Who’s To Blame For Afghanistan? by Peter Van Buren

Did anyone expect the U.S. war in Afghanistan to end cleanly? If so, you bought the lies all along and the cold water now is hitting sharp. While the actual ending is particularly harsh and clearly spliced together from old clips of Saigon 1975, those are simply details. Who should we blame for losing Afghanistan? Why blame anyone? Why blame Biden? He played his part as a senator and vice president keeping the war going, but his role today is just being the last guy in a long line of people to blame, a pawn in the game. That Biden is willing to be the “president who lost Afghanistan” is all the proof you need he does not intend to run again for anything. Kind of an ironic version of a young John Kerry’s take on Vietnam “how do you ask the last man to die for a mistake?” Turns out, it’s easy: call Joe. Blame Trump for the deal? One of the saddest things about the brutal ending of the U.S.-Afghan war is we would have gotten the same deal—just leave it to the Taliban and go home—at basically any point during the last 20 years. That makes every death and every dollar a waste. Afghanistan is simply reverting, quickly, to more or less status quo ante September 11, 2001, and everything between then and now, including lost opportunities, will have been wasted.⁠ Blame the neocons? No one in Washington who supported this war was ever called out, with the possible exception of Donald Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney walks free. The generals and diplomats who ran the war have nice think tank or university jobs, if they are not still in government making equally bad decisions. No one has been legally, financially, or professionally disadvantaged by the blood on their hands. Some of the era’s senior leaders—Blinken, Rice, Power, Nuland—are now working in better jobs for Biden. I’d like to hope they have trouble sleeping at night, but I doubt it. George Bush is a cuddly grandpa today, not the man who drove the United States into building a global prison archipelago to torture people. Barack Obama, who kept much of that system in place and added the drone killing of American citizens to his resume, remains a Democratic rock god. Neither man nor any of his significant underlings has expressed any regret or remorse. For example, I have recently listened to Ryan Crocker, our former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, on CNN. Making myself listen to him was about as fun as sticking my tongue in a woodchipper. Same for former general David Petraeus and the usual gang of idiots. None of them, the ones who made the decisions, accept any blame. Instead, they seem settled on blaming Trump because, well, everything bad is Trump’s fault even if he came into all this in the middle of the movie. In the end the only people punished were the whistleblowers. No one in the who-is-to-blame community seems willing to take the story back to its beginning, at least the beginning for America’s latest round in the Graveyard of Empires (talk about missing an early clue). This is what makes “blame Trump” and “blame Biden” so absurd. America’s modern involvement in this war began in 1979 when Jimmy Carter, overreacting to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to prop up what was already a pro-Soviet puppet government, began arming and organizing Islamic warriors. Those anti-Soviet warriors were what we now collectively know as “the Taliban.” People who only want to see trees they can chop down so that they can purposefully miss the forest try to sideline things by claiming there never was a single entity called the Taliban, that it only emerged later, and the young Saudis who flocked to jihad to kill Russians technically weren’t funded by the U.S. (it was indirectly through Pakistan), or that the turning point was the 1991 Gulf War, etc. Quibbles and distractions. If Carter’s baby steps to pay for Islamic warriors to fight the Red Army was playing with matches, Ronald Reagan poured gas, then jet fuel, on the fire. Under the Reagan administration the U.S. funded the warriors (called mujahideen if not freedom fighters back then), armed them, invited their ilk to the White House, helped lead them, worked with the Saudis to send in even more money, and fanned the flames of jihad to ensure a steady stream of new recruits. When we “won” it was hailed as the beginning of the real end of the Evil Empire. The U.S. defeated the mighty Red Army by sending over some covert operators to fight alongside warriors for whom a washing machine was high technology. Pundits saw it as a new low-cost model for executing American imperial will. We paid little attention to events as we broke up the band and cut off the warriors post-Soviet withdrawal (soon enough some bozo at the State Department declared “the end of history.” He teaches at Stanford now) until the blowback from this all nipped us in the largely unsuccessful World Trade Center bombing of 1993, followed by the very successful World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. Seems like there was still some history left to go. How did U.S. intelligence know who the 9/11 culprits were so quickly? Several of them had been on our payroll, or received financing via proxies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, or were inspired by what had happened in Afghanistan, the defeat of the infidels (again; check Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the Sikhs, the British, et al.). If post-9/11 the U.S. had limited itself to a vengeful hissy fit in Afghanistan, ending with Bush’s 2003 declaration of “Mission Accomplished,” things would have been different. If the U.S. had used the assassination of Osama bin Laden, living “undiscovered” in the shadow of Pakistan’s military academy, as an excuse of sorts to call it a day in Afghanistan, things would have been different. Instead, Afghanistan became a petri dish to try out the worst liberal internationalist wet dream, nation-building across the Middle East. Our best and brightest would not just bomb Afghanistan into the stone age, they would then phoenix it from the rubble as a functioning democracy. There was something for everyone: a military task to displace post-Cold War budget cuts, a pork-laden reconstruction program for contractors and diplomats, even a plan to empower Afghan women to placate the left. Though many claim Bush pulling resources away from Afghanistan for Iraq doomed the big plans, it was never just a matter of not enough resources. Afghanistan was never a country in any modern sense to begin with, just an association of tribal entities who hated each other almost as much as they hated the West. The underpinnings of the society were a virulent strain of Islam, about as far away from any western political and social ideas as possible. Pakistan, America’s “ally” in all this, was a principal funder and friend of the Taliban, always more focused on the perceived threat from India, seeing a failed state in Afghanistan as a buffer zone. Afghanistan is a narco-state; its only real export is heroin. Not only did this mean the U.S. wanted to build a modern economy on a base of crime, the U.S. in different periods actually encouraged or ignored the drug trade into American cities in favor of the cash flow. The Afghan puppet government and military the U.S. formed were uniformly corrupt, and encouraged by the endless inflow of American money to get more corrupt all the time. They had no support from the people and couldn’t care less. The Afghans in general and the Afghan military in particular did not fail to hold up their end of the fighting; they never signed up for the fight in the first place. No Afghan wanted to be the last man to die in service to American foreign policy. There was no way to win. The “turning point” was starting the war at all. Afghanistan had to fail. There was no other path for it, other than being propped up at ever-higher costs. That was American policy for two decades: prop things up and hope something might change. It was like sending more money to a Nigerian cyber-scammer hoping to recoup your original loss. Everything significant our government, military, and mainstream media told us about Afghanistan was a lie. They filled and refilled the bag with bull hockey and Americans bought it every time expecting candy canes. Keep that in mind when you decide who to listen to next time, because of course there will be a next time. Who, by now, has not realized that? We just passively watched 20 years of Vietnam all over again, including the sad ending. So really, who’s to blame? Peter Van Buren is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent

Vietnam Redux BY RICHARD C. GROSS

“So it goes.” – Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” 1969 Game over for America in Afghanistan. There may be no helicopters on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as there were Hueys on an apartment house roof in Saigon in April 1975 evacuating diplomats and endangered Vietnamese. But we’re cutting and running again. Another defeat for an American war. The U.S. withdrawal from Kabul is hurried, helter-skelter, far from orderly and dignified as American officials make their way in a frenzy from their embassy to the airport, where U.S. military protect them from the advancing Taliban. The insurgents reportedly entered through Kabul’s four main gates Sunday. The government collapsed when Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, perhaps mindful of when the Taliban tortured Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah to death when it seized Kabul in 1996. There likely will be oppression again and possible revenge killings. And now the Afghan door will be open again as a haven for Islamist terrorists, a possible return of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida that launched the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11, 2001. The hasty retreat means trouble for Joe Biden. There are withdrawals and there are routs. The fire drill U.S. departure definitely was a rout. It’s clear the president failed his first big foreign policy test despite majority American support for getting out of Afghanistan after 20 years, 2,312 U.S. military personnel killed, $1 trillion spent and 300,000 Afghan troops trained to fight. Many of those soldiers didn’t defend their country as the Taliban blitzed their way through, seizing major cities in mere days, many without a fight. It’s as if the Americans who fought and died in Afghanistan made their ultimate sacrifice in vain. America’s longest war ended in disgrace. Biden defended his decision in a lengthy statement Saturday from Camp David. “One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country,” he said in a statement from Camp David Saturday. “And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil war was not acceptable to me.” The stunning weekslong Taliban advance forced Biden to send 6,000 Marines and soldiers back to Afghanistan to evacuate Americans and Afghans who worked with them who are still there, asking the insurgents to spare the embassy and setting up a diplomatic outpost at the airport. Despite his ballyhooed experience with foreign affairs during 36 years in the Senate and as vice president for eight years, Biden acted too precipitously and with surprising naivete in announcing in April the withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Trusting the Taliban to live up to an agreement is like trusting Trump to tell the truth. Any rational individual would realize the Taliban just were waiting for an American departure to try to take over the country. The short of it is America again has been humiliated in defeat of yet another war. We never seem to learn from our mistakes. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on the lie by Republican President George W. Bush that Sadam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction, was a major one. The Republicans will make a big deal out of America’s disgraceful exit from Kabul, blaming Biden for withdrawing too many U.S. forces too soon despite advice to slow the pullout to prevent a rapid Taliban takeover of the country. The Taliban waited in neighboring Pakistan to make their move once the Americans started leaving, like mice emerging from the woodwork once the cat is gone. But whatever the Republicans will say will mark another show of their hypocrisy because they will have conveniently forgotten that it was Trump who decided to quit Afghanistan in a hurried peace deal to get out by May 1. His party backed him, of course. The Republicans can be expected to severely criticize the Democrats for the botched withdrawal, making it seem as if they abandoned the Afghans after supporting them for 20 years even though a majority of the American public approves of the pullout. “. . . I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor – which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019 – that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. forces,” Biden said in his statement. “Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500. “. . . I faced a choice – follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.” Biden did extend the withdrawal deadline from May 1 to Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary on the worst terrorist attack ever unleashed on America. “I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan – two Republicans, two Democrats,” he said. “I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.” So be it. But it’s not as if Biden were letting another normal political party take control of Afghanistan. The Taliban are terrorist killers, known slayers of their opponents, including civilians. Life will not be easy for the men, women and children under the Taliban yoke. Richard C. Gross, a correspondent, bureau chief and foreign editor of United Press International at home and abroad, retired as the opinion page editor of The Baltimore Sun.

Kabul’s Victors and the Vanquished BY RON JACOBS

Speculation abounds. The end of US-managed rule in the nation called Afghanistan has fueled a flood of warnings, blame, and just plain guessing about what comes next there. Liberal and neocon warmongers in the media wring their hands looking for someone/anyone to blame beside their failed imperial strategy. The far right in the US have yet to speak their piece on the so-called fall of Kabul. Perhaps they are waiting for their two primary impulses of libertarianism and military imperialism factions to fight it out. What’s left of the US antiwar movement and the antiwar left are for the most part calmly stating what they were saying twenty years ago. In other words, just get the hell out. There are a few who fear for those who collaborated closely with the US-led forces and even fewer who still pretend that the US invasion and occupation was somehow necessary for the freedom of Afghan women (the upper class ones, anyhow.) Shadows of the past leak into the conversations about the Taliban. No one has said Islamofascism yet, but a chorus is slowly building that marks the Taliban as somehow crazier than the forces fleeing Kabul; forces which truly believed they could render the land into a compliant part of the US empire. The Taliban are not crazy. They are primarily Afghans who are sick of foreign occupation. The crazy ones are the foreigners who thought they could occupy a people and a land and turn them into puppets of the US. I think the predictions of a terrible life under the Taliban are premature. In addition, they are also based on what we have been told about the Taliban. They are mostly ignorant of the region’s history, either as the British-created nation of Afghanistan or the land of various tribes/clans, with the Pashtu being perhaps the most powerful and certainly the best known in the west. Does this mean I support the Taliban’s misogyny? Of course not, but pretending like majority of the people in Afghanistan were better under the occupation is hubristic as can be. There were elements of Afghan society who fared well. Most of them were those with whom the US felt most comfortable with. The vast majority lived outside of that sphere and faced US bombing, Taliban and other militia attacks, and US Marines kicking in their doors at two in the morning, taking away the males in the family, beating them and then destroying homes if the spirit moved them. As I wrote in a 2010 piece re-published in the newsletter of the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA), “there will never be real progress toward a genuine peace in Afghanistan until the US and other members of the International Security Armed Force (ISAF) withdraw their forces.” Now that the Taliban forces are apparently in charge, they have to lead. It is this transition from a warmaking entity to a governing one which will be their test. Like most every war, there will most likely be some instances of retribution by the victors against the vanquished. One hopes these are few and far between. If not, that retribution could easily become the rationale for another invasion of the land by another army intent on having its way there. Despite their portrayal as such in the Western media, the Taliban are much more than an armed militia with beards and big guns. Their version of Afghan nationalism and religious belief incorporates Afghans from all walks of life. As they move into the empty seats of power in Kabul they will be watched closely by those inside the nation, those in Islamabad, Delhi and those in Beijing. They will also be watched very closely by US military forces stationed a few hours away and ready to attack at any moment. There are many potentialities in Afghanistan’s future. There are also many forces who want them to fail at governance. These forces include rival warlords, elements of the international narcotics trade (in governments and otherwise), much of the US political/military establishment, and those in other capitals around the world. Even those who have supported the Taliban over the years, like Pakistan’s ISI and other foreign intelligence agencies, have done so with certain goals in mind. Not all of those goals were shared by the Taliban. The end of war is never pretty. Establishing a new order in the wake of the old is full of uncertainties. The people of Afghanistan who have little to lose no matter who is in power might breathe a bit easier for now. Those who had put their lives in the hands of the defeated regime may be doing the opposite. The new rulers hold some of their nation’s fate in their hands. One hopes they don’t squander it as surely as one hopes the US military and its allies stay out for good. The latter’s decades long rampage of death and destruction has done little but bring misery to most Afghans. Washington has proven it has little else to offer. Washington’s politicians and generals, from Jimmy Carter’s White House to the present, are criminals of the first order for their actions in Afghanistan alone. If this world were just, they would stand trial for those actions. Instead, they won’t even accept their responsibility or learn the obvious lesson of the defeat. After all, everyone knows the next war is already being planned. Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem. He lives in Vermont.

1,001 killed since military took over Myanmar

BANGKOK (AP) — More than 1,000 people have been killed by security forces in Myanmar since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi about six months ago, a human rights group said Wednesday. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors protest-related arrests and deaths in Myanmar, said it confirmed two more deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total to 1,001. There has been a groundswell of protests against the military-led government since Suu Kyi’s ouster. Casualties are also rising among the military and police as armed resistance grows in both urban and rural areas. Teik Naing, secretary-general of the AAPP, said most of the people killed were anti-military activists and more than 40 were shot in the head. In addition, a large number died in interrogation centers and prisons after being arrested, Teik Naing said. The military leadership disputes the AAPP’s figures but has not recently released any of its own. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the military commander who took power after deposing Suu Kyi in February, said near the end of May that about 300 people had been killed.

The generals lied and the fantasy died - by Anatol Lieven

An opening move in the U.S. military high command’s campaign to deflect blame for the 20-year-long American debacle in Afghanistan has come with a Sunday article by General H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman in the Wall Street Journal, “In Afghanistan, the Tragic Toll of Washington Delusion.” The delusions have indeed been real, and now cruelly exposed. As amply documented by the reports of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko, and the The Afghanistan Papers by Washington Post journalist Craig Whitlock, the deceptions are largely the work of McMaster himself and his military colleagues. The first question to ask though is why General McMaster thinks he has the right to say anything at all on the subject of Afghanistan? In the 1980s, the Afghan Mujahedin fighting against the Afghan communist government and its Soviet backers were equipped by the West with sophisticated equipment including Stinger missiles that cleared the Soviet air force from the skies. The Taliban have had no heavy weapons at all, a budget a tiny fraction enjoyed by the Afghan state, let alone the United States, and numbers that have also been much smaller than those (on paper at least) of the Afghan security forces. Yet the Taliban have won, by sheer resilience, better strategy, and superior public appeal. American generals have led America to unnecessary defeat in Afghanistan; and defeated generals should have the elementary decency to keep their mouths shut. This is all the more so because many of the military mistakes in Afghanistan have directly echoed those of the Vietnam War, from which American generals failed to learn. This was especially true of their approach to their local allies. Washington funded the Afghan army to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, trained it, and provided it with armor, heavy artillery, and airpower — yet while the Communist state survived for three years after the Soviet withdrawal, America’s Afghan state collapsed in a fortnight. If this has come as such a shattering surprise, then it is largely because — as reported by SIGAR — generals like McMaster systematically misinformed multiple administrations, Congress, and the American people about the real state of the Afghan forces that they had created and shaped. In particular, they did their utmost to downplay the theft of U.S. aid and equipment by Afghan generals and officials — something that has been critical to the demoralization and easy surrender of their soldiers. The most important question Americans need to ask in the wake of the fall of Kabul is therefore how they were lied to so systematically over so many years, and what it is about the US system that allowed these lies to pass with too little challenge. This is a problem for the USA that casts into the shade the “blame game” over President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. If it can be honestly and thoroughly examined, there may be some chance of it not happening again. Perhaps the most terrifying thing of all about this is that it has happened before. The name of Craig Whitlock’s reports for the Washington Post, and forthcoming book, “The Afghanistan Papers” recalls “The Pentagon Papers” leaked by Department of Defense official Daniel Ellsberg during the Vietnam War. In both cases, internal U.S. governments revealed that senior officials and soldiers knew perfectly well that the picture of the war, and of America’s ally, being given to the public, Congress, and the media was substantially false. The “Afghanistan Papers” quote General Douglas Lute, Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2007 to 2013: “We stated that our goal is to establish a ‘flourishing market economy’. I thought we should have specified a flourishing drug trade – this is the only part of the market that is working.” Another senior NSC official said that: “It was impossible to create good metrics. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory, and none of it painted an accurate picture. The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war…For example, attacks are getting worse? ‘That’s because there are more targets for them to fire at, so more attacks are a false indicator of instability.’ Then, three months later, attacks are still getting worse? ‘It’s because the Taliban are getting desperate, so it’s actually an indicator that we’re winning.’ ” The Afghanistan Papers, like the SIGAR reports (another of which is to be issued this week), focus above all on misinformation about the weakness and corruption of the Afghan government and armed forces, and the theft, misuse and waste of U.S. assistance. There are, however, two other areas where propaganda, as swallowed by too much of the mainstream media, was so far from reality that it deserves special attention. The first of these were the real workings of Afghan democracy, which were disguised with pious and meaningless phrases about “the people of Afghanistan’s quest for peace and stability and freedom and democracy,” and sentimental articles about Afghans queuing to vote that never asked whether they had been told for whom to vote, and who the winning candidates were. In recent weeks, articles about “defending democracy in Afghanistan” have ignored the fact that parliamentary elections in Afghanistan had been indefinitely postponed, and that in the Afghan presidential elections of 2019 only 20 percent of the electorate voted, the losing candidate refused to accept the result, and no independent report by observers was ever published. The second is the way the Taliban benefited from the Afghan government’s lack of legitimacy, while generating mass support of its own. This is now completely obvious, but for 20 years was mostly simply ignored, in favor of endless articles about them as mere “creations of Pakistan,” and as a “Saudi-influenced” group that is essentially alien to “Afghan traditions.” Thus one part of the McMaster and Bowman oped reads as follows: “In areas they conquer, the Taliban conduct mass executions and assassinate journalists and anyone else who might oppose their perverted theocratic dictatorship. The Taliban force women to “marry” terrorists, who rape them, force them to wear the burqa and otherwise strip them of rights they have enjoyed for nearly two decades.” It is true that the Taliban have committed egregious human rights violations, but ultimately central to the mass surrenders of the past fortnight has been that the rank and file of Afghan troops trusted Taliban promises not to take revenge on them, and to let them go home in peace; and they could do so because that was the Taliban strategy in most areas during their rise in the 1990s; and also the Mujahedin approach to Communist garrisons that surrendered in 1992. Only some specific units have been killed — ones which (like General Raziq’s border troops in Kandahar) had themselves gained an open reputation for taking no Taliban prisoners. The second sentence of McMaster and Bowman’s paragraph conflates the Taliban and ISIS (called in Afghanistan Daesh), when these forces are in fact bitter enemies. In fact, while the Taliban in power were cruelly oppressive to middle class and educated women, and severely limited their rights, in the Afghan countryside one reason why they gained such support was precisely because they ended the savage attacks on and exploitation of women conducted by the Mujahedin warlord forces whom we brought back to power in 2001. Once again, if the Taliban have faced very limited opposition from the mass of the population across much of Afghanistan — without which they could not possibly have survived and won in the way that they have — it is because far from being a new and alien force, they reflected core Afghan conservative traditions in parts of the country — traditions alien and obnoxious to our own, but tragically, not an anathema to large parts of the Afghan rural population. In dealing with the Taliban, the U.S. government and military commanders like General McMaster forgot that most crucial of military maxims, “know your enemy.” This self-deceit reflected in turn the fact that for 20 years the great majority of U.S. and allied staff officers and officials never bothered seriously to study Afghan history or culture. In particular, leading experts on Afghanistan who wrote analyses questioning the Western official line, like Antonio Giustozzi, were too often ignored and excluded. Officials and soldiers who did develop such expertise, like the U.S. political officer Carter Malkasian and British Captain Mike Martin, or the British came too late to make a difference (and in Martin’s case, faced a determined attempt by the British Ministry of Defence to censor his book on Helmand). This too recalls a famous comment by Ellsberg, that when Washington sent an army to South Vietnam in 1965, there was not a single middle ranking U.S. official who could have passed a freshman exam on Vietnam. As Leslie H. Gelb (author of The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked, about the errors of analysis that led the USA into Vietnam) wrote comparing the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, “[B]ecause we’d never learned that darn lesson about believing our way into these wars, we went into Afghanistan and we went into Iraq… You know, we get involved in these wars and we don’t know a damn thing about those countries, the culture, the history, the politics, people on top and even down below. And, my heavens, these are not wars like World War II and World War I, where you have battalions fighting battalions. These are wars that depend on knowledge of who the people are, with the culture is like. And we jumped into them without knowing. That’s the damned essential message of the Pentagon Papers.” Just as the realities of the Afghan state were disguised by bromides about democracy, so the realities of the Taliban were obscured by cliches about “terrorists” and “fanatics.” This was odd, since the Taliban stemmed from parts of the same Mujahedin whom we supported against the Soviets and Communists in the 1980s, and whom Western intelligence officers and journalists (including myself, as a journalist for The Times of London) had got to know very well. As revealed in interviews like those organized by Graeme Smith of the Toronto Globe and Mail, ordinary Taliban members were fighting for very much the same reasons (patriotism, religion, and revenge) as those for which their fathers had fought against the Soviet occupiers and their local Communist allies. This it seems could simply not be admitted by most Western observers. In his magisterial book on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Afgantsy, Sir Rodric Braithwaite recounts how any suggestion that the United States might learn from the Soviet experience was simply dismissed with contempt by American officials. I myself encountered this attitude in Afghanistan in early 2002 when I warned American officials against the use of the term “postwar,” pointing out that the USSR had also occupied Afghanistan in a fortnight in December-January 1979-80 — but that had certainly not meant an end to conflict. The response was a mixture of incomprehension and indifference. That was a time when America appeared to be victorious; but it has been said that failure is a better teacher than success, and it is greatly hoped that the US establishment will learn lessons from its failure in Afghanistan — lessons not about Afghanistan, but about itself.

Message from Sound Vision on Afghanistan

The Taliban have declared victory and the end of the war in Afghanistan. America has been in dialogue with the Taliban for a couple of years. They finally signed an agreement under former President Donald Trump for the US to withdraw last year. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban negotiator who was released by Pakistan at President Trump’s request, was humble in his first statement. He said the victory was unexpectedly swift and had no match in the world. However, he said the real test would begin now, with meeting the expectations of the people and serving them by resolving their problems. • President Biden is right in withdrawing from 20 years of war. It is what former President Obama and former President Trump both declared they would do but could not. • Afghans must determine their own future. They have the right to self-determination just as any other people do. If they want Islamic criminal law with their tribal code, they have as much right to choose that as Saudi Arabia does. • American responsibility must go beyond evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies. There are at least half a million displaced people in Kabul right now and more are coming. USAID must airlift massive relief supplies to Afghanistan right away. The same flights can bring back thousands waiting at Kabul airport. • If America can work with Vietnam despite its communist ideology and brutal conflict, it should have no problem working with the Taliban. Today, 30% of Vietnam’s economy is connected with that of the US. • There must not be any ban on girls' education whatsoever. Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, specifically mentioned women when ordering, “Seeking knowledge is a binding duty on each Muslim man and Muslim woman” (Hadith recorded by Ibn Majah). • There must be freedom of religion for all Afghans, as per the Constitution of Madinah instituted by the Prophet himself. Education of Girls in Afghanistan In December 2020, UNICEF and the Taliban signed a formal agreement to run up to 4,000 community-based classes reaching 120,000 students in areas under the Taliban’s control. This agreement includes girls’ primary education. Hopefully, UNICEF and the Taliban will be able to expand the area of work now that the Taliban is in power.

The Murder of the ‘Menacing’ Water Technician: On the Shadow Wars in the West Bank BY RAMZY BAROUD

There is an ongoing, but hidden, Israeli war on the Palestinians which is rarely highlighted or even known. It is a water war, which has been in the making for decades. On July 26 and 27, two separate but intrinsically linked events took place in the Ein al-Hilweh area in the occupied Jordan Valley, and near the town of Beita, south of Nablus. In the first incident, Jewish settlers from the illegal settlement of Maskiyot began construction in the Ein al-Hilweh Spring, which has been a source of freshwater for villages and hundreds of Palestinian families in that area. The seizure of the spring has been developing for months, all under the watchful eye of the Israeli occupation army. Now, the Ein al-Hilweh Spring, like most of the Jordan Valley’s land and water resources, is annexed by Israel. Less than 24 hours later, Shadi Omar Salim, a Palestinian municipal employee, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the town of Beita. The Israeli army quickly issued a statement which, expectedly, blamed the Palestinian for his own death. The Palestinian victim approached the soldiers in a “menacing manner”, while holding “what appeared to be an iron bar,” before he was gunned down, the Israeli army claimed. If the “iron bar” claim was true, it might be related to the fact that Salim was a water technician. Indeed, the Palestinian worker was on his way to open the pipes that supply water to Beita and other adjacent areas. Beita, which has witnessed much violence in recent weeks, is facing an existential threat. An illegal Jewish settlement, called Givat Eviatar, is being built atop the Palestinian Sabih Mountain, in Arabic, Jabal Sabih. As usual, whenever a Jewish settlement is constructed, Palestinian life and livelihood are threatened. Thus, the ongoing Palestinian protests in the area. The struggle of Beita is a representation of the wider Palestinian struggle: unarmed civilians fighting against a settler-colonial state that ultimately wishes to replace a Palestinian village or town with a Jewish settlement. There is another facet to what may seem a typical story, where the Israeli army and Jewish settlers work together to ethnically cleanse Palestinians: Mekorot. The latter is a state-owned Israeli water company that literally steals Palestinian water and sells it back to the Palestinians at an exorbitant price. Unsurprisingly, Mekorot operates near Beita as well. The Palestinian worker, Salim, was killed because his job of supplying water to the people of Beita was a direct threat to Israeli colonial designs in this region. Let us put this in a larger context. Israel does not just occupy Palestinian land, it also systematically usurps all of its resources, including water, in flagrant violation of international law which guarantees the fundamental rights of an occupied nation. The occupied West Bank obtains most of its water from the Mountain Aquifer, which is divided into three smaller aquifers: the Western Aquifer, the Eastern Aquifer and the North-Eastern Aquifer. In theory, Palestinians have plenty of water, at least enough to meet the minimally-required water allotment of 102-120 liters per day, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). In practice, however, this is hardly the case. Sadly, most of the water in these aquifers is appropriated directly by Israel. Some call it “water capture”; Palestinians call it, more accurately, “theft”. While in Israel the daily per capita water consumption is estimated at 300 liters, illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank consume over 800 liters per day. The latter number becomes even more outrageous if compared to the meager amount enjoyed by a Palestinian, that of 70 liters per day. This problem is accentuated in the so-called ‘Area C’ in the West Bank, for a reason. ‘Area C’ consists of nearly 60 percent of the total size of the West Bank and, unlike ‘Areas A’ and ‘B’, it is the least populated. It is mostly fertile land and it includes the Jordan Valley, known as the ‘breadbasket of Palestine’. Despite the fact that the Israeli government had, in 2019, decided to postpone its formal annexation of that area, a de facto annexation has been in effect for years. The illegal appropriation of the Ein al-Hilweh Spring by illegal Jewish settlers is part of a larger stratagem that aims at appropriating the Jordan Valley, one dunum, one spring, and one mountain at a time. Of the more than 150,000 Palestinians living in ‘Area C’, nearly 40 percent – over 200 communities – suffer from “severe shortage of clean water”. That shortage can be remedied if Palestinians are allowed to drill new wells, expand current ones or to use modern technologies to allocate other sources of freshwater. Not only does the Israeli army prohibit them from doing so, even rainwater is off-limits to Palestinians. “Israel even controls the collection of rainwater throughout most of the West Bank and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army,” an Amnesty International report, published in 2017, concluded. Since then, the situation became even worse, especially since the idea of officially annexing a third of the West Bank obtained widespread support in the Israeli Knesset and society. Now, every move made by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers in the West Bank is directed towards that end, controlling the land and its resources, denying Palestinians access to their means of survival and, ultimately, ethnically cleansing them altogether. The Beita protests continue, despite the heavy price being paid. Last June, a 15-year-old boy, Ahmad Bani-Shamsa, was killed when an Israeli army bullet struck him in the head. At the time, Defense for Children International-Palestine issued a statement asserting that Bani-Shamsa did not pose any threat to the Israeli army. The truth is, it is Beita that is under constant Israeli threat, as well as the Jordan Valley, ‘Area C’, the West Bank and the whole of Palestine. The protest in Beita is a protest for land rights, water rights and basic human rights. Bani-Shamsa and, later, Salim, were killed in cold blood simply because their protests were mere irritants to the grand design of colonial Israel. The irony of it all is that Israel seems to love everything about Palestine: the land, the resources, the food and even the fascinating history, but not the indigenous Palestinians themselves.

Déjà Vu: Saigon, Vietnam, 1975; Kabul, Afghanistan, 2021 BY RAOUF HALABY

In addition to global warming (floods, fires, destructive storms, water shortages and water pollution), a pernicious pandemic (COVID virus with all its offspring variants), a depressed economy, abuse of power, rabid racism, graft and corruption at all levels – Hubris and Arrogance, the afflictions to which all empires succumb, are but two of America’s tragic flaws. Pundits, politicians, and sycophants will no doubt debate and thrash the following question: Did President Joe Biden make a huge mistake pulling out of Afghanistan on short notice as per his orders to pull out under the cover of dark – even without properly informing the Afghani government of forwarding the withdrawal timetable? In all the public punditry and babble about the wisdom of Biden’s decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan, the sycophantry of media talking heads and elected officials (on the right and the left) rightly decry the 2+ billion dollars spent on a senseless adventure and the death of 2,312 US personnel and 20,066 wounded. Sadly, there’s been hardly any mention of the tens of thousands Afghani dead, wounded, and maimed. And that includes women, children, the elderly, hospitals, schools, and entire villages vaporized in heinous drone attacks. Barak Obama’s Tuesday morning meetings to choose targets hangs like a Giant V (for villainy) over his Exceptional head. Just recently he who vaporized some 60 wedding party extended family members celebrated his 60thbirthday to much fanfare. The children vaporized in this and other Exceptional Orgy of Tuesday Killing Decisions have had their lives swatted as though they were pesky flies to be disposed into the bin of history. Was the Nobel Prize for Peace perhaps not a premature award? Better yet, did this unmerited and sardonic award give the Change We Can Believe In Prince of Drones a sense of false invincibility and immunity? And the life-long PTSD traumas borne by US Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, including the millions of Iraqi and Afghani civilians, are heavy crosses and crescents they have to bear for the rest of their lives. Ironically, it is these same hypocrites who, in 2001, were George Bush et company’ cheerleaders. Strategically located, Afghanistan, after all, sits on mineral deposits worth billions of dollars, deposits to be exploited by Brown and Root, Bechtel, Exon Mobil, and scores of mining conglomerates sharpening their greedy fangs and claws to lay claim to Afghanistan’s subterranean wealth. Don’t believe me, just ask oilman Bush and Dick Cheney, Brown and Root, Halliburton, and Bechtel’s front scavenger. After an 18-year American involvement/war in Vietnam, in 1973 Saigon fell to a determined Vietcong. Will Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, fall to the brutal Taliban in 2021 – after yet another 20-year futile war? Inasmuch as I hate to frame the Taliban’s current advance on Kabul as a pattern in the execution of US foreign policy/wars, this movie is not new. In both instances the US was/is a key player, making the same mistakes, over-and-over-again. In addition to waging war on Vietnam, neighboring Cambodia and Laos also fell victim to napalm strafing, B-52 carpet bombing, the dropping of cluster bombs in the tens of thousands, and the spraying of defoliants such as Agent Orange. Agent Orange has not only destroyed the lives and livelihoods of the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, but it has also destroyed the lives of thousands of American military personnel in the service of Johnson and Nixon’s “Econam War.” A dear friend, the father of three daughters and a Vietnam veteran, died from a morbidly excrutiating lung disease. In 1973 the US’s adversary were the Vietcong. Today’s US adversaries (one of many) are the Taliban, a ruthless religiously fanatical lot led by a 7th century mentality tribal leaders who’ve exploited the weakness of the current Afghani government, an equally corrupt and inept entity. I will leave it to others to detail all the atrocities committed by the US and its many NATO allies that began way back in 2001. And the myriad atrocities committed by the US in Vietnam (to, supposedly, stop the spread of communism) have been memorialized in hundreds of books and documentaries. I shall never forget the images of the last days of April 1975, images of carnage that included the hurried loading of US military hardware aboard impotent naval ships; masses of people congregating in front of the US embassy protective cordon of metal and concrete fencing, scaling the walls and begging to be airlifted to the safety of US navy ships; Vietcong assaults in the Greater Saigon area; and then, on April 30, 1975, the rolling of Vietcong tanks into the South Vietnamese presidential palace compound. The footage of civilians scrambling to reach American ships was gut wrenching. Equally disturbing was the footage of US military hardware, including several helicopters, being pushed off naval vessels into the Saigon Bay harbor. Was this perhaps a burial metaphor for American military might in southeast Asia? Caught in the struggle between the two superpowers of the time, Vietnam (a poor 3rd world nation) persevered in forcing out American forces. Likewise, Afghanistan, with covert US support of Usama Bin Ladin and the Taliban, forced Russia, America’s Nemesis, out of Afghanistan. Shameful, disgraceful, and humiliating does not even begin to describe the fateful retreats of the two superpowers from their ill-advised adventures. And just as Russia pulled out of Afghanistan in disgrace, so is mightiest military power in the world pulling out of Afghanistan. And thus emerged the Vietnam Syndrome. In 1991 Daddy Bush waged a war against Iraq, bombing it back to the stone age. He as much as said the following: This victory (a hollow one) makes up for the embarrassing Vietnam defeat. With the Soviet Empire on the wane, Daddy Bush gloated that 1991 Iraq War was an affirmation of a military victory over an emaciated Iraq, America could now claim that “a new world order [emerged]. [and] What we say goes.” Ten year later Daddy Bush’s Boy, the supreme court choice for the Presidency, waged a war on Afghanistan. The unforgivable and cowardly Osama Bin Ladin-led assault on America, a perniciously heinous onslaught on three iconic US entities, shocked the nation to its very core. How could a cave-dwelling Muslim fanatic accomplish this murderous act? And who supported him became the battle cries for an immediate and swift act of retribution? The Gods of anger and revenge delivered their speedy venom. Afghanistan had to pay a price. And from the start and for twenty years “the mission” was not properly defined. Instead of a well-planned military action to bring those responsible to justice, Lyssa, the Greek goddess of mad rage, frenzy, and rabies and her close kin Manea, the goddess of madness and insanity, blitzed the White House, the Pentagon, Congress, every media outlet, and every living room across the nation. Ah, the unschooled Vietnam lesson! It is much easier to wage a war than to halt it and bring it to a close. And once in, the mission sprouts too many unintended consequences. So here we are, 20 years and four presidents later, facing yet another humiliating withdrawal. And like Vietnam’s burgeoning war into neighboring countries, the last four US presidents have either waged wars or are responsible for expanding the Afghanistan mission into Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Looming on the horizon of forever US wars in Asia Minor is the specter of a war with Iran, a country that has been, and continues to be, in Israeli-Saudi crosshairs. Woe unto us if we wage a war on Iran to appease Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Emiratis. The Abu Ghraib prison brutalities, the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the rendition of thousands at Guantanamo and other torture chambers across the globe put a blight on America’s reputation. And this does not include the many restrictions imposed on free expression – here at home. The Taliban have smelled blood and are going in for the kill. President Biden’s decision to reintroduce US military forces into Afghanistan is too little and too late. On August 12, 2021 State Department and Pentagon spokesmen scrambled to provide political cover for Biden, and folks such as Tom Cotton and his ilk are braying about Biden’s flip flop decision/s. They, too, smell blood, and are going in for the kill. American politics has turned into a gotchya war with money flowing in from those who benefit from the forever wars – to the detriment of the masses, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet on a $7.50 per hour pittance. Only time will tell how the 20-year Afghanistan adventure, at a cost of over 2+ trillion plus hard earned US taxpayer dollars, will play out. Just think of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Libya, and Yemen as casinos whose high stakes vainglorious gamblers gamble BIG. And when they lose, they lose BIG. Raouf J. Halaby is a Professor Emeritus of English and Art. He is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener, and a peace activist. halabys7181@outlook.com

Israeli forces conduct raids in occupied East Jerusalem, West Bank

Israeli forces have launched a barrage of raids and arrests in areas of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem that resulted in clashes and injuries, continuing a round of violence that commenced in May. In Jerusalem, which has in recent months become a flashpoint in the ongoing conflict, dozens of settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning under the protection of the occupation forces. Israeli forces raided during the night the homes of two young men in the Bab Al-Amoud area and Salah El-Din Street and arrested one of them, Sa’adi Burqan. In the West Bank town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya, occupation forces arrested resident Tariq Salim in his home. Several other people were injured due to tear gas inhalation during the clashes that erupted in the town. An infantry squad was deployed in the town of Ya'bad, southwest of Jenin, where neighbourhoods were raided and vehicles moved. No arrests were reported. In Beita, south of Nablus, confrontations continued throughout the night in the Jabal Sabih area. For the third fay in a row, settlers have continued to erect tents in Tarqumiyah, northwest of Hebron, with the intent of seizing the land near the settlement of Adora. The land belongs to a Palestinian family, however settlers are attempting to seize it under the pretext that it is state land. According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, settlers have repeatedly attempted to uproot olive trees in the area, which resulted in clashes with Palestinians defending their lands. Human Rights Watch, in an April report, accused Israel of "apartheid". It described "discriminatory laws and policies" that "enable settler and settler organisations to take possession of Palestinian homes". RELATED Israel 'asked US' to apply pressure in Sheikh Jarrah case MENA The New Arab Staff 05 August, 2021 Since 1967, Israeli authorities have expropriated nearly one-third of the land in East Jerusalem from Palestinians, largely via settlements, it said. Rights groups say the forced evictions are part of a broader move to drive Palestinians from their homes, in a city coveted by both sides as their capital, and cement Israeli occupation over the whole of Jerusalem. Israel's Supreme Court is expected on Monday to issue a final ruling on a high-profile Sheikh Jarrah case involving four Palestinian families in the occupied East Jerusalem suburb who face imminent forced eviction to make way for Israeli settlers. The decision, which was initially set for May, was postponed after the attorney general requested more time to study the case and following daily Palestinian protests and sit-ins that were violently dispersed by Israeli forces using tear gas, sound bombs, and rubber bullets.

Armenian armed forces open fire at Azerbaijani army positions

On August 15, at 04:33 and 07:25 the Armenian armed forces units from the positions in the Arazdeyen settlement of the Vedi region, using large-caliber weapons subjected to fire the Azerbaijan Army positions in the direction of the Heydarabad settlement of the Sadarak region of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Trend reports with reference to Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry. On August 14 starting from 19:08 to 19:17, the Armenian armed forces units from the positions in the Zarkand settlement of the Basarkechar region using small arms subjected to fire the Azerbaijan Army positions in the direction of the Damirchidam settlement of the Kalbajar region. The opposing side was suppressed by retaliation fire. Moreover, on the evening of August 14, illegal Armenian armed detachments in the territory of Azerbaijan, where Russian peacekeepers are temporaly deployed, committed provocation against the Azerbaijan Army Units in the vicinity of the city of Shusha. So that, at about 22:14 two civilian vehicles were seen approaching the settlement of Khalfali.The armed men who got out of the vehicles after opening fire in the air in the direction of the positions of the Azerbaijan Army Units immediately left the area. Relevant measures have been taken by our units and the command of the Russian peacekeeping contingent has been informed about it. There are no losses or wounded among the military personnel of the Azerbaijan Army. The Azerbaijan Army Units control the operational situation.

Hold the Generals Accountable This Time

by Ray McGovern If, after the horrors of this week in Afghanistan, the 4-Starry-eyed generals responsible for this 20-year March of Folly are not held accountable, there will be still worse to come. None were held accountable for the disasters of Vietnam or Iraq, and now the allegedly smart 4-Star Generals and Admirals are – get this – preparing for war with China and Russia. "Civilian control" of the military is a fiction when the Departments of Defense and State are headed by windsock politicians like Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton, not to mention President Barack Obama who lacked the spine to stand up to political generals like David Petraeus. This was clear as a bell 12 years ago, when on March 24, 2009, Obama announced his first surge of troops into Afghanistan. He claimed his decision was the result of a "careful policy review" by military commanders and diplomats, the Afghan and Pakistan governments, NATO, and other international organizations. That he did not mention any intelligence input into this key decision for a slow surge in troops and trainers was not an oversight. There was no intelligence input – just as there was none before the benighted "surge" of U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007, during which an extra thousand GIs were killed. Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were in charge, and they knew best. They would run their own policy review, thank you very much. And if the outcome meant an automatic fourth star for the generals, who’s to complain. The pressure on Obama was so clear that when he announced his decision to surge troops into Afghanistan I wrote "Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President." "The road ahead will be long," Obama warned. That part he got right; that was guaranteed by the strategy adopted. It seemed only right and fitting that Barbara Tuchman’s daughter, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, then-president of the Carnegie Foundation, showed herself to be inoculated against the kind of "cognitive dissonance" about which her historian mother Barbara Tuchman warned in her classic book, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. In a January 2009 Carnegie report on Afghanistan concluded, "The only meaningful way to halt the insurgency’s momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban." Many old hands in intelligence and the military were also highly skeptical, but Congress and the mainstream media remained bedazzled by the medals and merit badges of Petraeus and other generals, some of whom looked forward to another star and kept their mouths shut. Only one summoned the courage to speak out. He happened to be the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, who a few months before had publicly contradicted his boss, Defense Secretary Gates, when Gates started talking up the prospect of a "surge" of troops in Afghanistan. McKiernan insisted publicly that no Iraqi-style "surge" of forces would end the conflict in Afghanistan. "The word I don’t use for Afghanistan is ‘surge,’" McKiernan said, adding that what is required is a "sustained commitment" that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution. One argument Gates adduced to support his professed optimism made us veteran intelligence officers gag – at least those who remember the US in Vietnam in the 1960s, the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and other failed counterinsurgencies. "The Taliban holds no land in Afghanistan, and loses every time it comes into contact with coalition forces," Gates explained. Was he unaware that his remark echoed one made by US Army Col. Harry Summers as the Vietnam war was approaching its own denouement? In 1974, Summers was sent to Hanoi to try to resolve the status of Americans still listed as missing. To his North Vietnamese counterpart, Col. Tu, Summers made the mistake of bragging, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield." Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant." Obama’s generals resemble all too closely the gutless general officers who never looked down at what was really happening in Vietnam. The ones standing behind Obama at the press conference on March 24, 2009 had smarts – but not courage – enough to have told him: NO; IT’S A BAD IDEA, Mr. President. That should not have been too much to expect. Sadly, after that press conference it was easy to predict: "Gallons of blood are likely to be poured unnecessarily in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan – probably over the next decade or longer. But not their [4-star] blood." It Will Happen Again, Unless… This time there must be accountability for Afghanistan. The more so since generals and admirals, active duty and retired, are going off half-cocked. Some of them, like Admiral Charles Richards, head of US Strategic Command, are saying nuclear war is possible. Earlier this year Richard wrote that the US must shift from a principal assumption that nuclear weapons’ use is nearly impossible to "nuclear employment is a very real possibility." And retired Adm. James Stavridis, former commander of NATO, is already talking about war with China "perhaps ten years from now." Accountability and effective civilian control of such general officers can prevent the next March of Folly. Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Rohingya need international protection from ongoing genocide

Press Release Rohingya need international protection from ongoing genocide 16 August 2021 On January 23, 2020, the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) issued an order in the case of The Gambia v. Myanmar requiring Myanmar to take measures to prevent the risk or possible recurrence of genocide against the Rohingya people and to preserve evidence of the 2017 attacks (“Order”). Myanmar is required to report periodically on the measures it has taken to comply with the Order. Myanmar’s two reports filed to date have been classified confidential, available only to the ICJ and The Gambia, thus keeping the international community as a whole, including the Rohingya as victims and survivors, in the dark. Such an approach prevents them to see, assess and draw conclusions on any measures which Myanmar has (or has not) taken. Despite the requirements of the Order, Myanmar is continuing to fail in its obligations to take any of the prescribed genocide against the Rohingya people (as a protected group) although it has power to do so. The same conditions that existed in the Arakan/Rakhine state have not changed since the order for provisional measures. The Rohingya in Arakan are subject to “oppressive and systematic restrictions” on freedom of movement, education, marriage, childbirth, access to food, health care, and humanitarian assistance with several thousand people being held in highly discriminatory circumstances (in possible apartheid like conditions) including in arbitrary detention centres in Sittwe (Akyab) and the southern towns for 10 years with little access to land, livelihood, appropriate food and water. Those not being arbitrarily incarcerated in detention facilities, are forced to live in ghettos and encircled/confined villages. The land and jungles are riddled with landmines presenting a danger to villagers and to those who may farm or collect firewood. The Covid-19 outbreak has substantially affected the people in northern Arakan. Rohingya patients are neither receiving proper treatment nor a vaccine or oxygen. They are rarely allowed to the hospital. All these may be further indicative of the military regime’s intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. There is no evidence that Myanmar has even considered – let alone – started – cancellation or changes in the highly discriminatory oppressive laws, including the most controversial citizenship law of 1982. It has continued its ill-conceived idea of providing the Rohingya “National Verification Cards” and asking that Rohingya people erase their identity in order to come back home. In 2017, the military carried a campaign of murder, burnings, lootings, sexual violence, and the destruction of homes. Many bodies were dumped in mass graves which (to date) the ICJ has not precisely outlined measures of how evidence of such possible crimes may be preserved. The victims have not been identified or given an appropriate burial. The location of mass graves and exhumation of the bodies will be a critical step in identifying the manner and causes of death. Myanmar has continued to drag its feet with regard to repatriation. It has done nothing to prepare the Arakan for the return of the Rohingya refugees. On the contrary, Myanmar is trying to erase the Rohingya identity; and Rohingya villages are being erased from existence and renamed with Burmese names as if to indicate the Rohingya never had an existence in the Arakan. On the other hand, the harassment of the Buddhist Rakhine armed group, with the blessing of the military administration, brings the Rohingya people to an unbearable situation, particularly in Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships. They are progressively making demographic changes by settling hundreds of Buddhist families on the Rohingya land for reengineering the Rohingya Homeland of North Arakan. These Rakhine armed group has already taken over more than 10,000 acres of Rohingya land from the villages of Thapetaw, Thazaw, Thangana, Attenat, Auknat, Chaung, Nilambow, Belamin, Zedibyin in Rathedaung township. They are renting out these intruded lands seasonally to the Buddhist cultivators at the rate of 100 baskets of paddy per 6.40 acres. With the financial support of the Rakhine businesspersons, they allure them (landgrabbers) with incentives, including agricultural machinery, and assure them of ownership of the land if they use it for two years. There are occasional reports of abduction, extortion, killing, human trafficking of Rohingya and rape of Rohingya women and girls by them. At the outcry of the people, recently five people have reportedly been arrested by Arakan Army (AA) in connection with rapes. It may be recalled, from 21 July, just before the Eidul Adha Muslim religious festival, the soldiers of the AA have created a hellish situation in the Lat Ma village under Minbya township, harassing, torturing and detaining the villagers in the village mosque/madrasa for alleged non-compliance (by a few villagers) with their order to pay them money, meat and hides of the sacrificed animals (cows) on the occasion of Eidul Adha. For many days the village was under siege and arrested more than one hundred villagers, who included women and religious persons. Even an infant was separated from the mother. Now AA is forcing the Rohingya villagers into making statement(s) that AA did no wrong to them. The Rohingya people always aspire to “peaceful co-existence” with their Rakhine compatriots. They have never expected such a treatment from AA. It is all the more essential to revive the traditional relation between our two sister communities of Rohingya and Rakhine in Arakan. Together we can achieve much, together we can achieve our eventual objective. “United we stand, divided we fall”. To this fact, we invite the attention of the Rakhine people. The coup d’état of February 1, 2021 has changed the circumstances of the case, increasing the risk for the Rohingya and causing greater confusion as to intentions of the military junta with the real prospect that the junta will be shielded through confidentiality while the States parties and the victims remain in the dark. It is, therefore, all the more critical that Myanmar’s reports be made public without delay by the ICJ. Rohingya in Arakan face an increasing and continuing danger without any protection. We urge the international community to increase pressure so that realistic and tangible solutions are provided to stop the ongoing Rohingya genocide and another generation of Rohingya people can live. The international community has an ongoing and mandatory duty to prevent genocide and use all means reasonably available for doing so. Furthermore, there should be no solutions to the Rohingya repatriation without appropriate Rohingya representation and meaningful engagement by the Rohingya people in the process. For more information, please contact: Dr Mohammad Habib Ullah Cell, WhatsApp: +1-4438158609 Email: arno@rohingya.org/ info@rohingya.org

‘A sample of hell’: Rohingya forced to rebuild camps again after deadly floods

Kaamil Ahmed Sat 7 Aug 2021 01.01 EDT Refugees clear mud that engulfed shelters after recent flash floods. In January a fire burnt 600 homes. Photograph: Yassin + Zia/Rohingya photographers for NRC The process of rebuilding has begun once again for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh after a week of heavy rains made thousands homeless. The chest-high waters that flowed through parts of Cox’s Bazar have exposed the vulnerability of the area’s unplanned settlements, which have to be repeatedly repaired and rebuilt after flooding, cyclones and fires. At least 21,000 refugees were displaced by heavy monsoon rains that began on 27 July and lasted for days. Flash flooding inundated the fragile shelters, which are made of bamboo and tarpaulin, with landslides crushing those perched on unstable hills. Zahed Khan, a Rohingya youth activist who lives in the Kutupalong refugee camp, said: “All of our family was at home and we didn’t have any way to escape so we tried everything we could do to get rid of the water. We dug ditches to drain the water away.” He said most of his family’s belongings and documents were damaged by the water. “We’re trying to rebuild, with difficulty because we don’t have the financial support to get materials. We spent days in the damaged shelter but after a few days some NGOs gave us materials like bamboo and tarpaulin.” The aftermath of the floods, which killed at least six Rohingya refugees and swept away infrastructure. Photograph: Yassin and Zia/Rohingya photographers on behalf of NRC The main Kutupalong camp was established in the 1990s, but, since August 2017, it has rapidly expanded to become the world’s largest refugee camp. It is now home to 700,000 Rohingya who fled violence in neighbouring Myanma. Forests and hills were quickly cleared of vegetation by the refugees to make way for the expanding camp. But the mass deforestation has weakened the soil and rainwater runs straight off the hills instead of being drawn down into aquifers. At least six Rohingya died in last week’s floods, along with 15 Bangladeshis. The rains damaged bridges, roads and paths used by the refugees to move around within the sprawling camps and which are crucial to deliver aid in hard-to-reach areas. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said hundreds of clinics, aid delivery centres and toilets were damaged, though some have since been repaired. UNHCR said it provided kits to help tie down shelters ahead of the monsoon and cyclone seasons, and trained thousands of volunteers. But with the camps locked down, as Bangladesh goes through its worst outbreak of Covid-19 yet, and after fires displaced tens of thousands of people earlier this year, the past week’s deadly rains have increased desperation among the Rohingya. “The life we are having here at camp is like a sample of hell. We don’t want to live here for one minute,” said Mohammed Zonaid, a Rohingya photographer and aid worker whose shelter was damaged by a landslide. “As long as we live here in the camp, we want to live safely and with dignity.” He said the pandemic had reduced the presence of aid organisations, which meant less preparation was made for this year’s monsoon season. “NGOs were not ready to deal with the rains and their lack of care meant people died and so many became shelterless,” said Zonaid. He said more pressure needed to be put on Myanmar to give the Rohingya the right to return, a move that seems highly unlikely after this year’s military coup. Sandbags are used to try to stabilise a hillside. The floods caused landslides amid widespread deforestation in the surroundings of the camps. Photograph: Yassin and Zia/Rohingya photographers on behalf of NRCMany Rohingya refugees have lived in the camps in Kutupalong and Nayapara, also in Cox’s Bazar, since the early 1990s. A fire in January destroyed the homes and belongings of 3,500 people in Nayapara, including shelters where many residents had lived for almost 30 years. The families began a hunger strike in early July, refusing to take rations from the UN’s World Food Programme until they were given better living conditions. One of the strike organisers said, on condition of anonymity, that eight women involved in the strike had been beaten by police, and organisers had been threatened. The World Bank announced on Thursday that it was committing $590m (£420m) to help support the Rohingya and local Bangladeshi communities. With the flooding devastating the region, the UN has stressed that support also needed to be provided to people living in nearby villages. “Extreme weather affects us all,” said Jamie Munn, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Bangladesh. “Host Bangladeshis in Teknaf and Ukhiya [districts], many of whom live in extreme poverty, are suffering the aftershock of floods as well. Currently, we are working directly with local government officials to ensure communities who graciously host refugees are not forgotten in the aftermath of disasters. A collective tragedy demands a collective response.”

Myanmar Fast Facts ( Genocide taking place in Burma (Myanmar) against religious minority group Muslim Rohingyas)

Myanmar Fast Facts Posted By: CNN Editorial Research Here's a look at Myanmar, a country in southeast Asia formerly known as Burma. About Myanmar (from the CIA World Factbook) Area: 676,578 sq km (slightly smaller than Texas) Population: 57,069,099 (July 2021 est.) Median age: 29.2 years Capital: Naypyidaw Ethnic Groups: Burman 68%, Shan 9%, Karen 7%, Rakhine 4%, Chinese 3%, Indian 2%, Mon 2%, other 5% Religion: Buddhist 87.9%, Christian 6.2%, Muslim 4.3%, Animist 0.8%, Hindu 0.5%, Other 0.2%, None 0.1% (2014 est.) Unemployment: 4% (2017 est.) Other Facts Prono: MEE'-an-mar Myanmar shares borders with China, India, Laos, Bangladesh and Thailand. The United States officially still calls the country Burma. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there were more than 773,000 people of concern, including stateless and internally displaced people, in Myanmar in 2019. The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar's Rakhine State thought to number about one million people at the beginning of 2017. Myanmar does not recognize them as citizens or one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups living in the country. According to Human Rights Watch, laws discriminate against the Rohingya, infringing on their freedom of movement, education and employment. According to the UN's Inter Sector Coordination Group, over 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since 2017, bringing the total Rohingya refugee population in Cox's Bazar to more than 880,000. (As of July 2021). Timeline 1824-1886 - Burma becomes part of British India after fighting three wars with Great Britain over 62 years. January 1947 - After negotiating with the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL), Great Britain agrees to give Burma its independence. July 1947 - AFPFL leader Aung San is assassinated. January 4, 1948 - Burma gains independence from the United Kingdom. March 1962 - The military government is established under Ne Win after a bloodless coup. August-October 1988 - Mass anti-government demonstrations take place throughout Burma. The official Radio Rangoon figure is 450 dead; the actual number is believed to be much higher. September 1988 - Gen. Saw Maung takes over in another military coup. 1989 - Burma changes its name in English to Myanmar and the name of the capital from Rangoon to Yangon. May 1990 - General elections are called by the junta. Activist Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD (National League for Democracy) party wins easily, but the military refuses to hand over power. April 23, 1992 - Gen. Than Shwe replaces Saw Maung as head of the junta. July 23, 1997 - Myanmar joins the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. March 2006 - Naypyidaw becomes the new administrative capital. August 19, 2007 - Protests break out in Yangon after the government raises petroleum and diesel prices by 100%. September 22, 2007 - In her first public appearance in over four years, Suu Kyi greets monks as they march past her house in Yangon. September 24, 2007 - Buddhist monks lead about 100,000 in the largest anti-government demonstrations since 1988. September 26, 2007 - As protests continue, Myanmar security forces crack down -- clubbing and gassing protestors and arresting as many as 200 monks. September 30, 2007 - Special UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari meets with Suu Kyi and with military officials (separately) to attempt to resolve the situation. October 20, 2007 - The UN General Assembly approves a resolution condemning the government crackdown and asking for the release of political protesters. May 2, 2008 - A cyclone kills more than 70,000 people. The United Nations later estimates that more than two million people are severely affected by the storm. May 20, 2008 - It is announced that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will be allowed to tour the devastated area hit by the cyclone. Also, shipments of aid barred from coming into the country will be allowed in. June 5-10, 2010 - More than 4,000 ethnic Karen leave Myanmar for Thailand after clashes between the Karen National Union rebel group and the Myanmar army. June-July 2010 - Floods and landslides kill 68 people and displace thousands. October 22, 2010 - Cyclone Giri hits Myanmar, leaving at least 27 people dead and close to 75,000 homeless. November 7, 2010 - Myanmar holds its first elections in 20 years. The Union Solidarity and Development Party, backed by the military, claims victory with 80% of the votes. November 13, 2010 - Opposition leader Suu Kyi is released from house arrest. January 31, 2011 - Myanmar convenes its first parliament in more than two decades in the capital, Naypyidaw. February 4, 2011 - The parliament elects Prime Minister Thein Sein as president. Suu Kyi's NLD party boycotts the elections, calling it a sham. March 30, 2011 - A civilian government is sworn in to replace the military junta. October 12, 2011 - Dozens of political prisoners are released as part of a mass amnesty. November 30, 2011 - Hillary Clinton arrives in Myanmar, the first visit by a US secretary of state in more than 50 years. December 13, 2011 - The NLD is granted permission to register for future elections in Myanmar. April 1, 2012 - Suu Kyi wins a seat in parliament in the first multi-party elections since 1990. April 13, 2012 - British Prime Minister David Cameron arrives in Myanmar. He is the first British prime minister to visit the country. April 28, 2012 - EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton meets with Suu Kyi. The European Union has suspended most of the sanctions it had imposed on Myanmar, citing the "transparent and credible" election that brought Suu Kyi to office and other reforms. April 29, 2012 - UN Secretary-General Ban arrives in Myanmar to meet with President Thein Sein and Suu Kyi. May 2, 2012 - Suu Kyi takes the oath of office for Myanmar's parliament, resolving an impasse that had been preventing her from taking her seat in the legislature. She and 33 other newly elected members of the National League for Democracy had been delaying their swearings-in due to objections to the wording of the oath they would have to take. June 2012 - Unrest breaks out in the western state of Rakhine. Religious violence leaves more than 200 dead and close to 150,000 homeless -- predominantly members of the Rohingya Muslim minority. November 19, 2012 - US President Barack Obama becomes the first sitting US president to visit Myanmar. He meets with President Thein Sein and activist Suu Kyi. March 10, 2013 - Suu Kyi wins reelection as Myanmar's leader of the NLD. March 22, 2013 - A state of emergency is declared as ethnic clashes between Muslims and Buddhists lead to killings. May 2, 2013 - US President Obama extends sanctions against Myanmar for one year while lifting the 1996 visa ban. April 7, 2014 - The UN's Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, reports that the recent persecution of the Rohingya group "could amount to crimes against humanity." May 15, 2014 - Obama extends sanctions against Myanmar for another year. May 15, 2015 - Obama extends sanctions against Myanmar for another year. August 3, 2015 - Authorities say that heavy monsoon rains in the past month have left at least 47 people dead and displaced more than 200,000. August 7, 2015 - Government officials say that the death toll from the flooding has risen to 88 and 330,000 others have been affected. November 13, 2015 - The Myanmar election commission announces that Suu Kyi's NLD party has won the majority in the nation's first democratically held parliamentary elections. They will choose the country's next president. March 15, 2016 - Myanmar's parliament elects Htin Kyaw as the country's new president. Htin Kyaw was elected to the position by 360 votes, more than a third of the parliament's available 652 votes. October 9, 2016 - About 300 men armed with knives, pistols and swords attack border posts in Rakhine State, killing nine police officers. Rakhine State is home to a large population of Rohingya Muslims. The attacks spark an intense crackdown by the Myanmar military, which they call "clearance operations" in the Rohingya villages to find the suspects involved, and to retrieve their weapons. February 3, 2017 - A UN report alleges Myanmar's security forces are waging a brutal campaign of murder, rape and torture in Rakhine State. Aye Aye Soe, a spokeswoman for the Myanmar government, says the government has seen the report and is "very concerned about the allegations" and will investigate. August 25, 2017 - Myanmar's state media reports 12 security officers were killed during a series of coordinated attacks targeting at least 20 police outposts and an army base in Rakhine State. An insurgent group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, formerly known as Harakat al-Yaqeen -- or "Faith Movement" -- claims responsibility for the attack on Twitter. In response to the attacks, Myanmar's military renews an offensive inside the state against what it says are "terrorists." September 11, 2017 - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein says the continuing Myanmar military operation against the minority Rohingya people appears to be a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing," but the full humanitarian situation in Rakhine State can't be fully assessed because of Myanmar's refusal to give access. September 19, 2017 - In a 30-minute televised address from Nyapyidaw, Suu Kyi does not denounce alleged atrocities against the Rohingya community and claims the government needs more time to investigate the exodus of more than 400,000 members of the group from Myanmar. Amnesty International describes the speech -- in which Suu Kyi only once refers to the Rohingya by name -- as a "mix of untruths and victim blaming." December 12, 2017 - According to a report released by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), at least 6,700 Rohingya died as a result of violence in Rakhine state between August 25 and September 24. December 2017 - Reuters journalists Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone are detained after working on an investigation into the mass killing of a number of Rohingya villagers in Myanmar's Rakhine state. March 12, 2018 - Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee says that Myanmar's ongoing crackdown on the Rohingya may amount to genocide. She states, "I am becoming more convinced that the crimes committed following 9 October 2016 and 25 August 2017 bear the hallmarks of genocide and call in the strongest terms for accountability." March 21, 2018 - The government announces President Htin Kyaw has resigned due to poor health. March 28, 2018 - Myanmar's parliament elects Win Myint as the new president. March 31, 2018 - The United Nations announces that Myanmar and the UN have reached a deal to work together to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in the country in the last year. May 22, 2018 - An Amnesty International report finds members of the Rohingya militant group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) allegedly massacred dozens of men, women and children, execution-style in Hindu villages in Myanmar's Rakhine State in August 2017. September 3, 2018 - After being convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act during their investigation, Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone are sentenced to seven years hard labor by a Myanmar court. Reuters, with special mention of the two journalists, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in April 2019. September 18, 2018 - A UN fact-finding mission releases an extensive 440-page report detailing atrocities carried out by the Myanmar military against Rohingya Muslims, in support of its call for the country's generals to face an international tribunal on charges of genocide. May 7, 2019 - Reuters reporters Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone are released after being jailed for more than 500 days. They are released as part of an amnesty of 6,520 prisoners by President Win Myint. August 22, 2019 - 3,450 Rohingya refugees, from a list of more than 22,000 provided by Bangladesh, are cleared to return to Myanmar. Caroline Gluck, UNHCR's Senior Regional Public Information Officer, says "If any refugee expresses interest in returning, we would carry out a second interview with the individuals in a confidential setting to reconfirm their voluntariness and provide them as much information as we could about prevailing conditions in Myanmar." It remains unclear if any refugees accepted the offer of voluntary repatriation. January 23, 2020 - The International Court of Justice orders Myanmar to prevent acts of genocide against the Rohingya and to stop destroying evidence that could play a part in the case. July 2, 2020 - A landslide triggered by heavy rain kills at least 116 people at a jade mine in the Hpakant area of Kachin State in northern Myanmar. November 13, 2020 - The NLD, the ruling party of Myanmar, wins enough parliamentary seats to form the next government, according to official results of a general election. February 1, 2021 - Myanmar's military seizes power in a coup and declares a state of emergency, after detaining Suu Kyi and other senior government leaders in early morning raids. March 27, 2021 - Myanmar's military junta chief Min Aung Hlaing throws a lavish dinner party while his troops reportedly shoot dead at least 114 people during demonstrations and force thousands of people to flee into neighboring Thailand. It is the deadliest day since the army seized power in a coup and overthrew the country's elected government on February 1. April 16, 2021 - Opponents of the military junta announce a National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow civilian government, with Suu Kyi named as the de facto leader. April 24, 2021 - Following a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Southeast Asian leaders say they have agreed on a plan with Myanmar's junta chief to end the crisis in the violence-hit nation, but Min Aung Hlaing did not explicitly respond to demands to halt the killing of civilian protesters. August 1, 2021 - State media reports that Min Aung Hlaing has taken on the role of Prime Minister in a newly formed caretaker government, six months after the army seized power from a civilian government. In a speech, Min Aung Hlaing repeats a pledge to hold elections by 2023 and says his administration is ready to work with a future regional envoy on Myanmar. The-CNN-Wire

Kashmir Committee urges OIC to move Kashmir case in ICJ on Rohingya model

“I fear there would be no Kashmir to save in two year’s time if Indian demographic terrorism is not stopped as the Illegally Occupied regime in Jammu and Kashmir is fast changing the demography of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” said Afridi while addressing a special meeting of the Committee held to brief the visiting IPHRC delegation. Welcoming the delegates of the OIC, the Kashmir Committee chairman expressed gratitude to the delegation for heeding to the wails of Kashmiri mothers and daughters mourning their martyrs. He said that the United Nations was formed after failure the League of the Nations, had been unable to resolve the issues faced by the humanity. He deplored the fact that the United Nations is also failing to resolve the issues like Kashmir and Palestine. He also said that the humanity is bleeding in occupied Kashmir but the prosperous world is a silent spectator. He further said demographic changes are taking place in the IOK and 4.1 million new domiciles have been issued to non Kashmiris brought from mainland India which is a violation of the Indian constitution. He added that the Indian regime is implementing genocide tools and is not providing medical facilities to the freedom loving Kashmiris jailed. He said that Illegally occupational regime of India is violating the basic rights of freedom of speech and any Kashmiri who writes anything on digital media, is pushed behind bars under notorious UAPA laws. Afridi while humanity is bleeding in the IOK, festivity, development and freedom are the order of the day. He said that all the political parties took part in the elections recently held in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. He also said that recently Kashmir Premier League has been launched to help showcase the talent of the Kashmiri youth. He further said that it is not about Kashmir and rather its about the suffering humanity which needs assistance from the OIC and the United Nations. The Kashmir Committee chairman said Pakistan has fought war against terrorism to save the world from this menace and have given unprecedented sacrifices and the world needs to value the sacrifices given by the brave Pakistani nation. He urged the UN and the prosperous world to wake up from the deep slumber and spring into action to help the sufferings of the people of occupied Kashmir. He asked the delegates to apprise the committee on the steps taken on the OIC delegation report on human rights violations released in year 2017. Dr Mohamed Saeed Abdullah, the chairman of the IPHRC delegation, said that despite the Covid-19 situation, the IPHRC decided to undertake this visit due to the rising human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir. “We also issued a report after our first visit to Jammu and Kashmir and this is our follow up to view the updated situation in Jammu and Kashmir. It’s quite different visiting the Kashmiri areas and reading stories about the suffering of the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” he added. Dr Haci Alo Aeikgul, another member of the IPHRC, briefed the committee on the updates on the steps taken by the OIC delegation and said that India was neither cooperating nor India was allowing the delegation to visit Jammu and Kashmir. Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed said that the Kashmir Committee said that despite their political difference, all political parties stood together on issues like Palestine, Kashmir, nuclear programme and China Pakistan Economic Corridor. He said that The New York Times has reported that due to Indian oppression, 500,000 people have been sent jobless and USD 5 billion have been lost. He said that OIC must use a third country to help raise the Kahsmir issue at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Rohingya genocide. Dr Waleed Rasool, head of Kashmir Committee’s Advisory Board on Academia, briefed the delegates on the demographic terrorism by Indian occupational regime in IOK. He said that Indian government had waged a war against Kashmiris was form all sides and systematically, Hindu population was being increased in IOK while Muslims population was decreasing. Quoting Indian officials data, Dr Waleed said that India was manipulating data to turn the Muslim-majority Kashmir into Hindu-majority state using all unethical means at their disposal.

Video Report: Anti-Muslim hate speech at Delhi rally calls for communal violence

“Jab Musle Kate Jaenge, Ram Ram Chillaayenge” Hindutva’s anti-Muslim rhetoric picks up momentum Delhi, August 10 (KMS): It rained communal slogans in the heart of the National Capital, a few kilometers away from Parliament at a rally was called for by lawyer Ashwani Upadhyay It rained dangerous communal slogans this Sunday, August 8, in the heart of the National Capital. Multiple right-wing organisations got together and gathered to spew hate in a high security zone, just a few kilometers from the Parliament, which is in session. Many in the gathering raised calls for violence and massacre againt the Muslim community shouting “Jab Musle Kate Jaenge Ram Ram Chillaayenge”. The derogatory slur M***e, is a reference to Muslims often used for inciting hate against the community, especially in Hindi speaking North India. These crowds chanted that Muslims will be forced to say “Ram Ram” while they are hacked to death. A clear call for violence against the community. The hate gathering took place near Jantar Mantar, in the jurisdiction of the Connaught Place police station, and is a short distance away from the Delhi Police headquarters. So this happened yesterday. In the peak hours of the day, in the heart of the capital of India, 5 minutes from the parliament. There were slogans by 100s, led by a member of the ruling party, making calls for genocide of Muslims. No action by police. These hate mobs came together on a Sunday, a day that saw a heavy footfall of visitors to the Connaught Place commercial area that one end of this road leads to. Prior permission is always needed to hold any gathering or protest year, though it is not yet known if Delhi Police gave this group permission to hold this gathering. As the video clips that were released on twitter on Sunday night showed, no police action was taken against the mob when they began chanting hate slogans. For the past weeks, the Kisaan Sansad, or the farmers parliament, has been held peacefully under a tight security watch on all working days. No untoward incident, or hate speech remarks have been reported from there. Nevertheless, there is always a heavy security deployment in the area, including riot control personnel with tear gas launchers etc. However, on Sunday the farmers were not there, instead there was these groups of men and women shouting hate slogans, professing right-wing communal ideologies who gathered at Jantar Mantar, ostensibly to demand a repeal of what they termed ‘anti-Hindu’ clauses from the Indian Penal Code (IPC). According to a report in Clarion India, the crowd swelled to hundreds at Jantar Mantar reportedly demanding “repeal of British era laws” which they said were “anti-Hindu”. They also demanded one code for the entire country, stated the news report, adding that “disinformation, lies, hate speeches and Islamophobia” marked the event. Police FIR against “unknown persons” for raising “inflammatory slogans” On Monday morning the Delhi Police reportedly “registered an FIR against unknown persons” for raising ‘inflammatory slogans’ at Jantar Mantar. According to a report by Indian Express, the Police have registered an FIR under Sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups), against the unknown persons. Delhi Police told the media that the organisers had no permission for the rally and they have also added Sections of 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) and 51 for violation of DDMA Act pertaining to violation of Covid guidelines, stated the news report. Supreme Court lawyer and former Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay, on Monday morning, reportedly sent a text message to the Delhi Police, saying some people had tried to malign his event, adding that he left the venue when the event ended at 12.15 P.M reported the IE. His text coincides with the fact that the videos where open threats are being issued against the Muslim community have gone viral. Shipra Srivastava, media in-charge of ‘Bharat Jodo Movement’ had told the media that on Sunday, “There was a protest against colonial laws used to suppress Indians by the British, which still exist. We were there to protest against those laws and for a Uniform Civil Code because our demand was that there should be one rule in one country… There was no such (inflammatory) slogan in my knowledge… there were 5,000 people and if five-six people in some corner would be shouting such slogans, then we would disassociate ourselves from them.” Ashwani Upadhyay’s plan of action At the rally Ashwani Upadhyay also addressed the gathering amidst chants of “Jai Shree Ram” and “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”. The faces of the men who raised anti Muslim hate slogans were seen in many videos now going viral on social media. However, senior advocate Vikas Singh the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said he is “not aware of the event at all” hence would not comment. Meanwhile Senior Advocate Pradeep Kumar Rai the association’s vice president added that he too was not aware but would take the matter up with the committee if details were shared. Upadhyay has been quick to distance himself from those raising the hate slogans saying he didn’t know the man. Upadhyay was the one who had also filed a plea seeking sections of the law be set aside that he deemed took away the right of a judicial remedy to reclaim a place of worship’. In March this year, the Supreme Court sought the Centre’s response to the plea. According to news reports Upadhyay, had sought that “sections 2, 3, 4 of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 be set aside on grounds including that these provisions take away the right of a judicial remedy to reclaim a place of worship of any person or a religious group.” His petition alleged that the 1991-law creates an “arbitrary and irrational retrospective cut-off date” of August 15, 1947 for maintaining the character of the places of worship or pilgrimage against encroachment done by “fundamentalist-barbaric invaders and law-breakers”. #भारत_जोड़ो_आंदोलन में शामिल होने आए सभी राष्ट्रभक्तों का मैं हार्दिक आभार व्यक्त करता हूँ🙏 अब आप अपने शहर में कार्यक्रम का आयोजन करिये, मैं अवश्य आऊंगा🙏 मुझे विश्वास है कि आजादी की 75वीं वर्षगांठ (15 अगस्त 2022) से पहले सभी अंग्रेजी कानूनों को समाप्त कर नया कानून बन जाएगा pic.twitter.com/rg9xb3FrIv — Ashwini Upadhyay (@AshwiniUpadhyay) August 8, 2021 अंग्रेजी कानून बहुत घटिया है इसीलिए प्रसिद्धि पाने के लिए मजहबी उन्माद फैलाया जाता है जब तक घटिया अंग्रेजी कानूनों को बदलकर अच्छे कानून नहीं बनेंगे तब तक अलगाववाद कट्टरवाद और मजहबी उन्माद कम नहीं होगा He had given the call for the rally on various social media channels along with ex-journalist Pushpendra Kulshreshtha asking people to gather on the streets in large numbers as other right-wing influencers such as politician Kapil Mishra and army veteran Lt Gen (rt) GD Bakshi will also be there. On Sunday, August 8, he led hundreds of protesters and demanded that “222 black laws” they say were “made by the English” be “abolished from the penal code”. Clarion India, quoted Upadhyay saying, “These laws were made to jail Veer Savarkar (a pre-Independence Indian leader known as the founding father of the Hindu nationalist politics); to hang Bhaghat Singh, Sukh Dev and Raj Guru. This law was also made to Lathi charge Lala Lajpat Rai.” He then reportedly “cited the example of recent post-election violence in West Bengal and migration of Hindus from Kashmir at the outbreak of militancy to explain how the Police Act of 1800s stops police from “firing” at people, adding that “these British laws were made without any consultation with the people of India.” According to the news report, some of the participants distributed flyers allegedly carrying genocidal hate content in Hindi against Islam, stated the report quoting a flyer titled “Islam Ka Vinaash” (Annihilation of Isam). “Hindu groups always protest against Muslims which shows their cowardice. They stay within constitutional and legal limits. This is possibly because Hindus are not capable of committing genocide,” said the flyer, reportedly adding a call to violence stating that Hindus must “resort to terrorism to fight terrorism… Don’t protest, rebel. Don’t make noise. Annihilate them.” Journalists soon began sharing the hate speech, which then went viral overnight. ये ना अफ़ग़ानिस्तान है ना तालिबान ये राजधानी दिल्ली है भारत की संसद से कुछ दूर संसद मार्ग थाने का इलाक़ा,जहां खुलेआम नारे लग रहे हैं- जब मुल्ले काटे जाएँगे राम राम चिल्लाएँगे ये देश तबाही की तरफ़ है निःशब्द हूँ ये सब देख कर The Print, in a 2018 profile on him, had described Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya, a lawyer-politician from the BJP who had also “filed PILs on issues that are on top of his party’s agenda — such as yoga, Vande Mataram and nikah halala.” It reported how in 2016, Upadhyaya had filed a public interest litigation before the SC to “make yoga compulsory in all schools for children between 6 and 14 years of age,” and another PIL to “make singing the national anthem and Vande Mataram compulsory in schools”. He had also filed a PIL seeking to make Hindi a compulsory language in schools across the country. However, the hate that was spewed by those who attended this Sunday’s ‘rally’ was peppered with discussions “bogus anti-Muslim theories of Love Jihad, Mughal rule, increasing Muslim population, Shaheen Bagh protests, Rohingya refugees, etc,” reported Clarion. According to the report a participant alleged that “Christians were giving rice bags to poor Hindus to convert.” While some others mentioned the Uttar Pradesh elections due next year, a Bajrang Dal worker reportedly said if “Hindus do not awaken and support Hindu parties then UP will become Islamic state.” Perhaps enthused by the lack of police action on the hate speech at his rally, Upadhyay has reportedly announced that he is planning similar gatherings in other cities: “Those who have not been able to come here today, I tell them I will now come to your city.” As in the Delhi riots, violence is preceded by such incendiary and hate filled majoritarian speeches. Delhi police must take note. Unless it has and decided to do nothing. https://t.co/QZyLgJaB3k — Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) August 9, 2021 Not an isolated anti-Muslim incident Delhi, is still nursing scars from the Anti-Muslim violence that took place in the North Eastern part of the city, the communal hate that emanated after the Tabhlighi Jamaat event at Nizamuddin, as well as the infamous hate speeches by politicians over the past two years. However, communal hate is being fueled afresh. Recently, residents of Dwarka, a locality near the Delhi Airport, have written to Lt-Governor Anil Baijal, seeking cancellation of land allotment to construct a Haj House. The All Dwarka Residents Federation (ADRF), Delhi has written to the Lt-Governor Anil Baijal, who is also chairperson of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), asking him to cancel the land allotment made for a Haj House in Sector 22. They have claimed that there is strong apprehension that this would disturb the “brotherhood, harmony and peace” in society. The Federation’s letter goes on to say that if the Haj House is allowed to be constructed in the area, law and order will be disturbed, there will be “every possibility of riots”, migration of Hindus and “repetition of situation like Shaheen Bagh, Jaffrabad (reference to the North East Delhi violence last year) and Kashmir”. SabrangIndia reached out to ADFR’s President Ajit Swami who revealed that the land cleared for the construction of the Haj building was earlier allotted to build a university. “If the government is allocating money, why not for something that can be used by every one and not just benefit one community,” he remarked. He said that he is speaking on behalf of all residents of Dwarka, and that if a Haj House needs to be built, the Muslim community should pay for it from their own pockets instead of using every taxpayer’s money. Policeman who diffused a communal situation got trolled A mazar at the beginning of the Azadpur flyover has also been targeted by communal forces who alleged that it is an encroachment. On August 2, a youtube ‘news’ portal published a video from the Azadpur flyover in Delhi where SHO Adarsh Nagar had to intervene when a Hindutva group was “protesting” the shrine. It was SHO Adarsh Nagar, CP Bharadwaj, who had intervened and tried to stop any communal flare up. “Who gave you the right to pressurize Indian citizens like this. If you want to take any action, take the legal recourse,” he told Vijay, the man who was objecting to the shrine adding that “as per the Supreme Court ruling, the Government Of Delhi had enacted a religious committee to take action on such complaints…. If this gentleman has any problem, he should submit an application to the Delhi government.” However, right wing portals and handles soon used this to attack the policeman himself.