Headlines:
- US Angry that Taliban continue to Hit Back at Illegal Foreign Occupation
- Tripoli Water Supply becomes a Weapon in Libyan Civil War
- To heal its Economy, Lebanon turns to the IMF, the Destroyer of Economies
- Coronavirus: Trump Stands by China Lab Origin Theory for Virus
- Dubai Ruler Donates 60 tons of PPE Equipment to UK’s NHS
- Pakistan has a Dependency Syndrome, says Prime Minister Imran Khan
US Angry that Taliban continue to Hit Back at Illegal Foreign Occupation
It was quite evident that the Taliban did not freely enter into negotiations with the US and were forced to do so by the Pakistani military leadership. But even so, the Taliban stood their ground on multiple issues and refused to accept the false demands of the foreign disbelieving superpower. And now, after negotiations have ended, while America continues to attack the Taliban from behind the Afghan government, they are insisting that the Taliban reduce the level of intensity of their response. According to the Washington Post:
Facing an emboldened Taliban, and with less U.S. military support, Afghan forces have suffered heavy casualties during a two-month surge in violence across the country that is threatening to jeopardize a fragile peace deal between the United States and the Taliban.
A U.S. military assessment describes Taliban attacks on Afghan forces in March as “above seasonal norms,” according to a quarterly report released Thursday by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
According to the Afghan National Security Council, the Taliban has carried out an average of 55 attacks a day since March 1 — a spike that has doubled casualties among Afghan security forces in some parts of the country, officials say.
“The numbers show Taliban doing nothing for peace and everything to continue their campaign of terror against Afghans,” the council’s spokesman, Javid Faisal, said on Twitter…
The U.S. military command in Kabul refused to release more-specific data on Taliban attacks, citing concerns surrounding sensitive negotiations with the Taliban. This marks the first time the U.S. military command in Kabul has restricted the release of such data since SIGAR began using it in 2018 to track the levels and locations of violence.
The mujahideen in Afghanistan are doing their best against the evil foreign disbelieving presence on Muslim land. But what they need is state support from Muslims not state opposition. With Allah’s permission, Muslims shall soon re-establish the righteous Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet ﷺ that shall unify all Muslim countries within a single state and liberate all occupied territories from the presence of the foreign disbelieving imperialist.
Tripoli Water Supply becomes a Weapon in Libyan Civil War
As the civil war drags on in Libya, now with the intervention of Russia and Turkey, even water has become a weapon in the conflict. According to the Middle East Monitor:
This month, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Libyan capital and most of western Libya spent at least 20 days without water. This was in addition to living through intensified fighting around Tripoli which only abated following the humiliating defeat of the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Khalifa Haftar. His forces lost all major cities, west of the capital, that they had held for nearly a year.
Tripoli, like much of Libya, gets its water supplies from a man-made river that transports fresh water from the sparsely populated desert south to the north where two thirds of Libyans live. Dubbed the Great Manmade River (GMMR), one of the legacies of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, it provides water for drinking and other uses. Today the entire project is endangered as a result of misuse and war.
Its water is being weaponised in the conflict as never before. The whole country could soon face severe water shortages if no action is taken, and fast.
The latest cut in the water supply took place on 6 April and the man who did it, unashamedly, appeared on TV explaining his motives behind denying water to over two million people. Hassan Al-Gaddafi, the Haftar-appointed mayor of Al-Schwerf – east of Tripoli – claimed his brother went missing near Tripoli, where the Government of National Accord (GNA) is in control. He told astonished Libyans that unless his brother is freed, he will not reopen water pipelines.
Two weeks later water was slowly dripping into parts of Tripoli only to be cut again for three days but this time for maintenance. It is not clear if Al-Gaddafi’s brother has been released. Al-Gaddafi (no relation to the late leader) did not answer my messages asking for comment.
The Libyan civil war is a consequence of external influence not simply by regional countries but by the Western imperialists behind those regional countries. Africa has long been dominated by the European powers, and is the continent that America has the least engagement in. The imperialism of the West is a bitter rivalry and competition between them, each racing ahead of the other to the spoils, despite their sharing a common secular liberal civilisation. The fall of Gaddafi was a great opportunity for America to enter Libya, which it has been trying to do through backing General Haftar in the east. Meanwhile, the ruling body in the capital of Tripoli in the west remains European controlled.
Western civilisation is not fit to dominate the world. Its wealth and apparent prosperity is due not to fake ideas such as freedom and democracy, but due to its expropriation of the wealth and resources of the entire world. Only the social and economic systems of Islam were able to bring genuine ease, prosperity and well-being.
To heal its Economy, Lebanon turns to the IMF, the Destroyer of Economies
A case in point of Western imperialism is Lebanon, once the leading commercial capital of the entire region and now forced to turn begging to the IMF after months of protests from a population that is on the brink of hunger, famine and disaster. According to the New York Times:
Lebanon plans to seek International Monetary Fund aid after approving an economic rescue plan setting out vast losses in its financial system as it aims to chart a way out of a crisis seen as the biggest risk to stability since the 1975-90 civil war.
Rooted in decades of state waste, corruption and bad governance, the crisis is causing mounting economic hardship and fuelling unrest. A protester was killed during rioting in the northern city of Tripoli this week and dozens of soldiers have been wounded in the unrest.
Lebanon will use the rescue plan to negotiate an IMF programme, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said after it was approved by cabinet. The 53-page plan says the economy “is in free fall” and an international financial rescue package urgently needed.
“If we get (IMF support), and God willing we will, it will help us to pass through this difficult economic phase, which could be three, four or five years,” said Diab, a little-known academic until he was nominated premier in January by the Iran-backed Shi’ite group Hezbollah and its political allies, including President Michel Aoun’s party.
“The road ahead will not be easy, but our determination and optimism will help us.”
The crisis has brought economic difficulties on a scale unseen before in Lebanon, even during its civil war.
Saddled with one of the world’s biggest public debt burdens, the state defaulted on its sovereign debt in March for the first time. The government declared hard currency reserves had hit critically low levels and were needed for vital imports.
The role of international institutions such as the IMF is not to solve problems but to perpetuate the international economic architecture that enables the West to continue to loot and plunder the entire world. It is the job of the IMF to step in not when economies are in trouble but when governments are in trouble, to provide support to keep them in power, so that the looting and plundering can continue. But even this support is linked to Western conditionalities that binds those governments and their systems even more firmly to Western control. And of course such loans, on interest, only further overburden recipient countries with astonishing levels of international debt.
With Allah’s permission, the world shall soon witness a very different type of world order, built by the re-established Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet ﷺ that shall be a source of only light and goodness for all of humanity, as happened before for the millennium that the Khilafah State was the leading power in the world.
Coronavirus: Trump Stands by China Lab Origin Theory for Virus
US President Donald Trump has appeared to undercut his own intelligence agencies by suggesting he has seen evidence coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory. Earlier the US national intelligence director’s office said it was still investigating how the virus began. But the office said it had determined Covid-19 “was not manmade or genetically modified”. China has rejected the lab theory and criticised the US response to Covid-19. Since emerging in China last year, the virus has killed 230,000 people worldwide including 63,000 in the US. At the White House on Thursday, Mr Trump was asked by a reporter: “Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?” “Yes, I have. Yes, I have,” said the president, without specifying. “And I think the World Health Organization [WHO] should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China.” Asked later to clarify his comment, he said: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.” He also told reporters: “Whether they [China] made a mistake, or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose? “I don’t understand how traffic, how people weren’t allowed into the rest of China, but they were allowed into the rest of the world. That’s a bad, that’s a hard question for them to answer.” The New York Times reported on Thursday that senior White House officials had asked the US intelligence community to investigate whether the virus came from a Wuhan research laboratory. Intelligence agencies have also been tasked with determining if China and the WHO withheld information about the virus early on, unnamed officials told NBC News. In a rare public statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees US spy agencies, said on Thursday it concurs with the “wide scientific consensus” regarding Covid-19’s natural origins. “The [intelligence community] will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” It was the first clear response from American intelligence debunking conspiracy theories – both from the US and China – that the virus is a bioweapon. [Source: BBC]
Trump is blaming China to conceal not only his own shortcomings, but also prepare for the general election in November. By apportioning blame for the COVID-19 crisis on China, Trump hopes to garner greater support amongst his Republican base for the upcoming presidential elections.
Dubai Ruler Donates 60 tons of PPE Equipment to UK’s NHS
The ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum has donated 60 tons of personal protective equipment to the UK, according to Dubai Media Office. Sheikh Mohammed bought the equipment from suppliers in China and offered it to the UK’s National Health Service. Planes from China loaded with the equipment arrived at Heathrow Airport in London on Thursday afternoon, with more planes expected to arrive in the coming days. A spokesperson for Sheikh Mohammed said the donation was made because of the Dubai ruler’s “deep and long-standing connections with the UK” and that “he is determined to do his bit to keep Britain’s health workers safe,” the BBC reported. The equipment included face masks, protective clothing and other essential supplies, Dubai Media Office said. The UK remains in a state of lockdown since Boris Johnson’s March 25 announcement, with 171,253 confirmed cases and 26,771 deaths announced on Thursday. Health workers suffered from shortages of protective equipment and called on the government to do more to get the supplies to front-line medics. [Arab News]
The Muslim Ummah is suffering from a variety of disasters including COVID-19, and Dubai decides to donate PPE aid to the UK. The UK has been spearheading the war against Islam—not to mention collaborating with the UAE to wage war in Yemen—in many Muslim countries.
Pakistan has a Dependency Syndrome, says Prime Minister Imran Khan
As Pakistan grapples to combat coronavirus with increasing number of cases, Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged the need to build its own reliable medical infrastructure. “The coronavirus has brought to the fore that Pakistan needs to build its medical infrastructure and reduce dependency on foreign aid,” added Imran. Speaking during this visit to COMSTECH exhibition in Islamabad on Wednesday, Prime Minister Imran said: “We have a dependency syndrome; we don’t have that self-belief, we didn’t progress towards knowledge economy because we didn’t spend on education and research. Pakistanis excel once they immigrate; why can’t you create that system here?” “We have to focus on building our medical infrastructure so that we are prepared for any such emergency situation in the future,” he said and added that the COVID-19 crisis provided an opportunity to produce locally manufactured ventilators and protective equipment as everything cannot be imported. COMSTECH stands for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation for the promotion and cooperation of science and technology activities among the OIC member states. “It is only now — with a global shortage — that we have found out that building ventilators isn’t that hard. The country that had the capacity to make nuclear bombs, how hard can it be for it to make ventilators?” he said.
Khan’s engagement with IMF loans underscores Pakistan’s further dependency on foreign powers and their institutions. This shows that Khan’s words belie his actions, as he plunges Pakistan deep into the debt trap.