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May 2013
Despite horrific repression, the U.S. should stay out of Syria
By Stephen Zunes: The worsening violence and repression in Syria has left policymakers scrambling to think of ways the United States could help end the bloodshed and support those seeking to dislodge the Assad regime. The desperate desire to “do something” has led to increasing calls for the United States to provide military aid to armed insurgents or even engage in direct military intervention, especially in light of the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. The question on the mind of almost everyone who has followed the horror as it has unfolded over the past two years is, “What we can do?” Read More
Pakistan elections do not augur well for President Zardari
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: May 11 elections have drastically changed the political map of Pakistan. At least three surprises sprung from the election result which will have grave repercussions for the political spectrum. The former ruling party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was confined to the province Sindh. The Awami National Party was demolished in Khyber Pakhtunkhwah. President Asif Ali Zardari, who is also the co-chairman of the PPP, will not get a second term in office. The PML-N sweeps across Punjab (the most populated province of Pakistan), has ensured that Mian Nawaz Sharif will not need any coalition partners, except for the sake of keeping a federal face by including some PML-Functional, Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI-F men in his cabinet. Read More
Israel, Syria and the United States
By Stephen Zunes: A billboard of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in Baalbak, Lebanon, Jan. 22, 2013. (Photo: Lynsey Addario / The New York Times) To whatever extent the Israeli May 6 attack on Syria may have inflicted material damage on the regime's war-making capability, it has allowed an untimely political victory for that brutal and besieged regime. Though Israel's devastating bombing raid may have been focused on missiles or other military hardware bound for the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, the attack will just feed into President Bachar al-Assad's narrative that his secular nationalist government is not fighting a popular rebellion but is instead the victim of an international conspiracy of conservative Arab monarchies, radical Islamists, Western powers and now Israel. Read More
Syria: U.S. involvement could make things even worse
Stephen Zunes: The worsening violence and repression in Syria has left policymakers scrambling to think of ways our governments could help end the bloodshed and support those seeking to dislodge the Assad regime. The desperate desire to "do something" has led to increasing calls for the United States to provide military aid to armed insurgents or even engage in direct military intervention, especially in light of the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. The question on the mind of almost everyone who has followed the horror as it has unfolded over the past two years is, "What we can do?" The short answer, unfortunately, is not much. Read More
March 2013
Remembering those responsible on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War
By Stephen Zunes: This March 19 marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The U.S. war and occupation has resulted in the deaths of up to half a million Iraqis, the vast majority of whom are civilians, leaving over 600,000 orphans. More than 1.3 million Iraqis have been internally displaced and nearly twice that many have fled into exile. Read More
Abdus Sattar Ghazali’s Islam and Muslims in the Post 9/11 America
By Arthur Scott: Race as a political tool has always been prominent strategy in the American landscape as exemplified by Black segregation and Jim Crow, by the “Yellow Scare” leading to Chinese Exclusion and the Gentleman’s Agreement which limited the number of Japanese entering the country leading to Japanese internment during the World War II. Similarly throughout the twentieth century hysterical outburst against communism raised its head taking the form of the “Red Scare” first with the Palmer Raids in 1920, reaching its apotheosis under Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings in the 1950’s in which thousands of Americans were terrorized and had their civil liberties compromised. Today the Far Right has gone ballistic over gun control seeing in it a governmental/Obama conspiracy to disarm “White America” and to marginalize the Second Amendment. It is no coincidence that these episodes are described in terms of color, for color touches on a deep aspect of the American psychic racism, which is endemic in the American culture going back to first encounters with the indigenous peoples who were described by the Anglo Puritan settlers as “Red.” Abdus Sattar Ghazali, a noted Pakistani and Middle East scholar, in his just published book - Islam & Muslims In The Post- 9/11 Era - discusses in great detail the impact of the “Green Terror” on the civil liberties of the seven million Muslims, who comprise the American Islamic community, since 9/11. Read More
Ghazali Describes the Post- 9/11 American Muslim Experience
By A.H. Cemendtaur: Two days after veteran journalist Abdus Sattar Ghazali’s book ‘Islam & Muslims in Post 9/11 America’ was promoted through a book review event in Newark, an appeal filed by the lawyers of Hamid Hayat got rejected by the federal appeals court, upholding Hayat’s 24-year prison sentence -- the underlying premise of Ghazali’s book got highlighted even further: In Post 9-11 US, the state sees its Muslim citizens as the enemy within and is ready to err on the side of wrongful incarceration of Muslim Americans based solely on suspicion. Read More
Turmoil in Balochistan – the Indian factor
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: US Secretary of defense Chuck Hagel suggested in a previously unreleased 2011 speech that India has for many years sponsored terrorist activities against Pakistan in Afghanistan. In a speech, delivered at Oklahoma's Cameron University, Chuck Hagel said: "India for some time has always used Afghanistan as a second front, and India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border" "And you can carry that into many dimensions, the point being the tense, fragmented relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been there for many, many years," remarked Chuck Hagel who was a US senator at the time. A video containing these remarks was uploaded by Washington Free Beacon. Read More
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