international discourse power that does not run through American social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook,” writes Bill Bishop, the author of the blog Sinocism and a close observer of Beijing’s information warfare.
An American Counterstrategy
After decades of naiveté and denialism, Washington’s approach to Beijing finally began to adapt to reality and toughen up during the Trump administration, and the Biden administration has largely maintained its predecessor’s policy. The tariffs Trump imposed to punish China’s theft of intellectual property are still in place, and President Joe Biden is fleshing out a Trump-initiated Commerce Department panel meant to keep dangerous Chinese software and equipment out of U.S. domestic telecommunications networks. The current administration is also deepening diplomatic initatives related to China, such as the Quad—a group of democracies composed of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.
Despite those corrective steps, there are still several areas in which Washington needs to further strengthen its approach, especially by making sure that powerful private interests in the United States stop undercutting the country’s ability to confront China. The realm of finance is the place to start. The retirement savings of millions of Americans currently finance Beijing’s military modernization and support Chinese companies that are complicit in genocide and other crimes against humanity. Even as Beijing was systematically expelling foreign journalists from China and making the country’s investment climate increasingly opaque, stock index providers such as FTSE Russell and MSCI continued to add Chinese companies to their indexes, sometimes under pressure from Beijing. Because many American funds benchmark their investments to those same indexes, billions of U.S. dollars automatically flow to Chinese companies, including those that Washington has sanctioned or subjected to export controls. For Beijing, there simply is no substitute for U.S. capital markets, whose depth and liquidity outpace those of the rest of the world’s capital markets. Few successful Chinese technology companies exist that were not launched with money and expertise from Silicon Valley venture capital firms. Both Alibaba and Baidu were seeded with U.S. capital.
Although executive orders issued by the Trump and Biden administrations already prohibit U.S. investment in 59 named Chinese companies involved in the Chinese military’s modernization or human rights atrocities, the Treasury Department needs to expand that list by at least an order of magnitude to better encompass the galaxy of Chinese companies developing so-called dual-use technologies—those with both civilian and military or surveillance applications. The Biden administration should also enforce a ban on the purchase of debt instruments from blacklisted companies and clarify that their subsidiaries are off-limits to U.S. investors, as well. The European Union should adopt a similar investment blacklist and permanently abandon the trade agreement it recently negotiated with Beijing. The deal is already on ice after Beijing sanctioned European parliamentarians and think tanks for highlighting Chinese human rights abuses. The EU should now withdraw once and for all.
The United States and European countries should also challenge the naked hypocrisy of some firms that tout investment products they claim will further “environmental, social, and governance” goals. Some money managers who offer such options eschew investing in Western companies that don’t meet a particular set of criteria (called “ESG criteria”) but happily invest in Chinese companies that feature atrocious records in all three categories. There are U.S. university endowments, for instance, that could deliberately decide to invest in only ESG-compliant companies in the United States but simultaneously invest in a raft of Chinese firms that flout all accepted standards of corporate governance and environmental stewardship. Chinese firms contribute more to greenhouse gas emissions, ocean plastic pollution, and illegal fishing than do the companies of any other country on earth. As for social responsibility, a wide variety of Chinese companies—from leading technology firms to manufacturers that export globally—work with Beijing’s security apparatus to track, incarcerate, and extract forced labor from ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims. With respect to corporate governance, CCP cells, operating mostly in secret, wield significant and often decisive control over Chinese companies—making a mockery of Western standards of corporate transparency and independence.
Beijing is no longer bothering to camouflage its global ambitions.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission needs to fulfill its legal obligations under the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act of 2020, which prescribes an overly generous three-year grace period before Chinese companies are to be delisted from U.S. exchanges if they fail to meet U.S. accounting standards. The SEC has yet even to start the clock on the three-year countdown for noncompliant firms. Having judged the U.S. law hollow, Chinese companies continue to launch initial public offerings in the United States.
Washington also needs to do more to stymie Beijing’s plans to dominate semiconductor manufacturing. Chinese leaders are well aware that most twenty-first-century technologies—including 5G telecommunications, synthetic biology, and machine learning—are built around advanced semiconductors. Accordingly, those leaders have poured more than $100 billion in subsidies into building Chinese chip foundries, with mixed results.
Most of the world’s cutting-edge chips are produced by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The CCP has many ideological and strategic reasons to consider invading Taiwan; its quest for control of the market for chips represents an economic incentive to do so. Of course, a war could seriously damage Taiwan’s foundries, which, in any case, would struggle to maintain production without Western chip designs and equipment. And such a shock to chip supplies would affect millions of downstream jobs in China, not just those in other large economies. Even so, Beijing might believe that China could recover from a crisis more quickly than the United States. That is precisely the lesson Beijing drew from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken a far greater toll on China’s adversaries than on China itself. To be sure, Beijing would not take the fateful step of attacking Taiwan and risking war with the United States based on semiconductor inventories alone. The point is that Chinese leaders may not view the disruption of semiconductor supply chains as an inhibitor to launching a war.
Regardless of Beijing’s calculus, Washington should seek to eliminate any potential Chinese advantage in semiconductors by subsidizing new chip foundries in the United States—something the 2020 CHIPS Act and the 2021 U.S. Innovation and Competition Act seek to do. The U.S. Commerce Department must also slow Beijing’s efforts to scale up its foundries by applying sharper restrictions on the export of U.S.-made equipment used to manufacture semiconductors—not just for cutting-edge chips but also for those that are a couple of generations older.
Finally, Washington needs to do more to address Beijing’s information warfare. One of the weirder ironies of our time is the fact that U.S. citizens are sometimes censored and even deplatformed for political speech by the same American social media giants that channel CCP disinformation and agitprop to millions of people worldwide. U.S. companies, Congress, and the courts should act to address both of these phenomena—supporting the free speech of U.S. citizens while exposing the ways in which Beijing boosts its messaging. This can and should be done while still upholding the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. The idea is not to censor Beijing’s statements but to expose government-orchestrated efforts to camouflage propaganda as organic discourse among private citizens through fake accounts and covert schemes. Washington’s best partners in this effort should be the Silicon Valley social media giants themselves. Because they have the means to detect Beijing’s proxies, these firms can take a leading role in tamping down the sheer amplitude of Chinese government influence operations online.
At the same time, free and open societies—and the companies that flourish in them—must make it easier for Chinese citizens to access information from outside China’s Great Firewall, and to communicate with one another away from the watchful eye of Beijing’s digital panopticon. The Great Firewall is formidable but less technologically advanced than many observers often assume. In contrast to the CCP’s information warfare, U.S. efforts need not involve manufacturing disinformation or even generating much content at all. Washington needs only to provide the Chinese people with safer means to exchange news, opinions, history, films, and satire with their fellow citizens and others around the world.
One good place to start would be with the Chinese diaspora. There are very few Chinese-language news outlets left that resist toeing the CCP’s line. Under a new national security law imposed by Beijing, authorities in Hong Kong recently arrested the owner and editors of one of the few that remained: the now-defunct Apple Daily. The U.S. government can help by offering grants to promising private outlets and reenergizing federally funded media such as Radio Free Asia. U.S. universities should also hand a second smartphone to every Chinese national who comes to study in the United States—one free from Chinese apps such as WeChat, which monitor users’ activity and censor their news feeds.
Democracy vs. Tyranny
During a visit to Beijing in 1995, the U.S. democracy activist Dimon Liu met with a former Chinese official sympathetic to democratic reform. He provided Liu with an insight into U.S.-Chinese relations that she never forgot: “If the contest is based on interests, tyranny wins. If the contest is based on values, democracy wins.”
The failure of Beijing’s recent attempt to coerce Australia into compliance with Chinese policy illustrates this point nicely. CCP leaders gambled that Australian businesses, suffering from a targeted trade embargo, would lobby their government to make political concessions to Beijing. But the Australian people—business leaders and exporters included—understood that accepting China’s ultimatum would mean submitting to a dangerous new order. Australian businesses absorbed the losses, weathered the embargo, and found new markets. Australians decided that their sovereignty was more important than lobster sales—no doubt confounding those in Beijing who had assumed that Canberra would put Australia’s economic interests ahead of its foundational values. The CCP, having played this card, will not be able to do so again with much effect in Australia or elsewhere, so long as democracies remain alert to what is at stake.
The CCP has made perfectly clear its desire for global preeminence, and officials in Washington have finally stopped pretending otherwise. Americans, Europeans, and people the world over are now increasingly clear-eyed about Beijing’s intentions and the sources of its hostile behavior. Elected leaders must now take the next step: applying their tough new line not just to Beijing but also to elite institutions in their own societies that need to join the fight against the CCP. Because companies are economic actors, not political ones, it is the government’s responsibility to establish guidelines for engaging with adversaries. With strict new parameters, Washington can level the playing field for all U.S. firms—refreshing their commitment to the United States’ 245-year-old experiment with democracy instead of bowing to the Chinese government’s experiment with neo-totalitarianism. Without such guidelines, however, U.S. firms, money, and institutions will continue to be coerced into serving Beijing’s ends instead of democratic principles.
*Matt Pottinger is a Senior Adviser at the Marathon Initiative and was U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021.

أفغانستان والحرب الأهلية المحتومة
L’Afghanistan et l’inévitable guerre civile
Charles Elias Chartouni/August 24/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/101658/charles-elias-chartouni-lafghanistan-et-linevitable-guerre-civile-hezbollah-taliban-et-consorts-ou-les-revers-de-la-modernite-dans-lislam-contemporain-%d8%b4%d8%aa%d8%b1/
In memoriam, Jean François Deniau (Politique, diplomate, aventurier, architecte des résistances anti-communistes dans le monde, et membre de l’académie française, 1928-2007), l’architecte de la résistance afghane contre les soviétiques et éminence grise du Commandant Ahmet Chah Massout, notre grand ami et mentor. La fin de l’épisode afghan nous rappelle le rôle prophétique de Jean François Deniau et sa vision stratégique qui ne cesse de nous interpeller, vingt après l’échec de la stratégie de reconstruction de l’Afghanistan sur les mêmes bases qui ont menées aux impasses historiques qu’on connaît (lire son livre, Deux heures après minuit, Grasset 1985). La vallée du Panchir, rendue célèbre par Le commandant Ahmet Chah Massout du temps de l’invasion soviétique, regagne son statut emblématique de foyer de résistance contre les Talibans, revenus au pouvoir après le long intermède des vingt ans qui ont succédés aux attaques terroristes du 9 septembre 2001, et à l’assassinat du chef résistant. Amrullah Saleh, le président en exercice d’Afghanistan, en se repliant sur la vallée du Panchir, envoie un message double aux Talibans: soit la négociation ou la guerre. Les chances d’une négociation avec les Talibans s’avèrent, d’ores et déjà, caduques et l’éventualité de la guerre civile reprend le dessus de la scène, comme pour entériner une fois de plus, l’impossibilité d’une solution négociée avec la mouvance islamiste des Pachtouns, la fragilité des équilibres géopolitiques en lice, et les rapports de consubstantialité entre les Talibans et les mouvements terroristes ( DAECH, al Qaida, Lashqar Taiba…) et leurs relais tribaux (le clan des Haqqani).
Les préparatifs militaires en vue d’attaquer la vallée du Panchir en disent long sur les intentions des Talibans, qui annoncent, d’ores et déjà, leur volonté de renouer avec leur statut de terroristes islamistes, signifier le caractère fictif de l’État afghan et le refus de rejoindre la communauté internationale. Leurs options de base n’ont pas dévié d’un iota comme n’a cessé de le réaffirmer, Ahmad Rachid (le grand spécialiste pakistanais des affaires afghanes), depuis le commencement des négociations de Doha (29 février 2020). Nous voilà revenus à la case de départ qui nous renvoie aux scénarios suivants: 1/ L’appui au noyau de la résistance représenté par la mouvance du commandant Massoud, et la reconstitution des alliances afin de contenir l’avancée des talibans; 2/ la formation d’une coalition militaire multinationale en vue de détruire les plate-formes opérationnelles des talibans et empêcher l’émergence des réseaux de terreur; 3/ la mise en action des sanctions internationales en vue de casser les simulacres étatiques montés par les talibans, détruire leurs réseaux de criminalité organisée (culture du pavot, contrebande en tous genres) et déjouer leur duplicité; 4/ remettre en discussion la géopolitique du sous-continent indien en vue de remodeler les configurations en place et mettre fin à leurs impasses. Le retrait des USA et de la coalition internationale qui s’est organisée au lendemain des attaques terroristes du 9/11, 2001, devrait donner lieu à une restructuration en profondeur de l’OTAN en vue de définir les nouveaux axes stratégiques, et sortir des démarches aporétiques qui procèdent de choix arbitraires (Chine vs théâtres opérationnels moyen orientaux…), de l’unilatéralisme stratégique, et de la mise à mort des alliances stratégiques et opérationnelles de circonstance ou de principe.
Les alliances stratégiques ont toujours fait leur preuve dans la défaite des totalitarismes du XX siècle(Nazisme, Communisme), ainsi que dans la politique d’endiguement durant la guerre froide ( Europe, Sud Est asiatique, Amérique latine, Moyen orient…) et dans la guerre contre le terrorisme islamiste. La fin de l’épisode du 11 septembre 2001, loin d’être dramatique, devrait inaugurer une ère de révisionnisme géopolitique qui mettrait fin aux vides stratégiques, aux louvoiements des satrapies d’Arabie illustrés par les bailleurs de fonds du terrorisme islamiste (Qatar, les factions concurrentes des Saoud, les cheikhs véreux de l’UEA, l’Iran, la Turquie), les visées et convulsions des impérialismes islamiques en état de choc frontal ou latéral (Iran, Turquie, Qatar, Arabie Saoudite…). La fin de cette ère était inévitable, mais elle devrait donner lieu à une vision stratégique alternative et mettre fin aux vides dont se nourrissent les nihilismes qui verrouillent toutes perspectives de changement dans cet univers morbide qui s’empare du monde musulman de part en part.
§ Peintures de Shamsia Hassani (1988, peintre et universitaire
afghane)

حزب الله، طالبان، واصناؤهم، او هزيمة الحداثة في الاسلام المعاصر
Hezbollah, Taliban et consorts, ou les revers de la modernité dans l’islam contemporain
Charles Elias Chartouni/August 24/2021
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/101658/charles-elias-chartouni-lafghanistan-et-linevitable-guerre-civile-hezbollah-taliban-et-consorts-ou-les-revers-de-la-modernite-dans-lislam-contemporain-%d8%b4%d8%aa%d8%b1/
Indépendamment des contextes propres aux deux mouvements millénaristes*
inspirés par le khomeinisme et le wahhabisme, ils répercutent chacun à son propre niveau les crises systémiques propres aux sociétés musulmanes, les eschatologies politiques qu’ils ont générées, les pathologies mentales qui leur servent de levier, et les paradoxes d’un monde écartelé entre des croyances et des impasses induites par une modernité faillie. Loin de constituer des cas sui generis, ces mouvements relèvent d’une typologie qui a été abondamment étudiée dans le cadre des anthropologies post-coloniales. Les traits communs répertoriés: la sécularisation de l’eschatologie et le salut par le politique, le retour à un état présumé de pureté originelle et le virage vers la terreur, le mythe du monde renversé …. Ces mouvements sont les produits de la modernité dans la mesure où ils reproduisent ses contradictions, ses promesses faillies, ses échecs et apories, et leurs conduites effectives ne font que manifester les anomies propres à des sociétés où le corpus islamique est instrumentalisé comme caution à des pratiques de terreur et de criminalité qui viennent s’ajouter à l’actif déjà lourd des structures sociales éclatées.
Ce qui est inquiétant dans le cas des sociétés politiques de l’islam contemporain, c’est la prédominance de ce récit idéologique et la mise en place des verrouillages qui contribuent à l’installation des totalitarismes idéologiques et des glacis stratégiques, et fournissent des prétextes idéologiques à l’ensauvagement, et à la création d’un contexte approprié à l’éclosion des psychoses collectives et de la haine de l’autre comme revers de la haine de soi. L’échec patent de ces mouvements, tant au niveau de la gouvernance et du rapport au reste du monde, (je ne dirais pas aux autres États, parce que ces mouvements ne peuvent en aucun cas se reconnaître dans les notions d’État de droit et instituer des rapports inter-étatiques) se laisse compenser par les enfermements idéologiques, le règne de la terreur, l’anomie sociale, et l’accès au reste du monde par la voie de la criminalité organisée et des actions terroristes étayées par la jurisprudence islamique.
Les effondrements consécutifs de l’ordre géopolitique, socio-économique et normatif requièrent une approche méthodologique et stratégique qui s’articule sur la base d’un continuum qui aide à comprendre les enjeux et définir les politiques conséquentes. Toute approche politique qui ferait l’économie de ces causalités complexes et enchevêtrées, finirait par échouer et multiplier les effets pervers d’une méthodologie étriquée. Ces mouvements totalitaires ne peuvent survivre que moyennant des contextes de crise, des rééditions de scénarios de guerre froide, un ordre géopolitique en état d’implosion, des sociétés en état de dislocation diffuse (Afghanistan) ou de simulation continue de crises (Liban), la différence entre les deux cas de figure tenant au fait que les deux contextes géopolitiques ressortent à des temporalités sociales décalées et leurs registres politiques propres. L’extension des aires névralgiques dans cette partie du monde rend plus que jamais impérative la mise au point des politiques d’endiguement, de stabilisation et de mise en œuvre des réformes structurelles et des coalitions qu’elles requièrent. L’emboîtement des vides stratégiques n’étant plus gérable, le temps est désormais à la mise en œuvre d’un nouvel ordre régional qui mettrait fin aux nihilismes qui se succèdent et aux dystopies meurtrières qui leur servent de récit.
*Voir, Charles Chartouni, le messianisme politique, une étude
paradigmatique, Annales de Sociologie et d’Anthropologie,
Vol.5,1994, FLSH-Université St.Joseph

After the Fall...The people running the country are incompetent. Is there a leader left in America?
Peter Savodnik/bariweiss.substack.com/August 24/2021
When the Impossible War ended, I was in a cabin in the woods in Oregon. Towering pines, unpaved roads, canyons, creeks, a crystalline moonlight that stretched across the hamlets and orchards and interstates and the farm dogs roaming around outside low-lying barns.
It was called the Forever War, but that was misleading. The problem wasn’t just that it had dragged on for so long. It was that it had attempted to do something that could not be done.
It was late. My wife was sleeping. So were our children, ages six and three. I was watching the already infamous video of the Afghans falling from the sky. They had chased a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane about to take off on the tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport. They’d climbed aboard the wings and into the wheel wells. After the plane had taken off they tumbled to the Earth below.
The first thing I could think of — I wasn’t alone — was the image, nearly two decades old, of the couple jumping from the World Trade Center. Bookends of calamity.
In the beginning, on September 11, 2001, there was grief and rage and fear of what lay ahead. But we never doubted that a great deal lay ahead. We were still the indispensable country. We had been wronged, gravely, and we were armed with a gargantuan moral authority and an unstoppable killing machine.
And there was — just beneath the tears and disbelief, the plumes of dust, the candlelight vigils, the images of the missing — a strange anticipation. When George W. Bush, bullhorn in hand, declared, “The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!,” I was in a newsroom in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the reporters and editors and the old ladies who laid out the pages and the old men who ran the press, with their faded Marine Corps tattoos and their packs of Marlboro Reds tucked into their shirt pockets, started to clap. One of them said, “Fuck yeah,” and I remember feeling a little fuck-yeah-ish, too. We looked forward to tuning into the war we were about to launch.
Then, we failed. We failed over and over and over. In Iraq. In Afghanistan. But also — and this was harder at first to see — at home.
We kept electing commanders-in-chief who had never served, who had credentials but had never built anything, whose success resided atop the more substantive success of more serious people. The post-Cold-War president could make you feel all kinds of things, but he was always a little out of his depth because he had very little to begin with. He made promises he did not really understand. We won’t just pummel Afghanistan into glass. We’ll turn it into a Jeffersonian republic. We’ll make these people into a people they have never been, even though no one — the Brits, the Soviets, the Persians — has ever attempted as much, let alone achieved it. We will do it because we’re Americans.
It wasn’t just our presidents. It was that the whole machinery of American government seemed less capable of doing big things: mopping up New Orleans; quashing the subprime meltdown; making sure Big Pharma didn’t kill us with painkillers.
The fastest-growing technology companies didn’t create so much as connect. They connected us with friends and drivers and places to eat and to stay. Uber was great, but no one was pitching apps to tackle joblessness, cancer, alienation.
We talked with more people than ever. The number of acronyms and emojis we vomited out — voicelessly, by way of thumb — exploded. But the things we said were more trite, thinner. Which made everything faster, smoother, “smarter,” and exponentially lonelier.
We were stuck in the middle of this strange contradiction — the more and the less blended together. Which left everything feeling flat. Even those interactions that still took place IRL, which were always being interrupted by a ping or a vibration or someone glancing at a screen, wondering whether more interesting things were happening in this other invisible, parallel universe.
We justified all this the way we always justified things, by arguing that it was more convenient, that we didn’t know how we ever lived without it, that it was impossible to get by without it. But we forgot that it was also impossible to get by without other human beings. We were relieved we no longer had to have difficult conversations — one could simply ghost or delete or block — but we started to think this might not be healthy. Difficult conversations, after all, were important and good, and they instilled character. They made us more real. We yearned for the days before high-speed and we talked endlessly about the importance of authenticity. The truth is, we just missed it.
Then we discovered that almost everyone under 30 had no idea what we were talking about. This was when we knew we were in trouble.
The people in charge stopped being adults, which meant they stopped upholding the values and standards of those who came before and they rationalized this abandonment by telling themselves that the Tik-Tokification of American discourse was harmless or forward-looking or a good way to “engage” Gen Z. They forgot that it was their job not to engage with the young but to teach them.
They were confused, and, in their confusion, they failed to distinguish between influencers — otherwise known as popular people with short shelf lives — and leaders, who were willing to harness and even sacrifice their popularity in the service of something bigger than themselves. Everyone in the land of this new, horizontal, non-elite elite, was a brand now, and they spoke the same stupid, happy lingo of the H.R. Department — relentlessly upbeat, irony-averse, disingenuous, parochial. They thought the worst thing in the world was to offend. They said amazing a lot.
They were disconnected from the gravity of the moment, because, like all adolescents, they hadn’t yet come into possession of themselves. They were silly and trite and self-important. They were conduits for social-media personalities. They thought bubble-gum phenoms like Benny Drama were clever.
It’s worth noting that the White House released that Benny Drama video — which was meant to encourage all of us to get our vaccinations — weeks after the State Department warned that Kabul was on the brink of falling to the Taliban and exactly one week before all those Afghans crammed themselves into the wheel well and climbed onto the wing of that C-17, hoping that, somehow, when they opened their eyes, they would be in America.
Our elites’ dereliction of duty, their forgetting — about who they were supposed to be and, just as important, what America was supposed to be — is mostly to blame for the ocean of inanity that has engulfed us. The multiplying stupidities. The mythologies we promulgate online unironically or strategically. The preeners. The pronoun displayers. The opportunists. Michael Moore with his mindless Instagram post about everyone having their own Taliban.
A genuine elite would know enough, be strong enough, to say: enough. To say: no. To say: that is nonsense.
A genuine elite would care little about how many followers it had. It would be steeped in its many responsibilities — to those who had come before and those who were yet to be born — and that sense of responsibility would be reflected in its nourishing and cultivation of the institutions of American life. It would ensure that those institutions remained tethered to their heritage while open to new voices. An ever-expanding, renewing worldview. Like America itself.
Instead, we are governed by weaklings whose weakness has enabled all species of moral relativism. The identitarian left can no longer distinguish between its political foes and those who are truly evil. It cannot see that the “toxic masculinity” it decries extended the lifespans of Afghan women and shielded them from their would-be rapists and enabled their daughters to go to school. The identitarian right wonders aloud why America should absorb the Afghan interpreters who helped us prosecute a 20-year-war in their country. It cannot see that admitting these refugees is a matter not of immigration policy, but of honor and integrity and preserving these values that, it claims, are central to the American character. Both camps have been permanently alienated from their home. Both are incapable of charting a way forward, because they have forgotten, among all the many other things, where we are going. Our ignominious departure from Hamid Karzai International was presaged years ago by their ignorance and cravenness.
What now?
We have arrived at the second bookend: the Afghans falling from the sky.
Of course, it wasn’t really a bookend. “Bookend” implies symmetry. This wasn’t symmetrical. The first fall was horrifying, but it was the first. It signaled the start of something, and it signaled the hope that, soon, everything would be different.
Now we know that nothing will be different. That we have been returned to September 11, 2001, but that it is worse this time, because no one fears us and everyone knows we’re never going back. That nothing can be done. About Afghanistan and, really, America. There is a sense of inevitable decline.
In the cabin, at a little past one in the morning, I can hear our daughter mumbling in her sleep, I imagine our son splayed across a queen-size bed, and I feel what all fathers must feel when squeezed between the ugliness of the external world and the boundless love that binds them to their children. I think: There is nothing inevitable about any of this.
In my children, like children everywhere, there is the possibility of the new. But I wonder (how can any of us not wonder?) whether it is too late for poetry, whether the fall has already happened, and whether we — they — will be forced to soldier through the dark. Not in search of themselves, like the Israelites in the desert on the cusp of the Promised Land. But to escape from their history and from themselves.
In the night, it is easy to vacillate, to feel rudderless, to run toward hope and then sink into despair. To imagine that we are out of mornings and then, no, to know that there will be a new morning. In these moments, one tunnels through the gray, with all the ferocity one can muster, hoping that this will come to an end, that the fog is a precursor to something else, but not knowing, never knowing, knowing that everything is ambiguous, fluid, shifting. Waiting to be remade.
Perhaps you have felt disoriented or disillusioned or simply at a loss given the events of the past week. I certainly have.
In addition to the pieces we have run here — if you missed our symposium, please check it out — the following essays have helped me make sense of this uncertain moment:
We Are No Longer a Serious People by Antonio García Martínez
The Ides of August by Sarah Chayes
Farewell to Bourgeois Kings by Malcolm Kyeyune
Assabiya Wins Every Time by Lee Smith
The Week the Left Stopped Caring About Human Rights by Caitlin Flanagan
Biden’s Most Heartless Betrayal by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Requiem for the ‘Stan by Samuel Finlay
Will Biden Invite Afghanistan to His Democracy Summit? by Eli Lake
I’m also very gratified that our recent podcast with Gen. H.R. McMaster made news. The New York Times made note of his harsh words for Mike Pompeo; Maureen Dowd gave it a nice plug in her weekend column; and Axios covered it, among other mentions.
It is your support that allows us to do this work. Thank you so much. — BW

The Naqba was justified....
When the naqba occurred, and upon looking back at it today, it is clear that it was justified and necessary, but not sufficient. Op-ed.
Dr. Mordechai Nisan/August 24/2021
From the earliest days of the Zionist movement, the Arabs protested as a group in Eretz Yisrael, expressing feelings of revulsion, jealousy, disgust, hostility and resorting to violence. They murdered Jews, mutilated bodies, burned fields and forests, stole cars and destroyed property, fabricated libelous accusations, turned the world against us, stabbed, stoned, poisoned, raped, harassed young women, blew up restaurants and buses, spied and betrayed, abhorred our flag and hated our soldiers, lied, cheated, looted, badmouthed and took advantage.
Their terrorists attacked Jews in their homes and on the road, they lauded those who murdered Jews, kidnapped Jewish youngsters, hoarded weapons, murdered their employers, disturbed the night hours with deafening muezzin calls to prayer – what else lies ahead for Muslims who believe in the merciful Allah?
The Arabs scornfully reject the State of Israel – as criminal, racist, colonialist, thieving, conquering.
And the Arabs are still here, with us.
The struggle with them would have reached an end had all the Arabs living in Israel converted to Judaism, intermarried or emigrated. That would have brought tranquility and security. The Arabs as a group will never truly recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Arab tribal loyalties, together with the feeling that they were wronged by the Jewish people prevent acceptance and peace. They did not come around in 1948, not after the 1967 Six Day War, not after the 1993 Oslo Accord, and they will not do so for another 300 years. They will not give in, compromise, soften their stance, regret, forgive, forget. Never. Because they fervently believe that the Land of Israel is their birthplace, Palestine, and that the Jews must leave it.
There is no way the Arabs in general will budge one millimeter towards accepting the legitimacy of the Jewish State. Neither employment nor education, rights or privileges, positions or budgets, joint sports clubs or friendship associations, and not even learning to speak Arabic – none of these makes a dent in Arab intransigence – in fact, they achieve the opposite, intensifying and worsening that intransigence. The Arabs are serious people, they believe in the Qu'ran and Islamic tradition that the entire country is theirs and Allah is on their side.
The Jewish-Israeli march of folly has been going on for generations. Despite wars and terror, broken agreements and hollow promises, mudslinging lies such as "Al Aksa is in danger" or "Israel is an Apartheid state," the Jews refuse to admit the permanence of the Arab-Israeli dispute.Lies abound and truth is nowhere to be found. We are witness to a special phenomenon of false awareness, self-denial and escapism.
When an Arab murders a Jew… not all the Arabs are like that. Right.
When a Jewish girl is raped by Arabs…don't generalize.
When a house is set on fire…it's an isolated incident.
When roads are blocked and Jews are threatened. But just yesterday, I bought a kilo of apples from a nice Arab.
When Arabs are on the rampage…it's a marginal group.
When Arabs are running amok at the park or swimming pool…not all of them are like that. There are also doctors, pharmacists, lecturers, journalists among the Arabs who live here.
Enough of hallucinating, enough utopian dreams, enough embracing the enemy, enough bending over backwards, enough heaping kindness on freeloaders. Enough of people who live among us with hatred bubbling in their hearts. If they were able to, the Arabs would do a rerun of Hevron's 1929 massacre in Tel Aviv. Don't delude yourselves, my fellow Jews.
Dear Jew: Go to the fields and forests, go the valleys and hills, walk on the roads – and the threat may be lying in wait to ambush you. Like at the Danny Spring, near Migdal, Ein Yael, Arad, and the road near Tal Menashe.
And I want to stress: When the Naqba (1948 Arab catastrophic loss) occurred, and upon looking back at it today, it is clear that it was justified and necessary, but not sufficient.
There are times when a person has freedom of speech and can express himself without fear, or point out a fact without trying to soften it. Moshe Smilansky of Rehovot, pioneer and Zionist leader of the First Aliyah, who believed in Arab-Jewish coexistence but was not afraid to write what he really felt, wrote a sort of uncensored epigram in 1914: "We have to deal with a half-savage people…and this is their nature: if they believe you are strong, they will give in and keep their hatred locked up in their heart. If they sense that you are weakening – they will rule over you."
Over a century has passed since those words were said. Another thousand years can pass and a more accurate sociological, psychological and nationalist sentence that shines light on the chaotic relationship between Jews and Arabs in Eretz Yisrael will not be heard.
*Dr. Mordechai Nisan is a retired lecturer in Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Among his books is The Conscience of Lebanon: A Political Biography of Etienne Sakr (Abu-Arz). His most recent books are Only Israel West of the River: The Jewish State and the Palestinian Question and The Crack-up of the Israeli Left, available at Amazon.com.
Translated by Rochel Sylvetsky

How Qatar became the power broker of Afghanistan - analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/August 24/2021
Qatar has been playing a key role in the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan. It has also been playing a key role in flights to Kabul.
Qatar has been playing a key role in the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan. It has also been playing a key role in flights to Kabul. It has won widespread praise for both, seemingly contradictory, policies. However, this is the Qatar methodology: presenting itself as both a power broker that can work with extremist groups, while backing those groups, while also appearing to back stability and work with the countries dealing with the chaos left behind by these groups.
As such, Qatar positions itself as the country that everyone needs in order to work in Afghanistan. It both flies in journalists to cover the chaos at Kabul and provides “protection” for Americans in Kabul. Protection against the very group, the Taliban, which Qatar hosts. Qatar also hosted the “peace” talks that the Trump administration pushed for Afghanistan in early 2020, sidelining the Afghan government and making sure the Taliban would triumph.
On August 22-23 a total of 16,000 people were evacuated from Kabul, around 11,000 by US military aircraft, Jared Szuba reported. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that “in recent days, the Qatari ambassador to Afghanistan has escorted small groups of Americans into the [Kabul] airport.” The Qatari officials meet Americans at various points in the city and “the ambassador then accompanies them to guarantee safe passage,” according to the report.
Qatar is now the go-to country for all things Kabul. Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas thanked his Qatari colleague, Foreign Minister Mohamed bin [Abdulrahman] Al Thani,” on August 23. Maas “expressed gratitude for Qatar’s continued support in facilitating safe transit of German citizens and foreign nationals from Kabul to Germany.” He said that “Qatar has taken on a real leadership role.” The fact is that it is the US that has secured the area near the runways so planes can come and go and the UAE has actually evacuated more people from Kabul than Qatar, as of August 23. But Qatar positions itself as taking a “leadership role,” precisely because it helped host the Taliban for years to smooth their public relations campaign and transition them back into a palatable place for the international community.
Qatar has a huge public relations machine and many supporters in Western think tanks and in media. This is partly through its own powerful media arms, such as Al Jazeera. It is now being praised as playing a key role in Kabul. However, as we can see from announcements by the Taliban saying the US must leave by the end of August, basically dictating terms to Washington, the US is on its back foot, and the Taliban, who were hosted for years by Qatar, feel like the winners. The smoke and mirrors whereby Qatar “helps” the evacuation and hosts the Taliban enables it to play good cop to both sides.
This might raise eyebrows because CNN reported on August 24 that “the Biden administration has been in regular contact with Taliban officials throughout the course of the evacuation process, both on the ground in Afghanistan and in Doha, Qatar.”
The head of the CIA reportedly met Taliban co-founder and deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar recently. This “amounts to the highest-level direct exchange” between the current US administration and the Taliban. The Taliban were midwifed into this new respectability by Qatar. However, if the Taliban were not totally kosher and no longer a threat, then it is unclear why Qatar and other countries that are supposedly US partners, can walk freely in Kabul, but Americans must shelter in place and wait for help being evacuated.
In some ways this is a reminder of the double standards by which the US is treated. During the US intervention in Somalia, troops from mostly Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, seemed to not be targeted the same way as Americans during the infamous Black Hawk Down incident. If that’s the case in Afghanistan, whereby Qatari troops, Turkish troops and others are welcomed or safer, then why didn’t the US just leave the Afghan war a decade ago and let other NATO partners, like Turkey, who are not targets of the Taliban, do the work in Kabul, while the US carried out an air campaign?
Is it because US partners and allies, such as Qatar and Turkey, regularly play both sides, working with US adversaries or anti-American groups, while also getting US equipment and positive coverage from the West? Radicalizing and then getting paid to moderate at the same time.
What is clear is that Qatar engineered itself into power brokerage in Afghanistan. This comes during years in which the Doha-Ankara axis partnership has grown because both countries support the hard-right Muslim Brotherhood and both tolerate groups like Hamas, or extremists from Ahrar al-Sharqiya in Syria to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
After the rise of ISIS much of the region began to reject extremism and the Muslim Brotherhood was ejected from power in Egypt and other extremist groups were checked. However the temporary sidelining of far-right Islamist groups between 2015 and 2020 got new wind in Afghanistan when the Trump administration choose to legitimize the Taliban via the Qatar meetings. Here, Qatar was able to become a key guarantor for US forces in Afghanistan. In short, if the US wanted troops safe then Qatar could be the intermediary and thus control both the Taliban and US policy.
The end result is an empowered Qatar, and it sends a message to countries like Turkey and Pakistan – that flirt with extremist anti-Western groups but also want close ties to the US – that playing both sides has benefits because they become essential to both.
It remains to be seen what role Qatar will play after the US leaves Afghanistan. Will it continue to have the leverage it had, or will the fact the US has left, leave Qatar having to compete for influence with much bigger players like Russia, China, Turkey and Pakistan. For now the small Gulf country continues to play an outsized role. It has positioned itself well, hosting a US base and appearing to both help Afghans who are fleeing, such as nine Afghan women robotics team members, while hosting the extremists that caused them to flee in the first place. While being praised for helping the Afghans flee the same extremists that got top ratings on Al Jazeera, it is unclear if those poor Afghans will get any residency or refugee status in Qatar, or just be exploited for temporary PR, and sent on to some other country.
Turkey, which also sells itself as hosting refugees, is building a wall to keep Afghans out and has sent poor Syrians as mercenaries to die in places like Libya to fight Turkey’s foreign wars. That cynical manipulation of refugees tends to be the one that suits countries that both embrace extremists and embrace the Western countries that are against the extremists.

Arabs: Biden Brings Extremism, Terrorism Back to Life
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/August 24, 2021
For the first time in several years, the jihadis sense US weakness, confusion and lack of vision under the Biden administration.
"The United States withdrew from [Afghanistan] to open the door for its enemies and opponents to fill the vacuum.... If we assess the situation, we will find that the forces that will replace the US there are: Russia, China, Pakistan, and of course Iran. Russia and China are driven by the desire to exploit the vast mineral wealth of Afghanistan." — Jameel Al-Theyabi, Saudi journalist and political analyst, Okaz, August 15, 2021.
"The escalating threat of terrorism from Afghanistan appears to be taking place with the support and patronage of major countries... by turning a blind eye to the activities of violent and terrorist organizations, which require Arab and international solidarity to confront the threat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda together." — Monir Adib, Egyptian expert on global terrorism, Al-Ain, August 16, 2021.
"The Americans must admit their failure to build a state, or an army, in Afghanistan, or even a movement to confront terrorism and extremism, and now it is withdrawing all its agents, leaving Afghanistan hostage in the hands of extremists." — Osama Saraya, former editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram; Al-Ahram, August 16, 2021.
Thanks to the Biden administration, say the Arabs and Muslims, terrorist groups that want to wage jihad (holy war) against the US and Israel and threaten the security and stability of many Arab countries have firmly increased their foothold in the Middle East.
For the first time in several years, the jihadis sense US weakness, confusion and lack of vision under the Biden administration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
As the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is celebrating the "defeat" of the United States in Afghanistan, the Arabs seem worried that they will be the ones to pay the price by being targeted by terrorist groups, including Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.
Commenting on the withdrawal of US troops and the speedy Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, various Arab political analysts, writers and journalists said that they have no doubt that the region is headed toward a new era of extremism and terrorism.
The Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said that they were emboldened by the "defeat" of the US and have called for stepping up the fight against Israel. "The demise of the American occupation of Afghanistan is a prelude for the demise of all the forces of oppression, first and foremost the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said during a phone call to Taliban leader Mullah Baradar to "congratulate him on the alleged victory against the US."
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest terrorist group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, also issued a statement "congratulating the dear Afghan people on the liberation of the Afghan lands from the American and Western occupation." PIJ expressed hope that all Muslims would one day be united "under the banner of Islam to liberate Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque."
The two Palestinian terrorist groups are happy to see the US weak, humiliated and retreating. They despise the US because of its long-standing and traditional support for Israel. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, "the friend of my enemy is my enemy". This view also appears the reason Hamas and PIJ do not differentiate between Israel and the US. Hamas and PIJ are also now probably hoping that all the jihadi groups will get together to help the Palestinians eliminate Israel.
For the first time in several years, the jihadis sense US weakness, confusion and lack of vision under the Biden administration. The Arabs are warning that this weakness and uncertainty will plunge Afghanistan and the whole Middle East into a bloodbath.
"We are witnessing the creation of a malicious momentum to revive the extremist Islamists again, and no party will be spared from this momentum, and we, the Arabs in particular, the Gulf states, will be targeted," wrote Saudi writer Mishary Dhayidi. "Who released the beast from its cage and for what purpose? We have returned to square one."
Saudi political analyst Abdullah Bin Bijad Al Otaibi predicted that the Biden administration's steps in Afghanistan will lead to the revival of terrorism and the drug trade, as well as strengthening the extremist ideology of the terrorist groups in the Middle East.
"The revival of terrorism will be an important part of the fundamentalist era not only in Afghanistan, but throughout the Islamic world," Otaibi cautioned. "Afghanistan will once again become a safe haven for all fundamentalists and terrorists, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Al-Qaeda."
The Arab and Islamic countries, he said, "must prepare for the worst in the near future, and any complacency with Islamist groups, organizations, activities, discourse and ideology will have dire consequences." Otaibi further warned that social media will become an even greater hotbed of incitement and recruitment, and new mechanisms will be established to raise funds for the terror organizations.
"Some Arab and Islamic countries will be targeted if the terrorist groups start mobilizing their members and tools across the world," Otaibi noted.
Jameel Al-Theyabi, a Saudi journalist and political analyst, pointed out that American security experts believed the Taliban would not be able to enter Kabul for at least a month. Theyabi warned that the Biden administration's actions in Afghanistan will open the door for a new global security crisis.
"Let us recall scenes of hesitation and fluidity in the positions of President Barack Obama, which ended with the handing over of Iraq and Syria to Iran," he wrote.
"Today, it can be said that the administration of US President Joe Biden took a weapon and shot itself in the foot. Afghanistan is now again in the grip of the Taliban because of the recklessness of the US withdrawal, which means a threat to the security of the whole world because of the Taliban's support for extremist and terrorist movements and groups. Who can forget that the Taliban used to host Al-Qaeda and its former leader, Osama bin Laden, and is still allying with it and hosting its elements?"
According to Theyabi, in addition to concern that Afghanistan will be plunged into a violent civil war, the fear is growing that Afghanistan will return to what it was -- a stronghold of extremism and terrorism, and a haven for jihadist movements. "These are grave dangers that the United States and the world will not be able to ignore, no matter what," he said.
"What is happening in Afghanistan, which is currently under the control of the Taliban, presents a serious challenge to the entire world. The United States withdrew from it to open the door for its enemies and opponents to fill the vacuum, with all that this implies of influence, hegemony, and a threat to the region and the world. If we assess the situation, we will find that the forces that will replace the US there are: Russia, China, Pakistan, and of course Iran. Russia and China are driven by the desire to exploit the vast mineral wealth of Afghanistan. As for Pakistan, it is searching for strategic depth along its long border with Afghanistan. This strategic depth would block the way for India to reach any alliance with Afghanistan."
The Saudi analyst added that "it is certain that the world is entering a dark tunnel and an insecure future with the return of Afghanistan as a gathering point for terrorist groups."
Monir Adib, an Egyptian expert on Islamic movements and global terrorism, said that many countries had turned a blind eye to the Taliban's cooperation with Al-Qaeda.
"Afghanistan has become a haven for Islamist organizations, and international behavior in general, and reflects the extent of the crisis in dealing with the escalating danger from Afghanistan and its impact on world security... The escalating threat of terrorism from Afghanistan appears to be taking place with the support and patronage of major countries, or at least by turning a blind eye to the activities of violent and terrorist organizations, which requires Arab and international solidarity to confront the threat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda together."
Adib called for a "strategy to confront violent groups and extremism, and also to confront the countries that support these organizations, despite the complexity and difficulty involved."
Osama Saraya, former editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, said that the US administration's policy has allowed the Taliban to "realize its infernal strategy" in Afghanistan.
"The Americans must admit their failure to build a state, or an army, in Afghanistan, or even a movement to confront terrorism and extremism, and now it is withdrawing all its agents, leaving Afghanistan hostage in the hands of extremists... We, the Arabs, are the most affected by all terrorist and extremist movements. We need to prepare for what is to come from Afghanistan. This is a purely national responsibility of our countries. We must not wait for assistance from the West or from the Americans."
Another prominent Egyptian writer, Ahmed Al-Shamy, pointed out that while the Taliban and their friends are "dancing with joy," the world is "crying in fear of the possible terrorism" that would come from Afghanistan.
"The Taliban has gained the kiss of life from the Americans, and everyone is now engaged with it and ready to deal with it," Shamy wrote.
"Will the Taliban stop adopting terrorism? I am certain that this is impossible in light of the movement's endorsement of terrorist organizations in the world, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra after they have become a safe haven for them. Rather, the Taliban will provide all support to these organizations during the coming period to reproduce more extremist organizations and terrorists who terrorize all countries of the world under the pretext of establishing the Islamic state. Therefore, all countries of the world, especially in the Middle East, must search for new scenarios to stop the possible terrorism that has begun to appear in Afghanistan."
The initial reaction of the Arabs to the last US debacle in Afghanistan shows that the Arab and Islamic countries are extremely worried about the Biden administration's empowerment of Islamist terrorist groups. Thanks to the Biden administration, say the Arabs and Muslims, terrorist groups that want to wage jihad (holy war) against the US and Israel and threaten the security and stability of many Arab countries have firmly increased their foothold in the Middle East.
*Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
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What’s the purpose of Kadhimi’s regional summit?
Ibrahim al-ZobeidiThe Arab Weekly/August 24/2021
Amid the strenuous preparations for the Conference of Leaders of Neighbouring Countries, which will be held in Baghdad at the end of the month, Iraqis, who worry about their livelihood and security, are wondering whether their government intends to take advantage of this conference. Will it makes demands of its guests, in the name of religious and humanitarian duty, based on neighbourly obligations and in the name of the future of interests? Will it ask them to stop their interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and refrain from protecting Iraqi parties and organisations that are beyond the law along with their senior corrupt leaders and members who serve as their lackeys?
Or is the government intent upon just making this conference similar to previous gatherings, which turned into courtesy and hospitality sessions? The question comes to mind especially since there have been precedents where the Iraqis and their prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, were unsuccessful. They could face failure in this conference, too.
Leaders of Arab and foreign countries, whom he met previously and who will be attending his new conference, see in Kadhimi an employee without free will. Therefore, when they talk to him they know they talking to the regime that pulls the strings from beyond the borders.
Member of the Iraqi parliament’s foreign relations committee, Omar Al-Fayez, said in a press interview that Kadhimi’s government “will discuss, during the summit meeting, the issue of the Turkey’s aggression on Iraqi territory and work to end its military intervention, without discussing Iranian influence in Iraq.”
If this conference does not tackle external interference, especially that of Iran, which caused such devastation in Iraq, if it does not claim back Iraq’s usurped water rights and take advantage of this opportunity to express its firm determination to take away the weapons of the outlaw factions and militias and restore the prestige of the state and the rule of law, control border crossings and prevent the smuggling of oil, weapons and drugs, then the whole exercise would have been a waste of effort and money.
According to the statements from the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs, the most prominent invitees to this summit are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi, the two presidents who most encroach upon the security, sovereignty, security and stability of Iraq. This could be a golden opportunity to confront them with the facts.
But how can the prime minister of Iraq ask his Turkish guest to withdraw his forces from Iraqi and not ask his Iranian guest to do the same thing?
Turkey does not deny its occupation of parts of northern Iraq. It invokes the pretext of fighting the “rebels” among its Kurdish citizens who found a safe haven in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan from where they launch armed attacks on its soldiers and officers.
But what about the other neighbouring country that does not occupy simply one, two or three Iraqi cities, like Turkey, but rather occupies the whole of Iraq?
Without fear or shame, the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, praised Kadhimi for holding the conference, describing the initiative as “a service to the resistance project.”
It is known that the term “resistance project” is used by the Iranians and their followers to refer to the project of their Imam Khomeini, which is based on the idea of ​​exporting the revolution to neighbouring countries.
Talking about the conference, the Iranian newspaper “Tehran Times” says that the gathering may succeed in arranging a spontaneous meeting between the delegations of Tehran and Riyadh, but it is doubtful the meeting will achieve much success, because “the Iranian-Saudi differences are so deep that it is unlikely that a meeting will resolve them.”. So the Iraqi efforts and money that were spent on previous conferences, trips and tours, which will also be spent on this conference, are only to serve the Iranian regime and its expansionist goals and follow its orders and directives, while Iraq has no stake in the event.
The experience of Iraq during the past decades has shown that the interests of the Iraqi people are the last issue on the mind of Iranians and the Iraqis in their service.
Evidence has demonstrated that Iranians and their Iraqi lackeys, were also allies, helpers and partners of the Americans in the occupation of Iraq, cooperated with them in destroying the Iraqi state and encouraged them to abolish its army, interior ministries, media, security and intelligence services. Commenting on the rapid collapse of the regime that the United States established in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden says that the US objective in Afghanistan was never to build a state.” He was honest in telling things as they are.The last word belongs to the Iraqi people, who must speak now, before it is too late.