16 May 2023

Biden meets Spanish prime minister Sanchez to discuss war, migration

Alejandro López


US President Joe Biden and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met at the White House on Friday to discuss NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, the deployment of US warships and soldiers stationed on Spanish territory, and cooperation to escalate attacks on migrants. The meeting took place as Madrid assumes the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union in July.

In the Oval Office, the two leaders promoted the ongoing NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Biden said, “[T]ogether we’re supporting Ukraine. I can’t thank you enough.”

Sanchez replied by squarely blaming the war on Putin—retailing a false narrative incessantly promoted by NATO media, think tanks, academics and pseudo-left tendencies like the Democratic Socialists of America in the US and Podemos in Spain, Sanchez’s junior partner in government.

Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez speaks to Spanish troops during his visit to Adazi Military base in Kadaga, Latvia, Tuesday, March. 8, 2022. [AP Photo/Roman Koksarov]

“We support Ukraine. Of course, we work for a lasting and just peace that respects fully the international law and also the principles of the UN charter,' Sanchez said. “Make no mistake, in this war there is an aggressor and a victim, and the aggressor is President Putin.”

The statements were made just days after the Washington Post published an interview with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who stated that the war in Ukraine “didn’t start in 2022. The war started in 2014.”

This admission confirmed that the war began with the US-backed regime change operation in Ukraine in 2014, when fascistic, US-sponsored anti-Russian militias overthrew President Victor Yanukovych, who had opposed measures to integrate Ukraine into the EU.

In the following years, Kiev launched assaults on the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine, leading to over 14,000 deaths between 2014 and 2022. In response, Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum in which the overwhelming majority of the population of the enclave supported leaving Ukraine. The 2022 invasion, as the WSWS has insisted, was a desperate response of the Russian oligarchy to the escalating efforts of NATO to bring Ukraine into its orbit.

Spain has played a strategic role in NATO’s war and Washington clearly hopes that it will play a central role in pressing the entire European Union to escalate the war.

The PSOE-Podemos government has spent hundreds of millions in financial support to the Ukrainian state to continue serving as a proxy for imperialist war with Russia and hundreds more in military aid. This includes rifles, grenade launchers, Hawk missile launchers, Aspide anti-aircraft missile systems, howitzers and light vehicles. Many of these have been sent to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Madrid has also trained over 850 Ukrainian soldiers on Spanish soil.

A few weeks ago, Madrid dispatched six Leopard 2 tanks and 20 armored vehicles to Ukraine.

How deep Spanish involvement is in NATO’s eastern front was revealed in a widely unreported incident over the Black Sea on May 5. A Polish Turbolet L-410 was flying over the Black Sea in what has been ludicrously presented as a routine Frontex patrol mission 1471 kms away from Poland. More reasonably, it was a NATO plane flying to collect intelligence on Russian positions to provide to Ukrainian armed forces.

Russia reacted by sending an Su-35 jet to intercept the spy plane, with NATO ordering Spanish fighter jets in Romania to be on “pre-alert,” marking another dangerous milestone after a Russian fighter forced down a Reaper surveillance drone in March.

The danger posed to humanity by a NATO-Russia war was revealed in another issue in the Biden-Sanchez meeting: the cleanup of Palomares, the area contaminated with plutonium in 1966 when a US B-52 bomber collided in midair with a refueling plane and dropped four hydrogen bombs, 70 times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the Spanish coast of Almería.

On that occasion they did not explode. However, the incident, covered up by Washington and the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco, is yet another warning on the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.

Biden and Sanchez also noted the recent signing of the expanded Agreement on Defense Cooperation, which facilitates the presence of two additional US warships in Spain from four to six and enhances NATO’s anti-missile shield in southern Europe. The growing deployment of troops on the Iberian Peninsula is transforming it into a giant base for US operations in the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East.

Spain’s EU presidency, noted Sanchez, would also aim to bolster cooperation with Latin America, an area that was brutally colonized and plundered for gold and silver by Spain for centuries. It was then replaced by Washington, which plunged the region into military coups, police state dictatorships and bloody counterinsurgency in the name of defeating “communism.”

European imperialism fears losing ground to the US, which has long dominated the region, and above all China, South America’s largest trading partner. In the space of barely two decades, total trade between China and the Latin American region as a whole has leapt nearly 20-fold, from $17 billion in 2002 to $315 billion in 2019.

The region is rich in vast resources that imperialist powers across Europe and the US need for their military machines as they seek to re-divide the world. It includes the vast oil reserves of Venezuela and Guyana, copper, silver, gold and other minerals, and lithium, the strategic metal necessary for electric vehicles and utilized in virtually every modern weapons system. China also depends upon Latin America for 36 percent of its food supplies.

In a sign of rising tensions within the EU and between Brussels and Washington, Sanchez also outlined the concept of “open strategic autonomy” as key to Spain’s EU Council presidency.

Madrid’s meeting summary stated that Sanchez would seek “open strategic autonomy, aimed at reducing risks and vulnerabilities in strategic areas such as the digital economy, health, critical raw materials, energy security or food security, also strengthening alliances with other partners, such as the United States.” EU powers are also aiming to boost homegrown industry, particularly the geostrategic microchip sector.

This takes place months after French President Emmanuel Macron defended strategic autonomy from the US during his trip to China, particularly in the defense industry. It was a stark expression of the deepening rivalries between the imperialist powers amid war, a growing economic crisis and the growth of the international class struggle.

Beyond war, Biden thanked Sanchez for signing up to his anti-immigration policy. “We are both facing the challenges of migration in the Western hemisphere,” he said, as Washington sent 4,000 troops to the US-Mexico border and stepped up violence against refugees.

Madrid has signed up to Biden’s plan requiring asylum seekers to file claims in processing centers across Latin American countries where migrants can apply to enter the US, Spain or Canada. Spanish big business is salivating at the prospects of receiving rejected US asylum seekers to work as low-cost agricultural labor.

Both Biden and Sanchez share a brutal track record of reacting to fascistic anti-migrant agitation of Republicans in the US and neo-fascist Vox party in Spain by implementing barbaric assaults on immigrants’ rights. Biden has already carried out more deportations than the Trump administration. Successive PSOE-Podemos governments are responsible for the deaths or disappearances of over 11,200 migrants in the Canary Islands route since 2018 as part of the EU’s fascistic “Fortress Europe” policy.

Thailand’s military-backed parties suffer losses in general election

Ben McGrath


The opposition Move Forward Party (MFP) emerged as the largest party in the lower house of parliament after Thailand’s general election on Sunday. The party took 113 constituency seats and 39 party-list seats, up from its total of 81 in the 2019 election. Voters selected individual candidates while casting separate ballots for party-list seats, with the latter awarded on a proportional basis.

Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of Move Forward Party, announces his party's victory in Thailand's general election on Sunday. [AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn]

The other main opposition party, Pheu Thai Party (PTP) won 112 constituency and 29 party-list seats, up marginally from a total of 136 seats in 2019. While the two opposition parties now command a clear majority in the 500-seat lower house, it is far from certain that MFP leader Pita Limjaroenrat will be installed as the next prime minister.

Under the constitution drawn up by the military, the prime minister is chosen in a joint sitting of the upper and lower houses—the upper house of 250 seats being appointed the military. On Monday, Pita announced a planned coalition with Pheu Thai and four smaller parties—Thai Sang Thai, Prachachart, Seri Ruam Thai, and the Fair Party—with a total of 309 seats. This is still well short of the 376 seats needed for a majority in the joint sitting.

The election results demonstrate the widespread hostility to the military, which seized power in a coup in 2014 and has maintained control through its anti-democratic constitution and police state measures. In 2020, the military suppressed huge protests of mainly young people lasting for months demanding coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha step down as prime minister, the reform of the monarchy and a new constitution.

Voter turnout in Sunday’s election reached a record-high with 75.22 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. Young people, in particular, were determined to express their opposition to the military-backed regime by voting for opposition parties.

The ruling Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) split prior to the election with Prayut forming his own United Thai Nation Party (UTN), which won 40 seats and 36 seats respectively. The combined total was far less than 116 seats won by the unified PPRP in 2019. Both were outstripped by the right-wing Bhumjaithai Party (BJTP) that appeals to a layer of farmers and was part of the previous ruling coalition. It won a total of 70 seats.

Move Forward’s Pita has dismissed concerns that the Senate would fail to back his proposed government. However, the Bangkok Post reported on Saturday that the Senate was split into roughly three factions, with 120 senators supporting Prayut, 80 supporting First Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon of the PPRP, and another 50 who were undecided.

The lack of support for Pita in the Senate is the result of bitter differences within the Thai ruling class between dissident factions represented by Move Forward and Pheu Thai whose interests are constrained by the country’s traditional elites—the monarchy, military, state bureaucracy and associated interests.

Senator Jadet Insawang has already publicly declared that he will vote against Pita to defend the monarchy and maintain the country’s lèse-majesté law. Under this draconian legislation, anyone guilty of insulting the king and his close family is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. A number of the prominent leaders of the 2020 protests have been charged under the law.

The formation of the next government is likely to be a drawn-out process. In the 2019 election, Pheu Thai won the most seats in the lower house and formed a coalition that claimed to hold a majority in the lower house. The military simply ignored the result and used its majority in the joint sitting to reappoint Prayut as prime minister, who has never been elected to any position.

If its chicanery through the joint sitting of parliament, the electoral commission and the courts fails, the military could simply resort to another coup. In 2006, it ousted the billionaire founder of Pheu Thai, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was forced to flee the country, and, in 2014, resorted to a coup to seize power from his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, who took over Pheu Thai and won the 2011 election.

Last Thursday army chief Narongpan Jittkaewtae downplayed the possibility of a military takeover, declaring, “The chance [of a coup] is zero now.” However, both Prayut and the PPRP’s Prawit hinted before the election that a coup could be necessary.

While Pheu Thai and Move Forward have exploited the widespread opposition to the military and monarchy, both are parties of big business connected to wealthy families and are incapable of addressing the pressing social needs and democratic aspirations of the working class and rural masses.

Pheu Thai’s leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra is the youngest daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra and the latest in the ultra-rich Shinawatra family to make a bid for prime minister.

Move Forward has particularly oriented towards young people, taking an ostensibly more critical stance towards the monarchy and the military. It is the successor to the Future Forward Party founded by multimillionaire auto company director, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, just prior to the 2019 election. Its leadership consisted largely of young business executives and academic lawyers.

The sudden emergence of Future Forward provoked fear in the military backed regime which used the Constitutional Court to accuse Thanathorn of violating the election law, disqualify him as a member of parliament and ultimately to disband the party. The court decision proved to be one of the catalysts for the mass protest movement in 2020.

Move Forward head Pita is a wealthy businessman with close family connections to the Thai state. His father, Pongsak Limjaroenrat, served as an advisor in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives while his uncle, Padung Limjaroenrat, was a close aide to Thaksin as prime minister. Pita joined the MFP in 2020 after the forced dissolution of his Future Forward Party (FFP).

In an indication of the layers the MFP is oriented to, Pita stated on Monday that after finalizing coalition talks, he will hold discussions with government officials and big business. He will no doubt emphasize that his government would represent no challenge to the ruling elite, and offers the best means for containing the sharp social tensions produced by deteriorating living standards and rising social inequality.

15 May 2023

Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards 2024

Application Deadline: 30th June 2023 by 2pm Paris time (CEST)

Eligible Countries: Cartier reviews applications from 7 regions (Latin America, North America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Far East Asia, South-East Asia). One from each region wins this award.

To be taken at (country): exact location still TBC

About the Award: Since 2006, the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards have supported 219 female entrepreneurs worldwide. Each year, 21 finalists representing 7 regions (Latin America & the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, East Asia and South Asia & Oceania) are selected during the first round of the competition. These finalists are then invited to attend the Awards week (exact location still TBC) during which the second round of the competition takes place. After the final jury evaluation, 7 laureates, one for each region, are announced on stage during the Awards ceremony.

Offered Since: 2006

Type: Entrepreneurship, contest

Eligibility: The Cartier Women’s Initiative Award is looking for committed female entrepreneurs heading initiatives with the potential to grow significantly in the years to come. The selection of the finalists and laureates of the competition is done by an independent international Jury of entrepreneurs, investors, business executives and other profiles engaged in the support of female entrepreneurship.

The project to be considered for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards must be an original for-profit business creation in its initial phase (2 to 3 years old) led by a woman:

  • The “for-profit” requirement: the business submitted for the Award must be designed to generate revenues. We do not accept non-profit project proposals.
  • The “originality” requirement: we want your project to be a new concept, conceived and imagined by the founder and her team and not a copy or subsidiary of an existing business.
  • The “initial phase” requirement: the project you submit should be in the first stages of its development meaning between 2 and 3 years old.
  • The main leadership position must be filled by a woman. A good command of English is required (both verbal and written) to take full advantage of the benefits the Award has to offer.
  • All entrants must be aged 18 or the age of legal majority in their respective countries or states of citizenship, whichever is older, on the day of the application deadline.

Selection Criteria: The Jury evaluates the projects based on criteria of creativity, sustainability (potential for growth) and impact.

  • The creativity criterion: the Jury looks at the degree of innovation shown by the overall business concept, the uniqueness of the project on the market or country where it is being developed.
  • The sustainability criterion: the Jury examines the financial impact of the business, its revenue model, development strategy and other aspects indicating its chances of long-term success and future growth.
  • The impact criterion: the Jury evaluates the effect of the business on society, in terms of jobs created or its effect on the immediate or broader environment.
  • The overall quality and clarity of the material presented: the Jury is looking for motivated and committed entrepreneurs who are passionate about their initiatives. Being clear and concise, organizing your ideas and not repeating yourself will show that you are serious about your application.

Selection Process: 

  • Round 1: The Jury selects 18 Finalists*, the top three projects of each of the 7 regions (Latin America, North America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Far East Asia, South-East Asia), on the basis of their short business plans. They receive coaching from experienced businesspeople to move to the next round.
  • Round 2: The Finalists are invited to the final round of competition which includes submitting a detailed business plan and presenting their projects in front of the Jury.

Number of Awardees: Based on the quality of the plan and the persuasiveness of the verbal presentation, one Laureate for each of the seven regions is selected

Value of Competition: The 21 finalists, representing the top 3 businesses from each of the 7 regions, will receive:

One-to-one personalized business coaching prior to the Awards week
A series of business coaching workshops and networking sessions during the Awards week
Media visibility for the finalists and their businesses in the months leading up to the Awards week and interview opportunities with local & international press during the Awards week
PRIZE MONEY
The 7 laureates (1 from each region) will receive:
US$ 100 000 in prize money
The 14 finalists (the two runners-up from each region) will receive:
US$ 30 000 in prize money
AWARDS PACKAGE
In addition to the prize money, all 21 finalists will be awarded:
A scholarship to attend the six-day INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Executive Education Programme (pending admission to the programme based on eligibility criteria and selection process)
Ongoing support for the further growth and development of their business

How to Apply: Go here to apply

We suggest that you download the application form worksheet first and that you write your answers in a separate draft document. You may then copy & paste them into the online form once you are finished.

Visit Competition Webpage for details

Aqueous Matters: Europe’s Water Crisis

Binoy Kampmark



Photo by Jong Marshes

Europe is joining a number of other regions on the planet in suffering a prolonged water crisis; and it is one that shows little sign of abating.  To this can be added the near catastrophic conditions that exist in other parts of the globe, where ready and secure access to water supplies is more aspiration than reality.

Since 2018, according to satellite data analysed by researchers from the Institute of Geodesy at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), the continent has been enduring increasingly dire drought conditions.  Groundwater levels have been, according to the institute, low, despite the occasional dramatic flooding event.  Even through winter, there has been no relief.

In a piece published in Geophysical Research Letters, Eva Boergens and her fellow authors picked up on sharp water shortages in Central Europe during the summer months of 2018 and 2019.  “In the summer months of 2018, Central and Northern Europe experienced exceptionally dry conditions […] with parts of Central Europe receiving less than 50% of the long-time mean precipitation”.

In July and August that year, vicious heatwaves aided in inducing drought conditions.  Much the same pattern was repeated in 2019: below-average precipitation, beating heatwaves in June and July.  The consequences for such deficits in water, the authors note, are severe to “agricultural productivity, forest management, and industrial production, with the latter cut back by disrupted transport on inland waterways due to extremely low water levels.”  Levels since have barely risen.

The researchers from TU Graz also note the bleak picture from prolonged drought, one all too familiar to those inhabiting dry swathes of land on such continents as Africa and Australia.  The dry riverbed and bodies of stagnant water are becoming more common features of the European landscape.  Aquatic species are losing their habitats and ecological disruption is becoming the norm.

From the human perspective, the water crisis has also encouraged an energy shortage.  The French nuclear industry has prominently struggled with inadequate supply, even in the face of a parliamentary bill to accelerate the construction of new reactors.  As Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV, Greens), declared on March 7, “Once and for all, let’s say it, simply and firmly: at this rate, there will soon not be enough water in our rivers to cool the nuclear power plants!”

In Spain, the country’s weather service, Aemet, has concluded that the situation is nothing less than extraordinary.  Last November, Catalan authorities imposed a number of water restrictions, limiting the refilling of pools, limiting showers to five minutes, prohibiting the washing of cars and cutting down the watering of gardens to two times a week.

In Barcelona, water supplies responsible for nourishing six million people, are at risk.  The Sau reservoir, for instance, is at a mere 9 percent of capacity, necessitating the removal of fish to prevent them from perishing.

In Italy, the mighty Po has declined in the worst drought in seven decades.  Supplies have fallen in lakes and reservoirs.  This is critical for a country which relies more than any other EU member state on those sources for their water supply.  The Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) recently noted that the country’s aqueducts lost 42 percent of carried water supply in 2020.

Last year, over 100 cities in Italy alone were called upon to limit water consumption as feasibly as possible.  States of emergency were declared in five regions.  This has sufficiently concerned the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni to take a number of measures, though these have yet to bear fruit.  In a meeting chaired by Meloni and attended by various top government representatives, a decision was reached that a steering committee would be established involving all relevant ministries “in order to define a special national water plan in agreement with regional and local authorities”.  This would involve as yet unspecified technologies.

Legislative measures would also be passed “containing the necessary simplifications and waivers and speeding up essential works to cope with drought conditions”.  And, for good measure, “an awareness-raising campaign about using water responsibly” would be launched.

Despite such conditions, a number of European states have struggled to find measures of coping.  One obvious response is recycling water.  But France, by way of example, has a mere 77 of 33,000 treatment plants in the country up for the task.

The picture only promises to get uglier and more desperate.  The 2022 Global Water Monitor Report does little to provide any cheer, observing that the last two decades had “seen increased air temperatures and declining air humidity, increasing heat stress and water requirements for people, crops and ecosystems alike.”

Even in the face of such climatic disturbance affecting that most vital of resources for life, countries will still find the miraculous energy and industry to wage war or at least prepare for it, all the while continuing to despoil environments.  In time, the proposition that war will even be waged over water supply is a distinct, disturbing possibility.

The Taliban and the Islamic State Continue to Fight for Control of Afghanistan’s Future

John P. Ruehl



Photograph Source: Karla Marshall – Public Domain

On April 25, 2023, U.S. officials confirmed that the Taliban had killed the head of the Islamic State (IS) cell operating in Afghanistan. Though his identity has not been revealed, the IS leader is believed to have masterminded the 2021 Kabul airport attack that killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. military personnel.

His assassination marks the latest escalation of violence between the Taliban and IS in Afghanistan this year. Several senior Taliban officials were killed or targeted in March 2023 by IS, while several IS leaders in Afghanistan were killed by the Taliban in January and February.

The Taliban, a loose Pashtun-centric political movement active across Afghanistan and Pakistan, previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The U.S. withdrawal and ensuing collapse of the Afghan government in 2021 allowed the Taliban to re-establish their rule over the country, but they have been prevented from gaining full control thanks to IS, which has existed in the country since 2014.

Initially, many Taliban members were supportive of IS’s ability to seize territory and challenge U.S. and Western forces in Syria and Iraq in 2013 and 2014. Yet despite their common U.S. and Western enemies and shared hardline Sunni interpretation of Islam, the Taliban’s animosity arose after IS began to establish itself on Afghan territory and attract Afghans to its cause.

At the time, Taliban forces had failed to make territorial gains and had recently begun another round of negotiations with the U.S. government. The Taliban had also traditionally suppressed the Salafist brand of Islam in eastern Afghanistan in favor of Hanafi Islam, making IS’s Salafist leanings attractive to many Afghans in the region. There was also significant division across the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leadership, further allowing IS to poach members.

Several high-ranking members switched allegiance to IS in 2014, which also found support from smaller regional militant groups. But of significant importance was IS’s ability to attract disillusioned members of its rival, Al Qaeda, to its ranks. Disagreements over policies, tactics, and leadership caused Al Qaeda to disavow IS in 2014, and they have competed for dominance over the global jihadist movement since. The Taliban’s close relationship with Al Qaeda only made IS more resolute in challenging them in Afghanistan.

In January 2015, IS announced its vision to create the province of “Khorasan,” which would include much of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and is part of IS’s effort to establish a global caliphate. The group began to expand more rapidly across Afghanistan while accusing the Taliban of being “filthy nationalists” and neglecting Islam in favor of their ethnic and national base.

As clashes between the Taliban and Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) intensified in 2015, the Taliban’s then-leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, wrote a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging him to abandon recruitment in Afghanistan and insisting the war against the United States should be led by the Taliban. But it failed to dissuade the IS leadership, who were also aided in part by the Afghan Army’s initial decision to avoid fighting IS to focus on the Taliban.

As IS emerged as a serious threat to Afghanistan’s stability, however, both Afghan and U.S.-led international forces increasingly came to focus on the group in the country. IS targeting of religious minorities also brought it into further conflict with parts of the Afghan population. Despite an initial expansion, IS lost significant territory and fighters from 2015 to 2018, while from 2019 to 2020 many of its fighters and leaders surrendered to authorities.

The Taliban, in comparison, had steadily increased its influence in Afghanistan, convincing the Afghan and U.S. governments to commit to talks to end the war. The Doha Agreement in 2020 put forth a withdrawal timeline for foreign soldiers, saw thousands of Afghan and Taliban soldiers released in a prisoner swap, and the Taliban pledged to prevent terrorist groups from operating in Afghanistan. IS denounced the agreement, accusing the Taliban of deviating from jihad to please “their U.S. masters.”

But suggestions of IS’s demise in Afghanistan by then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani proved short-lived, particularly as Afghanistan was engulfed by the power vacuum caused by the U.S.’s departure. IS’s numbers were also bolstered by thousands of prisoners who escaped or were freed from Afghanistan’s prisons.

While IS’s estimated 4,000 members in Afghanistan as of 2023 pale in comparison to the Taliban’s roughly 80,000 troops, its guerilla warfare campaign, similar to the one used effectively by the Taliban against U.S. forces, has made it a formidable opponent in parts of the country. By the end of 2021, the group had killed or injured more people in Afghanistan than any other country, and clashes between the Taliban and IS are common occurrences.

On top of attracting more members to IS’s ranks, the Taliban fears IS will erase what little legitimacy it has as a governing force by keeping Afghanistan unstable. The Taliban’s leadership remains plagued by division and lacks any international recognition. The Taliban is also now fighting IS-K largely alone and without the high-tech weaponry and air support enjoyed by the previous Afghan government forces. And having been beaten back in Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan provides IS-K one of the few places where it can expand, causing the group to double down in the country.

To shore up their position, the Taliban leadership has sought to engage with other governments. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are cautiously cooperating with the Taliban, while Pakistan, which has a complex history of working with the Taliban, continues to conduct dialogue with them. The Taliban is also courting IndiaChina, and Russia, which seek to stabilize the country and potentially exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 to $3 trillion in mineral wealth.

Pressure is on the Taliban to get results. Chinese and Russian citizens and infrastructure in Afghanistan have been targeted by IS, drawing criticism. And though the Taliban has said it will not allow its territory to be used to attack its neighbors, IS has already tested this in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The Taliban’s ongoing cooperation with Al Qaeda (exemplified by the assassination of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul in 2022) continues to dissuade Western cooperation, coupled with the Taliban’s crackdown on women’s freedom in Afghanistan. Reversing their more radical policies could in turn instigate more defections to IS.

Having fought the Taliban for two decades, a rapprochement with the Taliban would be a difficult sell to Western audiences. But having already worked with the Taliban to evacuate its citizens in August, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley stated the possibility of coordinating with the Taliban to defeat IS in 2021. Nick Carter, his British counterpart, expressed a similar sentiment as well. U.S. officials have also stated that they “do not support organized violent opposition” to the Taliban.

With the Afghan government disbanded (many members have joined the Taliban or IS) and the weaknesses associated with the National Resistance Front, there is little viable opposition that Western forces can support. Yet The U.S. “over-the-horizon” approach to ignoring the Taliban to deal with IS and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has its own consequences—a drone strike intended for the mastermind behind the 2021 Kabul Airport attack instead ended up killing 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children.

Nonetheless, the Taliban’s assassination of the individual responsible in April 2023 may encourage soft coordination and informal diplomacy with other countries, including the U.S. Yet because the Taliban remains dependent on cooperation with extremist groups like Al Qaeda, its formal international isolation risks becoming long-term.

Providing a haven for groups like Al Qaeda and promoting a strict interpretation of Shariah law is also a double-edged sword. These conditions helped IS establish itself in Afghanistan, aided further by the poverty and lack of basic services in many parts of the country. IS will continue to attempt to weaken the Taliban militarily, exploit its divisions, and erode its claims to have restored peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s instability since the 1970s remains ongoing, and the country continues to be a hotbed of regional concern, great power rivalry, and ideological clashes. While most foreign governments view IS as a greater threat, this may not be enough for the Taliban to end its vulnerable isolation and help Afghanistan achieve peace and stability.

Anticlerical Rule is on the Rise in Iran

Akbar E. Torbat


The women-led anti-hejab movement that began after the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022, in Iran, is ongoing. Even though the street protests have subsided, many Iranian women defy to comply with wearing Islamic hejab in public. Nonetheless, the Islamic government is fighting to enforce hejab by various means, including closing stores that admit women without headscarves and preventing women without wearing hejab from entering metros and other public service places such as schools and universities. The government has also installed cameras in various places to monitor hejab enforcement. The enforcement of Islamic hejab has led to many anticlerical protests throughout Iran. The government has dealt with people’s protests by crackdowns, arrests, imprisonments, and executions. Consequently, a violent anticlerical wave has started in Iran.

Several clerics have been killed or injured in various places in Iran in the past few weeks. A senior Islamic cleric Abbas-Ali Suleimani was assassinated by a security guard on April 26, 2023, inside Bank Meli in Babolsar in the Mazandaran Province. Suleimani had previously served for 17 years as the representative of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan. This province has been the site of many anti-government protests in recent months. According to people who knew Suleimani, he was pro-gender separation in all public places. On the same day, a junior mullah was purposely run over by a car, and on April 29, another cleric was stabbed in the city of Qum. On April 30, Lieutenant Alireza Shahraki, the head of the Saravan District Awareness Police Department, was assassinated. On May 5, the body of a mullah, Ibrahim Fazel, who had been missing for four days, was dragged out of the water in the coastal village of Goldasht in the Province of Mazandaran. On May 7, a mullah was injured after a young man attacked him with a knife in Ahmedabad village of Saveh city in the Central province.

The clerical oligarchy has claimed that the anticlerical incidents have been instigated by the reformists and celebrities inside Iran who are supported by the Western powers. The pro-clerics daily newspaper Kayhan wrote: “These [terrors] and dozens of other examples are just a small part of the efforts of the pro-reform media or domestic-westernization process to complete the puzzle of the enemy in creating hatred in society and social disintegration of the country.”

In recent years, the ruling clerics’ political base has shrunk tremendously. The Middle class is feeling resentment and has turned against the ruling clerics. The clerics and their family members have moved up to the wealthy upper class by accumulating wealth. They engage in rent-seeking activity under the guise of Islamic and anti-imperialist slogans. In contrast, the high rate of inflation has pushed down the middle class to become a part of the dispossessed underpaid laborer, and that has further intensified the anticlerical feelings.

The clerics opiate the masses with promises of rewards in another world after death. They preach to people to pray five times a day to be rewarded by God to go to heaven. Even so, most Iranians have turned against the ruling clergy, as they feel they have been deprived of basic living standards. The young generation of Iranians does not listen to the clerics’ superstitious preaching. Two Iranian political prisoners, Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zari, who had managed a cable channel called “Critique of Superstition and Religion,” were sentenced to death for the charges of “insulting the Prophet and religious sanctities,” “promoting atheism,” and “apostasy.” They were hanged on May 8, 2023. Many other people have been executed on various charges. According to Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, there have been 798 executions in Iran since the beginning of 2022 to this date.

Ebrahim Raisi became president in a low-turnout election engineered by Khamenei. The results of Raisi’s two years in office include the fastest decline in the national currency’s value, the highest growth of money supply, the highest historical rate of inflation, and the biggest historical collapse of Tehran’s stock indexes in a day. The high rate of inflation has pushed down real wages, which has brought teachers and factory workers to the street to demand higher pay for their work. The country is struggling through the collapse of the nation’s currency, the rial. President Raisi has used printed money borrowed from the Central Bank of Iran (Bank Markazi) to spend on promises he had made two years ago during his presidential campaign. Inflation and financial corruption caused by the clerical leadership and their cronies have intensified anticlerical feelings throughout Iran.

The Islamic regime in Iran has become a Shi’a dictatorship by reactionary clerics. The clerics’ only concern is to remain in power. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, controls all three branches of the government directly or indirectly. The ruling clerics have used nepotism and marriage schemes to limit the important positions to themselves and their family members. For example, the current head of the parliament (Majles) Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf is a nephew of the Supreme Leader’s wife. The Supreme Leader’s daughter is married to the son of Ayatollah Mohamad Golpayegani, who is the chief of the Supreme Leader’s office. The Supreme Leader’s son Mujtaba Khamenei is married to a daughter of Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the former head of the parliament. President Ebrahim Raisi is the son-in-law of Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, the hometown of Khamenei. Alamolhoda is also the city’s representative in the Assembly of Experts.

On April 30, 2023, Reza Fatemi Amin, the minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade, was impeached in the parliament to be questioned for providing wrong statistics and prioritizing the interests of two major Iranian automobile companies. The minister was dismissed by the Majles due to the high prices of automobiles and rent-seeking corruption.

So far, the mullahs have not given up their enforcement of hejab, believing that yielding on that issue will open the door to other demands, and those could pave the way for ending the clerical rules, which they are unwilling to accept.

Israel agrees to ceasefire in Gaza amid mounting provocations against Palestinians

Jean Shaoul


Late Saturday night, Israel agreed to a ceasefire, mediated by Egypt, following five days of unremitting strikes on the impoverished Gaza Strip. But commentators are saying that the next escalation is “just around the corner.”

Israel’s massive aerial assault, ostensibly aimed at Palestinian Islamic Jihad personnel and its facilities, struck 370 targets, killed 35 Palestinians, at least one third of whom are civilians, and injured more than 147 people. It inflicted major damage on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including Gaza City, and left 375 people homeless.

Smoke and fire rise from an explosion caused by an Israeli airstrike targeting a building in Gaza, Saturday, May 13, 2023. The building was owned by an Islamic Jihad official. [AP Photo/Ashraf Amra]

This is the latest “ceasefire” in at least 15 murderous assaults, including four major wars, on the besieged Palestinian enclave since Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005. Given that the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused point blank to end its murderous campaign of assassinating leaders of Palestinian resistant groups or to return the body of Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan—who died a week ago while on a hunger strike in Israel’s Nitzan jail—this is likely to provide only a temporary respite for the beleaguered Palestinians.

Gaza’s borders have been closed since Tuesday, halting the entry of essential goods that gives Israel total control over the civilian population, and preventing hundreds of people seeking urgent medical treatment from leaving. Palestinian officials warned they would have to shut down the enclave’s only power plant unless Israel reopened its border crossing to let in emergency fuel. Schools have also closed.

The response from Israel’s sponsor in Washington, the United Nations and the major imperialist powers has been limited to condemnations of Palestinian rockets fired on Israel, expressions of “concern” and calls for a ceasefire. US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman reiterated Washington’s “enduring commitment to Israel's security” and “condemned the indiscriminate launch of rockets into Israel from Gaza-based terrorist groups, which endangers the welfare of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

The ceasefire comes as Palestinians mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in which at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees were driven out or fled their homes in the 1947-49 war following the UN General Assembly vote to partition Palestine, the end of the British Mandate over Palestine and Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948.

Later this week, tens of thousands of far-right Israeli nationalists are expected to march through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City in an annual parade, known as Flag Day, on a national holiday marking Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab Israeli war. Even as tensions mount, Netanyahu has refused to cancel the march, one of Islamic Jihad’s conditions for a ceasefire. This same provocation and subsequent protests in May 2021 were among the factors precipitating Israel’s 11-day assault on Gaza that saw, for the first time, widespread protests in Israeli cities with large Arab populations against the government’s actions.

The latest round of attacks began after Israel’s refusal to return the body of Adnan, a well-known opponent of Israel’s repression of the Palestinians, with Islamic Jihad firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. This provided Israel with the pretext to send 40 jet bombers to target Islamic Jihad in a two-hour long bombing raid, killing three of its leaders in Gaza along with at least 18 others, including family members, children and neighbours, in what the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) called “precision” strikes against Jihad Ghannam, Khalil al-Bahtini and Tareq Ezzedine. The IDF claimed they were responsible for rockets fired on Israel during a brief flare-up sparked by Israel’s raid on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound during Ramadan last month that also led to rocket fire from neighbouring Lebanon.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant threatened, “Any terrorist who harms Israeli citizens will be made to regret it.” In anticipation of retaliation from Gaza, the authorities closed several roads and restricted gatherings and movement up to 40 kms from the Gaza Strip.

While one third of the renewed barrage of more than 1,100 rockets from Gaza were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence missile system and a similar number fell far short of their targets landing inside Gaza, rockets killed an Israeli in Rehovot and a Palestinian day labourer from Gaza and injured 43 others. Israel let loose on Gaza, killing three more Islamic Jihad leaders and around 12 civilians.

Hamas, the militant clerical group that controls Gaza, opposed the IDF operation, but left Islamic Jihad—whose top officials are based in Beirut where it has close relations with Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—to fight alone. The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, which has fought a near-civil war with Hamas in Gaza, took five days to release a ludicrous appeal for Washington to intervene against Israeli aggression.

Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said that the IDF had achieved its objectives in the operation and highlighted the support Israel had received, including the efforts by the US and several UN Security Council members—the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China--to block a joint statement expressing concern over the violence.

Even this horrific assault on Gaza is not enough for Netanyahu’s fascistic colleagues. Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance and Religious Zionism leader, said that Israel would have to reconquer the Gaza Strip, calling it a “chronic problem” that had to be dealt with once and for all. Speaking in a television interview, he said, “The time will probably come to return to Gaza, disassemble Hamas and demilitarise Gaza. This too will be carried out according to the broad interests and considerations of the State of Israel,” adding “I believe the moment will come when there won’t be a choice but to reconquer Gaza.”

Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the leader of Jewish Power and national security minister, had earlier attacked Netanyahu for his “lenient” response to Islamic Jihad. Jewish Power legislators also refused to attend voting sessions in the Knesset, threatening to withdraw from the coalition. Opinion polls show plummeting support for Netanyahu’s far-right government and a likely election win for the opposition bloc led by former prime minister Yair Lapid and General Benny Gantz.

There has been no let up on the crackdown on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank where there were renewed clashes with protesters in Nablus in which six Palestinians were injured with live fire. The raid followed the wounding of an Israeli soldier by an explosive device near Nablus Tuesday afternoon.

On Saturday, undercover security forces shot and killed two men aged 19 and 32, reportedly members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s armed wing, in another raid on Balata—a refugee camp in Nablus. Israel’s paramilitary Border Police also shot a 33-year-old Palestinian man at a West Bank checkpoint where he was left to bleed to death.

It signals an ever-sharper turn towards the military repression of the Palestinians on all fronts that threatens a broader conflagration throughout the region.

As Netanyahu doubtless calculated when he started the military operation in Gaza, the opposition leaders dutifully fell in line. This disparate group of Zionist parties, whose disagreements with Netanyahu reflect their concerns that he is endangering the state and jeopardising its support in Washington and the diaspora, issued statements of support and called off Saturday’s 19th successive weekly protest rally in Tel Aviv. They proved their unity on all essential issues with Netanyahu and the far-right, above all in relation to the oppression of the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Israelis defied their leaders’ call to abandon the protests, turning out Saturday to demonstrate against the Netanyahu government's judicial coup in towns and cities across the country, with the largest rallies in the north. In Haifa, Doctors for Democracy led the rally, with a smaller group protesting against Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Protesters rallied in central Tel Aviv, despite the official cancellation of the main rally, with some demonstrating against the Gaza operation.