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Headline News 31/03/2018
Headlines:
Trump once again promises US pull out from Syria
Ongoing Conflict between Pakistan and India has not spared even its Diplomats
Russia Expels 59 Diplomats from 23 Countries
Details:
Trump once again promises US pull out from Syria
US President Donald Trump has again promised to remove American troops from Syria, in accordance with popular sentiment in US domestic public opinion which is strongly against America’s military interventions and wars abroad but in contradiction to the wishes of the Capitalist elite. Trump’s isolationist stance conflicts with the American political establishment, which works for American global dominance, and will not submit on this even to its own president. As noted by the Washington Post:
President Donald Trump’s unscripted remark this week about pulling out of Syria “very soon,” while at odds with his own policy, was not a one-off: For weeks, top advisers have been fretting about an overly hasty withdrawal as the president has increasingly told them privately he wants out, U.S. officials said.
Only two months ago, Trump’s aides thought they’d persuaded him that the U.S. needed to keep its presence in Syria open-ended — not only because the Islamic State group has yet to be entirely defeated, but also because the resulting power vacuum could be filled by other extremist groups or by Iran. Trump signed off on major speech in January in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out the new strategy and declared “it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria.”
But by mid-February, Trump was telling his top aides in meetings that as soon as victory can be declared against IS, he wanted American troops out of Syria, said the officials. Alarm bells went off at the State Department and the Pentagon, where officials have been planning for a gradual, methodical shift from a military-led operation to a diplomatic mission to start rebuilding basic infrastructure like roads and sewers in the war-wracked country.
In one sign that Trump is serious about reversing course and withdrawing from Syria, the White House this week put on hold some $200 million in US funding for stabilization projects in Syria, officials said. The money, to have been spent by the State Department for infrastructure projects like power, water and roads, had been announced by outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at an aid conference last month in Kuwait.
The officials said the hold, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is not necessarily permanent and will be discussed at senior-level inter-agency meetings next week.
America’s role in Syria has been much underplayed in the media. In reality it is America that controls the entire battlefield in Syria, and it is America that controls the puppet regime of Bashar al-Assad. However, realising the steep danger presented by the revolution in Syria, and cognisant of its military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, America chose not to enter Syria directly but to use its agents such as Iran and Turkey, and attract Russia to enter the field in protection of its vital Tartus naval base in Syria. It is America that is supervising the distribution of Syria amongst these different agents, and it is America that allows Turkey to enter Afrin but not the Kurdish area, and Assad to expel the people of Ghouta, in a form of ideological cleansing, but does not allow Assad’s forces to enter eastern Syria, which it wants to reserve for its own forces.
The American people have yet to realise that America never pulls out of any region once it has entered it. This is the reason that America has close to one thousand military bases around the world. It is expected that the US military will retain a permanent military presence in Syria, just as it has elsewhere.
Ongoing Conflict between Pakistan and India has not spared even its Diplomats
Recent months have seen aggressive cross-border attacks by India on Pakistan soil, which numbered 170 just in the month of January. The excessive friction between the two countries extended to treatment of each other’s diplomatic staff, though they pledged yesterday to at least desist from this expression of conflict. According to the Dawn:
Pakistan and India on Friday agreed to address complaints of harassment of diplomats in accordance with the bilaterally agreed 1992 ‘Code of Conduct’ on treatment of diplomatic and consular staff in each other’s country.
The agreement was announced through a statement simultaneously issued by the Foreign Office and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.
The statement reads: “India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises, in line with the 1992 ‘Code of Conduct’ for treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan.”
The discussions between the two countries had begun after Pakistan recalled its High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood for consultations following a spike in incidents of harassment of Pakistani diplomats in Delhi. India, meanwhile, too had been complaining about the treatment of its diplomats in Islamabad.
It is said that over 50 incidents of harassment of Pakistani diplomats and their families took place between March 7 and 23. It turned ugly when the children of Pakistani diplomats while on way to their schools were stopped and harassed.”
Again it is America that lurks behind this conflict, inciting India as a further means of pressure on Pakistan to make greater sacrifices in support of the American occupation of Afghanistan. A secondary American objective is to coerce Pakistan into normalising relations with India, so that India can concentrate more fully on confronting China.
Russia Expels 59 Diplomats from 23 Countries
Russia has responded to the West’s diplomatic assault by announcing its own expulsions; according to Reuters:
Russia expelled 59 diplomats from 23 countries on Friday and said it reserved the right to take action against four other nations in a worsening standoff with the West over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.
Russia said it was responding to what it called the baseless demands for scores of its own diplomats to leave a slew of mostly Western countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
A day earlier, Moscow ordered the expulsion of 60 U.S. diplomats and the closing of the U.S. consulate in St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, in retaliation for the biggest ejection of diplomats since the Cold War.
Preparations appeared to be under way on Friday to close the St Petersburg mission down, with a removals truck making repeated journeys to and from the consulate which took delivery of a large pizza order for its staff.
Britain’s purpose in all this has been to repeat its strategy prior to World War II, which was to drive continental Europe, and particularly Germany, against the Soviet Union. America has been aligned with Britain in this policy.
The UK and the US view the world in terms of conflict and balance of power so they are always seeking to drive other countries against each other, in order to maintain their own superiority. Hence they constantly seek out opportunities to increase conflict, instead of trying to reduce conflict in the world. With Allah’s permission, the world will soon witness the return of the righteous Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) that will establish a very different approach to international affairs, and return the entire world to peace, justice and prosperity, as was seen during the millennium that the Khilafah State previously remained the world’s sole superpower.