In the first visit of its kind... the Chinese Foreign Minister arrives in Kabul

In the first visit of its kind... the Chinese Foreign Minister arrives in Kabul

    Thursday, March 24, 2022   No comments

 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Kabul today, according to a Taliban official, a week before Beijing hosts a meeting between Afghanistan's neighbors to discuss ways to help the country after the Taliban seized power.

In the context, a government official, Ahmed Yasir, wrote in a tweet, that "the Chinese Foreign Minister arrived in Kabul to meet officials from the Islamic Emirate."

The minister arrived in Kabul from Islamabad, where he participated, over two days, in a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

It is noteworthy that China shares with Afghanistan a small part of its border, 76 kilometers at a very high altitude, but Beijing has long feared that its neighbor could become a base for separatists and Islamists from the Uighur ethnicity.

Before the Taliban seized power on August 15, Beijing sought to maintain its ties with the hardline Islamic movement, at a time when US and NATO forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan.

FBI Documents Link Saudi Spy to Attacks on 9/11

FBI Documents Link Saudi Spy to Attacks on 9/11

    Monday, March 21, 2022   No comments

 A 510-page secret FBI report, written in 2017 and declassified last week without any fanfare by the FBI or Justice Department, concludes that the California-based Saudi spy, Omar al Bayoumi, not only helped several 9/11 hijackers to find housing in San Diego, but that there was a “50/50 chance” he “had advanced knowledge” of their deadly plans.

While heavily redacted, the report offers the most direct link yet between the Saudi government, its secretive royal family and the team of 19 operatives of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network who hijacked four jetliners on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. 

The findings in the FBI report are coming to light just as the Biden administration is reportedly reaching out to several oil producing nations — including Saudi Arabia — to increase production and help curtail rising gas prices across the United States. Whether the FBI’s report will impact negotiations with Saudi oil officials remains to be seen. But for decades, critics have pointed to Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves and their importance to the economies of many western nations as a reason the U.S. has not pushed harder for more information on alleged Saudi links to 9/11 and other Islamist-based terrorist attacks.  

Read the FBI Report

   

On the anniversary of the outbreak of the events that led to his islation by Gulf States, President Assad of Syria visits the UAE

On the anniversary of the outbreak of the events that led to his islation by Gulf States, President Assad of Syria visits the UAE

    Friday, March 18, 2022   No comments

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited UAE, where he met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Friday. 

The Emirates News Agency said that the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi received the Syrian President, and discussed with him "brotherly relations, cooperation and joint coordination."

The agency added that the UAE Prime Minister affirmed his country's keenness to "discover new paths for constructive cooperation with Syria, and to monitor opportunities through which various aspects of cooperation can be pushed forward."

The agency indicated that Assad left the UAE after meeting with senior officials.

The UAE has been at the fore in the efforts of some Arab countries to normalize relations with Syria in recent times.

Al-Assad received in Damascus the UAE Foreign Minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, last November, and this was the first visit of a high-ranking Gulf official since several Gulf countries cut diplomatic relations with the Syrian government following the outbreak of violence in Syria in 2011. The United States expressed its dissatisfaction with the visit.

Other Gulf States, especially, Qatar, is holding back normalization with the Syrian government given their initial support of the armed groups that wanted to overthrow the Syrian government. In 2012, Qatar hosted the Arab League Summit, its leader, Hamad, offered Syria's seat to an opposition figure, which they recognized as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people. Saudi Arabia, too, held the position that "Assad must go--peacefully or violently." 

It is not clear if UAE will try to mend relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia, though it is unlikely that it will advocate for the warming of relations between Qatar and Syria goven that UAE still has frosty relations with its neighbor.

View from China: China sends tough signal ahead of Xi-Biden talk to set firm position on bilateral ties, Ukraine issue

View from China: China sends tough signal ahead of Xi-Biden talk to set firm position on bilateral ties, Ukraine issue

    Friday, March 18, 2022   No comments

 

Just hours before the phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden on Friday, China, in a rare move, sent tough signals, stating it will never accept US threats and coercion over the Ukraine issue and vowing to make a strong response if the US takes measures harming China's legitimate interests. 

In an exclusive interview with the Global Times, an anonymous Chinese official said China accepted the US' proposal for the phone call between the heads of the two countries on China-US relations and the Ukraine situation out of considerations of bilateral relations, promoting peace talks and urging the US to take right stance. 

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Saudi Arabia executes 81 people in one day; No reaction from Western Democracies

Saudi Arabia executes 81 people in one day; No reaction from Western Democracies

    Monday, March 14, 2022   No comments

 Saudi Arabia beheaded at least 81 people in one day, including seven Yemenis and one Syrian, state media reported on Saturday. 

Activists said, 41 of them were Shia Muslims from the eastern Qatif region.

The mass carrying out of capital punishment appears to be the largest execution in the kingdom in its modern history. The total number of those put to death surpassed that of the January 1980 mass execution of militants convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which saw 63 people beheaded.

Human rights group Reprieve condemned the executions and said it feared for prisoners of conscience, including individuals arrested as children, on Saudi death row. 

"The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow,"  said Reprieve deputy director Soraya Bauwens in a statement. 

"Just last week the crown prince told journalists he plans to modernise Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, only to order the largest mass execution in the country’s history.

Since taking power, Crown Prince Mohammed under his father has increasingly liberalized life in the kingdom, opening movie theaters, allowing women to drive and defanging the country's once-feared religious police.

However, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the crown prince also ordered the slaying and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, while overseeing airstrikes in Yemen that killed hundreds of civilians.

World reacts--or not

Other than Iran, no government, including Western democracies, reacted to the mass killing.  Iran has unilaterally suspended talks aimed at defusing longstanding tensions with regional rival Saudi Arabia, Iranian state media reported on March 13.

The New York Time noted the silence of Western demcracies linking it to events in Ukraine.

Noting that Western countries were looking to Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest oil producers, to help make up for the shortfall in oil supplies as many countries shun energy from Russia because of President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she added, “We cannot show our revulsion for Putin’s atrocities by rewarding those of the crown prince.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-executions.html 

Media Coverage Sample:

The West has instrumentalized human rights for its benefits and conveniently ignored it otherwise

The West has instrumentalized human rights for its benefits and conveniently ignored it otherwise

    Sunday, March 13, 2022   No comments

 Trusting governments with human rights matters is like trusting a wolf to watch over your sheep; this reality is more evident now with the Western governments' reaction to the war in Ukraine. Human rights are secondary to their economic interests. British government is making the case for this argument.

Britain defended, on Sunday, its efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production, after Western consumers began to feel the repercussions of sanctions imposed on Russia, and after the kingdom carried out record death sentences against 81 convicts in one day.

The Minister of Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, did not deny reports published on Saturday by "The Times" that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit Saudi Arabia within days.

And the newspaper reported that Johnson will seek to urge Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to help ease the impact of the sanctions imposed on Russia on Westerners against the backdrop of its invasion of Ukraine, after Britain and the United States announced a ban on Russian oil imports.

 

China delivers first J-10CE fighter jets to Pakistan in a milestone move

China delivers first J-10CE fighter jets to Pakistan in a milestone move

    Friday, March 11, 2022   No comments

The Pakistan Air Force on Friday held an induction ceremony for the first batch of six J-10CE fighter jets in Kamra, with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan attending the event.

The official commissioning of China's new-generation main battle aircraft into the Pakistan Air Force marks the systematized, organic export of such aviation equipment by China, and is yet another major milestone in the export of China's advanced aviation equipment, the Global Times learned from the aircraft's maker, state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), on Friday.

With the delivery of the J-10CEs, China and Pakistan opened a new chapter in aviation defense cooperation, and it will significantly contribute to the further deepening of the China-Pakistan All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership, AVIC said.

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Welcome To Ukrainistan

Welcome To Ukrainistan

    Friday, March 11, 2022   No comments

... 

As soon as the war in Ukraine broke, leaders of that country called on people from around the world to join their fight. There is no evidence that Ukraine ever sent its people, in such an organized fashion, to support other communities devastated by wars, many were illegal wars of aggression. Yet, here we are, Ukraine is enabling its embassies around the world to facilitate the transfer of volunteers. As expected, Russian officials appear to do the same: they will transfer volunteers from the Middle East and Africa to eastern Ukraine to join the fight there. Another proxy-war is under way.

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Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan to Western leaders: "We are not your Slaves"

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan to Western leaders: "We are not your Slaves"

    Tuesday, March 08, 2022   No comments

Ukraine Russia War: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday responded to a joint letter by the heads of diplomatic missions of the European Union urging Pakistan to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In response to this joint letter, Imran said, ‘What do you think about us.. You think that we are your slaves.. That we will do whatever you say?’

Imran Khan fiercely targeted Western envoys during a rally in Islamabad on Sunday. He said that I want to ask the ambassadors of the European Union whether they have sent a similar letter to India to abstain from voting? Given that Pakistan’s arch rival had also not participated, the EU did not send the letter to India. He said that the United Nations has never condemned India for its actions in Kashmir.

Imran Khan further says, ‘We are friends with Russia, and we are also friends with America, we also have good relations with China and Europe. We are not in any camp.” Khan said Pakistan would remain “neutral” and work with those who are trying to end the war in Ukraine.

After SoS, Blinken appeared to geenlight Poland sending fighter jets to Ukraine, the Pentagon clarifies: ‘No Decisions Made’

After SoS, Blinken appeared to geenlight Poland sending fighter jets to Ukraine, the Pentagon clarifies: ‘No Decisions Made’

    Tuesday, March 08, 2022   No comments

The Ukrainian government asked Western nations to supply them fighter jets or impose no-fly-zone over Ukraine. US state department appeared to support the idea of Poland providing such military support. Russia responded saying that any such move by a European nation will make them directly involved in the conflict and Russia will respond accordingly. Once that threat was issued and when Poland felt the lack of support should Russia respond, the Polish government commented on it sending fighter jets to Ukraine: "Fake News".

 On Monday, the Pentagon downplayed the chances of Poland sending Ukraine Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said such a plan would get a “green light” from the US.

Blinken said that the US was in discussions with Poland to replenish Warsaw’s fleet with US-made jets if it transfers the MiG-29s to Ukraine. But as recently as Sunday, Polish officials have characterized the idea of Poland sending warplanes to Ukraine as “fake news.”

When asked about the comments from Polish officials, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “no decisions have been made,” and that the decision was ultimately up to Poland.

“This will be a sovereign decision for a nation-state to make. Whether it’s Poland or anybody else, that should they want to provide aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force, that’s a sovereign decision that they can make,” he said.

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