Long before Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the Americans had started to mutter darkly that Hamid Karzai was not only ineffective, he presided over a government that was corrupt and harbored drug and warlords in Afghanistan. While not all charges are false, Karzai alone cannot be blamed for all of them; it appears like another desperate attempt to shift blame for America's own disastrous policies.
Barack Obama’s election on November 4th and his inauguration as the 44th president of the United States on January 20th have led to misplaced optimism even among those who should know better. Obama’s claims to America’s “greatness” because it afforded him — son of a cattle-herder from Africa — the opportunity to rise to the highest office in the land should not mislead anyone.
Is it the beginning of the end for foreign occupation in Afghanistan? Seven years after driving the Taliban from power, Western bravado about defeating them militarily has evaporated. Several Western commanders and diplomats have at different times admitted that defeating the Taliban militarily was not possible and that a negotiated settlement to contain the insurgency was the only possible option.
By the time these lines are read, the US presidential election would be over. Current trends suggest Barack Obama would be the next president unless some unforeseen catastrophe or electoral fraud like those in 2000 and 2004 occur. Obama will inherit the biggest economic mess in US history since the 1930s depression. How did the US, the largest economy in the world, come to such a sorry state?
The days of the American empire are over; even US elites are writing its obituaries. The world Capitalist System was established on such factors as greed, living beyond means, using other people’s wealth, compound interest and a rigid focus on short-term profit.
Barack Obama, Democratic party presidential nominee, calls it the “good war”; his Republican rival, John McCain, insists that he will “chase Osama to the gates of hell.” Americans are being told that Afghanistan is the “right war” and that it is “winnable”, in contrast to Iraq.
Unable to contain (much less defeat) the resistance that has spread to most parts of Afghanistan in the last two years, the US has decided to bomb its way to “victory” by attacking Pakistan on the spurious pretext that it is going after insurgent sanctuaries across the border.
Within a period of less than 30 years, Muslims have consigned one superpower—the Soviet Union—to the dustbin of history and are about to deliver the other—the US—to the same fate, together with its regional surrogate, Israel. The achievements against the US are particularly remarkable because the mujahideen have had little or no external help.
If anyone hoped that the security pact being negotiated between the US and Iraq was rising above the cycle of frustrations and false starts, then such fanciful thoughts can now be dismissed. On September 17 Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki told a group of Iraqi journalists that “there are very serious and dangerous obstacles facing the deal.
There are many unknown victims of the US’s global war on Islamic dissidence. The plight of one of them hit the headlines earlier this summer, after years in which nothing was known of her. FAHAD ANSARI reports on the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Muslimah now in US custody after disappearing in Pakistan in 2003.
The great political circus otherwise known as the US presidential election campaign is an expensive affair. It will cost nearly $1 billion—no mean sum in a country with 45 million people without health insurance and another 40 million living in absolute poverty, even if it boasts the largest economy in the world.
Ideological blinders often lead ideologues to stumble into serious blunders. That US president George W. Bush’s Iraq adventure has gone awry has escaped no one but the warmongering neo-conservative cabal dominating the Bush White House and the stalwart intellectuals who blithely rationalized the irrational war.
At the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month, US president George W. Bush performed a comedy skit making fun of all three contenders to replace him, blithely ignoring the fact that he himself is the greatest figure of fun of all -- a lame duck president despite having nearly a year of his administration to go, with the lowest approval ratings of any American president ever.
The political situation is Pakistan so precarious that few people, including the country’s president, general (retired) Pervez Musharraf, can say with certainty that the parliamentary elections scheduled for February 18 will indeed be held on time. Even if they are, there is little prospect of change unless Musharraf resigns and allows genuine civilian rule. There are widespread allegations of bogus voters’ lists, illegal use of government machinery and vehicles to support candidates allied to Musharraf, and of course of voter intimidation.
The US midterm elections in November 2006, in which the Democrats took control of the House of Congress for the first time in twelve years, was perhaps the moment when most commentators in the US realised that the country had turned decisively against Bush and the neo-cons. As analysts dissected the implications of the results, Bush took himself off for a tour of friendly countries in south-east Asia, to generate pictures of himself appearing powerful and statesmanlike and counter the bad political news at home.
While George W. Bush made his imperialistic tour of the Middle East last month, French president Nicholas Sarkozy (pic) was also in the Persian Gulf. Among other things, he agreed a $4 billion deal to build nuclear power stations there and to establish a military base in Abu Dhabi, just across the Gulf from Islamic Iran. The deal secures lucrative contracts for French nuclear companies, and the base is France's first military presence in the region.
George W. Bush’s tour of the Middle East last month was reminiscent of old-style imperialism, when emperors would occasionally tour their vassal states to assert their overlordship and remind their local underlings of their place. George W. Bush concluded his Middle East tour last month by telling Syria, Iran and their allies to “end their interference” in Lebanese politics. This came just a few days after the US president sent “a clear message to the Syrians – that you will continue to be isolated, you will continue to be viewed as a nation that is thwarting the will of the Lebanese people.”
The transitional federal government (TFG) of Somalia, which was put in power in December 2006 after the removal of the ruling Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) by the Ethiopian army – began to disintegrate last October, finally crumbling soon after its 72-year-old leader, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad, fell ill in December and was taken to Britain for medical treatment. Now the new government, a remnant of the TFG, whose name it continues to use, is also backed by the US, Ethiopia and their allies, including those in the region such as Kenya.
A week after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the political dust has settled sufficiently for us to hazard some analysis of the situation Pakistan faces and where it might go from here. The announcement that elections have been postponed until February 18, and the appointment of Benazir’s husband and son to lead the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – confirming it to be a family fiefdom rather than a political party in any real sense – have established some of the parameters of Pakistani politics in the post-Benazir era. And yet, in perhaps the most important ways, her death really changes very little.
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has revealed a facet of Pakistani politics that is not generally known to people in the West: the extent to which Pakistani politicians act as agents of the West. Tens of thousands of Muslims are killed in political violence each year, most of of it sponsored by the West. Few are mourned as deeply as Benazir. Her assassination has been condemned by US President George Bush, the UN Security Council and a long list of other western leaders. Why should the death of one Pakistani draw so much attention in the West, when those of other – such as the girls killed in the Lal Masjid in July – are regarded with disdain?
