An Important History Lesson for Mainstream Indian and Pakistani Mainstream Politicians

by NYLA ALI KHAN

India agreed to hold a free and impartial plebiscite in the state. At a mass public rally in Srinagar in 1948, Nehru, with the towering Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah by his side, solemnly promised to hold a plebiscite under United Nations auspices.

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s ascendancy received vituperative opposition not just from royalist elements, but also from Ladakh’s Tibetan Buddhists who were apprehensive about the sudden rise of a new Kashmiri Muslim elite and were particularly fearful of the implications of its land reform policies for the Buddhist clergy’s enormous private land-holdings in Ladakh. As the elected head of government Abdullah

“pushed through a set of major reforms, the most important of which was the “land to the tiller” legislation, which destroyed the power of the landlords, most of whom were non-Muslims. They were allowed to keep a maximum of 20 acres, provided they worked on the land themselves: 188,775 acres were transferred to 153,399 peasants, while the government organized collective farming on 90,000 acres. A law was passed prohibiting the sale of land to non-Kashmiris, thus preserving the basic topography of the region.”

The new economic plan of the state, formulated and executed by Abdullah’s government, underlined cooperative enterprise as opposed to malignant competition, in keeping with Abdullah’s socialist politics, which implied the organization and control of marketing and trade by the state. This revolutionary economic agenda in a hitherto feudal economy enabled the abolition of landlordism, allocation of land to the tiller, cooperative guilds of peasants, people’s control of forests, organized and planned cultivation of land, the development of sericulture, pisciculture and fruit orchards, and the utilization of forest and mineral wealth for the betterment of the populace. Tillers were assured of the right to work on the land without incurring the wrath of exploitative creditors, and were guaranteed material, social and health benefits (Korbel [1954] 2002: 204). These measures signaled the end of the chapter of peasant exploitation and subservience, and opened a new chapter of peasant emancipation.

Sheikh Abdullah’s unsurpassed achievement during his years as the prime minister of J & K from 1948 to 1953 was the abolition of the exploitative feudal system in the agrarian economy. He was also responsible for the eradication of monarchical rule. A.M. Diakov, a Soviet specialist on India, wrote about the progressive and democratic policies adopted by Abdullah’s National Conference (NC):

“After the Second World War, a national movement in Kashmir developed the program of doing away with the Maharaja, of turning Kashmir into a democratic republic, of giving to the people of Kashmir the right of self-determination.”

The Dogra monarchy was formally abolished in 1952, and the last monarch’s heir apparent, Karan Singh, was declared the titular head of state. Disregarding the attempts of the Indian government to ratify its authority in J & K, the UN Security Council passed a resolution in March 1951 reminding the governments and authorities concerned of the premises of the Security Council resolutions of 21 April 1948, 3 June 1948 and 14 March 1950, and the United Nations (UN) Commission for India and Pakistan resolutions of 13 August 1948 and 5 January 1949, according to which a final decision about the status of the state would be made in accordance with the wishes of its people expressed in a free and fair referendum held under the impartial auspices of the UN.

This resolution also determined that the convening of a Constituent Assembly as recommended by the general council of the “All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference,” and any decision that the Assembly might take and attempt to execute determining the political affiliation of the entire state or any part thereof, would be considered as not in accordance with the above principles and would therefore be disregarded .

When Sheikh Abdullah first voiced his unrelenting opposition to autocratic rule in the state, his political stance was applauded by some sections of the Indian press, which, by foregrounding his position, further brought it out of the catacombs of provincialism:

“It is imperialism’s game to disrupt the great democratic movement led by the NC. . . . There is no doubt that the NC would defeat these disruptive efforts by placing in the forefront the issue of ending the present autocratic regime and establishing a fully democratic government in accordance with its program.” (Communist, October 1947, quoted in Krishen 1951: 3–4)

Despite the injunction of the Security Council, Abdullah and his organization convened a Constituent Assembly in 1951. The NC regime was faced with unstinting opposition in the Hindu-dominated southern and southeastern districts of the Jammu region. Disgruntled elements comprising officials in the former maharaja’s administration who had been divested of their authority by the installation of a democratic regime in the state, and Hindu landlords stripped of their despotism by the NC administration’s populist land reforms, founded an organization called the Praja Parishad in late 1947, which was at loggerheads with Abdullah’s regime since 1949 (see Bose 1997: 104–64).

Despite all the odds, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah sought to maintain Kashmir’s autonomous status. Tariq Ali makes an astute observation regarding Abdullah’s locus standi:

If Sheikh Abdullah had allied himself with Pakistan, the Indian government and its troops would have been unpleasantly disarmed. But he considered the political and social ideologies of the Muslim League extremely conservative and was afraid that if Kashmir acceded to Pakistan, the Punjabi feudal lords who were at the helm of the ship of policy making in the Muslim League would hamper political and social progress. In order to prevent such an occurrence, Abdullah agreed to support the Indian military presence in the State provided under United Nations auspices in J & K.

The purportedly autonomous status of J & K under Abdullah’s government provoked the ire of the Hindu nationalist parties, which sought the unequivocal integration of the state into the Indian Union.

The unitary concept of nationalism that these organizations subscribed to challenged the basic principle that the nation was founded on, namely, democracy. In such a nationalist project, one of the forms that the nullification of past and present histories takes is the subjection of religious minorities to a centralized and authoritarian state buttressed by nostalgia of a “glorious past.”

The unequivocal aim of the supporters of the integration of J & K into the Indian Union was to expunge the political autonomy endowed on the state by India’s constitutional provisions.

According to the unitary discourse of sovereignty disseminated by the Hindu nationalists, J & K was not entitled to the signifiers of statehood – a prime minister, flag and constitution. The concept of nationalism constructed by Hindu nationalists bred relentless violence and the delusions of militant nationalisms, which is exactly what is happening now.

Nyla Ali Khan is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir, The Life of a Kashmiri Woman, and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir. Nyla Ali Khan has also served as an guest editor working on articles from the Jammu and Kashmir region for Oxford University Press (New York), helping to identify, commission, and review articles. 

Trump and the Kashmir Catastrophe

by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump have much in common, not least extensive use of Twitter to communicate their thoughts, policies and intentions. The arrangement for a Modi-Trump meeting on September 22 in Houston Texas, at a rally of Indian-Americans, known as “Howdy Modi!” was greeted enthusiastically by India’s leader (“The special gesture of President Trump to join us in Houston highlights the strength of the relationship and recognition of the contribution of the Indian community to American society and economy”) and no doubt he was confident that Trump would not refer to him, as he did to Egypt’s General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as “my favorite dictator.”

But Mr Modi is behaving more and more like a dictator, as evidenced by his actions in Indian-administered Kashmir. Howdy Despot.

Modi’s August decision to unilaterally change the status of the territory is only one of the many disasters to befall it in the seventy years since the Muslim majority state, the fiefdom of a Hindu Maharaja, was allocated to India by the colonial British who in 1947 had been forced to grant independence to India, resulting in creation of the nations of Pakistan and India which continue to disagree about the status of region and even about how to seek resolution.

One most sensitive aspect of the Kashmir dispute is the matter of bilateralism as interpreted by India. This was indicated, for example, by the Chandigarh Tribune which stated on 8 August that “UN chief Antonio Guterres has recalled the Simla Agreement of 1972, a bilateral agreement between India and Pakistan that rejects third-party mediation in Kashmir after Islamabad asked him to play his ‘due role’ following New Delhi’s decision to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.” The contention that the Simla Accord nullifies third party mediation is a drumbeat in India and is retailed in Western media.

But the Simla Agreement does not exclude or in any way invalidate mediation concerning Kashmir or any other dispute between India and Pakistan, as it lays down that “the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations shall govern the relations between the two countries” which “are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.”

Successive Indian governments have willfully ignored or chosen to misinterpret the phrase “or by any other means” simply because it makes nonsense of the contention that Simla decrees bilateralism. It is disturbing that India should reiterate that its “consistent position [is] that all outstanding issues with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally.”

It is obvious why India refuses to countenance mediation — because any independent, objective mediator would make the point that UN Security Council agreements still apply to the territory, and that none of them have been annulled or diluted.  As the BBC noted, “In three resolutions, the UN Security Council and the United Nations Commission in India and Pakistan recommended that as already agreed by Indian and Pakistani leaders, a plebiscite should be held to determine the future allegiance of the entire state.”

There is nothing wrong with mediation, and when bilateral confrontation hasn’t worked for seventy years in solving a dispute, it might be a good idea to try some other way.

At the moment, however, India’s government has no intention of trying anything but coercion as regards Indian-administered Kashmir and its unfortunate citizens, and has imposed a draconian regime of direct rule on what is now a “Union Territory”.

The decision by Prime Minister Modi to annul Article 370 of the Constitution and thus abolish the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir was yet another stride in his ultra-nationalist campaign to reinforce supremacy of Hindus. Since 1948 the Article has meant that the territory’s citizens have their own Constitution, their own laws, and the right to property ownership, with non-Kashmiris not being permitted to buy land.  It is this last that is of major concern, because Hindus will now be encouraged to buy land and property, and gradually (or perhaps not-so-gradually) displace the Kashmiris.

It is little wonder that so many Kashmiris distrust and detest their Hindu overlords who are behaving in a fashion that would have excited the admiration of the most rigid colonial autocrat in the years of the British Raj.

Modi promised that his unilateral imposition of direct rule on the region would bring “new opportunity and prosperity to the people” — but if he thought that his announcement would be greeted with enthusiasm and that his policy would indeed benefit Kashmiris, then why did he send “tens of thousands of Indian troops . . . in addition to the half a million troops already stationed there”?  Why has the Central Government “shut off most communication . . . including internet, cellphone and landline networks”?

Arrest and detention without trial of over 3,000 Kashmiris added to overall fear and resentment, and the treatment of former chief minister, 81 year-old Farooq Abdullah attracted attention in international media.  It was reported that on September 19 “the 42nd day of the ongoing Kashmir lockdown . . . Farooq Abdullah was arrested under the Public Safety Act, a law that allows detention without trial for two years.”  He has been confined in “the main city of Srinagar, from where he governed the disputed state as chief minister for three terms.”

There was no mention of Abdullah’s detention at the ‘Howdy Modi’ rally in Texas on 22 September, when President Trump “sat in the front row as the Indian prime minister told cheering crowds his decision to remove all autonomy from Indian-administered Kashmir would bring progress and better rights for its people,” and it seemed that Trump endorsed Modi’s oppression in the territory.  But later he seemed to have second thoughts about what is going on in locked-down Kashmir.”

In July President Trump said Modi had asked him if he would “like to be a mediator, or arbitrator” concerning Kashmir and he replied “If I can help, I would love to be a mediator.” This was most strongly denied by India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar who told parliament that “The US president made certain remarks to the effect he was ready to mediate if requested by India and Pakistan. I categorically assure the house that no such request has been made by the prime minister.”  And there the matter was laid to rest — until once again the US president had thoughts about Kashmir.

After the Howdy Modi carnival and immediately before meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan on September 23, Trump was asked by a reporter if he was concerned about the human rights situation in Kashmir and replied “Sure.  I’d like to see everything work out.  I want it to be humane.  I want everybody to be treated well.  You have two big countries, and they’re warring countries and they’ve been fighting.”

He continued that “I heard a very aggressive statement yesterday from India, from the Prime Minister . . .  it was a very aggressive statement, and I hope that they’re going to be able to come together — India and Pakistan — and do something that’s really smart and good for both.”  When asked directly about mediation he was positive in declaring that if both countries wished it, “I am ready, willing, and able.”

So, for the moment at least, President Trump says he disapproves of human rights abuses by Indian armed forces in Kashmir and has reiterated his willingness to mediate over the disputed territory.

But his dabbling will have no effect.  The military clampdown in Indian-administered Kashmir will continue until the Modi government is confident that the population is fully under control;  and there is no possibility of mediation by Trump or anyone else being permitted by India. The ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will continue to rule and attract ever more support from the Hindu majority, which is intent on displacing Muslims in Kashmir whose suffering will be ignored by the world at large. The outlook is dire.

Brian Cloughley writes about foreign policy and military affairs. He lives in Voutenay sur Cure, France.

The Drone Strikes on the Saudi Oil Facilities Have Changed Global Warfare

by PATRICK COCKBURN

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Photograph Source: VOA – Public Domain

The devastating attack on Saudi oil facilities by drones and missiles not only transforms the balance of military power in the Middle East, but marks a change in the nature of warfare globally.

On the morning of 14 September, 18 drones and seven cruise missiles – all cheap and unsophisticated compared to modern military aircraft – disabled half of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production and raised the world price of oil by 20 per cent.

This happened despite the Saudis spending $67.6bn (£54bn) on their defence budget last year, much of it on vastly expensive aircraft and air defence systems, which notably failed to stop the attack. The US defence budget stands at $750bn (£600.2bn), and its intelligence budget at $85bn (£68bn), but the US forces in the Gulf did not know what was happening until it was all over.

Excuses advanced for this failure include the drones flying too low to be detected and unfairly coming from a direction different from the one that might have been expected. Such explanations sound pathetic when set against the proud boasts of the arms manufacturers and military commanders about the effectiveness of their weapons systems.

Debate is ongoing about whether it was the Iranians or the Houthis who carried out the attack, the likely answer being a combination of the two, but perhaps with Iran orchestrating the operation and supplying the equipment. But over-focus on responsibility diverts attention from a much more important development: a middle ranking power like Iran, under sanctions and with limited resources and expertise, acting alone or through allies, has inflicted crippling damage on theoretically much better-armed Saudi Arabia which is supposedly defended by the US, the world’s greatest military super-power.

If the US and Saudi Arabia are particularly hesitant to retaliate against Iran it is because they know now, contrary to what they might have believed a year ago, that a counter-attack will not be a cost-free exercise. What happened before can happen again: not for nothing has Iran been called a “drone superpower”. Oil production facilities and the desalination plants providing much of the fresh water in Saudi Arabia are conveniently concentrated targets for drones and small missiles.

In other words, the military playing field will be a lot more level in future in a conflict between a country with a sophisticated air force and air defence system and one without. The trump card for the US, Nato powers and Israel has long been their overwhelming superiority in airpower over any likely enemy. Suddenly this calculus has been undermined because almost anybody can be a player on the cheap when it comes to airpower.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, succinctly sums up the importance of this change, writing that “the strikes on Saudi Arabia provide a clear strategic warning that the US era of air supremacy in the Gulf, and the near US monopoly on precision strike capability, is rapidly fading.” He explains that a new generation of drones, cruise missiles, and precision strike ballistic missiles are entering the Iranian inventories and have begun to spread to the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Similar turning points in military history have occurred when the deployment of an easily produced weapon suddenly checkmates the use of a more complicated one.

A good example of this was the attack on 11 November 1940, on five Italian battleships, moored at their base at Taranto by 20 slow moving but sturdy British Swordfish biplanes, armed with torpedoes and launched from an aircraft carrier. At the end of the day, three of the battleships had been sunk or badly damaged while only two of the British planes were missing. The enormity of the victory achieved at such minimal cost ended the era when battleships ruled the sea and replaced them with one in which aircraft carriers with torpedo/bomber were supreme. It was a lesson noted by the Japanese navy which attacked Pearl Harbor in similar fashion a year after Taranto.

The Saudis showed off the wreckage of the drones and missiles to assembled diplomats and journalists this week in a bid to convince them that the Iranians were behind the air raid. But the most significant feature of the broken drone and missile parts was that, in full working order, the weapons that had just rocked the world economy would not have cost a lot. By way of contrast, the US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, the main air defence of Saudi Arabia that were so useless last Saturday, cost $3m apiece.

Cost and simplicity are important because they mean that Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah and almost any country can produce drones and missiles in numbers large enough to overwhelm any defences they are likely to meet.

Compare the cost of the drone which would be in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to the $122m (£97.6m) price of a single F-35 fighter, so expensive that it can only be purchased in limited numbers. As they take on board the meaning of what happened at Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities, governments around the world will be demanding that their air force chiefs explain why they need to spend so much money when cheap but effective alternatives are available. Going by past precedent, the air chiefs and arms manufacturers will fight to their last breath for grossly inflated budgets to purchase weapons of dubious utility in a real war.

The attack on Saudi Arabia reinforces a trend in warfare in which inexpensive easily acquired weapons come out on top. Consider the track record of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), usually made out of easily available fertiliser, detonated by a command wire, and planted in or beside a road. These were used with devastating effect by the IRA in South Armagh, forcing the British Army off the roads and into helicopters.

IEDs were used in great numbers and with great effect against US-led coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Immense resources were deployed by the US military into finding a counter to this deadly device, which included spending no less than $40bn (£32bn) on 27,000 heavily armoured vehicles called MRAPs. A subsequent army study revealed that that the number of US servicemen killed and wounded in an attack on an MRAP was exactly the same as in the vehicles which they had replaced.

It is unthinkable that American, British and Saudi military chiefs will accept that they command expensive, technically advanced forces that are obsolete in practice. This means they are stuck with arms that suck up resources but are, in practical terms, out of date. The Japanese, soon after they had demonstrated at Pearl Harbour the vulnerability of battleships, commissioned the world’s largest battleship, the Yamato, which fired its guns only once and was sunk in 1945 by US torpedo aircraft and bombers operating from aircraft carriers.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of  The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution.

Israel and the evolution of asymmetric warfare

Omar Ahmed

War, wrote the 19th century Prussian General and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, is an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” This is an enduring maxim of the essence of war to this day, with von Clausewitz’s work still studied by army officers around the world.

It is generally understood among military academics that a distinction should be made between war’s objective nature and its subjective character. Among them is professor of international relations and strategic studies Dr Colin Gray, who stated that, “Nothing essential changes in the nature [of war] in sharp contrast to the character – of strategy and war.”

The character of war, it is argued changes over time and can be impacted by factors such as technological advances, culture and ethics.

Ever since the end of the Cold War and more so post-9/11, the concept of “asymmetric warfare” has become increasingly relevant and prominent in literature on contemporary warfare, especially with the supposed decline of state against state warfare, for the time being, at least.

In simple terms, Dr Rod Thornton describes it as “violent action undertaken by the ‘have-nots’ against the ‘haves’.” The have-nots are usually non-state actors, explains the Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies, and seek to generate profound effects by capitalising on their relative advantages against vulnerabilities in larger, conventional opponents, essentially national armed forces.

In relation to the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, Thornton wrote how four aircraft were brought down, along with twin icons of American economic might — contributing to the 3,000 people killed in the world’s most powerful state with the world’s most sophisticated military – by men “armed only with box cutters”. However, recent developments would suggest that things have changed considerably in asymmetric warfare since that fateful day.

The “game-changing” usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) — commonly referred to as drones — by Yemen’s Houthis against big defence spender Saudi Arabia and its oil producing facilities, resulting in halving its output and a temporary surge in oil prices, is notable in this respect. One Reuters article quoted an unnamed Saudi security analyst who acknowledged that, “The attack is like September 11th for Saudi Arabia; it is a game changer.”

Supporters of the Houthis participate in a march to mark the 5th anniversary of the Houthis’ control of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, on 21 September 2019 [Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency]

Elsewhere in the Middle East, tensions appear to have flared up again between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, after two Israeli drones crashed into the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the movement has its headquarters. It will be interesting to see how this perceived evolution in asymmetric warfare affects the balance of power between the Israeli army and Hezbollah’s armed wing, Al-Muqawama Al-Islamiyya or the Islamic Resistance, a reference to the struggle against the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in the early 1980s whence the social movement was founded.

Hezbollah believes that its armed resistance is legitimate as Israel continues to occupy the Shebaa farms in Lebanon to this day; the area is part of the occupied Golan Heights, most of which belong to Syria. Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump caused uproar with a controversial decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan, contravening decades of US policy on the region. In addition to being committed to liberation for Palestinians living under occupation, Hezbollah says that it must continue its armed struggle to reclaim all Lebanese territory.

During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah used several Iranian made Ababil drones, which were shot down by Israel’s air defence systems. The movement has managed to enter Israeli airspace on numerous occasions since then, despite Israel’s Iron Dome defence system.

Israeli soldiers walk past an Israeli Iron Dome defence system on 25 February, 2016 [AFP/Gil Cohen-Magen/Getty]

Although Hezbollah’s drone usage continues to become more sophisticated, the movement has “led the way in the deployment and use of drones for non-state groups for more than a decade”.

Hezbollah’s first known use of a drone occurred in 2004, when it infiltrated Israeli airspace for reconnaissance purposes, successfully returning to Lebanon before the Israelis, who were caught off guard, could intercept or destroy it. It was alleged to be an Iranian supplied Mirsad-1 UAV.

Iran began manufacturing drones in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, primarily for surveillance and aerial monitoring purposes, although they have grown in sophistication and capability and have been exported over the years to regional allies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and occupied Gaza. In late 2010, Israeli Brigadier-General Nitzan Nuriel confirmed that both Hezbollah and Hamas were in possession of a number of drones with a range of 300km.

Israel is a leading developer of drone technology and has the upper hand, but Iranian made UAVs certainly constitute a “limited threat”.

Hezbollah’s battle experience has also undoubtedly been bolstered by its involvement in the Syrian civil war. This extends to its knowledge in utilising drones, or as one Hezbollah fighter told Middle East Eye in 2017, “We are definitely learning a lot by working with Russians and Iranians in the Syria war and more specifically when it comes to UAVs.” Israel has also turned to drones for the many air strikes which it has been accused of carrying out in Syria.

An image released by the Iranian military in April 2016, showing it’s replicated shell of the captured US RQ-170 Sentinel drone

Due to the low-cost, high impact nature of drone attacks in contemporary warfare, the stakes are definitely higher, especially with the increased access of open source satellite imagery since the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Such images can enable the careful, strategic targeting of specific sites.

Writing about a Houthi drone attack earlier this year on Saudi-backed forces, author Aaron Stein mentioned how the Houthis are “using drones in ways reminiscent of precision-guided-munitions.”

For over a decade, Israel and Hezbollah have maintained an uneasy absence of hostilities, although occasional comments by observers always suggest that another war is flaring up. That narrative is being heard more often with the downing of the Israeli drones in Beirut, and the response by Hezbollah, which claimed to have destroyed an Israeli armoured vehicle, killing and wounding the soldiers inside.

Israel has vowed to use its 2006 “Dahiya doctrine” — named after a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut and which involves “indiscriminate destruction of infrastructure and disproportionate force against communities thought to be supporting Hezbollah across the country” – although there is arguably nothing exactly novel or unprecedented about this. We just have to look at Israel’s military offensives against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which have not, it must be said, deterred the resistance movements there.

Returning to von Clausewitz, who wrote of “friction” in warfare, more widely understood as the “fog of war”, there is still that inherent element of ambiguity and uncertainty, as the Aramco attacks have illustrated. What is certain, though, is that asymmetric warfare has evolved with the democratisation of drones among non-state actors; they are set to be an enduring part of contemporary warfare, especially in the Middle East.

Pope Francis digs into Western arms manufacturing countries for creating refugees

Pope Francis on Sunday scolded countries that produce weapons for wars fought elsewhere and then refuse to take in refugees fleeing the very same conflicts, reports Reuters.

The 82-year-old Argentine pope, whose parents were of Italian immigrant stock, has made the defence of migrants and refugees a plank of his pontificate and he has often clashed over immigration policy with US President Donald Trump and populist anti-immigrant politicians in Europe.

Francis has also criticised the arms trade repeatedly and his sermon for 40,000 people in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday linked the issues of war and migration as the Roman Catholic Church marked its World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

Francis said:

Wars only affect some regions of the world, yet weapons of war are produced and sold in other regions which are then unwilling to take in the refugees generated by these conflicts

Sunday’s Mass was attended by many immigrants and groups helping them. It was also marked by a mix of African, Spanish and Portuguese music as well as traditional Church music.

Francis said the world is becoming increasingly “elitist and cruel towards the excluded”, adding that it is the duty of Christians to look after all those left behind in a “throwaway culture” taking root in society.

“This means being a neighbour to all those who are mistreated and abandoned on the streets of our world, soothing their wounds and bringing them to the nearest shelter, where their needs can be met,” he said.

People could not remain indifferent to “the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to ‘our’ group”, the pope said.

Francis then inaugurated a large statue in St. Peter’s Square, showing dozens of migrants and refugees from different faiths and different periods of history.

Spectacular Yemeni Victory Spells Doom of Saudi Regime

By: S. Nawabzadeh

"Nasrun min Allah; wa fat’hun qareeb (Help from Allah and victory is near)” – Holy Qur’an 61:13

It was yet another manifest fulfillment of the Divine Promise of assistance from the heavens to ensure the triumph of the believers over the heretical aggressors.

I mean the latest decisive operation in parts of Occupied Najran launched with the above-mentioned Qur’anic phrase by the indomitable Yemeni forces that resulted in the annihilation of three Saudi brigades and the capture of over three thousand enemy troops, in addition to the killing and wounding of more than five thousand soldiers trained by the Americans and equipped with sophisticated weapons made in the U.S., Britain and France.

Video footage of the operations that came on the heels of the spectacular drone attack of September 14 that destroyed the Abqaiq oil installations, showed tanks and armoured vehicles, several of them ablaze, with clear Saudi markings, along with huge piles of U.S.-British manufactured weapons and ammunition seized by the Ansarallah forces.

The footage focused on rows of fresh corpses in Saudi military uniforms, in addition to the captured soldiers clad in Saudi fatigues, and many of them officers, speaking the Saudi dialect of Arabic and sheepishly admitting their defeat.

They said the lightning operation, accompanied with a barrage of missiles and drones, caught them by surprise and they had no other choice but to surrender. Many of those captured confessed that they did not know what they were fighting for, and why the Wahhabi regime in Riyadh was sending them to their death.

It seems, the Saudi authorities, who initially respond with lies and denials to such devastating retaliatory attacks by Yemen’s defenders, are in a state of shock, since they have not said anything so far.

Horrified at the footage released by al-Masirah TV, they might be frantically conferring with their masters in Washington, London, and Tel Aviv, as to utter what preposterous lies this time, in the aftermath of their failed propaganda to put the blame upon Iran for the Abqaiq drone attacks.

Of course, the Americans and the Saudis will again try to frame up the Islamic Republic and accuse it of supporting the Yemenis, in a bid to deflect attention from the U.S.-supported war crimes of Riyadh that over the past four-and-a-half years have killed almost a hundred thousand men, women, and children in Yemen, in addition to destroying that country’s infrastructure, making hundreds of thousands homeless, and trapping millions of others in famine and epidemics.

Meanwhile, independent analysts in the West say there is no reason to doubt the latest communiques from Sana’a, since the video and images being broadcast by al-Masirah clearly affirm the rout of the Saudi ground forces, indicating a pivotal turn in the imposed war that now sees Yemenis in the ascendant and moving inside what is called Saudi territory.

It is worth noting, Najran, along with Asir and Jeezan have been historically and geographically integral parts of Yemen, until their seizure in 1934 by Abdul-Aziz, the desert brigand from Najd for whom Britain created the spurious state called Saudi Arabia in 1932, seven years after he brutally attacked and occupied Hijaz the Land of Divine Revelation by massacring tens of thousands of Muslims in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, as well as in Jeddah and Ta’ef – even in the precincts of the sacred Ka’ba and the shrine of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).

Observers believe that if the Ansarallah can deal such a deadly blow to the Saudis, then they are capable of not just crippling the Saudi oil industry with more drone and missile attacks, but advancing further north with the aim of liberating Hijaz.

If such a scenario materializes, then people of other occupied parts of Arabia, especially the Shi’a-Muslim majority of the oil-rich east, will launch their own uprisings for freedom.

In such a case, the Wahhabis will be pushed back into their native Najd, if not totally annihilated, while the Saudi ruling family flees to the U.S. and Europe with hundreds of billions of dollars of the looted wealth of the people that Washington will definitely welcome, rather than back a losing horse and risk the end of its political influence in Arabia with the new rulers.

Insha Allah (God Willing), the end of this criminal clique that slavishly serves U.S.-Zionist interests and creates macabrely murderous terrorists to destabilize Muslim lands, is near.