بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Headline News 29/12/2018
Headlines:
Pentagon trying to save American plan for Syria after Trump Withdrawal Decision
Bangladesh Elections Exposes Real Face of ‘Democracy’
Germany resisting US Attempts to create New European Balance of Power with Russia
Details:
Pentagon trying to save American plan for Syria after Trump Withdrawal Decision
According to Reuters:
U.S. commanders planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria are recommending that Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State be allowed to keep U.S.-supplied weapons, four U.S. officials said, a move that would likely anger NATO ally Turkey.
Three of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the recommendations were part of discussions on a draft plan by the U.S. military. It is unclear what the Pentagon will ultimately recommend to the White House.
Discussions are still at an early stage inside the Pentagon and no decision has yet been made, the officials said. The plan will then be presented to the White House in the coming days with U.S. President Donald Trump making the final decision.
America has been following a very specific plan for Syria since the time of the Obama administration. Fearful of taking the lead, militarily, after the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, America has fought the Syrian war largely with the support of other countries, some fighting on the side of the revolution and some on the side of the government, principally Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi, each of which was assigned a particular area of operation within Syria. But the American military presence has been central to micromanaging the entire effort, ensuring that no force exceeds the area designated to it, for example limiting Turkey to the west of Manbij in northwest Syria while the Kurds take the northeast. Maintaining separate areas for such forces was not only essential to coordinating multiple forces in such a small region but is also part of the post-war solution that America wishes to impose. America wants to reorganise Syria as it has reorganised Iraq, a decentralised state built on sectarian and ethnic lines.
America planned well, but it failed to plan effectively for the unpredictability of President Donald Trump, who spontaneously decided to withdraw US troops from Syria in the middle of a phone call with Turkish President Erdogan, as the above article goes on to explain:
A phone call between Trump and Erdogan led to the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria.
In the call two weeks ago, Trump had been expected to deliver a standard warning to the Turkish president over his plan to launch a crossborder attack targeting U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, U.S. officials said.
Instead, in the course of the conversation, Trump reshaped U.S. policy in the Middle East, abandoning a quarter of Syrian territory and handing Turkey the job of finishing off Islamic State in Syria.
Consequently, the American establishment in general and the Pentagon in particular are scrambling to find alternate ways to continue with the American plan for Syria without the military presence to ensure its proper execution.
Allah (swt) says in the Noble Quran:
[وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُ اللَّـهُ ۖ وَاللَّـهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ]
“But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners.” [Al-Anfal: 30]
Bangladesh Elections Exposes Real Face of ‘Democracy’
According to the Guardian:
Bangladeshis will vote on Sunday on whether to grant a record third consecutive term to a prime minister who has overseen one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but whose government is accused of rampant human rights abuses.
Sheikh Hasina, 71, is favoured to remain PM after a bloody election campaign that opposition activists have described as the most stifled in the 47 years since her father became the country’s first leader.
Scores of opposition figures including Hasina’s major rival, Khaled Zia, have been jailed or disappeared in the months leading to the election. International election monitors and press freedom groups have complained of unnecessary delays in issuing visas.
“Police harassment of opposition activists has reached unprecedented levels,” Kamal Hossain, a human rights lawyer who is serving as the candidate of the joint opposition, told the Guardian.
Hossain, 82, said around 70 candidates from an alliance of opposition parties were too afraid to campaign in their constituencies after a spate of attacks on rallies and party offices by armed thugs.
Many Muslim countries implement democracy or strive to implement democracy, considering it to be morally superior to authoritarian models of government, such as monarchy or dictatorship. But the ugly reality of democracy is that it is designed to perpetuate the existing ruling class, and sometimes even the existing political regime, as is happening right now in Bangladesh.
The fantasy of democracy has never been implemented anywhere in the world at the level of a country, nor arguably even at the level of a city as even in ancient Athens only a minority of the population were entitled to citizenship. The ruling system of the West is in actual fact ‘representative democracy’, a contradiction in terms, in which the masses are allowed to choose, once every few years, between different factions of the ruling elite. And because the system is fully controlled by this elite, including the legislation on which it is based, it is impossible to displace them from within the system, i.e. using ‘democratic’ means. Stable modern ‘democracies’ function relatively smoothly because of common interest and mutual compromise between members of the elite. The turmoil in Bangladesh is because of a fracture in the ruling elite, with one element refusing to compromise with the other. Historically, the Awami League followed a pro-Indian agenda, while the BNP followed a pro-American agenda. But with the shift of India to the American camp, the Awami League has been able to present itself as both pro-Indian and pro-American, thus isolating the BNP internationally.
Islam has provided a very different form of ruling, in which the Khalifah is directly accountable to the state citizenry based on a fixed shar’a that cannot be manipulated at will by an elite. The internal machinations of the Bangladeshi ruling elite are only making more obvious the true reality of their evil system of rule to the sincere Muslims of Bangladesh. With Allah’s permission, the Ummah shall return to establish the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) that will rid Muslims of treacherous ruling factions following the agenda of the disbelieving foreigners.
Germany resisting US attempts to create new European Balance of Power with Russia
According to Reuters:
Germany would strongly oppose any move to station new medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe if a key Cold War-era arms control treaty is scrapped, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told DPA.
“Under no circumstances should Europe become a stage for a rearmament debate,” the German news agency quoted him as saying in an interview published on Wednesday.
“Stationing of new medium-range missiles would be met with broad resistance in Germany,” he said.
The United States has threatened to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which bans Moscow and Washington from stationing short- and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe.
Russia has said it was planning for a U.S. deployment of new nuclear missiles in Europe following Washington’s planned withdrawal from the treaty.
Germany’s Maas said: “Nuclear rearmament is most certainly the wrong answer.”
Ever since Christian Europe compromised on the Peace of Westphalia, the West has seen a continuous ongoing struggle between the Western powers, at times resulting in not only war but world war. A key factor in the perpetuation of this struggle has been the concept of balance of power, elevated to the level of a strategic doctrine. The United States is but the latest practitioner of such a doctrine, seeking to balance the German-French axis with Russia, drawing Russia into Eastern Europe while also bolstering West European countries in opposition to Russian advances. The threatened abandonment of the INF treaty will only acerbate these tensions.
Balance of power is a useful tactic that was historically applied by the Khilafah State also in particular situations. But the adoption of this style as a permanent method, as key Western powers have done, has resulted in a highly unstable world dominated by multiple regional and global arms races and the senseless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction capable of annihilating entire nations.
The people of the West need to accept that the roots of present world disorder lie in their own civilizational norms. Despite the flaws of Christianity, the West’s adoption of secular materialist thinking has been a huge backward leap. With Allah’s permission, the world shall soon witness the return of a civilisation based on a spiritual creed with values that far transcend narrow materialistic greed.