Habib Siddiqui

  At Home and Abroad Police in America need a great deal of reform, a project that translates to freeing them from the racist nature of U.S. culture while tying them more firmly to the culture of civil and human rights. Not easy, but certainly a worthwhile task compared to maintaining the present situation. Here is another perspective: what would happen if all the police in the country just disappeared or were “defunded”?  Almost certainly the result would be a breakdown of order. Actually, according to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, this would be an absolutely worse case scenario, because just about anything is better than anarchy, which he likens to a war of all against all. Putting a deeper analysis of Hobbes aside, I am going to assume that most readers would agree with him—though perhaps not with his soft spot for dictatorial substitutes (see his seminal work, Leviathan). Ok. Let’s now transfer that second perspective—anarchy in one society—to the international order. Act...

  By  Abid Hussain Islamabad, Pakistan –  A sharp escalation in  hostilities  between Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past week has resulted in the death of at least one member of the Pakistani security forces and dozens of civilians in Afghanistan. This latest round of cross-border fighting stems from what Pakistan insisted was its response to regular attacks by the armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which Islamabad said has found sanctuary across the border in Afghanistan. The most recent TTP attack, on December 21, led to the deaths of at least 16 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistani military sources confirmed to Al Jazeera that on Tuesday, Pakistan launched  air strikes  in Afghanistan’s Paktia province, which borders Pakistan’s tribal district of South Waziristan. Pakistani jets reportedly targeted hideouts where TTP fighters had sought refuge. However, Afghanistan’s Taliban government, in power since August 2021, accused Pakistan of ki...

  The director of  Gaza 's last functioning hospital is being held at  Israel 's notorious Sde Teiman prison, where abuse - including torture, murder and rape - is rife, recently released detainees have said. Hussam Abu Safiya has  not been seen  in public since Friday, when Israeli forces stormed the bombed-out Kamal Adwan Hospital following a nearly three-month blockade of  northern Gaza . All medical staff, patients and their relatives were taken out of the hospital at gunpoint, forced to strip down to their underwear and transferred to an unknown location. The last photo of Abu Safiya showed him walking alone towards a row of Israeli tanks that had amassed outside the facility. On Saturday, the Israeli military said - without providing any evidence - that it was holding Abu Safiya on suspicions of "being a Hamas terrorist operative". On Sunday, several former detainees at Sde Teiman, a military prison in Israel's Negev desert, said the directo...

  By  Mohammed Zain Shafi Khan In July, outgoing United States President Joe Biden claimed he had “done more for the Palestinian community than anybody”. Maryam Hassanein, a political appointee who resigned from his administration, strongly disagrees. “I think his legacy is the opposite,” Hassanein, a former member of the Interior Department, said. “He’s the president who’s done the most harm to Palestinians." On January 20, Biden is slated to leave office, joining a short list of presidents who served only a single term in the White House. But as his tenure sunsets, some former members of his government say his approach to Israel’s war on Gaza may prove to be a lasting stain on his legacy. The war in Gaza has provoked widespread humanitarian concerns, ranging from  famine  to  ethnic cleansing . A United Nations special committee even warned Israel’s tactics in the Palestinian enclave were “ consistent with genocide ”. Close to 45,000 Palestinians have been kil...