Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei offers his condolences on the demise of Palestinian freedom fighter Ahmad Jebril.
Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei and Ahmad Jibril
Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei has offered his condolences on the demise of Palestinian freedom fighter Ahmad Jebril.
He called the leader of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) a “brave person”, “who spent his life fighting for his occupied homeland and his oppressed people.”
The Secretary General of the PFLP-GC passed away on Tuesday, in a hospital in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
I offer my condolences on the demise of the untiring fighter Mr. Ahmad Jebril, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to the Palestinians, all those active in the Palestinians’ struggles, all members of the Resistance in W Asia, & his survivors. pic.twitter.com/FmcGD3Ph1f— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) July 8, 2021
Mr. Ahmad Jebril was a brave, hardworking person, who spent his life fighting for his occupied homeland and his oppressed people. I ask God to bestow great reward upon him, and I ask for God’s mercy and forgiveness for him.— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) July 8, 2021
Quds Force Leader Esmail Qaani offered his condolences in the death of Palestinian leader Ahmad Jibril, calling him “one of the founders of the Axis of Resistance, who always believed that the Resistance’s rifle would bring back Palestine.”
IRGC’s Quds Force Leader Esmail Qaani
General Esmail Qaani said that the late Ahmad Jibril “formed through his personality and march a complete model in building the ‘resistant’ character.”
He added: Al-Quds, and the liberation of all of Palestine were always Abou Jihad’s compass, from whose direction he never veered.”
Commenting on his struggle and the difficulties he had to endure for the Resistance, he said that “despite all the temptations and intimidations he faced, he always believed that the Resistance’s rifle would bring back Palestine.”
Qaani spoke highly of Jibril, declaring that “he was one of the founders of the Axis of Resistance, placing all of his energy in its service, staying true to the blood of the martyrs.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, had eulogized its Secretary General, Ahmad Jibril (Abou Jihad), who passed away on Wednesday in a hospital in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The punitive strikes from the Syrian and Iraqi ‘resistance’ continue on US targets in both countries.
On July 7th, the second rocket attack targeted Ain al-Asad Air Base in two days, and this time there were casualties.
According to the US-led coalition spokesman, the base was targeted with 17 rockets, and as a result two personnel received light injuries.
The rockets were reportedly fired from an improvised launcher installed in the back of a truck that was parked near a mosque in the district of al-Baghdadi to the northeast of Ain al-Assad Air Base.
The district was shelled by the US in response, following the attack.
A newly-formed pro-Iranian group calling itself the “al-Muhandis Revenge Brigades” claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. In a statement, the group revealed that Ain al-Assad Air Base was targeted with 30 Grad 122 mm rockets.
Simultaneously, the military base run by the American troops at the al-Omar oilfield in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor was also hit.
According to Syrian news agency SANA, mortar rounds were fired into the base for the third time in recent days.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of mainly Kurdish forces fighting against Damascus, claimed that they had thwarted the attack.
The US interests are constantly targeted in both Syria and Iraq, and the situation has been especially exacerbated after Washington’s strikes on ‘resistance’ positions along the border on June 27th.
On July 6th, an explosives-laden drone hit Erbil International Airport. The airport, where US-led coalition troops are stationed, had a fire break out as a result of the attack.
A spokesman for the U.S. military, citing initial information, said one drone had “impacted” near Erbil, but that there were no injuries or any damage.
Earlier on the same day, four US logistical convoys were struck by IEDs, resulting in no injuries but material damage.
Targeting of American convoys throughout Iraq is a daily occurrence.
Before any of this, in the very early hours of July 6th, an explosive-laden “suicide” drone was shot out of the sky by US C-RAM from Union 3 base as it neared the US Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
The reported drone attack came just hours after the previous attack on Ain al-Asad airbase. at least three rockets slammed into the US position in Iraq’s Anbar Province earlier on July 5th.
The US usually downplays any damages suffered, and all claims should be taken with a grain of salt.
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General, His Eminence Sheikh Naim Qassem called the family of prominent Palestinian Leader, Ahmad Jibril, to express condolences of Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Jibril’s demise.
Sheikh Qassem also called Deputy Secretary General of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] – General Command, to offer condolences on Sayyed Nasrallah’s behalf to the leadership of the Palestinian movement and its fighters on the passing away of the prominent late leader.
Hailing Jibril as a leader on the path of liberating Palestine, Sheikh Qassem prayed that Allah may have mercy on his soul, and help his family and lovers in Palestine and the Arab and Muslim world to fulfill his dream of liberating al-Quds and Palestine.
Jibril, the head and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, died of an illness on Wednesday, at the age of 83 in a hospital in the Syrian capital Damascus.
The Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Hezbollah, mourns the late Palestinian leader Ahmad Jibril in an official statement.
Hezbollah offered “the striving Palestinian people its deep condolences and its jihadi factions,” as well as the leadership and members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command over the death of the great Palestinian leader and the resistance fighter Ahmad “Abu Jihad” Jibril on Wednesday, 7th of July.
Hezbollah issued a statement saying, “Jibril’s life was full of resistance, struggle (or jihad, as it is called), redemption, and sacrifice on the road to Palestine,” adding, “He spent his life moving between battlefields and battlegrounds, believing in the continuous struggle as the only path to liberation, being steadfast on righteousness – unwavering and unmoving – believing in the unity of all resistance fighters and Jihadis on all fronts, characterized with fierce determination, high morale, and heroic bravery – [these are all] sublime characteristics that put him in his rightful place in the history of Palestine and the region.”
Hezbollah considered that “The Palestinian people have lost a high stature of honor and redemption. We hope that our nation and our Palestinian people follow through his footsteps on the path of liberation, resistance, and victory.”
This afternoon, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command announced the death of its Secretary-General, Ahmad “Abu Jihad” Jibril, who passed away Wednesday in a hospital in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Ahmed Jibril, a Palestinian leader born in 1938, founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, because of his belief in the “armed struggle to liberate Palestine.”
كما في كل مرة يقع الأميركيون وجماعاتهم في المنطقة بوهم نابع من طريقة تفكيرهم، فيظنون أن مجرد الدخول في التفاوض مع إيران سيعني تجميد ساحات الصراع التي تقاتل فيها قوى المقاومة بوجه الاحتلال، فيتوهّمون أن إيران ستضغط في فلسطين كي لا تقوم مقاومة شعبية أو عسكرية بوجه الاحتلال، لأن الحكومة الجديدة في الكيان في الحضن الأميركي وتحتاج الى انتصارات تظهرها أمام المستوطنين بمظهر قوة، ويتوقعون أن تجمّد قوى المقاومة في اليمن قتالها لمجرد أن واشنطن قالت إنها تؤيد وقف الحرب، وينتظرون التهدئة مع القوات الأميركية في سورية والعراق وعدم معاملتها كقوات احتلال، لأن واشنطن تنظر لهذا الوجود كورقة مساومة لاحقة عندما تنتهي من الاتفاق مع إيران.
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حدث ذلك من قبل، ففي عام 2015 عندما قام جيش الاحتلال بقرار من رئيس حكومة الكيان يومها بنيامين نتنياهو بالإعلان عن العزم على فرض قواعد اشتباك على المقاومة، رداً على معادلات أعلنها الأمين العام لحزب الله السيد حسن نصرالله، وكان اغتيال الشهيد جهاد مغنية، وتوقع نتنياهو وردّد خلفه كل جماعة أميركا في المنطقة، أن حزب الله لن يردّ، وأن إيران المنخرطة في التفاوض ستضغط على المقاومة لمنع الرد لأنه يخرب المسار التفاوضيّ، ولكن الواقع كان أن المقاومة ردّت وبقسوة، وفرضت معادلاتها، والذي ضغط على حليفه لعدم الرد كان الأميركي، الذي قال بلسان الرئيس الأميركي باراك أوباما لنتنياهو تعليقاً على ردّ المقاومة، إن الضربة موجعة لكنها لا تستحق حرباً، فأعلن نتنياهو العضّ على الجراح، كما قال.
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في سورية والعراق احتلال أميركي والحق الطبيعي لقوى المقاومة هو خوض المواجهة حتى انسحاب هذه القوات. وهذا حق وطني منفصل عما يدور في المفاوضات الأميركية مع إيران، وإيران تفكر بهذه الطريقة. وهذا ما يعلمه الأميركي من تجاربه السابقة مع إيران، قبل توقيع الاتفاق النووي عام 2015، ففي كل مرة كان الأميركي يرغب بفتح التفاوض حول الملفات الإقليمية كانت تردّ إيران بأن التفاوض محصور بالملف النووي، وبعد توقيع الاتفاق في كل مرة كان الأميركي يحاول عبر الوسطاء طلب التدخل الإيراني مع فريق من قوى المقاومة، كان الجواب الإيراني أن قوى المقاومة هي قوى مستقلة بقرارها وإيران لا تقبل بمطالبتها بالضغط على هذه القوى، وأنه عندما يكون هناك لدى الخصوم المحليين لهذه القوى شيء يستحق التحدث مع هذه القوى فإن إيران يمكن أن تسهل اللقاء، لا أكثر ولا أقل، وليس أدل على ذلك من تجربة أنصار الله في اليمن، قبل تفاهم استوكهولم حول الحديدة وبعده.
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مقياس قوى المقاومة في سورية والعراق، ينطلق من حسابات سورية وعراقية. ففي العراق هناك قرار من البرلمان العراقي بانسحاب القوات الأميركية تقابله واشنطن بالمراوغة، والاستهداف الأميركي الأخير لقوى المقاومة على الحدود العراقية السورية إعلان حرب يجب أن تدفع قوات الاحتلال الأميركي ثمنه، وأن تدرك أن قوى المقاومة جاهزة للمواجهة المفتوحة حتى رحيل الاحتلال، وفي سورية عدا عن عملية الاستهداف، يصرّح الأميركيّون بنهبهم لنفط سورية، ويقومون بحماية مجموعات انفصاليّة تشاركهم نهب القمح والنفط، ويعلن الأميركيون ربط بقائهم بمصير الحدود بين بلدين شقيقين سيدين هما سورية والعراق، بهدف قطع التواصل بينهما، بينما تتحرّك القوات الأميركية عبر الحدود مستبيحة كل مقوّمات سيادة البلدين، وتنقل ثرواتهما المنهوبة عبر الحدود، وتتخذ من المناطق الكردية قواعد للعبث بوحدة البلدين، ما يجعل عمليات المقاومة في سورية، كما في العراق، رداً مشروعاً وطبيعياً.
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الذي يجب أن يكون مستغرباً هو البقاء الأميركي في العراق وسورية، بينما يحزم الأميركي حقائبه في أفغانستان للرحيل، رافضاً تسلم قوى قاتلت الإرهاب أرض بلادها، مخلفاً وراءه في أفغانستان تشكيلات اتهمها بالإرهاب بعد عشرين عاماً من الفشل في الحرب التي شنها على أفغانستان. وبالمناسبة كان الرئيس باراك أوباما يقول إنه سينسحب من العراق لأن لا مبرر للبقاء، ويبقى في أفغانستان لأن الحرب هناك جزء من الحرب العالمية على الإرهاب، ويأتي الرئيس جو بايدن ويقلب الأولويات، ويتوقع أن لا يكون درس الانسحاب الأميركي من أفغانستان هو أن الأميركي لا تحكمه قواعد ولا مبادئ ولا استراتيجيات، فهو يبقى حيث لا ينزف ويرحل حيث ينزف، لذلك عليه أن يتوقع أنه سينزف حتى يقرّر الرحيل، من دون أن يغيب عن تفكير قوى المقاومة أن الأميركي لا يمانع الانسحاب من أفغانستان رغم توصيفاته للحرب بحرب على الإرهاب طالما لا تداعيات للانسحاب على أمن كيان الاحتلال، بينما يتمسك ببقائه في سورية والعراق لفرض معادلات تتصل بالحدود بين البلدين وبحدود سورية مع الجولان المحتل، طلباً لأمن كيان الاحتلال، فتصير حرب المقاومة مع الاحتلال الأميركي امتداداً طبيعياً لالتزام قوى المقاومة بمعركتها مع كيان الاحتلال.
Today I am starting a new kind of post – a short news update. This is not an open thread where everybody shares all the latest information during a crisis, nor is it a full analysis. In this new category, I plan to include several small news which are relevant to what was discussed in the past or factoids/developments which might be discussed in a full analysis in the near future. I will include links to my sources only when I have them readily available, otherwise you will have to wait until my analyses to get the full sources. Note that this new category will appear under the “Saker Analyses and Interviews” section to give it maximal visibility. Finally, and just to make this clear, the regular rules of moderation will apply to this new section too. I hope that you will find this feature useful (by all means, let me know).
PS: please feel free to also contribute short news items in the “short news update” section!
Amazing! The US forces in Afghanistan left the (Soviet built) airbase in Bagram at night, not even informing their supposed Afghan “allies”. The base was looted for several hours as the US Americans left A LOT of stuff, including guitars and plenty of weapons (all of which will now go on sale in the various public markets in Afghanistan.
Comparing the Soviet and the US performance in Afghanistan is quite amazing. To make a long story short, I find the performance of Uncle Shmuel’s forces absolutely appalling and laughable. Killed lots of people, built nothing, never controlled much of the country, fled in the middle of the night and abandoned its allies. They literally switched off the electricity in Bagram and then fled. Absolutely typical “garden variety” for all US interventions. The Soviets even left with all their dignity safe – but the wannabe world hegemon had to leave in shame, like he always does.
The Taliban are now shooting Afghan collaborators in the streets, and floods of terrified refugees are now running for the border in the hope of escaping the Taliban’s wrath.
Did you know that since the US invasion of Afghanistan the volume of heroin produced by this country increased FIFTEEN FOLD!
Bottom line: the US+NATO+EU were defeated by the Taliban. Totally and comprehensively.
Today Russian Su-30SM has intercepted a US Poseidon aircraft over the Black Sea and forced it to turn away from the Russian border.
Three more days left for Sea Breeze 2021. Never say never, and we can’t be sure, but I don’t believe that NATO will try to breach the Russian maritime border again (these guys lost a long war to the Afghans, I don’t think they have the stomach for Russia!).
This is how the Soviet Forces left Afghanistan:
And this is how the “greatest military force in the Milky Way” left Afghanistan:
There are several reports, so far unconfirmed, that US bases in Iraq and Syria have come under attack. There has also been a huge explosion in the port of Dubai.
UK Foreign Minister Raab just repeated in the British Parliament that the British Navy fully intends to repeat the actions of the HMS Defender.
Let’s start with some stunning facts on the ground.
The Taliban are on a roll. Earlier this week their P.R. arm was claiming they hold 218 Afghan districts out of 421 – capturing new ones every day. Tens of districts are contested. Entire Afghan provinces are basically lost to the government in Kabul – de facto reduced to administer a few scattered cities under siege.
Afghanistan in Badakhshan province, seen from the Pamir highway in Tajikistan during my November 2019 Central Asian loop. This district, not far from Ishkashim, is now under Taliban control. Photo: Pepe Escobar
Already on July 1st the Taliban announced they controlled 80% of Afghan territory. That’s close to the situation 20 years ago, only a few weeks before 9/11, when Commander Masoud told me in the Panjshir valley , as he prepared a counter-offensive, that the Taliban were 85% dominant.
Their new tactical approach works like a dream. First there’s a direct appeal to soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to surrender. Negotiations are smooth – and deals fulfilled. Soldiers in the low thousands have already joined the Taliban without a single shot fired.
Mapmakers cannot upload updates fast enough. This is fast becoming a textbook case on the collapse of a 21st century central government.
The Taliban are fast advancing in western Vardak, easily capturing ANA bases. That is the prequel for an assault on Maidan Shar, the provincial capital. If they get control of Vardak they will be literally at the gates of Kabul.
After capturing Panjwaj district, the Taliban are also a stone’s throw away from Kandahar, founded by Alexander The Great in 330 B.C. and the city where a certain mullah Omar – with a little help from his Pakistani ISI friends – started the Taliban adventure in 1994, leading to their Kabul power takeover in 1996.
The overwhelming majority of Badakhshan province – Tajik majority, not Pashtun – fell after only 4 days of negotiations, with a few skirmishes thrown in. The Taliban even captured a hilltop outpost very close to Faizabad, Badakhshan’s capital.
I tracked the Tajik-Afghan border in detail when I traveled the Pamir highway in late 2019. The Taliban, following mountain tracks on the Afghan side, could soon reach the legendary, desolate border with Xinjiang in the Wakhan corridor.
The Taliban are also about to make a move on Hairaton, in Balkh province. Hairaton is at the Afghan-Uzbek border, the site of the historically important Friendship Bridge over the Amu Darya, through which the Red Army departed Afghanistan in 1989.
ANA commanders swear the city is now protected from all sides by a five-kilometer security zone. Hairaton has already attracted tens of thousands of refugees. Tashkent does not want them to cross the border.
And it’s not only Central Asia; the Taliban have already advanced to the city limits of Islam Qilla, which borders Iran, in Herat province, and is the key checkpoint in the busy Mashhad to Herat corridor.
The Tajik puzzle
The extremely porous, geologically stunning Tajik-Afghan mountain borders remain the most sensitive case. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, after a serious phone call with Vladimir Putin, ordered the mobilization of 20,000 reservists and sent them to the border. Rahmon also promised humanitarian and financial support to the Kabul government.
The Taliban, for their part, officially declared that the border is safe and they have no intention of invading Tajik territory. Earlier this week even the Kremlin cryptically announced that Moscow does not plan to send troops to Afghanistan.
A cliffhanger is set for the end of July, as the Taliban announced they will submit a written peace proposal to Kabul. A strong possibility is that it may amount to an intimation for Kabul to surrender – and transfer full control of the country.
The Taliban seem to be riding an irresistible momentum – especially when Afghans themselves were stunned to see how the imperial “protector”, after nearly two decades of de facto occupation,
Compare it to the evaluation of serious analysts such as Lester Grau, explaining the Soviet departure over three decades ago:
When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, they did so in a coordinated, deliberate, professional manner, leaving behind a functioning government, an improved military and an advisory and economic effort insuring the continued viability of the government. The withdrawal was based on a coordinated diplomatic, economic and military plan permitting Soviet forces to withdraw in good order and the Afghan government to survive. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) managed to hold on despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Only then, with the loss of Soviet support and the increased efforts by the Mujahideen (holy warriors) and Pakistan, did the DRA slide toward defeat in April 1992. The Soviet effort to withdraw in good order was well executed and can serve as a model for other disengagements from similar nations.
When it comes to the American empire, Tacitus once again applies: “They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.”
In the wake of the Hegemon, deserts called peace, in varying degrees, include Iraq, Libya, Syria – which happen to, geologically, harbor deserts – as well as the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.
That Afghan heroin rat line
It looks like Think Tank Row in D.C., between Dupont and Thomas Circle alongside Massachussets Avenue, have not really done their homework on pashtunwali – the Pashtun honor code – or the ignominious British empire retreat from Kabul.
Still, it’s too early to tell whether what is being spun as the US “retreat” from Afghanistan reflects the definitive unraveling of the Empire of Chaos. Especially because this is not a “retreat” at all: it’s a repositioning – with added elements of privatization.
At least 650 “U.S. forces” will be protecting the sprawling embassy in Kabul. Add to it possibly 500 Turkish troops – which means NATO – to protect the airport, plus an undeclared number of “contractors” a.k.a mercenaries, and an unspecified number of Special Forces.
Pentagon head Lloyd Austin has come up with the new deal. The militarized embassy is referred to as Forces Afghanistan-Forward. These forces will be “supported” by a new, special Afghan office in Qatar.
The key provision is that the special privilege to bomb Afghanistan whenever the Hegemon feels like it remains intact. The difference is in the chain of command. Instead of Gen. Scott Miller, so far the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the Bomber-in-Chief will be Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of CENTCOM.
So future bombing will come essentially from the Persian Gulf – what the Pentagon lovingly describes as “over the horizon capability”. Crucially, Pakistan has officially refused to be part of it, although in the case of drone attacks, they will have to overfly Pakistani territory in Balochistan. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan also refused to host American bases.
The Taliban, for their part, are unfazed. Spokesman Suhail Shaheen was adamant that any foreign troops that are not out by the 9/11 deadline will be regarded as – what else – occupiers.
Whether the Taliban will be able to establish dominance is not an issue; it’s just a matter of when. And that leads us to the two really important questions:
1. Will the CIA be able to maintain what Seymour Hersh initially, and later myself, described as the Afghan heroin rat line that finances their black ops?
2. And if the CIA cannot continue to supervise opium poppy field production in Afghanistan as well as coordinate the subsequent stages of the heroin business, where will it move to?
Every thinking mind across Central/South Asia knows that the Empire of Chaos, for two long decades, was never interested in defeating the Taliban or fighting for “the freedom of the Afghan people”.
The key motives were to keep a crucial, strategic forward base in the underbelly of “existential threats” China and Russia as well as intractable Iran – all part of the New Great Game; to be conveniently positioned to later exploit Afghanistan’s enormous mineral wealth; and to process opium into heroin to fund CIA ops. Opium was a major factor in the rise of the British empire, and heroin remains one of the world’s top dirty businesses funding shady intel ops.
What China and the SCO want
Now compare all of the above with the Chinese approach.
Unlike Think Tank Row in D.C., Chinese counterparts seem to have done their homework. They understood that the USSR did not invade Afghanistan in 1979 to impose “popular democracy” – the jargon then – but was in fact invited by the quite progressive UN-recognized Kabul government at the time, which essentially wanted roads, electricity, medical care, telecommunications, education.
As these staples of modernity would not be provided by Western institutions, the solution would have to come from Soviet socialism. That would imply a social revolution – a convoluted affair in a deeply pious Islamic nation – and, crucially, the end of feudalism.
“Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s imperial counterpunch worked because it manipulated Afghan feudal lords and their regimentation capacity – bolstered by immense funds (CIA, Saudis, Pakistani intel) – to give the USSR its Vietnam. None of these feudal lords were interested in the abolition of poverty and economic development in Afghanistan.
China is now picking up where the USSR left. Beijing, in close contact with the Taliban since early 2020, essentially wants to extend the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – one of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) flagship projects – to Afghanistan.
The first, crucial step will be the construction of the Kabul-Peshawar motorway – through the Khyber pass and the current border at Torkham. That will mean Afghanistan de facto becoming part of CPEC.
It’s all about regional integration at work. Kabul-Peshawar will be one extra CPEC node that already includes the construction of the ultra-strategic Tashkurgan airport in the Karakoram highway in Xinjiang, only 50 km away from the Pakistani border and also close to Afghanistan, as well as Gwadar harbor in Balochistan.
In early June, a trilateral China-Afghanistan-Pakistan meeting led the Chinese Foreign Ministry to unmistakably bet on the “peaceful recovery of Afghanistan”, with the joint statement welcoming “the early return of the Taliban to the political life of Afghanistan” and a pledge to “expand economic and trade ties”.
So there’s no way a dominant Taliban will refuse the Chinese drive to build infrastructure and energy projects geared towards regional economic integration, as long as they keep the country pacified and not subject to jihadi turbulence of the ISIS-Khorasan variety – capable of spilling over to Xinjiang.
The Chinese game play is clear: the Americans should not be able to exert influence over the new Kabul arrangement. It’s all about the strategic Afghan importance for BRI – and that is intertwined with discussions inside the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), incidentally founded 20 years ago, and which for years has advocated for an “Asian solution” for the Afghan drama.
The discussions inside the SCO regard the NATO projection of the new Afghanistan as a jihadi paradise controlled by Islamabad as not more than wishful thinking nonsense.
It will be fascinating to watch how China, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and even India will fill the vacuum in the post-Forever Wars era in Afghanistan. It’s very important to remember that all these actors, plus the Central Asians, are full SCO members (or observers, in the case of Iran).
Tehran plausibly might interfere with potential imperial plans to bomb Afghanistan from the outside – whatever the motive. On another front, it’s unclear whether Islamabad or Moscow, for instance, would help the Taliban to take Bagram air base. What’s certain is that Russia will take the Taliban off its list of terrorist outfits.
Considering that the empire and NATO – via Turkey – will not be really leaving, a distinct future possibility is a SCO push, allied with the Taliban (Afghanistan is also a SCO observer) to secure the nation in their terms and concentrate on CPEC development projects. But the first step seems to be the hardest: how to form a real, solid, national coalition government in Kabul.
History may rule that Washington wanted Afghanistan to be the USSR’s Vietnam; decades later, it ended up getting its own second Vietnam, repeated as – what else – farce. A remixed Saigon moment is fast approaching. Yet another stage of the New Great Game in Eurasia is at hand.
Hezbollah-Iraq: Government investigations will be under great pressure to hide the true saboteurs
Kata’ib Hezbollah confirms that it possesses irrefutable evidence pointing to the role of Saudi intelligence behind the sabotage of electricity pylons in Iraq, doing so to stir chaos and make use of ISIS fighters.
Kata’ib Hezbollah (Hezbollah Brigades) announced that it has confirmed “with irrefutable evidence that Saudi intelligence is behind the sabotage of electricity pylons in Iraq,” noting that government investigations “will be under a great deal of pressure so as to not reveal the true culprit behind the sabotage.”
The movement added that “by sabotaging the electricity pylons, Saudi Arabia seeks to create chaos and ‘recycle’ “ISIS” terrorists,” accusing Riyadh of planning to present itself as a “savior to improve its criminal image before the Iraqi people.”
Two days ago, a force of the PMU’s “25th Brigade” had foiled attempts by ISIS to blow up electricity pylons south of Nineveh province.
During the operation, the force was able to find three locally manufactured bombs that were set to be used to blow up pylons in the area.
The Iraqi Ministry of Electricity had also earlier said that a terror attack targeted the Salaheddin thermal plant in Samarra in late June. The attack was done using two explosive devices, causing great material damage to the facility.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack that targeted a pylon and a main power line that feeds into areas in Bakouba and Baghdad.
The Russian Navy organized training exercises in the center of the Pacific Ocean for the first time in recent history. On June 21, our Pacific Fleet deployed up to 20 vessels and the same amount of aircraft for the training. By the way, take note of the maneuvers’ date, on the eve of the Memory and Mourning Day when our people remember all those who perished as a result of the treacherous attack by the Western ‘partners’ on the USSR.
Russia has long made itself into a ship distributor, strenuously modernizing its navy and upsetting its geopolitical adversaries with that. Navy ships don’t get launched in order to rust at the pier, as is customary in the ‘independent’ Euro-Ukria. The Russian sailors keep training constantly in the near combat conditions, in order to be able to repel the aggressor, in case of an attack on our country, regardless of whether such an aggressor attacks from the de-facto occupied by the US European Union or from another Eastern direction.
Source: RIA News – “Combat vessels of the Pacific Fleet, together with the navy aircraft, are conducting naval exercises in the central part of the Pacific Ocean for the first time in recent history. The exercises take place in an area situated 2.5 thousand miles (approx. 4.6 thousand kilometers east of the Kuril Islands.”
As our fellow countrymen joke, 2.5 thousand miles east of the Kuril Islands is almost Hawaii. It is obvious that the ocean regions in question are those that the USA has been regarding for a long time as the exclusive zone of their interest. Now Russian missiles and aircraft are flying there. Naval vessels are also sailing over there.
Source: RIA News – “The exercises brought into play up to 20 surface vessels, submarines and support ships. The Flag Ship of the Pacific Fleet Missile Cruiser ‘Varyag’, the Frigate ‘Marshal Shaposhnikov’, the Corvettes ‘Aldar Tsydenzhapov’, ‘Sovershenny’ and ‘Gromky’, as well as a submarine are taking part. Additionally, the exercises involved a number of the Naval Aviation Tu-142M3 anti-submarine aircraft that undertook a 14-hour flight to the overall distance of 10,000 km. Overall 12 aircraft are involved in the exercises. Apart from the Tupolevs, these are Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft, MiG-31BM fighter-interceptors, an IL-78 refueling aircraft and deck helicopters Ka-27.”
The program for the training is also worth a note. Our Defence Ministry is not trying to conceal whom the sailors are training to sink.
Source: RIA News – “The vessels and aircraft have already worked through a few tasks, namely, destruction of an aircraft carrier strike group of a mock enemy, as well as a mock cruise missile strike on the enemy’s onshore targets.”
Which openly hostile towards Russian state cuts the waves of the Pacific Ocean with its aircraft carrier strike groups? There’s only one – the USA. Other aircraft carrier groups exist in possession of the British sworn ‘partner’s and of the French ones. But those don’t poke their heads into the Pacific Ocean. And we are not in conflict with the Chinese who build aircraft carriers at a higher rate. It is very significant that the training began on 21 June, on the eve of the most tragic date in our country’s history when we remember everyone who gave their lives in fight with Hitlerism. Now Hitlerism has been de facto rehabilitated in the territories of the independent limitrophe states that diligently serve the USA. The SS veterans march in the Baltic states. Recently in Kiev, the presidential guard regiment took part in a funeral service for an SS member.
“In the Ukraine, the former member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the SS Division “Galicia” (both organizations illegal in Russia) Orest Vaskula was buried with presidential honors. This is not a figure of speech. The regiment of the presidential guard named under Bogdan Khmelnitsky took part in the ceremony.”
With the background of the blunt resurrection of Nazism under the patronage of the State Department, the exercises of the Pacific Fleet in the zone of American geopolitical interests hints, as it were, to the Washington hawks who lost the last sense of reality: Russia will not allow the tragedy of 22 June 1941 to be repeated. The means for that are available. Late in May, the media wrote about the alarm in the USA caused by a discovery of a foreign drone, presumably the Russian device ‘Poseidon’ capable of causing a tsunami by an underwater nuclear explosion and washing away the American coastal cities.
In a word, welcome into the multipolar world, America, who is used to moving its troops to the borders of others but who is not used to military exercises of other countries near her own border. Russia has returned to the great geopolitical game and continues increasing its weight. And the dollar printing press turned to max power is not helping the Americans to reduce their arrears in armament, despite the fact that their military spending is comparable to the Russian and Chinese spending combined.
Source: RIA FAN – “The combined defense spendings of Russia and China have increased the military budgets of the USA, stated the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Senator Jim Inhofe cited this reason for the need of greater military spending in the United States. According to him, the buying power of currencies must be taken into account during drafting the budgets. As a result, it turns out that the CPR spends $604 billion dollars and Russia spends around $200 billion.”
Where is the limit of increase? The USA have already spent $780 billion dollars on defense in 2020. It didn’t help. The Americans still could not design a breakthrough weapon. While Russia did it. The hypersonic missiles can be deployed next time during the exercises somewhere near Hawaii. On which occasion I congratulate us all, dear fellow countrymen. The Pacific Ocean is ours.
French Ambassador to Lebanon Anne Grillo and United States Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea
In an unusual step, the French and the United States Ambassadors to Lebanon will visit Riyadh on Thursday to “discuss the gravity of the situation in Lebanon.”
The United States and French Ambassadors to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea and Anne Grillo, will travel to Saudi Arabia for meetings with Saudi Arabian officials in an unusual step: “to look into pressuring those responsible for the blockage [in the formation of a government],” according to the French Embassy in Beirut.
The French embassy also announced in a statement that Ambassador Anne Grillo and her US counterpart, Dorothy Shea, will travel to Saudi Arabia on Thursday to meet a number of Saudi officials.
Grillo will explain during the meetings the urgency for the Lebanese officials to form a credible and effective government that works on establishing the necessary reforms.
Déplacement de l’Ambassadrice de France en Arabie saoudite. زيارة سفيرة فرنسا إلى المملكة العربية السعودية. pic.twitter.com/J7jt3Zn94b— La France au Liban (@AmbaFranceLiban) July 7, 2021
“This visit follows U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s trilateral meeting on Lebanon with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud on June 29 in Matera, Italy, on the sidelines of the G-20 conference,” according to the US Embassy’s statement.
An Arab diplomatic source in Beirut told AFP that Saudi Arabia has not yet shown a desire to get involved in the details.
France, whose officials visited Lebanon, imposed sanctions on Lebanese figures it considers “responsible for political perversion and corruption,” and the European Union has threatened to impose sanctions.
Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab beseeched Tuesday the international community not to link its support to Lebanon with the formation of a new government, speaking with several ambassadors and representatives of diplomatic missions about a “siege” on Lebanon during the meeting.
French Ambassador Anne Grillo responded to the caretaker Prime Minister by saying, “What is frightening, Mr. Prime Minister, is that today, this brutal collapse… is the deliberate result of mismanagement and inaction for years. It is not the result of an external siege.”
The French diplomat in charge of coordinating international aid to Lebanon, Pierre Dukan, will arrive in Beirut on Wednesday to follow up on the humanitarian aid file and prepare for a third support conference for the Lebanese people.
Are black clouds gathering over the region? Are we headed back to the days of Daesh [Arabic acronym for “ISIS” / “ISIL”] in Iraq and Syria in 2014 and the internal cracks in other Arab countries in 2011?
Here are some indicators that warn of new challenges:
– A tangible return to sabotage activities by Daesh in Iraq came in the form of sporadic bombings in Baghdad, daily attacks on Iraqi forces in the Anbar, Salah al-Din, Nineveh, and Diyala provinces, and the bombing of several transmission towers, which exacerbated the electricity crisis in Iraq.
In addition, there is a chronic quest to inflame the internal situation in Iraq before the legislative elections expected to be held next fall. The US administration and its assets in Iraq are exploiting a number of factors to re-establish a comfortable parliamentary majority. These factors include the worsening electricity crisis during the hot summer and the value of the Iraqi currency, which is plummeting against the US dollar, leading to higher prices.
There is a gasoline crisis in the oil-rich country [a peculiar similarity with the situation in Lebanon]. Meanwhile, the United States has not offered Iraq anything to solve its chronic problems, such as the electricity problem. Instead, Washington is preventing the German company Siemens from obtaining contracts to carry out this task, according to Iraqi sources.
This is accompanied by Washington’s refusal to withdraw its forces from Iraq and Syria. The declared objective of this occupying presence is to exert pressure for regime change in Syria – exploiting the economic blockade is the main tool in this operation. The American military presence is also designed to act as a dam between Iran and the establishment of normal relations with the countries of the region. However, there are implicit goals, including controlling the future of Iraq and Syria and their hidden wealth and establishing permanent American bases in the region.
– There is a strong resurgence of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, as it now controls 70% of the Afghan territory, including those that were considered centers for Tajiks and Hazaras in the north of the country. This development coincided with the accelerated US withdrawal, which left the Afghan government in limbo, with little backing.
The new situation in Afghanistan can cause political and security agitation for each of the three players that challenge American influence internationally: Iran, Russia, and China. And each of these countries has its own concerns and grievances in dealing with Afghanistan, the Taliban, or groups that appeal to an extremist religious authority. Also, in the three countries, religious or ethnic groups can cause headaches due to the resurgence of the Taliban. Is the US withdrawal merely an American electoral necessity, or does it contain an element of distraction for the three mentioned countries?
Afghanistan and Iraq, by the way, were targets of an American invasion in 2001 and 2003, which opened the door to major storms in the region, the effects of which are still being felt today. However, there is an important difference between the two countries. In Iraq, there is a strong dam against the re-expansion of Daesh. This dam is Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi [or the Popular Mobilization Forces] that stands steadfast in the face of American efforts to dismantle and disrupt it, while its positions on the border between Iraq and Syria are exposed to US raids from time to time.
– In addition to the two worrying security developments in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ongoing siege on Syria to bring about a change in the hierarchy of power, there is an American effort to capitalize on the financial siege on Lebanon to impose the guardianship of the International Monetary Fund on the country as the only one option.
The US is taking advantage of the existing corruption and its local tools to provoke people’s anger and direct it mainly towards the resistance, with the aim of changing the political equation in the upcoming parliamentary elections in a few months. The anti-resistance propaganda is based on the idea that Hezbollah is protecting the corrupt, a claim that has not been proven in practice [did the party prevent a judge from prosecuting a corrupt person, for example?]. That’s unless the party is required to open side battles that further complicate matters and weaken the country’s internal immunity in the face of a lurking enemy.
– On the Palestinian side, features appeared to bring back former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad [the trusted American option] to the fore, in conjunction with an intense Egyptian presence in the Gaza Strip through the gateway of reconstruction and the establishment of calm. This comes after the last round of confrontation [the al-Quds Sword], which tilted the scales in favor of the resistance and placed al-Quds at the heart of the existing equation.
We are facing an American counterattack: a withdrawal here, a strengthening of military presence there, and economic and political pressures to impose ready-made American models in the Levant: Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. But the United States is not in the days of 2001-2003. Attempts to subjugate by sowing discord and employing ready-made American models will not change the fact that US influence is waning and is dependent on starvation and despair, not enticement, as in the American dream.
There is a counter opportunity to take advantage of the blockade in order to create new facts outside the closed game that the American tools contributed to creating. Perhaps we are beginning to perceive this by opening new supply channels to Lebanon and others, as well as strengthening the advanced al-Quds equation.
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