Category: 2. World

The Israeli regime has lost its multi-front war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Yes, really. It may not look like it, but the defeat is real and baked into Israel’s future.

Let me first make the case for Israeli “victory”: Since its 2023 invasion of Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces report fewer than 800 troops killed, while in turn killing tens – maybe hundreds – of thousands of mostly civilian Palestinian Arabs (and 250 or more inconvenient journalists).

Since the beginning. They’ve established their ability to attack any point in Gaza at will, driving a displaced, hungry population back and forth over piles of bodies, while seizing more land in the West Bank and Syria, liquidating Hezbollah’s Lebanese strongholds, trading missile strikes with Yemen’s Houthis, and even emerging relatively unscathed, if not particularly successful, in an intermittent war with Iran.

Top Israeli regime officials confidently assert that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank are inevitable.

Yes, that sounds rather like multiple “victories,” accomplished and pending.

But those victories didn’t come from nowhere. They were enabled by decades of massive financial, military, and diplomatic support from the United States.

Yes, other regimes too, but most of those “allies” are moving in the other direction already – cutting off arms sales, recognizing a Palestinian state, and sanctioning Israeli war criminals.

It’s quickly coming down to the “no daylight between us” US/Israel relationship under which the former annually shovels billions of dollars, and when requested direct military assistance, at the latter, no questions asked (US law “guarantees” Israel a “Qualitative Military Edge”), while using its own sanctions power and veto on the UN Security Council to protect Benjamin Netanyahu and Friends from the consequences of their actions. That relationship is nearing its end.

In late August, a Quinnipiac poll found that 50% of Americans now classify Israel’s operations in Gaza as genocidal, and that 60% – 37% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats, and 66% of independents – oppose continued military aid to Israel, at least while the genocide continues.

The effects of changing American attitudes toward Israel may not make themselves felt immediately, but the outcome is more “inevitable” than the fantasies of expansionist Israeli politicians.

In domestic politics, Social Security is sometimes called a political “third rail” – you touch it, you die.

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Excerpted: ‘The Gaza War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Already Lost’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington was in “very deep” negotiations with Palestinian militant group Hamas and urged them to release all hostages held in Gaza.

“We are in very deep negotiation with Hamas,” Trump told reporters, saying the situation will be “tough” and “nasty” if Hamas continues to hold Israeli hostages.

“We said let them all out, right now let them all out. And much better things will happen for them but if you don’t let them all out, it’s going to be a tough situation, it’s going to be nasty,” Trump said, adding that Hamas was “asking for some things that are fine.”

Trump did not elaborate further.

Palestinian militants took over 250 hostages into Gaza after an October 2023 attack in Israel that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

U.S. ally Israel’s ensuing assault on Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people, internally displaced Gaza’s entire population and prompted accusations of genocide and war crimes at international courts and from several rights groups. Israel denies the accusations.

Trump had promised a quick end to the war in Gaza during his presidential campaign but a resolution has been elusive.

About 50 Israeli hostages are still being held by Hamas in Gaza, with 20 thought to be still alive.

Hamas has said it would release some hostages for a temporary ceasefire while Trump has repeatedly said he wants the release of all hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the war in Gaza would only end if all hostages were released, Hamas was disarmed, Israel established security control over the enclave, and an alternative civilian administration set up. Hamas is demanding an end to the war and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

’Hydro-politics’ or ‘water politics’ is nothing new. But thanks to climate change, hydro-politics between countries is witnessing a manifold increase in intensity. On the one hand, climate change is compounding the problem of water scarcity and, on the other, it is triggering heavier rainfalls and flooding.

Various countries share common sources of fresh water. For this, they sign water-sharing treaties. Recognition of these treaties involves the signatory nations and international organisations. There is no single global authority to enforce these agreements, though.

In a 2023 essay, the sustainability specialist Emmanuel Gutman-Gates wrote that the increasing frequency of water-related conflicts and the ‘weaponisation of water’ in specific instances suggest that water politics is a growing source of instability and conflict.

The water dispute over the Indus River, for example, is a major source of tension between India and Pakistan. In April this year, India “suspended” the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) that was signed in 1960 between the two countries. This has escalated the threat of serious confrontation between the two historically antagonistic neighbours. 

From the Indus to the Rio Grande, rivers are no longer just lifelines — they are now battlefronts. As climate change shrinks and floods waterways, nations are turning treaties into weapons and neighbours into rivals

In August, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that the IWT does not allow for unilateral suspension. But India rejected the verdict. Pakistan’s army chief allegedly responded by claiming that it would take just 10 missiles for Pakistan to destroy any new dams built by India to disrupt the water supply to Pakistan.

River Indus is Pakistan’s largest river. It originates in Tibet and then goes through India before entering Pakistan. Climate change is disrupting the flow of the river, which is an important water source for both countries. Pakistan has often accused India of using its upstream position to threaten its water supply.

Nevertheless, in May this year, the former irrigation minister Mohsin Laghari wrote in The Nation, “The IWT treaty now risks obsolescence — designed for a bygone era, it is ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of climate change and geopolitical volatility.” The treaty needs to be reframed, but India’s recent act of suspending it has further compounded the issue.

Afghanistan has been facing a scarcity of water. The River Amu Darya is a vital source of water for Afghanistan and its northern neighbours, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Taliban regime in Kabul is planning to make a canal, which is likely to lessen the flow of Amu into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan by 15 percent. Both the countries are now negotiating with Kabul to resolve the issue peacefully.

The Kabul River, which flows into Pakistan from Afghanistan, sustains the lives of millions of people on both sides. There have been attempts by Afghanistan to build dams on this river, which Pakistan fears are likely to disrupt the supply of water to Pakistan. However, due to constant political turmoil and civil wars in Afghanistan, no such major dam has been built yet. Nevertheless, Pakistan is eager to sign a water treaty with Kabul sooner than later.

Water reserves in Iraq have hit their lowest levels in 80 years. This is straining Iraq’s relations with its upstream neighbours Iran and Turkey, who are blatantly restricting flows in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq. According to the researcher Hayder Al-Shakeri, the Iraqi government has, however, failed to respond with professional water diplomacy. Corruption among Iraq’s political elite has weakened institutional capacity. This creates openings for Turkey and Iran to press for deals that serve their own priorities.

Another long-running hydro-political flashpoint has been over the Jordan River. The tension in this regard is mainly between Israel and Jordan. Both the countries signed a water treaty in 1994 to diplomatically resolve the issue, but climate change, wars in the region and an increase in the populations of Jordan and Israel are severely testing the treaty.

The River Rio Grande, which flows from the US to Mexico, has been rapidly dwindling due to climate change, overuse and outdated water management practices. It is a source of a decades-long dispute between the US and Mexico. Rio Grande is also one of the most endangered rivers in the world. Mexico has fallen behind on its commitments under the 1944 US-Mexico Water Treaty.

However, this year, the US and Mexico announced that they would ‘upgrade’ the treaty according to current needs and conditions. But experts believe the current framework is still inadequate to fully resolve the issue due to the river drying up at an alarming pace.

Water politics has also become a prominent part of the internal politics of various countries. This includes political and social issues surrounding the management, allocation and distribution of water resources within a country’s borders.

For example, water disputes between states/provinces in India are intensifying due to disagreements over the use, distribution and control of inter-state river waters. It is one of the tensest issues in Indian federalism today. India has just four per cent of the world’s freshwater supplies but holds a massive 18 per cent of the world’s total population.

Pakistan’s two major provinces, Punjab and Sindh, are constantly locking horns over the waters of River Indus. Climate change is intensifying this tussle, especially with monsoon patterns becoming unpredictable. Indus River flows are likely to decrease and the risk of both floods and droughts likely to increase. There is now greater awareness of climate change among most people, but it only receives obligatory lip-service from the governments and the state.

For example, political opponents are more invested in pulling each other’s legs for failing to control flash flooding in major urban areas. There has been no show of any serious intent by the state and politicians to address the impacts of climate change beyond attacking each other for being incompetent.

In south-eastern Australia, the vast river system and drainage basin, the Murray-Darling Basin, is a flashpoint for internal water politics involving states and farmers. A major government initiative — the Basin Plan — to resolve the issue has continued to be ineffective due to disputes between federal and state governments, with New South Wales and Victoria often reluctant to accept the plan.

In the US, long-running battles over shared water resources have intensified due to the impact of climate change, particularly involving the Colorado River and Rio Grande basins. In Ethiopia, serious water imbalances between regions have been a major issue in the country’s politics.

Environmental activists spent decades to finally make the term ‘climate change’ a frequent part of everyday vocabulary — even among its deniers. Yet, it remains a vague term for many because, despite experiencing its impacts more than ever, no one seems to know how to address it. This is not to suggest that there are no solutions. But most of these require dramatic changes in political policies and in established lifestyle practices, which can create social, economic and political disruptions.

But one wonders: what more can be more disruptive than melting glaciers, increasing droughts, frequent floods, unprecedented rainfalls, dying rivers and water disputes that can lead to outright wars between nations?

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 6th, 2025

THE Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjing, followed by the grand military parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, was all about optics and signaling.

Looking at the reaction from the US and EU it would be safe to say that the messages hit bull’s eye.

But let’s first look closer to home. Before the summit, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said India would be looking for a categorical condemnation of cross-border terrorism, which in common language means that India’s allegations against Pakistan are upheld.

You may recall in this column last week, there was a mention of the SCO principle of collective or indivisible security and once again that was upheld as both the Pahalgam terror incident and the Jaffar Express and the Khuzdar school bus terror attacks, in which many innocent lives were lost — with India blaming Pakistan for the first and Pakistan saying India was responsible for the second and third incidents — were condemned but neither country was named.

Despite lack of success on this issue, as in the SCO foreign ministers meeting in June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was triumphantly holding hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and laughing in videos captured of their stand-up chats with China’s strongman Xi Jinping.

China may still not be militarily as strong as the US but it seems to be catching up fast.

Knowledgeable sources suggested Mr Modi was keen to thumb his nose at the US and its ‘unreliable’ leader and his erstwhile friend President Donald J. Trump whom he has courted in the past, even raising the slogan, ahead of the US elections: Abki baar, Trump Sarkar (The next administration will be Trump’s).

India is smarting at the ‘unfair’ 25+25 per cent tariffs with the latter being punitive for continued purchases of Russian oil when China and many other countries have not been penalised for their bulk oil/ energy procurement from Russia. But the size of the rapidly growing Indian economy, its human capital and enormous market means that despite its current tribulations, India won’t be ignored by either the US and its allies or the Global South for long. That is a certainty.

Moving out of the region into the global arena, it was clear that the summit and the parade signalled what China sees as a return to a multipolar world and not the unipolar arrangement that evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union and facilitated the massive eastward expansion of the Nato military alliance.

The Russian military assault and the war it triggered in Ukraine are attributed to that unipolar world, which meant initially that Moscow lacked the ability to stop the Western military alliance’s eastwards march. Later, however, after internal consolidation Russia started to flex its muscles first in Crimea and then in the Donbas region and made rapid advances in eastern Ukraine to pre-empt Nato’s further expansion.

President Joe Biden pumped billions of dollars into the ideological military campaign directly and via the Nato members and slowed the pace of the Russian advance. With Trump’s assumption of office, all that changed as the new US president announced he wanted to end the war and that his friend Vladimir Putin was on board. So far it appears he got played by the Russian leader.

It was not surprising then that looking at the SCO summit and the grand spectacle put on display by the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the Chinese victory over the Japanese military, Trump wrote a congratulatory message on his Truth Social platform and then said words that could be likened to a child throwing his toys out of the pram: “Give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”

China’s response was measured as its spokesperson underlined the fact that the commemoration was to mark the end to World War II and that foreign guests had been invited for it. China said its development of diplomatic relations with any country is never directed against a third party.

Trump’s political appointee as ambassador to Nato Matthew Whitaker seemed to have lost it in an interview with Fox News when, in a fit of rage, he accused China of putting on display lethal weaponry “in all likelihood stolen from us”.

EU foreign policy chief, the former right-wing Estonian politician, Kaja Kallas also criticised the parade and said that Xi, Putin and Kim appearing together was part of efforts to build an anti-Western “new world order” and was a direct challenge to the international rules-based system.

China described the remarks by a “certain EU official” as being full of ideological bias, lacking basic historical knowledge and a blatant attempt to stir up confrontation. Beijing found the remarks misguided, utterly irresponsible and arrogant.

It was laughable that the hawkish EU foreign policy chief referred to the rules-based international system when she and her grouping has supported the Gaza genocide and the shredding of any so-called rules-based order by the apartheid state on a daily basis by the mass murder of civilians by bombs, missiles, drones and starvation.

To many an impartial observer, China’s awesome military display translated into the introduction of a semblance of welcome balance in our unipolar world. China may still not be militarily as strong as the US but it seems to be catching up fast as its various arms and armaments including new hypersonic missiles, stealth fighter-bombers, lasers and microwave air defence and unmanned aerial and submarine military vehicles displayed.

One hopes this doesn’t unhinge Trump completely. He should realise that his desire of winning the Nobel Peace Prize was nearly non-existent, because he greenlit and enabled the Gaza genocide, a grave crime against humanity. Equally, no end to the Ukraine war on terms unfavourable to Russia is now likely. Trump’s threatened tariffs and sanctions can cause pain but not in any decisive way.

It will be interesting to watch the White House’s next move.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2025

WASHINGTON: The United States sent 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico as part of its war on drug cartels amid mounting tensions with Venezuela over Washington’s military build-up in the Caribbean.

The planes will join US warships already deplo­yed to the southern Carib­bean as President Donald Trump steps up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States accuses of leading a drug cartel.

The standoff has grown in recent days as the Pentagon said two Vene­zuelan military planes flew near a US Navy vessel in international waters on Thursday in a “highly provocative” move.

US forces on Tuesday blew up an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean that Trump said belonged to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation he tied to Maduro, killing 11 people.

The high-tech F-35 jets will be deployed to an airfield in Puerto Rico, a US Caribbean island territory of more than three million people.

Maduro — a leftist firebrand whose election victory last year was seen by Washington as illegitimate — has denounced the US build-up as “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years”.

Declaring his country prepared for “armed struggle in defence of the national territory”, he has mobilised Venezuela’s mili­tary, which numbers 340,000, and ‘eight million reservists’.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2025

• Starmer reshuffles portfolios after his embattled deputy Rayner steps down over property tax scandal
• David Lammy named new deputy PM; Yvette Cooper moves to Foreign Office
• Ex-Columbia University president Shafik named PM’s chief economic adviser

LONDON: Faced by crises on multiple fronts, UK PM Keir Starmer overhauled his cabinet on Friday, picking David Lammy to replace his embattled deputy PM, and bringing in Shabana Mahmood to head the Home Office.

Former deputy PM Angela Rayner quit after an investigation found that she had breached the ministerial code, underpaying a property tax in the purchase of a flat in southern England.

Her departure prompted Starmer to carry out the first major cabinet reshuffle of his stuttering 14-month-old premiership.

The shake-up comes after Rayner’s resignation dealt the latest blow to Starmer’s flagging government that has lurc­hed from one storm to another since he became prime minister in July last year.

It has been forced to U-turn on welfare reforms and fuel benefits for the elderly, while its failure to stop undocumented migrants arriving on small boats has bolstered support for Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.

Lammy’s post as Britain’s top diplomat will be taken by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who will in turn be succeeded by Ms Mahmood, the BBC reported.

This means that for the first time, all three of the most senior and historically important cabinet positions will be held by women, as Rachel Reeves is the current chancellor of the Exchequer.

Others leaving key posts include leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell and Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray.

Meanwhile, economist Nemat Talaat Shafik has been named Starmer’s new chief economic adviser.

Baroness Shafik was previously the president of Columbia University, and was pushed out following fallout from the 2024 Gaza protests. She has also served as a deputy governor at the Bank of England.

Rayner’s troubles

Rayner’s resignation followed her self-referral to the independent adviser on ministerial standards.

She disclosed on Wednesday that she had underpaid stamp duty — a property tax — on an apartment following days of reports suggesting that she had saved thousands of pounds by removing her name from the deeds of another property.

After reviewing her case, Laurie Magnus wrote to the PM, saying that in his opinion, she had breached the ministerial code.

He pointed out that while the tax rules Rayner was dealing with are “complex”, the fact that she didn’t seek expert advice means that she did not meet the “highest possible standards of proper conduct”, as required by the Ministerial Code.

In her resignation, Rayner took full responsibility for the error. In response, Starmer said she had done the right thing.

Rayner had been tipped as a potential future Labour leader and has been a top target for political attacks by the opposition Conservatives and right-wing media.

Despite the circumstances of her exit, Starmer told her: “You will remain a major figure in our party”.

Shabana’s rise

Shabana Mahmood, the 44-year-old Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood, has had a rapid rise. She becomes the second Home Secretary of Pakistani-origin, with Tory minister Sajid Javid being the first in 2018.

Born in Birmingham to parents with roots in Mirpur in Azad Kashmir, Mahmood often links her political outlook to her family’s migration story and the values she absorbed growing up around a corner shop in inner-city Birmingham.

In a New Statesman interview, she linked her parents’ politics to the party “that made them feel they had a stake in British society“, adding that her family “found opportunities in this country that would not have been available to us in the village that we hail from in Kashmir and then Pakistan.”

During her childhood she also lived for a period with her family in Taif, Saudi Arabia. She went on to study at the University of Oxford and graduated with a BA in Law, later working as a barrister.

Mahmood also became one of the UK’s first Muslim parliamentarians when she was elected in 2010 alongside other MPs.

She has spoken directly about representing Britain’s Pakistani communities.

“I…take pride in representing one of the biggest ethnic minority groups in the UK,” she told the British Pakistan Foundation in an interview, arguing that the government should work at the community levels.

She also rejected claims that Pakistanis do not hold British values, saying: “They respect the rule of law, they want to live in a democracy.”

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2025