Generating and Spreading Fear

6 May 2024 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Students and professors, carry on! History will only remember you, and it will have no mention at all of your oppressors. Keep up the fight to make the world a better place for us all.

Arab Intellectual

Bouthaina Shaaban

Dear students and professors,

For over 200 days, we here in the Arab World have been wondering how the so-called civilized world, along with its intellectual system and human rights laws, would allow such a genocide to take place against helpless women, children, and innocent civilians in Gaza and Palestine, without trying the impossible to stop this disgraceful insult against every human life everywhere.

Every day, the Zionists would perpetrate dozens of massacres against hundreds of Palestinians and would kill journalists, medical doctors, nurses, and patients, burying them in a mass grave inside the hospital. And yet the US continues to flood the Zionists with armaments, money, and moral support, enabling the worst genocide and ethnic cleansing that has brought dishonor upon our world and us who live in these times. 

All of us here in the Middle East were feeling absolutely helpless, depressed, and utterly betrayed by the Western World, as it not only betrayed us, but also Western values which the West claimed to develop and promote in the interest of humanity. For seven, long, difficult months, we questioned everything the West had said about itself, most notably its propaganda regarding the free press, the rights of women, the rights of children, and human rights in decent and safe lives.

All of this was happening to us as if we lived on an extremely remote island until the students of Columbia University broke this cycle with their brave forthcoming acts to challenge the conspiratory world‘s silence and announce their extremely important call to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, an act that triggered a worldwide movement by university students, professors, and employees in support of life in Gaza, and against the daily and continued massacres there. 

Your movement has restored our faith in human conscience, but your suffering and the way you have been treated proved to us, beyond any doubt, that Western systems leave a lot to be desired. The deep alliance that has surfaced between Zionists everywhere and Western governments has shown the horrifying moral deterioration of Western governments. Just as they spread fear and horror about Covid-19, they also started to fabricate myths about attacks on Jews, although Jewish students and professors were at the forefront of these noble movements, this did not prevent misleading media from accusing the student movement as antisemitic.

Instead of trusting that the movement proved that the issue was not between Muslims and Jews, but one of occupation, racism, and the worst violation of human rights witnessed in modern times, the authorities went on distorting facts and misleading people. 

When Jews were persecuted in Europe, they found their haven among the Arabs, and until the creation of the Zionist entity, Jews were citizens in most Arab countries, living amicably with Muslims and Christians and contributing to the prosperity and welfare of their countries. The Middle East is the cradle of the three monotheistic religions, and that is why its people lived together with the church and the mosque side by side, and with the deep-rooted faith that we all worship the same God but in different ways.

The first time we heard a language that divided the Iraqis into Sunnis and Shias was when American forces occupied Iraq and started talking about the Sunni triangle, Kurdish North, and Shia South. This is an alien language to the region’s indigenous Arabs, and this is the language that terrorists attempted to implant among our people. 

Antisemitism is a label coined and promoted by those who gave themselves the right to uproot indigenous people and to use their land and resources as their own. The Arabs had never been and cannot be antisemitic, as they themselves are Semites. Those who misused movements to incite hatred against Jews have nothing to do with Islam, as the Quran lauded all prophets and mentioned the followers of all prophets with great respect; “Indeed the faithful, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabaeans —those of them who have faith in Allah and the Last Day and act righteously— they shall have their reward near their Lord, and they will have no fear, nor will they grieve.”

The Quran stresses the importance of faith rather than religion, and any attempt to generate and spread fear among the followers of other religions is only a very suspicious political tool used for dubious purposes. The Western media that was supposed to facilitate communication among different people on different lands had become an impediment in the way of truth reaching audiences everywhere. 

Students and professors paid a heavy price, and some have lost the opportunity to complete their studies, but what you have done is so gracious and so eternal that it restored our confidence in humanity and its ability to strongly object to gross injustice, no matter how powerful and militarized it may seem. In that sense, you restored some of our confidence that the voice of the people will override the voice of governments who cannot get beyond their narrow, material interests, and their deeply rooted and unquestioned prejudices and shallow slogans.

You proved that you do not belong to the hypocrisy of the State, whose current discourse and actions are in total contradiction with its own narrative. Western systems are trying to spread fear: Jews fearing Muslims, Muslims fearing Jews, Christians fearing Muslims, Westerners against Easterners, in order to serve the interests of Zionist dark forces who do not see people with similar hearts and minds, but only see what may divide their ranks and make them weaker: inactive and incapable of undermining the interests of these dark forces.

Our God said in the Quran, “O mankind! Indeed We created you from a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes that you may identify yourselves with one another. Indeed the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most Godwary among you. Indeed Allah is all-knowing, all-aware.” Differences in color, origin, religion, or ethnicity, only exist to prove the greatness of the Creator, and not to classify people as superior and inferior. Only the vile racists do that for their own evil purposes, which have nothing to do with the interests of most people on this planet. 

Students and professors, carry on! History will only remember you, and it will have no mention at all of your oppressors. Keep up the fight to make the world a better place for us all.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Bouthaina Shaaban Arab Intellectual

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Sudan: The new geopolitical battlefield between east and west?

May 02 2023

Source

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The potential outbreak of a civil war sparked by a factional fight within Sudan’s military government poses a destabilization threat beyond the nation’s borders – into Africa, West Asia, and the emerging multipolar order. This suits the west just fine.

By Matthew Ehret

he story of Sudan is one of contrasts and contradictions. It is a country with tremendous potential and resources, yet it is plagued by poverty, conflict, and exploitation. The forces currently pulling Sudan apart are complex and multifaceted, but one thing is certain: the future of this nation is inextricably linked to the broader geopolitical landscape.

In order to fully comprehend the dynamics of this growing conflict, it is essential to look beyond Sudan’s borders. Attention must be paid to the broader geopolitical chemistry at play in the Horn of Africa, the Persian Gulf, the wider West Asian region, and even Ukraine.

Once the largest African nation with a population of 46 million and the third largest landmass, Sudan underwent a seismic shift in 2011 with a western-championed Balkanization, which divided the country into a “Muslim north” and a “Christian/Animist south.”

Extremes of wealth and poverty  

The country is blessed with one of the most water-rich zones of the earth. The White and Blue Niles combine to form the Nile River, which flows northward into Egypt. Sudan’s water abundance is complemented by fertile soil and immense deposits of gold and oil.

The majority of these resources are located in the south, creating a convenient geological divide that western strategists have exploited for over a century to promote secession.

Despite its abundance of resources, Sudan is also one of the poorest nations in the world. Thirty-five percent of its population lives in extreme poverty, and a staggering 20 million people – or 50 percent of the population – suffer from food insecurity.

Although Sudan achieved political independence in 1956, like many other former colonies, it was never truly economically independent. The British utilized a strategy they had previously employed before leaving India in 1946 – divide and conquer – carving out “northern” and “southern” tribes, which led to civil wars that began months before Sudan’s independence in 1956.

General against General

After achieving independence in 2011, South Sudan was plunged into a brutal civil war that lasted for seven years. In the meantime, the north was hit by two coups; the first in 2019, which ousted President Omar al-Bashir, and the second in 2021, resulting in the current power-sharing military-led transitional government led by the president of the Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

It is these two former allies-turned-rivals who now find themselves at the center of the conflict pulling Sudan in two opposing directions against the backdrop of the rapidly developing multipolar order.

Following the 2021 coup in Sudan, the two rival generals, Dagalo and Burhan, continued the momentum toward building large-scale projects. China funded a program to rehabilitate 4725 km of defunct colonial-era railways connecting the port of Sudan to Darfur and Chad.

A recent report by The Cradle suggests that if peace is maintained in the Horn of Africa and the new Iran-Saudi Arabia entente results in a durable peace process in Yemen, then the revival of the Bridge of the Horn of Africa project, which was last proposed in 2010, could become a reality.

Global South benefits from China-Russia co-op

In the past decade, the strategic partnership between China and Russia has been rapidly gaining favor among countries in the Global South. With the five BRICS member states accounting for over 3.2 billion people and 31.5 percent of global GDP, China and Russia have been providing financial support for major infrastructure, water, and energy projects while also backing the military needs of nations facing destabilization.

This has set the stage for a new era of geo-economics based on mutually beneficial cooperation. The Horn of Africa, which includes North and South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya, has been drawn into this positive dynamic of peace and development.

Ethiopia was able to end its 20-year conflict with neighboring Eritrea in 2018 and put down a potential civil war in November 2022. Furthermore, China’s diplomatic efforts facilitated a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, while even Syria has seen a new hope emerge with the Arab League’s consensus that the US-led regime change doctrine against President Bashar al-Assad is over.

Sudan’s multipolar prospects

While the cause of the recent violence in Sudan remains uncertain, there are some things that are known. Prior to the recent outbreak of violence that claimed nearly 500 lives, Sudan was making significant strides toward consolidating its participation in the emerging multipolar alliance.

This included Sudan’s submission of a request to join the BRICS+ alliance along with 19 other nations, including resource-rich African states such as Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. Sudan’s decision to grant Russia full use of the Port of Sudan and engage in large-scale economic development with China, Russia, Egypt, and Kuwait was viewed as a positive development by many but drew threats of “consequences” from the US Ambassador John Godfrey.

In April 2021, agreements were signed to build a 900 km Egypt-Sudan railway connecting Aswan to Sudan’s Wadi Halfa and Khartoum. In June 2022, a Joint Ethiopia-Sudan government commissioned feasibility study was finished outlining a 1522 km standard gauge railway connecting Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa to Khartoum and the Port of Sudan.

In January 2022, China pledged financial and technical support to extend Kenya’s 578 km Mombasa-Nairobi railway to Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Ethiopia, where the Chinese-built Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway was completed in 2017. In this comprehensive project, extensions into Eritrea were included.

Railway lines in the African continent

The revival of the Jonglei Canal

Water and oil are both abundant resources in South Sudan, making the region’s security a top priority for Beijing’s African interests. Despite this abundance, the country’s infrastructure is poor, leaving it with no means to move these resources to market or use them for industrial purposes.

Water is just as geopolitically important as oil, if not more so. Thus, nearly forty years ago, the Jonglei Canal project was launched, which aimed to connect the White and Blue Nile in South Sudan, creating a 360 km canal that would divert water runoff from the Upper White Nile.

The canal would result in 25 million cubic meters of water per day being directed north into Egypt, while 17,000 square kilometers of swamp land would be transformed into agricultural land. The project would make the desert land bloom in Egypt and northern Sudan, turning the Sahel into the breadbasket of Africa. However, the project was stopped after 250 km had been dug by a German-made Bucketwheel 2300-ton, laser-guided digging machine.

The secessionist southern Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA), led by western-educated John Garang De Mabior, launched a civil war in 1983 and kidnapped the machine’s operators, effectively halting the project. Notably, De Mabior’s 1981 doctoral dissertation in the US focused on the environmental damage that the Jonglei Canal would cause if not managed correctly.

Muddying the waters

Despite former President Omar al-Bashir’s attempts to restart this project since 1989 – until the 2011 partition of Sudan – constant destabilizations never permitted this project’s revival.

Things began turning around when, on February 28, 2022, South Sudan’s Vice President for Infrastructure, General Taban Deng Gai, called for the resumption of the Jonglei Canal, saying:

“We, the people in Bentiu and Fangak, have no place to stay. We may migrate to Eastern Nuer [eastern bank of the White Nile] because we have lost our land to flooding … People are asking who opened this huge volume of water because we never experienced this for decades. Of course, Uganda and Kenya opened the water, because Kampala was almost submerged because of the rising level of water from Lake Victoria. The digging of the Jonglei Canal that was stopped needs to be revised … For our land not to be submerged by flood, let’s allow this water to flow to those who need it in Egypt.”

General Taban referenced a UN Report detailing the 380,000 civilians displaced due to recent Sudd Wetland flooding and stated: “The solution lies in opening the waterways and resuming the drilling of the Jonglei Canal, based on the conditions and interest of South Sudan in the first place.”

General Taban had worked closely with South Sudan’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Manawa Gatkouth, who had been the first to revive this project since the 2011 partition, submitting a proposal to the South Sudan Transitional Council in December 2021.

This proposal grew directly out of agreements to build cooperative water projects that Gatkouth reached with the Egyptian government in September 2020.

At the time, the Egyptian minister of water resources stated that “Egypt would increase the number of development projects for collecting and storing rainwater, with the aim of serving the South Sudanese people.”

Boots on the ground: The west returns

Expectedly, the Sudanese crisis has drawn attention due to the involvement of Anglo-American military forces. On 23 April, US President Joe Biden announced a War Powers Resolution to deploy troops in Sudan, Djibouti, and Ethiopia.

Where all other nations quickly moved to remove their citizens and diplomatic staff out of harm’s way, 16,000 US civilians have been left without support, providing a convenient excuse to insert US military forces into the picture to “restore order.”

US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland’s surprise appearance in the region on 9 March is also worth noting. One of the key architects of Ukraine’s transformation into a confrontational state against Russia, Nuland bragged during her visit that she discussed a “democratic transition in Sudan,” along with her humanitarian concerns for Somalia and Ethiopia.

Sudan, incidentally, is dependent on wheat imports, 85 percent of which originate from Ukraine and Russia.

To date, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds over 300 separate civil society organizations in Africa, and at least 13 in Sudan – all of which use the tried and tested tactic of weaponizing pro-west local liberals to destroy their own nations under the cover of “democracy building,” human rights, and “anti-corruption” actions.

Conversely, the Global South increasingly views the rising multipolar powers China, Russia, and their growing coterie of allies, as advancing a non-hypocritical approach to supporting vital infrastructure projects and genuine national interests.

These new actors on the international stage prioritize the completion of large-scale water, food, energy, and transportation networks, which not only benefit all the involved parties, but also positively impact regions beyond national borders.

These transformative projects, such as Beijing’s ambitious, multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), promote unity and progress by overcoming the tribalism, bigotry, poverty, and scarcity that the west has historically relied on to sow conflict. By increasing education levels and providing quality jobs across tribal and national boundaries, economic development ignites dignity and innovation that poses a threat to oligarchs with imperialistic tendencies.

While the causes of the Sudan crisis are not fully understood, it is clear that there are powerful forces at work seeking to shape the outcome for their own benefit. However, the answer to Sudan’s problems lies in a different approach – one that prioritizes infrastructure development and nation-building rather than narrow geopolitical interests and regime change.

أرقام مرعبة لواشنطن حول تدفق المليارات النفطية و الغازية على الخزانة الروسية

Interpreting Turkey’s Opposition To Finland & Sweden’s Planned NATO Membership

14 MAY 2022

By Andrew Korybko

American political analyst

The more that President Erdogan exposes the manipulative means through which countries like those two NATO aspirants support terrorism against the Turkish people, the more that their international reputations will be damaged, which will in turn harm their influence seeing as how Finland and Sweden’s are disproportionately derived from their soft power.

Turkish President Erdogan said on Friday that his country isn’t supportive of Finland and Sweden’s planned NATO membership because of their governments’ backing of the terrorist-designated PKK. This Kurdish separatist group is responsible for multiple terrorist attacks across the decades, but its Syrian wing, the YPG, is regarded by the US-led West as a key ally against ISIS. Ankara and Washington’s polar opposite stances towards that branch are the reason why they began falling out in the middle of the last decade. This issue has once again come to the fore in light of two recent events.

The first is of course Finland and Sweden’s planned NATO membership, while the second is the US’ decision to waive its anti-Syrian sanctions in the YPG-controlled northeast of the Arab Republic. President Erdogan also expressed his opposition to that move on the same day that he condemned those two countries’ support of Kurdish terrorists. These developments created the opportunity for the Turkish leader to once again raise awareness of his country’s stance towards that group and its regional branches in the hopes of pressuring the US-led West to distance themselves from it.

The challenge that he’s forced to confront, however, is that his mutual defense ally considers terrorist-designated Kurdish separatists to be more important regional partners than his own country. The reason for this is that its Syrian branch serves as the US’ proxies for continuing its military occupation of the agriculturally and energy-rich northeastern region as well as its means for manipulating its stalled constitutional reform process. From the perspective of the US’ grand strategic interests, these objectives are considered to take precedence over retaining ties with its decades-long Turkish ally.

Although it’ll never be openly admitted, America might also be preparing to employ these same Kurdish groups as anti-Turkish proxies in the scenario that those countries drift further apart and Washington considers it advantageous to utilize them as a means for punishing its wayward ally. It’s this possibility that concerns Turkish strategists the most since it could prove to be extremely destabilizing for their geostrategically positioned civilization-state. That’s why President Erdogan uses every relevant opportunity to pressure the US-led West to cut off its Kurdish proxies.

It’s extremely unlikely that this well-intended campaign against America will ever succeed though, but it at the very least raises maximum global awareness about its unprincipled policy of literally endangering the security of its decades-long mutual defense ally all for the purpose of advancing its interests vis a vis Syria at Turkey’s expense. Furthermore, it should go without saying that the US’ European partners like Finland and Sweden are unlikely to change their governments’ policy of wholeheartedly supporting terrorist-designated Kurdish separatists because Washington exercises hegemonic influence over them.

Even so, Turkey can still hit those two countries where it hurts the most by continuing to talk about their scandalous support of the PKK. That’s because a disproportionate share of their influence is derived from their soft power, particularly the impression that they’re supposedly neutral, principled, and peaceful states that are shining examples in all respects for the entire international community. The dark reality, however, is that their backing of the PKK exposes them as American stooges. Moreover, it also suggests that their so-called “humanitarian policies” are actually anti-humanitarian to the core.

Finland and Sweden essentially consider the Kurds to be a so-called “oppressed minority” in West Asia, including in Turkey. Their unipolar liberal-globalist worldview is such that they believe that those people deserve the US-led West’s full support as a result, to which end they aim to disguise their tacit endorsement of those separatist-terrorist Kurdish groups like the PKK on a so-called “humanitarian basis”. Its Syrian wing’s rebranding as anti-ISIS fighters who saved their people from their terrorist rivals’ planned genocide of them endeared the PKK in the hearts and minds of many Westerners.

This in turn facilitated the US-led West’s efforts to continue supporting them in all respects on a false humanitarian pretext. The more that President Erdogan talks about this and exposes the manipulative means through which countries like those two NATO aspirants support terrorism against the Turkish people, the more that their international reputations will be damaged, which will in turn harm their influence seeing as how Finland and Sweden’s are disproportionately derived from their soft power. In other words, this is an asymmetrical response to the threat that they pose to his country’s security.

That said, it remains unclear whether Turkey will formally block their NATO membership, which could provoke an intensification of the US-led West’s years-long Hybrid War against it that he might not be prepared for fully defending against at this time. If he ultimately supports their applications, then it can be considered that he did so knowing that the alternative could have been an exacerbation of the threats that his formal allies are nowadays posing to Turkey’s national security. In any case, it’s clear that Turkey’s troubled ties with the US-led West won’t improve anytime soon no matter what happens.

• Turkey Opposes Sweden and Finland Joining NATO

Iran, The Point of Strength in The Strategic Agreement with China

Charles Abi Nader

None of the serious observers of the strategic engagement between the East and the West in general, specially between the Americans and their Western and regional allies on the one hand, and Russia, China, Iran and their allies on the other, imagined that there would be a capacity for the US-led Western camp to succeed in encircling the aforementioned Eastern camp triangle, neither economically, nor politically, nor militarily.

The latest strategic deal between China and Iran confirmed the equation [of the inability of encircling]; it articles, points, and directions it tackled showed that the US-led Western camp, in addition to its failure in imposing its authority in the East, it is indeed close to be encircled itself by the trio of knights of the stated Eastern camp.

From the political-strategic perspective, once the extent and validity of this convention is revealed in broad geography on one hand, or in the future regarding its period [25 years], or in the specialization of the strengths of the two states’ economies, especially in fixing a permanent, strong and honest importer of Iran’s oil and gas [China], this is enough for the world, especially the Americans, to forget the possibility of and impact of sanctions on Iran and to consider that any pressure on it, no matter how long it may last, will remain ineffective.

From the economic perspective, the aforementioned agreement between China and Iran revealed much strength, and the numbers allocated to finance large-scale projects indicate the magnitude of what awaits economic relations between the two countries. The area of the work sector and the extension of these projects, east, north-east, north-west and south, starting from the western front of this economic front, i.e. from Iran, through its landlines or through its vital ports, are sufficient to predict the size and magnitude of the effects of these projects in terms of trade, industry, business and exchange.

Concerning the military or military-strategic subject, which can be separated from the political and economic ones, where it remains linked to the level of tension of relations and the seriousness of the engagement between the two camps, it can be divided into two main parts:

First: Concerning the possibility that the engagement may lead to a war, this possibility sounds far-fetched. There will be no winner, no loser, no victor, and no defeated, since any military confrontation between these poles [the three most powerful countries including Iran] would be devastating to a wide range of the world’s geography. And of course, most parties of this confrontation have sufficient nuclear deterrence or destructive capabilities to cause mass destruction.

Second: Concerning the armaments, the acquisition of qualitative capabilities, and the imposition of control and influence, we can deduce how sensitive is Iran’s geographical position and the importance of its specific capabilities and qualitative weapons. This will be a vert strong point serving the interest of this strategic alliance with China as the following:

Concerning military capability:

– Iran has demonstrated, in various confrontations or engagements that took place in the Gulf region, the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman, that it possesses the appropriate deterrence weapons capable of achieving and imposing a strategic balance, including ballistic or winged missiles and from the world’s most advanced unmanned aircraft, as well as the latest maritime capabilities capable of controlling the world’s most sensitive waterway.

– By confronting American units deployed in the region and Washington allies, primarily the ‘Israeli’ entity, Iran has been able to impose a strategic deterrent balance, demonstrated by its units in several incidents where it has been able to outperform, by shooting down, capturing and controlling the most sophisticated American surveillance, espionage and attack aircraft to most naval-sea confrontations in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, between American and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard units, where all American and non-American military ships or cruisers entering Iranian territorial waters are treated as peers.

Concerning the geographical location:

–  Iran’s geographical location plays a pivotal role in any strategic engagement or any competition over influence or control between the major powers, as Iran is located on the Gulf and at the entrances to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, the most influential connection point between the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait on the one hand, and between the northern Indian Ocean and the South China Sea on the other hand. These marine areas are currently considered the world’s most important engagement spot, and most countries that are able to seize them or to own more than one naval fulcrum are competing on them. Iran represents through that position, and as a key partner, the most influential strength in consolidating China’s situation and position against the United States of America.

– Additionally, the importance of Iran’s geographical location is not limited to strengthening the elements of the alliance with China; Through this distinct geography, Iran represents more than a suitable fulcrum for any similar alliance with Russia, which needs a key supporter from its southern backyard, towards Central Asia or towards the South Caucasus. Iran’s position as a partner or as an ally of Moscow is capable of playing a defining and influential role in any confrontation imposed on Russia from the South.

Hence, considering this distinct geographical location of Iran and its effective capabilities, the latter is arguably the most influential strength in the strategic agreement with China or in any similar agreement with Russia.