Tajikistan officially banned the hijab, imposing hefty fines in its latest move to curb Islamic influence.

Beni Mellal – The Central Asian nation of Tajikistan officially prohibited the wearing of hijabs and other “alien garments” this week, as the country’s parliament passed a new bill regulating Islamic clothing and Eid celebrations.

The bill, approved by the upper house of parliament, Majlisi Milli, on June 19, comes after years of an unofficial clampdown on the hijab in the Muslim-majority country.

Under the new law, individuals wearing hijabs or other banned religious clothing could face hefty fines of up to 7,920 somonis (approximately $700). Companies allowing employees to wear prohibited garments risk penalties of 39,500 somonis ($3,500). Government officials and religious leaders face even steeper fines of 54,000-57,600 somonis ($4,800-$5,100) if found in violation.

The bill also restricts children’s participation in festivities and gift-giving traditions associated with the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Government officials stated these measures aim to ensure “proper education and safety” of children during the holidays.

Tajikistan has seen an influx of Islamic clothing from the Middle East in recent years, which authorities view as linked to extremism and a threat to the country’s cultural identity. In a March address, President Emomali Rahmon referred to the hijab as “foreign clothing.” The government has long promoted traditional Tajik national dress as an alternative.

The new law represents an escalation of Tajikistan’s unofficial restrictions on Islamic garb. Since 2007, the hijab has been banned for students, with the prohibition later extending to all public institutions. Authorities have also informally discouraged bushy beards in men, with reports of police forcibly shaving thousands of beards over the past decade.

Human rights organizations have criticized Tajikistan’s hijab ban as a violation of religious freedom. With Muslims comprising over 98% of the population, the law is likely to face significant opposition within Tajik society as it goes into effect.

Source

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s itinerary for his unscheduled visit to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, remains undisclosed.

In an unannounced visit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lands in Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday, and gets greeted by Saudi officials, including the national security advisor and ambassador to Kiev, according to reports by the official Saudi Press Agency.

As of now, no details regarding Zelensky’s itinerary have been made public.

In recent weeks, Zelensky has been on a global tour to garner support and encourage attendance for an upcoming summit in Switzerland this weekend. His travels have included visits to traditional European Union allies, as well as countries in the Middle East and Asia that maintain closer ties with Russia.

Argentina’s president to join Ukraine summit in Switzerland

Argentinian President Javier Milei has opted to attend the forthcoming summit in Switzerland, according to reports from the Clarin newspaper.

He will be accompanied by the economy and defense ministers. Initially, Argentine media indicated that Milei intended to skip the G7 summit in Italy and the Switzerland conference, along with other European events, to be in Argentina for national holidays. However, he later revised his schedule to include the G7 summit.

The newspaper reported on Tuesday that Milei has once more altered his plans at the eleventh hour and will also journey to Switzerland. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky purportedly conveyed a special message to Milei, urging him to at least be present at the opening ceremony of the conference.

Argentine Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Defense Minister Luis Petri will accompany Milei to Switzerland, as reported by the newspaper. It is also worth noting that Petri is anticipated to participate in a meeting of the contact group concerning Ukraine’s defense.

Switzerland is set to host a high-level conference on the war in Ukraine at the Buergenstock resort near Lucerne from June 15-16. 90 countries and organizations have affirmed their attendance at the conference.

Source: English

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Expert Analysis

“Bringing in Palestine Investment Fund chief Mohammed Mustafa and pushing out the current prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh is the rearranging of the deck chairs on the Palestinian Titanic. Both men are part of the problem. They are both cronies of Mahmoud Abbas. Neither figure has the power or will to reform the PA. This is not a serious effort to bring better governance to the West Bank, let alone Gaza. The United States must demand more.” — Jonathan Schanzer, FDD Senior Vice President for Research
“The PA has become largely irrelevant and desperately needs to be reformed. Palestinians overwhelmingly reject the authority’s corruption and repression. Replacing one Abbas loyalist with another is not the reform the Palestinians need.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst

PA Failing to Reform

Washington has repeatedly said that a “revitalized” PA should govern Gaza after the war. However, concerns remain over the PA’s ability to govern an independent Palestinian state, especially one ruled in coordination with Hamas. Abbas, who is in the 20th year of a four-year term, has presided over a corrupt and ineffective government that has lost legitimacy among the Palestinian people. The PA also continues to provide controversial welfare payments for Palestinian terrorists or their surviving families, and allows Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups to operate in the West Bank without significant limitations.

In Search of Palestinian Unity

The West Bank-based terrorist organization Hamas dismissed Shtayyeh’s resignation and said that it “only makes sense if it comes within the context of national consensus arrangements for the next phase.” Hamas is expected to participate in talks with other Palestinian factions in Moscow from February 29 through March 2. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Special Envoy for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov invited as many as 14 Palestinian groups, including Fatah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, from various Middle Eastern countries to participate.

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Latest Developments

The third-most senior Hamas figure, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed on January 2 in a Beirut blast that Lebanese authorities blamed on Israel. Arouri was among at least four people who died in an Israeli drone strike on a Hamas media office in the southern Dahiyeh suburb of the Lebanese capital, a Hezbollah stronghold, authorities said. Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

After Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, Arouri was the top-ranked Hamas official. He pursued an especially aggressive Palestinian terrorism strategy, with a focus on the West Bank, where he ordered the 2014 abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers, sparking a Gaza war. After a period of being headquartered in Turkey, Arouri relocated to Lebanon, where he spearheaded Hamas coordination with Hezbollah and their shared Iranian patron.

Expert Analysis

“Israel has openly vowed to take the Gaza war to all leaders of Hamas, no matter where they are. That Arouri apparently thought he might be immune in the Hezbollah heartland suggests a major miscalculation on the part of Hamas. The question now is how Hezbollah will calculate the risks of stepping up its own attacks on Israel in retaliation.” — Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO

“Israel sent a message to all terror allies of Iran that no matter where they hide, they will never be secure. Whether Hamas leaders reside in Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, or another country, they should assume their days are numbered. Hezbollah’s leadership must also factor this escalation into the group’s next move.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

“The elimination of Saleh al-Arouri stands as a significant blow to Hamas and a considerable victory for Israel in its current war against Palestinian terrorist groups. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this accomplishment is merely one of many goals Israel must achieve in order to dismantle Hamas and its partners.” — Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

Source: FDD

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Much like its ideological counterparts at HispanTV (Iranian-owned) and Actualidad RT (Russian-owned), Telesur wraps its incitement into a sophisticated and slick twenty-four-hour news platform through its website, broadcasts, and social media presence. Though it is difficult to gauge its influence, numbers suggest that Telesur’s message is impactful. Telesur has two million followers on its Spanish X account, 117,500 on its English X account, and more than half a million on Instagram. Its YouTube account has over 1.7 million subscribers, with 100,000 new subscribers and almost 7.4 million video views since October 7 (It also posts its videos on the Daily Motion).

The network traditionally pushes out conspiracy theories, fake news, “whataboutism,” and disinformation that serve a common agenda: demonize the West, undermine the credibility of Western news outlets, paint Western leaders as hypocrites, and promote a narrative of global resistance against America and its allies. Aware that a worldwide audience of half a billion Spanish speakers—including almost sixty million in the U.S.—could be receptive to its anti-imperialist spin, Telesur began broadcasts in 2005. Since then, Telesur has routinely packaged its allies’ imperialism as resistance, their terrorism as anti-terrorism, and their authoritarianism as democracy. It has platformed conspiracy theorists, like Thierry Meyssan, the French author of the 2002 screed, 9/11: The Big Lie, the earliest 9/11 “truther” libel, accusing the United States of orchestrating the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. It has also peddled anti-Semitic tropes, insinuating that “the Zionist Lobby” manipulates and controls U.S. media, falsely accusing Israelis of trafficking children and Israel of supporting ISIS.

Telesur news coverage since October 7, then, is hardly surprising. However, it has gained a new obsessive intensity, broadcasting a daily media diet of hatred. In its breaking news report on Hamas’ October 7 massacre, Telesur news anchor described that morning’s atrocities as an operation by the Hamas “resistance movement” in response to “continued Israeli aggressions.” The broadcast defined the event as “a new stage in the Palestinian struggle against Zionist occupation.” It then showed its viewers a news segment produced by their Syria-based correspondent, which made no mention of atrocities or Israeli civilian casualties. Telesur’s initial denial and distortion set the stage for the ensuing news coverage, which amplified a pro-Hamas narrative.

For example, after Western media corrected their reporting about Palestinian claims that on October 17, Israel bombarded the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, killing 500 people, Telesur doubled down, relying on a report from Al Jazeera.

Opinion pieces have been even more inflammatory than news segments, consistently espousing bigotry. Telesur commentators have routinely compared Israel to Nazism, denying and, at the same time, justifying the October 7 massacre. On October 9, as the gory details of Hamas atrocities were emerging, a blog entry celebrated them as a “very special page” in the history of the great battles for freedom. On October 15, TeleSur’s special envoy in Lebanon wrote a column entitled “Agony of a macabre implant,” where, after defining Israel as a European colonial-settler “implant” and accusing it of committing genocide, he proceeded to dismiss Hamas’ atrocities, lamenting a “Western media narrative, which focuses on Hamas, and not on the unprecedented fact of the united action of all Palestinian resistance organizations.”

After denial comes the systematic demonization of Israel through the casual recourse to antisemitic tropes, with Israel described as a worthy successor of Nazi Germany. 

On October 16, another blog post accused Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of pursuing a final solution in Gaza and pleaded that the international community should not allow “the Jews to continue murdering the Palestinians in their land.”

On October 21, another commentator evoked the old Antisemitic canard of Jewish control of world media to denounce what its author considered a global media coverup of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Those controlling the “spiral of silence” in the mainstream media were, according to the author, “the transnational Jewish lobby.” On November 3, the theme of a conspiracy of silence orchestrated by Israel, the United States, and “the hegemonic media” recurred in another column. Its goal, thundered the author, was to enable Israel to turn Gaza into “a Palestinian cemetery.” The next day, Telesur published another blog post accusing Israel, whose creation the author described as the machinations of the “international Zionist oligarchy,” of committing “the third largest genocide in history.” And on November 7, Chilean columnist Pablo Jofre Leal (an author frequently posting on HispanTV as well and a government advisor to Gabriel Boric’s ministry of health in Chile) attacked what he labeled “the Ukraine-Israel national socialist-national Zionist alliance,” called the Hamas massacres a “legitimate action of the Palestinian resistance,” and described Israel’s response as a modern version of 1942 Wannsee Conference, the Nazi gathering that finetuned Hitler’s final solution.

Telesur, whose broadcast includes an English language channel and a Washington, DC, based correspondent, continues to spread misinformation and incitement through the ether, the internet, and social media. Washington, whose battle against disinformation has taken multiple steps to curb Russia’s and Iran’s misinformation channels in the anglosphere, seems mostly oblivious to Spanish language propaganda by Maduro’s Venezuela, despite its ability to shape public opinion in Latin America.

Downplaying the importance of the battle of ideas in Spanish will have long-term implications, especially in Latin America, where the Maduro regime continues to leverage a long history of anti-Americanism to its own advantage. Commenting on Russia’s Spanish language propaganda in Latin America, Southern Command’s General Laura J. Richardson recently said, “In 2020, Russia Today (RT)’s Spanish-language media outlets more than doubled their social media followers from 7 million to over 18 million. These disinformation campaigns are just one part of Russia’s broader efforts to influence national elections throughout the region this year.”

With much of the region’s political winds blowing leftward, the pro-Iran and pro-Hamas echo chamber of the Maduro regime should draw as much urgent attention from the White House and State Department as Russia’s disinformation does.

If Washington does wake up to the threat, it can take three initial steps to address it. First, it can slap sanctions against Telesur, much like it did against Iran’s Press TV, for its key role in supporting censorship and televising forced confessions, and Russian state-owned propaganda outlets for their role in Russia’s disinformation campaign. Second, it can lobby the telecom private sector to have Telesur de-platformed. Third, it can appeal to U.S.-based social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, X, the Daily Motion, and YouTube, to ensure they restrict Venezuelan regime disinformation.

The pro-Hamas, pro-Iran disinformation that Telesur spews daily is inflammatory, inciteful, and rife with antisemitic hatred. Telesur should be treated as a foreign state influence operation of the Maduro dictatorship for its continued rhetoric inciting hatred against Jews and driving global antisemitism. It should not be given free rein. Washington has sanctioned similar media disinformation campaigns before. Telesur should not be an exception.

Source: FDD

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The Middle East & Ukraine on trial as a Putin-emboldened Xi Jinping is set to meet the US President 

China and Russia are strengthening their strategic partnership in the Middle East, which helps counterbalance the United States in the region. The countries share the opinion that the cause of the Israel-Palestine conflict was not the Hamas terrorist attacks, but an inability to guarantee the rights of the Palestinian people.

On October 18 this year, when US President Biden visited Israel, a high-level forum was held in Beijing to mark the 10th anniversary of the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative. In numerous photos, Russian President Vladimir Putin stands next to President Xi Jinping. The latter paved the way for Putin to return to the international arena, as the Russian President was not able to travel to major events abroad after the West introduced a warrant for his arrest. In addition to Xi Jinping, Putin also held individual meetings in Beijing with the leaders of eight other countries.

In his speech at the same forum, the Russian President unveiled plans to connect Russia to the Belt & Road Initiative.

In terms of Russia-China connectivity, in addition to the already existing Indian Ocean Sea Routes, (via both Suez and Vladivostok) from next year, the Arctic Ocean Northern Sea Route (NSR) will be operated year-round. The Trans-Siberian Railway is being expanded to include a north-south route connecting the NSR with China and other countries. On the eve of Putin’s visit to Beijing, mutual visa-free group tourist trips between China and Russia were resumed. Although Russia is generally wary of Chinese expansion into Siberia, in light of the new international environment it has clearly strengthened its resolve to live within China’s orbit.

In a map published in late August, Beijing showed as its own territory the entire island of Greater Ussuri, which China and Russia agreed to divide equally into east and west parts in 2004. At present, Russia cannot raise any objections on this matter. The island has strategic importance at the mouth of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers.

However, China is not a bad partner for Russia. Xi and Putin completed their speeches at the forum in the morning and held a three-hour summit in the afternoon, during which Xi Jinping addressed Putin as “my old friend.” Is there any other country today that treats the Russian president so generously?

So, what was discussed at the Sino-Russian summit? The most important topics appear to have been the rapidly changing situation around Palestine and strategic cooperation between China and Russia with an eye toward the United States.

Both leaders focused on economic policy in their speeches at the forum. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, economic and multilateral cooperation issues, including the expansion of BRICS, were discussed at the summit. However, shortly afterwards, at a press conference, Putin said that he had discussed Ukraine and Gaza issues in detail with Xi Jinping. It is believed that both sides are coordinating their global strategies to deal with these two critical issues.

Immediately after these discussions, on October 19, China’s international activity in the Middle East became more pronounced. Xi met with the Egyptian prime minister and advocated a solution to the Palestine problem through a “two-state plan” that would make Palestine independent, as well as increase Beijing’s cooperation with Arab countries. China’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, Zhai Junyi and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov held talks in Doha (Qatar). According to China’s State media outlet Xinhua, the root cause of the conflict is not Hamas’ terrorist attacks, but the failure to guarantee the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, and that China is working with Russia to resolve the issue. China expressed its intention to join Russia’s active position in proposing a UN resolution on the Gaza issue.

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping is attending the APEC 2023 forum, which has just begun and is being held in San Francisco. He is due to meet the US President on Wednesday (November 15). Will Beijing find it necessary to compromise with the United States?

In fact, the Xi administration is now moving in exactly the opposite direction. The Gaza issue has many important political aspects not only for Russia, but also for China’s global strategy. Unlike the military conflict in Ukraine, where the West supports the supposedly weak side, in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the United States firmly supports Israel, which is considered a strong party in the Middle East. However, for the Arab world, Israel is a symbol of colonialism imposed on the Palestinians by the West, which was unable to resolve the Jewish question on its own. Moreover, opposition to Israel, which has been roundly criticized for killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, is increasingly spreading to many developing countries. There is a growing sense in the global south that the United States is losing moral conscience.

Overall, the Middle East has recently become a key location in China’s global strategy. The Belt & Road Initiative has generally been well received in Central Asia and Africa. If China can effectively penetrate the Middle East and promote the BRI in the region, it will be able to connect its two most important zones of influence. This would allow China to divide the Western sphere of influence into zones in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.

China would like to see much more active cooperation with oil-producing countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, which are strengthening their autonomy vis-à-vis the United States. In addition, it is encouraging for Beijing that Russia has recently been increasing its presence in West Africa.

However, there is a certain amount of irony in the fact that China, which strongly claims that Taiwan is part of China, advocates Palestinian independence. There is a possibility that the United States will use this example to criticize China as having double standards. The United States has said it will treat Russia as a full participant at the APEC summit, with the Russian delegation being lead by Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk. “He’s being treated as the head of delegation, and he’ll have the opportunity to participate fully in the week’s events,” Matt Murray, the State Department official in charge of APEC, has stated. Overchuk is under a variety of Western sanctions including from the European Union but is not specifically under US sanctions.

That said, the Russian position as concerns the Middle East appears already set in stone and aligned with China’s. Xi’s diplomacy and ingenuity in dealing with US President Biden therefore remains the key event.

Source: Silkroad Briefing

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UNITED NATIONS | 12 November 2023 (IDN) — A longstanding proposal for a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZs) in the politically and militarily volatile Middle East has been kicked around the corridors and committee rooms of the United Nations since 1995.

Over the last 28 years, the proposal has failed to get off the ground—and remains suspended in mid-air.  

But there will be one more try—at least for minimal progress—when the fourth annual session of the “Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction” takes place between 13 and 17 November at the UN headquarters in New York. 

Of the world’s nine nuclear powers, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has gone nuclear—while the other eight nuclear countries worldwide are the US, UK, France, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

As with the first three sessions, Israel and its closest political and military ally, the United States, are not expected to attend. They will both be MIA’s—missing in action.

Meanwhile, there is widespread speculation that if Iran goes nuclear, as threatened by the Iranians off and on, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt might follow suit.

But as US President Joe Biden once remarked: “…and the last goddamn thing we need in that part of the world is a build-up of nuclear capability.”

Israel’s nuclear weapons are best ignored?

But like most US politicians and presidents, including former US President Barack Obama, Biden too believes that Israel’s nuclear weapons are best ignored—and never challenged in public.

Dr M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told IDN the idea of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons was first adopted at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference.

He pointed out that the very first resolution of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on International Security back from 1946 called for proposals for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction”.

“The closest agreement we have that goes some way toward achieving that goal is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) from 2017—seventy-one years after the first resolution. So, we have to be patient in this quest.” 

Important to confer on the establishment of a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Middle East

“That said, this is an important time to be holding a conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons,” he said.

“Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza, and the call to drop a nuclear weapon there, albeit by a junior minister who has since been fired, only provides more reason to push for eliminating the most destructive weapons known to humankind from Israel’s arsenal.”

More generally, he argued, the highly charged security environment in the region is also a reason to prevent other countries from not just acquiring such weapons, but even the means to make the fissile materials needed for nuclear weapons.

“I am talking, of course, about nuclear power plants. In addition to what is happening in the Middle East, the other war that has receded slightly from the headlines these days—in Ukraine—should remind us of how these reactors can become targets in future wars, and produce fears of widespread and long-lived radioactive contamination, as has been the case with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, since February 2022 and its occupation by Russian forces,” Dr Ramana declared.

According to the 2023 Yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia and the US together possess almost 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons. The sizes of their respective nuclear arsenals (i.e. useable warheads) seem to have remained relatively stable in 2022, although transparency regarding nuclear forces declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In addition to their useable nuclear weapons, Russia and the US each hold more than 1,000 warheads previously retired from military service, which they are gradually dismantling.

Israel—which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons—is also believed to be modernizing its nuclear arsenal, says SIPRI.

Meanwhile, since 1967, five nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZ) have been established worldwide—in Latin America and the Caribbean, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central Asia. But such a weapons-free zone in the conflict-ridden Middle East continues to remain elusive.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres points out that the established five zones include 60 percent of the UN’s 193 Member States—and cover almost all of the Southern Hemisphere.

According to the UN, the fourth annual session is being held pursuant to General Assembly decision A/DEC/73/546 (22 December 2018), which “entrusts the Secretary-General with the convening, … for the duration of one week at the United Nation Headquarters, of a conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction”.

The first session of the Conference was held from 18 November to 22 November 2019 under the presidency of Ambassador Sima Bahous of Jordan.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the United Nations conferences and meetings, the second session was postponed and was later held from 29 November to 3 December 2021 under the presidency of Ambassador Mansour Al-Otaibi of Kuwait.

The third session was held from 14 to 18 November 2022 under the presidency of Jeanne Mrad of Lebanon.

For information on the previous sessions, intersessional workshops, as well reports of the Secretary-General on the Conference, check the links below:

First session of the Conference – 18 to 22 November 2019

First informal workshop – 7 to 9 July 2020

Second informal workshop – 23 to 25 February 2021

Second session of the Conference – 29 November to 3 December 2021

Third session of the Conference – 14 to 18 Novembers 2022

Reports of the Secretary-General

Source: Indepth News

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On September 9, 2023, during the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the governments of seven countries and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding to create an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Only three of the countries (India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates or the UAE) would be directly part of this corridor, which was to begin in India, go through the Gulf, and terminate in Greece. The European countries (France, Germany, and Italy) as well as the European Union joined this endeavor because they expected the IMEC to be a trade route for their goods to go to India and for them to access Indian goods at, what they hoped would be, a reduced cost.

The United States, which was one of the initiators of the IMEC, pushed it as a means to both isolate China and Iran as well as to hasten the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It seemed like a perfect instrument for Washington: sequester China and Iran, bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together, and deepen ties with India that seemed to have been weakened by India’s reluctance to join the United States in its policy regarding Russia.

Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza has changed the entire equation and stalled the IMEC. It is now inconceivable for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enter such a project with the Israelis. Public opinion in the Arab world is red-hot, with inflamed anger at the indiscriminate bombardment by Israel and the catastrophic loss of civilian life. Regional countries with close relations with Israel—such as Jordan and Turkey—have had to harden their rhetoric against Israel. In the short term, at least, it is impossible to imagine the implementation of the IMEC.

Pivot to Asia

Two years before China inaugurated its “One Belt, One Road” or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the United States had already planned a private-sector-funded trade route to link India to Europe and to tighten the links between Washington and New Delhi. In 2011, then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Chennai, India, where she spoke of the creation of a New Silk Road that would run from India through Pakistan and into Central Asia. This new “international web and network of economic and transit connections” would be an instrument for the United States to create a new intergovernmental forum and a “free trade zone” in which the United States would be a member (in much the same way as the United States is part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC).

The New Silk Road was part of a wider “pivot to Asia,” as U.S. President Barack Obama put it. This “pivot” was designed to check the rise of China and to prevent its influence in Asia. Clinton’s articlein Foreign Policy (“America’s Pacific Century,” October 11, 2011) suggested that this New Silk Road was not antagonistic to China. However, this rhetoric of the “pivot” came alongside the U.S. military’s new AirSea Battle concept that was designed around direct conflict between the United States and China (the concept built on a 1999 Pentagon study called “Asia 2025” which noted that “the threats are in Asia”).

Two years later, the Chinese government said that it would build a massive infrastructure and trade project called “One Belt, One Road,” which would later be called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the next ten years, from 2013 to 2023, the BRI investments totaled $1.04 trillion spread out over 148 countries (three-quarters of the countries in the world). In this short period, the BRI project has made a considerable mark on the world, particularly on the poorer nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the BRI has made investments to build infrastructure and industry.

Chastened by the growth of the BRI, the United States attempted to block it through various instruments: the América Crece for Latin America and the Millennium Challenge Corporation for South Asia. The weakness in these attempts was that both relied upon funding from an unenthusiastic private sector.

Complications of the IMEC

Even before the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, IMEC faced several serious challenges.

First, the attempt to isolate China appeared illusory, given that the main Greek port in the corridor—at Piraeus—is managed by the China Ocean Shipping Corporation, and that the Dubai Ports have considerable investment from China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan port and the Zhejiang Seaport. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now members of the BRICS+, and both countries are participants in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Second, the entire IMEC process is reliant upon private-sector funding. The Adani Group—which has close ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has come under the spotlight for fraudulent practices—already owns the Mundra port (Gujarat, India) and the Haifa port (Israel), and seeks to take a share in the port at Piraeus. In other words, the IMEC corridor is providing geopolitical cover for Adani’s investments from Greece to Gujarat.

Third, the sea lane between Haifa and Piraeus would go through waters contested between Turkey and Greece. This “Aegean Dispute” has provoked the Turkish government to threaten war if Greece goes through with its designs.

Fourth, the entire project relied upon the “normalization” between Saudi Arabia and Israel, an extension of the Abraham Accords that drew Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates to recognize Israel in August 2020. In July 2022, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the I2U2 Group, with the intention, among other things, to “modernize infrastructure” and to “advance low-carbon development pathways” through “private enterprise partnerships.” This was the precursor of IMEC. Neither “normalization” with Saudi Arabia nor advancement of the I2U2 process between the UAE and Israel seem possible in this climate. Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinians in Gaza has frozen this process.

Previous Indian trade route projects, such as the International North-South Trade Corridor (with India, Iran, and Russia) and the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (led by India and Japan), have not gone from paper to port for a host of reasons. These, at least, had the merit of being viable. IMEC will suffer the same fate as these corridors, to some extent due to Israel’s bombing of Gaza but also due to Washington’s fantasy that it can “defeat” China in an economic war.

Source:Counter Punch

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Hamas is sheltered in a sea of civilians. Ostensibly a Palestinian political and military organization established in 1987, Hamas “governs” on the basis of having won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections – defeating Fatah, another Islamist terror combine – before forming a government in the Gaza Strip, described as “…the world’s largest open-air prison” for its Palestinian inhabitants.

So why don’t the Palestinians, having been robbed of their ancient lands, simply up and move somewhere else? It is telling that none of the Islamic nations surrounding Israel care to admit any more Palestinian settlers. Neither Egypt, Jordan or Syria will take them. Why is that? Because those nations are not fools: they understand that the bellicose, fractious Palestinians will bring them trouble, permanently.

A government is presumably supposed to “govern”. That presumably does not include torturing, maiming and killing those who voted for you. Acknowledged internationally as a terrorist organization, Hamas, cynically calling itself a “freedom fighter group” treats the average inhabitants of the west bank, Gaza and Lebanon as human meat shields.

It hides weapons among schoolchildren, deploys weapons from crowded areas, fires upon Israelis from trees and then melts back into crowds of noncombatants. Try and escape the war zone? Anyone now trying to flee the area is in danger of being murdered by Hamas and Hezbollah. Their “asymmetrical warfare” is not just wreaked on Israelis – they will torture and kill anyone not supporting their cause.

What cause is that? The Palestinians’ overt declaration, contained in the Hamas charter, is that Israel has no right to exist and must be destroyed. Its plainly-stated intention is to “wipe Israel off the map.” That is hardly a viable pre-condition for a serious negotiation to settle this ancient quarrel.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” How do you negotiate with such fanatics? Well, by now it becomes clear that you do not. The reality is they don’t care about average people, Muslim, Jew or Christian. They are hell-bent on the elimination of Israel at all costs, regardless of what happens to everyone else living there, including fellow Arabs and Muslims.

The provocation of 7 October, killing 1400 in attendance at a “Peace Festival” (the irony thickens) and kidnapping several hundred more, should have opened the eyes of the world to the fact that there is a larger, well-organized pogrom funded and carried out by Jew-hating fanatics who could care less about the plight of Palestinians and don’t want any compromise when it comes to eliminating every last Jew and Christian from the Middle East.

Once Israel goes, you can bet the Christian minority in Middle Eastern countries will be next.

Proof?

Just ask the millions of Christians who were “ethnically cleansed” from lands that they inhabited for centuries. It happened after World War Two, when Arab nations expelled their Christian and Jewish minorities in retaliation for the establishment of Israel.

In fact, this is a war is between Western Enlightenment, represented by Israel, and 14th Century theocratic despotism, represented by the Islamic nations surrounding it.

And the west is being held hostage: just as Europe is being deindustrialized, companies going bankrupt, since the Americans blew up the Russian gas pipeline, the “good life in suburbia” of America, Canada and Australia is not viable without affordable oil. Arab oil.

Israel, meanwhile, has already installed over 600,000 settlers in the West Bank, in violation of international agreements. How about the Palestinians who are being chased into the desert by Israeli ( = American) firepower? The US and Israel will find 3rd countries to take them. The US will pay a couple of billion in “aid” to bribe them. Just like the US bribed Egypt to make peace with Israel.

And Hamas? A legally-recognized government?

It is said that people truly get the government they deserve. God, let’s hope that’s not so in this case.

The post Hamas and their Human Meat Shields appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

The Huawei Cloud Partner Network (HCPN) in the Middle East and Central Asia provides partners with valuable business, technical, marketing, and Go-to-Market support

• At the Huawei Cloud Partner Forum, Huawei introduced the GoCloud and GrowCloud partner development frameworks to strengthen partner network and support ecosystem development.
• At the forum, Huawei Cloud also signed seven MoUs with partners – Grey Swan, Chinasoft, OneCloud, Al Falak, Expand My Business, TecBrix, and Techsol Space.

Dubai, UAE – On the sidelines of GITEX GLOBAL 2023, Huawei introduced the new GoCloud and GrowCloud partner development frameworks in line with the theme of “Go Together, Grow Together”. These frameworks aim to help partners build competitive offerings based on Huawei Cloud, as well as drive customer acquisition and revenue growth.

Fostering a vibrant ecosystem relies on the collective collaboration of customers and partners. Huawei Cloud offers the Pangu Large Models engineering platform, which streamlines and expedites the creation of industry models by encompassing functions like data processing, model training, and application development. Huawei Cloud has developed more than 20 industry models and more than 400 AI applications on Pangu L0 foundation models together with our partners and customers.

At the Huawei Cloud Partner Forum, Huawei also introduced the Huawei Cloud Partner Network (HCPN). This global partner program aims to help partners achieve success on Huawei Cloud by providing them with comprehensive business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market (GTM) support. The HCPN also enables Huawei Cloud customers to find high-quality HCPN partners who deliver value-added services and solutions on Huawei Cloud. Moving forward, Huawei Cloud will continue to improve the partner development framework and incentive policies, enhance the product GTM for partners, and increase investment in joint sales.

Frank Dai, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East & Central Asia, said, “The GoCloud and GrowCloud partner development frameworks foster innovation, nurture enduring partnerships, and empower you to thrive in this digital era. We are not here just to win the market; we are here to walk on this journey together.”

Roy Luo, Vice President of Cloud Consulting Solution Sales at Huawei Cloud Middle East & Central Asia, said, “Innovation has always been the lifeblood and DNA of Huawei Cloud. At Huawei Cloud, we are committed to becoming the Cloud Foundation and Industry Enabler with Everything as a Service based on systematic innovation. We hope, where your business goes, our cloud goes. Choose Huawei Cloud for your digital journey, with innovation at your fingertips.”

In line with its ambition to grow the Huawei Cloud partner network in the region and to build valuable collaborations with current partners, Huawei Cloud signed several Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with seven partners – Grey Swan, Chinasoft, OneCloud, Al Falak, Expand My Business, TecBrix, and Techsol Space.

About Huawei

Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have more than 207,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.

Our Vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they’re at home, in the office, or on the go.

Source: Zawya News

The post Huawei Cloud Partner Forum Paves New Values and Strategies for Partner Success Across Middle East and Central Asia appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.