Headline News 30/11/2019

• Trump Uses Secret Visit to Kabul to Publicise his Involvement in Returning US Troops

Iran-backed PM Talks Resignation in Iraq after Sustained Protests against Misrule

Erdogan, In Service of his American Masters, Defends NATO against Macron’s Attacks

Details:

Trump Uses Secret Visit to Kabul to Publicise his Involvement in Returning US Troops

After years of facing criticism for not visiting America’s warzones, US President Donald Trump made a secret three and a half hour visit to Kabul on Thursday to publicise his personal efforts for negotiating a settlement with the Taliban and returning US troops from Afghanistan ahead of US presidential elections next year. But in reality, the US faces considerable difficulties in achieving this aim, which Trump has actually not helped by his publicity-seeking interventions, which included using a tweet message to cancel discussions in September. The reality on the ground is that the US are progressively losing Afghanistan to the Afghan jihad and they know it’s only a matter of time before they are fully ejected, and are hence desperate to conclude a peace agreement while they still have some control. According to the Guardian:

Donald Trump says talks with the Taliban are back on but it is unclear if the disputes that hobbled the last attempt to reach a peace deal – cancelled by a presidential tweet in September – have been resolved.

The insurgent group responded to Trump by telling Agence France-Presse it was “way too early” to discuss resuming direct talks.

A recent hostage release, of an American and an Australian who had been held for three years, suggested the Taliban were still keen to find a negotiated end to the war.

“I have the impression that the contacts were never fully cut off,” said Thomas Ruttig, the co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

“The message from the Americans was: the Taliban need to give a few more concessions, and the prisoners/hostages swap … was discussed in this context. So the release was a sign of the Taliban’s interest to start talking again.”

The only reason America is able to continue to dominate Muslim lands is the treachery of our own rulers who seek support from their Western powers instead of building this support domestically. But with Allah’s permission, the Islamic Ummah is awaking from its deep slumber, regaining a sense of itself and its situation and in the process of arising to throw off the evil foreign disbeliever who has interfered in every aspect of our life’s affairs.

Iran-Backed PM Talks Resignation in Iraq after Sustained Protests against Misrule

In pursuit of narrow national interests, the Iranian government has come to involve itself deeply in Iraq, providing the US with a safe exit plan after its disastrous invasion of that country. Despite all its rhetoric, Iran has no interest in the actual implementation of Islam, whether in its own country or in countries like Iraq. Consequently, the Iran-backed Iraqi regime is now facing serious unrest from the Iraqi people, tired of its failed policies. According to the New York Times:

Pressured by an expanding protest movement and a rising death toll, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq said Friday that he would submit his resignation to Parliament, taking the country into greater uncertainty and possibly months of turmoil ahead.

Mr. Mahdi’s resignation would make him another prominent political casualty in a wave of recent antigovernment unrest that has swept the region.

Deep-seated anger over corruption and Iran’s influence in Iraqi politics are the major drivers of the protests across Iraq. In Lebanon, citizen rage over that country’s dysfunctional government pushed its prime minister to announce his resignation in October. And in Iran itself, the authorities scrambled to crush protests and riots in 100 cities set off a few weeks ago by an abrupt increase in fuel prices — the deadliest unrest to hit Iran in years.

The prime minister’s announcement was a particularly bitter blow for Iran, which had handpicked Mr. Mahdi and on Wednesday suffered an attack on its consulate in the southern city of Najaf. The building was severely damaged by firebombs thrown by protesters.

Iran has repeatedly sought to prop up Mr. Mahdi since he became prime minister in 2018, according to leaked Iranian intelligence reports obtained by The Intercept and shared with The New York Times. Mr. Mahdi worked closely with Iran while Saddam Hussein was in power, and for years he served as a member of a large Shiite party tied to Iran. He became an independent in 2017, but the leaked cables suggest he kept close ties to Iran in recent years.

The ills of the Ummah will not be solved until Islam alone is implemented. Justice and good governance do not come from simply finding sincere and dedicated leaders but from implementing the system that delivers justice and good governance. Despite Western pretensions, their systems are actually designed to mask elite power capture and the appropriate of wealth and resources for the elite alone. Implementation of Western laws will only continue to weaken the Ummah, like a drug abuser whose evil addiction can only ultimately lead to death. The only way out is to reject and uproot Western legal systems and replace them with the Islamic sharia, implemented as the sharia itself dictates by a general leadership for all Muslims, the righteous Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) that will unify Muslim lands, eject the foreign disbeliever and restore the glory of the Ummah to its former position as the world’s solitary superpower.

Erdogan, In Service of his American Masters, Defends NATO against Macron’s Attacks

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron further advanced his alternate thinking for the NATO alliance and an independent European military and foreign policy, calling NATO ‘brain dead’, an operational arrangement devoid of serious intergovernmental strategic thinking, thus making it just an extension of American foreign policy. However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, instead of adopting an independent position, has chosen to fully defend ‘America’s NATO’ against Macron’s attack. According to Reuters:

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Emmanuel Macron’s warning that NATO was dying reflects a “sick and shallow” understanding, telling the French president “you should check whether you are brain dead”.

The comments drew a swift rebuke from the French foreign ministry, which summoned Turkey’s ambassador to Paris to protest over what a French presidential adviser called “insults”.

Erdogan was speaking days ahead of a summit of the military alliance, which Macron has said is experiencing “brain death” because of U.S. unpredictability under President Donald Trump and strained ties with Turkey.

The Turkish and French presidents, who have traded criticism over Ankara’s cross-border offensive in northeast Syria, will be among NATO leaders meeting at a summit of the transatlantic alliance in Britain on Dec. 4.

“I’m addressing Mr Macron from Turkey and I will say it at NATO: You should check whether you are brain dead first,” Erdogan said.

Macron said in an interview three weeks ago there was a lack of strategic coordination between European allies on the one hand and the United States and Turkey, on the other. He has also decried NATO’s inability to react to what he called Turkey’s “crazy” offensive into northern Syria.

The deep mutual hostility and rivalries between Western powers provide an easy opening for the Muslim Ummah to take charge of its own affairs and re-establish its state. Nothing has stopped Muslims until now except the limits of their own imaginations. But Muslims are coming to realise their true strength and the West’s actual weaknesses and with Allah’s permission, the world shall indeed witness once again the rise of the Ummah as the leading power in the world.