Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD

Pakistan: Politics of Deception and Betrayal

The lingering suspicion unfolds a reasoned impression that Imran Khan – the hurriedly ousted PM’s failure is the net success of the nine skeleton grouped parties – “Democratic Front.” This Front is not formed by the people but by the few discontented figures eager to grab political power by any means. It would be illogical to describe the opposition as democratic as so many of them are listed indicted criminals, thugs, killers and failed politicians of the recent past. The current political chaos does not signal any ingenious mechanism of rational perception to appreciate the necessity of political change engineered by the few against many – the masses of Pakistan.

There is stunning embarrassed silence as to why the army General would become part of a violent assumption for change and plague the extravagant idea of leadership change in the country. The so-called “Democratic Front” does not appear to have any rational agenda for the present or futuristic socio-economic and political challenges and hard times facing the besieged nation. 

Imran Khan – a new generation sportsman (Tehreek-e-Insaf) “Movement for Justice”, with moral and intellectual integrity had many weaknesses and strength but unlike the opposition leaders, he has no criminal past, he did not rob any banks nor killed any fellow citizens and did not loot any public treasury to buy palaces in UK, France, Dubai and elsewhere. Is Pakistani politics reserved for the thugs, criminals and killers and not for any intelligent proactive person standing for a fair and just society to be evolved in a systematic manner?

Shared by Syed Ehtisham

President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising.

Tragically for America and the world, Biden has failed to restore Obama’s progressive initiatives, and has instead doubled down on many of Trump’s most dangerous and destabilizing policies. It is especially ironic and sad that a president who ran so stridently on being different from Trump has been so reluctant to reverse his regressive policies. Now the Democrats’ failure to deliver on their promises with respect to both domestic and foreign policy is undermining their prospects in November’s midterm election.

Here is our assessment of Biden’s handling of ten critical foreign policy issues:

1. Prolonging the agony of the people of Afghanistan. It is perhaps symptomatic of Biden’s foreign policy problems that the signal achievement of his first year in office was an initiative launched by Trump, to withdraw the United States from its 20-year war in Afghanistan. But Biden’s implementation of this policy was tainted by the same failure to understand Afghanistan that doomed and dogged at least three prior administrations and the U.S.’s hostile military occupation for 20 years, leading to the speedy restoration of the Taliban government and the televised chaos of the U.S. withdrawal.

Now, instead of helping the Afghan people recover from two decades of U.S.-inflicted destruction, Biden has seized $9.4 billion in Afghan foreign currency reserves, while the people of Afghanistan suffer through a desperate humanitarian crisis. It is hard to imagine how even Donald Trump could be more cruel or vindictive.

2. Provoking a crisis with Russia over Ukraine. Biden’s first year in office is ending with a dangerous escalation of tensions at the Russia/Ukraine border, a situation that threatens to devolve into a military conflict between the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear states–the United States and Russia. The United States bears much responsibility for this crisis by supporting the violent overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in 2014, backing NATO expansion right up to Russia’s border, and arming and training Ukrainian forces.

Biden’s failure to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate security concerns has led to the present impasse, and Cold Warriors within his administration are threatening Russia instead of proposing concrete measures to de-escalate the situation.

3. Escalating Cold War tensions and a dangerous arms race with China. President Trump launched a tariff war with China that economically damaged both countries, and reignited a dangerous Cold War and arms race with China and Russia to justify an ever-increasing U.S. military budget.

After a decade of unprecedented U.S. military spending and aggressive military expansion under Bush II and Obama, the U.S. “pivot to Asia” militarily encircled China, forcing it to invest in more robust defense forces and advanced weapons. Trump, in turn, used China’s strengthened defenses as a pretext for further increases in U.S. military spending, launching a new arms race that has raised the existential risk of nuclear war to a new level.

Biden has only exacerbated these dangerous international tensions. Alongside the risk of war, his aggressive policies toward China have led to an ominous rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and created obstacles to much-needed cooperation with China to address climate change, the pandemic and other global problems.

4. Abandoning Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. After President Obama’s sanctions against Iran utterly failed to force it to halt its civilian nuclear program, he finally took a progressive, diplomatic approach, which led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2015. Iran scrupulously met all its obligations under the treaty, but Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018. Trump’s withdrawal was vigorously condemned by Democrats, including candidate Biden, and Senator Sanders promised to rejoin the JCPOA on his first day in office if he became president.

Instead of immediately rejoining an agreement that worked for all parties, the Biden administration thought it could pressure Iran to negotiate a “better deal.” Exasperated Iranians instead elected a more conservative government and Iran moved forward on enhancing its nuclear program.

A year later, and after eight rounds of shuttle diplomacy in Vienna, Biden has still not rejoined the agreement. Ending his first year in the White House with the threat of another Middle East war is enough to give Biden an “F” in diplomacy.

5. Backing Big Pharma over a People’s Vaccine. Biden took office as the first Covid vaccines were being approved and rolled out across the United States and the world. Severe inequities in global vaccine distribution between rich and poor countries were immediately apparent and became known as “vaccine apartheid.”

Instead of manufacturing and distributing vaccines on a non-profit basis to tackle the pandemic as the global public health crisis that it is, the United States and other Western countries chose to maintain the neoliberal regime of patents and corporate monopolies on vaccine manufacture and distribution. The failure to open up the manufacture and distribution of vaccines to poorer countries gave the Covid virus free rein to spread and mutate, leading to new global waves of infection and death from the Delta and Omicron variants.

Biden belatedly agreed to support a patent waiver for Covid vaccines under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, but with no real plan for a “People’s Vaccine,” Biden’s concession has made no impact on millions of preventable deaths.

6. Ensuring catastrophic global warming at COP26 in Glasgow. After Trump stubbornly ignored the climate crisis for four years, environmentalists were encouraged when Biden used his first days in office to rejoin the Paris climate accord and cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline.

But by the time Biden got to Glasgow, he had let the centerpiece of his own climate plan, the Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP), be stripped out of the Build Back Better bill in Congress at the behest of fossil-fuel industry sock-puppet Joe Manchin, turning the U.S. pledge of a 50% cut from 2005 emissions by 2030 into an empty promise.

Biden’s speech in Glasgow highlighted China and Russia’s failures, neglecting to mention that the United States has higher emissions per capita than either of them. Even as COP26 was taking place, the Biden administration infuriated activists by putting oil and gas leases up for auction for 730,000 acres of the American West and 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. At the one-year mark, Biden has talked the talk, but when it comes to confronting Big Oil, he is not walking the walk, and the whole world is paying the price.

7. Political prosecutions of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale and Guantanamo torture victims. Under President Biden, the United States remains a country where the systematic killing of civilians and other war crimes go unpunished, while whistleblowers who muster the courage to expose these horrific crimes to the public are prosecuted and jailed as political prisoners.

In July 2021, former drone pilot Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45 months in prison for exposing the killing of civilians in America’s drone wars. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange still languishes in Belmarsh Prison in England, after 11 years fighting extradition to the United States for exposing U.S. war crimes.

Twenty years after it set up an illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to imprison 779 mostly innocent people kidnapped around the world, 39 prisoners remain there in illegal, extrajudicial detention. Despite promises to close this sordid chapter of U.S. history, the prison is still functioning and Biden is allowing the Pentagon to actually build a new, closed courtroom at Guantanamo to more easily keep the workings of this gulag hidden from public scrutiny.

8. Economic siege warfare against the people of Cuba, Venezuela and other countries. Trump unilaterally rolled back Obama’s reforms on Cuba and recognized unelected Juan Guaidó as the “president” of Venezuela, as the United States tightened the screws on its economy with “maximum pressure” sanctions.

Biden has continued Trump’s failed economic siege warfare against countries that resist U.S. imperial dictates, inflicting endless pain on their people without seriously imperiling, let alone bringing down, their governments. Brutal U.S. sanctions and efforts at regime change have universally failed for decades, serving mainly to undermine the United States’s own democratic and human rights credentials.

Juan Guaidó is now the least popular opposition figure in Venezuela, and genuine grassroots movements opposed to U.S. intervention are bringing popular democratic and socialist governments to power across Latin America, in Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Honduras – and maybe Brazil in 2022.

9. Still supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and its repressive ruler. Under Trump, Democrats and a minority of Republicans in Congress gradually built a bipartisan majority that voted to withdraw from the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen and stop sending arms to Saudi Arabia. Trump vetoed their efforts, but the Democratic election victory in 2020 should have led to an end to the war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Instead, Biden only issued an order to stop selling “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia, without clearly defining that term, and went on to okay a $650 million weapons sale. The United States still supports the Saudi war, even as the resulting humanitarian crisis kills thousands of Yemeni children. And despite Biden’s pledge to treat the Saudis’ cruel leader, MBS, as a pariah, Biden refused to even sanction MBS for his barbaric murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

10. Still complicit in illegal Israeli occupation, settlements and war crimes. The United States is Israel’s largest arms supplier, and Israel is the world’s largest recipient of U.S. military aid (approximately $4 billion annually), despite its illegal occupation of Palestine, widely condemned war crimes in Gaza and illegal settlement building. U.S. military aid and arms sales to Israel clearly violate the U.S. Leahy Laws and Arms Export Control Act.

Donald Trump was flagrant in his disdain for Palestinian rights, including tranferring the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to a property in Jerusalem that is only partly within Israel’s internationally recognized border, a move that infuriated Palestinians and drew international condemnation.

But nothing has changed under Biden. The U.S. position on Israel and Palestine is as illegitimate and contradictory as ever, and the U.S. Embassy to Israel remains on illegally occupied land. In May, Biden supported the latest Israeli assault on Gaza, which killed 256 Palestinians, half of them civilians, including 66 children.

Conclusion

Each part of this foreign policy fiasco costs human lives and creates regional–even global–instability. In every case, progressive alternative policies are readily available. The only thing lacking is political will and independence from corrupt vested interests.

The United States has squandered unprecedented wealth, global goodwill, and a historic position of international leadership to pursue unattainable imperial ambitions, using military force and other forms of violence and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law.

Candidate Biden promised to restore America’s position of global leadership, but has instead doubled down on the policies through which the United States lost that position in the first place, under a succession of Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump was only the latest iteration in America’s race to the bottom.

Biden has wasted a vital year doubling down on Trump’s failed policies. In the coming year, we hope that the public will remind Biden of its deep-seated aversion to war and that he will respond—albeit reluctantly—by adopting more dovish and rational ways.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journa

• Written by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

(Howard Zinn, late American historian and distinguished scholar of peace, justice and humanity).

Leaders Speak Words Written by Specialists But See No Irony in their own Actions

The UNO was evolved to act as a tangible force for change and future-making to ensure the systematic safeguard of humanity from the “scourge of wars”, global peace, human security and a sustainable future for all on this planet. Not so, you watched the leaders speaking at the UN General Assembly podium uttering third-party written words of wisdom and forbearance with overweening pride and prejudice in their own agenda. More often when they claim to honor and achievements, they dip into crass materialism, ignorance, violations of basic human rights, disregard of peace and security of mankind, inherent economic greed and perpetuated violence against the vulnerable and innocent habitants of this earth.

Our contemporary acclaimed political morality if there is any to a critical perceptive eye leans toward degeneration of humanity and leadership claims and counterclaims sound irrational and deceptive in pursuit of unbridled egoism and political power to deny reason and logic for the transformation of much-needed change and a peaceful future. We, the People of the globe must realize the truth and urgency at a challenging time of transformation and our sensual abilities for survival under circumstances of extreme geopolitical problems – continuous wars, COVID -19 Pandemic, climate change and violations of human rights, and dangers of insane cruelty in policies and practices to endanger our own future on this planet. The global institutions do not operate on human morality and intellect. The disclosure of ‘Pandora Papers’ reflects that reality.

The current global systems of political governance and leadership are overwhelmingly elite-class oriented and all global institutions are operated by pre-screened elite leaders who are disconnected to any relationship to ‘the people, by the people and for the people’ norm. In a rational sense, We, the People of the Planet have become lifeless digits, numbers and seamless legal entities to be used when needed at the ballot box and nothing else. What has changed from the authoritarianism of Hitler, Mussolini, and the European engineered Two WW killing millions and millions for their own ideas and ideas of political governance? One wonders, if the advanced and secretive space weapons will be the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in a next overdue war, or would it be the much-possessed nuclear arsenals to extinguish life from this Planet? It appears contentious to predict scientifically and technologically based criterion to illustrate a logical definition of the end game between the conventional age of life and the beginning of unknown new age of something beyond human imagination and history.

Contemporary Global Affairs under Rational Lens and Beyond

Looking at the contemporary world of acclaimed democracies, peace, and national security of the states, almost everywhere frustration, cynicism, and political endemic persist across the board. Political reasoning enforced by unilateral elite judgments view humanity just in a passing phrase for noble ideals of democracy and systems of governance devoid of legitimacy and public interest. Global leaders speak loud as actors at the UNO General Assembly but lack knowledge and wisdom to understand the pains and anguish of the victimized humanity. George Floyd continues to echo his voice across the US mainstream political activism: “I cannot breathe… I cannot breathe.” George Floyd is not dead; he is living in the living conscience and soul of the masses all over the world. You know that “Black Life Matters” is not a political slogan but a reality and demand of human conscience all over the planet.

Imagine, how 10 million people of Kashmir must be breathing under brutal Indian military occupation of the valley. Kashmiris are denied the UN sanctioned right of self-determination and the international community ignores their desperate voices for freedom because of India’s continuous lockdowns under the guise of security and bogus terrorism. Pakistani corrupt neo-colonial leaders lacking moral and intellectual capacity failed to challenge the Hindutva extremism or to plan international conferences on Kashmir and representation at global forums. Syria, Yemen, and Iraq are bombed and masses are crushed every day – what happened to the UNO Peace and Conflict Management responsibility? The new Arab Pharaohs kept in bondage by the American-European alliances offer no hope of freedom and peace to the masses. Palestinians are flogged mentally and physically by Israeli security strategies to disrupt their freedom and national identity. They are without any proactive or intelligent leadership to escape out of the box of inhumanity. Almost one million Rohinga refugees ask patiently why they were evicted forcibly from their homes in Myanmar. Do the world leaders care about real human suffering?

It is awful and a tragedy of conscience to be speaking of politics when mankind urgently needs an effective cure for the Covid-19 pandemic. We are One Humanity – natural disasters and fatalities know not any borders, flags and nationalities but surge like wildfire as being witnessed in the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Not so, Americans and the EU still buried in the past would not consider the Russian Covid-19 vaccine already prepared and administered or the Chinese vaccine because they are manufactured by the politically opposing sides. Again political absolutism heightens animosity and hatred rather than human understanding and cooperation for a precious cause of saving the lives on Earth. To save life of one human being is to safeguard the whole of humanity. We are all born equal One Humanity:- the Divine Message of Al-Qur’an clarifies the truth:

“Proclaim in the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created, Created man (human being) out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood, Proclaim! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful, He Who taught (the use of) the Pen, Taught man (human being) that which he knew not.”

Leaders at the annual UN Assembly compete for fame and honor but share no creative or practical ideas and workable ideals to protect the rights of humanity. Are we living and witnessing another world of global redundancy and foolishness where survival of the fittest is granted but masses are denied the reasoned and legitimate proposition of a sustainable future? Were these not the historic factors leading to the Two World Wars?

Are We Witnessing a Decadent Culture of Human Morality and Intelligence?

We, the People, must be conscientious and attentive to a moral and intellectual compass of global political governance. We are moral human beings- a Creation of God created for a purpose in human life, enriched with intellect and wisdom much different than other animals moving on this earth. Our life, our rights, our dignity, our peace and security, our planet and our future cannot be traded-in at the UNO Forum. It is obvious that facts and truths vary in time and space, human destiny and casualty but human consciousness is waking up to the challenges of the 21st century defining the world of destiny and pulsation and the world of global conflicts and tensions- the world as we see its history linking us all into the nature of things of which we are an essential part; We, the People at the Heart of the God-given Universe, must seek our unity in changing fortunes of time and space or we could be destroyed by our obsessed ignorance and arrogance governing the global politics and human affairs. Leaders failed to lead us to any viable destiny for future-making. We must use an inward moral, intellectual and spiritual eye as being the Chief Creation of God to articulate a new culture of human communication to resolve problems across all the people and lands and to accord equal rights, peace, and security to all, not the few arbitrarily conducting the UNO speaking forums.

Recall during the Two World Wars across Europe, millions and millions of innocent civilians had perished in aerial bombings, political tyranny, and forcible displacements. History is living not dead. We the 21st century conscientious and informed citizens must realize to eliminate insanity, the tyranny of destruction, violations of human rights, ethnic conflicts, and religious bigotry. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad preached the unity of mankind, respect, and tolerance in adversity. None of the Messengers of God taught evil, intolerance, and disrespect against the people. If we are witnessing it in the 21st century liberal democracies and immature leadership, it cannot flatten the moral, intellectual and political landscape as “No Man’s land” of any superpowers or elsewhere. Violence, killings, and maltreatment of the citizens cannot be transformed into the virtue of democracy or clash of fanaticism disguised in any political ideals of the individuals, political agendas, or so-called leaders.

Late Professor Howard Zinn envisaged the future of mankind in the following words of wisdom:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace, and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security, and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019.

How the Western Leaders Destroyed the Muslim World:  We, the People and Revival of Colonization

Mahboob  A.  Khawaja, PhD.

Arab geography is the by-production of European colonization. Historically, Arabs were nomadic people free to move and trade all over the Arabian Gulf Peninsula and beyond. British, French, and Italian demarcated the national borders and extended superfluous nationalities to keep the Arabs divided and defeated. While Islam offered the unity of One People – ‘One Ummah’, the Europeans indulged in massive cultural and political disruptive plans to ensure that Arabs remained fractured and would not re-emerge as One People again. They were used at will by the then superpowers (British and French) to fight the European national wars during the First and Second World Wars. Could history repeat itself as it happened during the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution that Arab people might rise over the agony of intolerable limits of lost freedom and bloody authoritarianism?

The degeneration of the Arab moral and intellectual culture is well in progress. They are divided and defeated. There are no wars for the Arabs to fight but they are fighting wars on several fronts without reason- known and unknown. The compelling realities across the beleaguered Arab world demand new thinking, new proactive visionary leadership, men of new ideas and plans to deal with the unwarranted bombing of the civilian population, wholesale deaths and deliberate destruction of the Arab people and culture and millions of displaced refugees-nowhere to go.