Archives: Articles

By Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander, New Age Islam

Saudi Presence at Khamenei’s Funeral

Main Points:

· The funeral is presented as a major political and ideological event, not just a moment of mourning.

· Saudi Arabia’s delegation attending the funeral is highlighted as symbolically important and diplomatically cautious.

· It  emphasizes the 2023 Iran-Saudi rapprochement and its limits, especially after years of mistrust and sectarian tension.

· It contrasts Iran’s image of resistance, simplicity, and religiously grounded statecraft with the lavish reputation of some Gulf rulers.

· It points to a contradiction between Wahhabi anti-Shia rhetoric and Saudi official participation in the funeral of a Shia leader

…

The funeral of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would not merely be a moment of national mourning for Iran, it would stand as a defining political and ideological event in the contemporary Muslim world. Among the most striking and symbolically charged aspects of this moment would be the participation of a Saudi delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al Khuraiji, who travelled to Tehran and attended the official funeral procession. This development, while diplomatically significant, would also expose deep contradictions within the religious discourse historically promoted by Saudi Arabia’s Wa habi establishment.

The Saudi delegation’s reception in Tehran was marked by the recitation of a powerful Qur’anic verse: “Indeed, there was a sign for you in the two armies that met in battle—one fighting for the cause of Allah and the other in denial. The believers saw their enemy twice their number. But Allah supports with His victory whoever He wills. Surely in this is a lesson for people of insight.” (Surah Al Imran 3:13). The choice of this verse was far from incidental. It invoked a narrative of moral clarity, resistance, and divine support against overwhelming odds. In the context of Iran’s long-standing confrontation with Western powers and their regional allies, the verse served as a subtle but pointed reminder of Iran’s self-image as a state that has resisted external domination.

This symbolism becomes even more poignant when viewed against Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical posture. For decades, Saudi Arabia has aligned itself closely with the United States, often supporting or tacitly endorsing policies that have directly challenged Iran. Even in moments of regional conflict, Riyadh has stood with Washington rather than with Tehran. Yet, despite this alignment, Saudi Arabia did not actively side with Iran in its struggles. The presence of its delegation at Khamenei’s funeral, therefore, reflects a complex and somewhat cautious diplomatic balancing act rather than a full ideological reconciliation.

The backdrop to this development lies in the 2023 restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. That agreement emphasized sovereignty, mutual respect, and non-interference in internal affairs. While it marked a significant thaw in relations, it did not erase decades of mistrust, ideological divergence, and sectarian hostility. However, the participation of Saudi officials in such a deeply symbolic event suggests that the rapprochement is not merely procedural but carries the potential for deeper transformation.

At the same time, Iran’s position in the Muslim world has evolved considerably. It is now widely perceived as a strong and influential state that has maintained its sovereignty despite sustained external pressure. Its refusal to succumb to the dictates of the United States and other powerful actors, including certain Gulf states, has enhanced its stature among large segments of the Muslim population. This perception is further reinforced by narratives surrounding the personal life of its leadership.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s observation about Ayatollah Khamenei captures this sentiment vividly, “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei left behind no palaces, no bank accounts, and no fortune after 47 years in power. No luxury yachts. No hidden billions. No golden thrones. Just one simple life serving his people.” Whether one interprets this statement as political messaging or as an accurate reflection of reality, it stands in stark contrast to the widely held perception of extravagance associated with many rulers in the Muslim world, particularly in the Gulf monarchies.

This contrast has not gone unnoticed. The simplicity attributed to Iran’s leadership, juxtaposed with the lavish lifestyles of other Muslim rulers, has made Iran appear more relatable and even admirable to many ordinary Muslims. It has helped cultivate an image of a state that, at least symbolically, aligns governance with ethical restraint and public service. In addition, Iran’s resilience in the face of external pressure has elevated its status as a model of political independence.

Moreover, Iran has demonstrated that religion can still function as a central organizing principle in modern statecraft. By maintaining a system that integrates religious authority with governance, it has challenged the assumption that modern states must necessarily be secular. For many Muslims, this has reaffirmed the continued relevance of religion in public life and political organization.

In contrast, the Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia has historically propagated a rigid and exclusionary interpretation of Islam. Central to this interpretation has been the persistent denunciation of Shia Muslims as deviants or even as outside the fold of Islam. For decades, Wahhabi clerics have used sermons, publications, and institutional platforms to delegitimize Shia beliefs and practices. This sectarian rhetoric has contributed significantly to divisions within the Muslim world and, in some cases, to violence and persecution.

It is precisely here that the participation of the Saudi delegation in Khamenei’s funeral creates a profound contradiction. If Shia Muslims are to be regarded as unbelievers, as many Wahhabi clerics have long claimed, then how does one justify the official presence of a Saudi delegation at the funeral of a Shia leader? How does one reconcile theological denunciation with diplomatic engagement at the highest level?

The answer lies in the political nature of religious discourse within the Saudi context. The Wahhabi establishment has historically functioned in close alignment with the Saudi state. Its authority and influence are deeply intertwined with the monarchy, and its positions have often reflected state interests rather than independent theological reasoning. As a result, when the state shifts its policy, the religious establishment is compelled, whether explicitly or implicitly, to adjust its rhetoric accordingly.

What is most striking in this scenario is not what Wahhabi clerics have said, but what they have not said. Their silence regarding the Saudi delegation’s participation in Khamenei’s funeral is telling. These are the same voices that have, for years, “left no stone unturned” in declaring Shias as unbelievers and in seeking to exclude them from the broader Muslim community. Yet, when confronted with a clear and public act of diplomatic engagement by their own state, they have chosen silence.

This silence is not accidental. It reflects an awareness that continued sectarian denunciation would now be at odds with official state policy. It also reveals the extent to which their earlier positions were contingent rather than absolute. If the Saudi monarchy were to deepen its engagement with Iran and move toward more substantive cooperation, it is highly likely that these same clerics would gradually soften their rhetoric. The denunciations that once appeared uncompromising would be reinterpreted, qualified, or quietly abandoned.

In this sense, the behaviour of Wahhabi clerics can be understood through the metaphor of “His Master’s Voice.” Their pronouncements often echo the priorities of the state, and their theological positions adapt to changing political realities. This does not necessarily mean that all such clerics lack conviction, but it does suggest that their public discourse is shaped, constrained, and at times directed by the imperatives of state policy.

The implications of this are significant for the broader Muslim world. It calls into question the authenticity and consistency of sectarian narratives that have long been presented as immutable truths. It also opens the possibility for a gradual de-escalation of sectarian tensions, not necessarily through theological reconciliation, but through political pragmatism.

At the same time, the contrast between Iran and other Islamic political models remains relevant. Unlike the Taliban regime, which has been widely criticized for its harsh and exclusionary policies, Iran has managed to project an image, however contested, of a functioning state that combines religious principles with institutional governance. This has made it more acceptable to many Muslims who seek a balance between faith and modernity.

None of this is to suggest that Iran’s system is without flaws or criticism. Its political structure, treatment of dissent, and human rights record remain subjects of debate. However, in the realm of symbolic politics, it has succeeded in presenting itself as a state that resists external domination and upholds a form of principled governance.

The funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei, therefore, would serve as more than a ceremonial event. It would act as a mirror reflecting the evolving dynamics of power, belief, and legitimacy in the Muslim world. The presence of the Saudi delegation would signal a shift toward pragmatic engagement, while the silence of Wahhabi clerics would expose the malleability of sectarian discourse.

Ultimately, this moment would underscore a fundamental reality, that in the intersection of religion and politics, doctrinal rigidity often yields to political necessity. The same voices that once declared Shias as outside the fold of Islam may, under changing circumstances, adopt a more conciliatory tone. Not because of a sudden theological awakening, but because the priorities of the state have changed.

…

M.H.A. Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir.

23 July 2026

Source: newageislam.com

By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

“The clerks began to play the game of political passions.” — Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals

Julien Benda feared intellectuals who betrayed universal principles for political passion. Pakistan has produced something more contemptible: intellectuals who betray principle for personal convenience. They have not been conquered by ideology. They have been subdued by the prospect of an unpleasant airport interrogation, a cancelled invitation, or a disrupted summer in Lahore.

For two decades, Pakistan’s diaspora scholar-activists built careers explaining the country to the West. They corrected journalists, lectured policymakers, decoded civil-military relations, and reminded every available audience that Pakistan’s generals did not merely guard the state; they governed it from behind the curtain.

Now the curtain is gone. The general stands center stage. And the experts have developed collective laryngitis.

Pakistan under Field Marshal Asim Munir is not an interpretive puzzle. It is a military-dominated order in which the army chief functions as principal diplomat, political arbiter, security overlord and custodian of permissible public speech. The country’s most popular opposition leader remains imprisoned. His party has been battered through arrests, prohibitions, defections and administrative sabotage. Journalists are disciplined, courts pressured, activists abducted, protesters criminalized and dissent routinely translated into the language of terrorism, treason or foreign conspiracy.

Apparently, however, one must wait until the dictator retires before calling the system a dictatorship.

Ayub may be condemned safely. Zia can be anatomized at conferences. Musharraf can be denounced between catered panels on constitutionalism. Dead dictators are wonderfully civilized: they revoke no passports, telephone no relatives and interfere with no festival invitations. The safest tyrant is always the one already embalmed by history.

The living ruler is another matter. Listen to much of Pakistan’s progressive diaspora commentary and you will hear every abstraction except the relevant name. There is “democratic backsliding,” “institutional imbalance,” “authoritarian drift,” “shrinking civic space” and, that exquisite monument to intellectual cowardice, “the establishment.”

There are prisons without jailers, repression without repressors, terror without authors.

There is, above all, no Asim Munir.

This silence would be merely pathetic were it not so politically obscene. Munir has become one of Pakistan’s most internationally recognizable figures. Foreign capitals increasingly treat him as the country’s decisive authority. Western commentary openly describes him as Pakistan’s dominant political actor. The same scholars who spent years complaining that the West ignored Pakistan now confront a world talking constantly about Pakistan — and pretend its central ruler is an optical illusion.

The bloodshed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir reveals what this cultivated vagueness conceals. Protesters mobilized around representation, electoral manipulation and reserved legislative seats. Security forces were accused of firing on civilians. Dozens were reported killed. Communications were severed. Journalists were obstructed. Authorities disputed casualty figures, invoked armed infiltrators and reached, with the reflexes of a nervous empire, for the usual vocabulary of militancy and foreign conspiracy.

The precise number of dead may be contested. The political machinery producing dead citizens is not.

Kashmir is not an aberration at the margins of an otherwise constitutional republic. It is the logical outcome of a security state that regards public aspiration as sedition. The same reflex operates in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Pakistani heartland: stigmatize dissent, criminalize organization, obscure responsibility and present coercion as patriotism. When citizens demand representation, the state searches them for foreign fingerprints. When they demand justice, it diagnoses them with terrorism.

And what does the progressive intellectual do? Select one morally photogenic victim, issue a suitably mournful sentence, and decline to identify the order manufacturing victims by the thousand.

Thus Mahrang Baloch’s persecution may be called “horrifically unjust,” as though it were a freak storm rather than the predictable output of authoritarian rule. The victim can be named. The jailer must remain grammatically invisible.

This is not solidarity. It is moral taxidermy: the preservation of politically convenient victims after every trace of dangerous context has been removed.

The hypocrisy becomes rancid when these same intellectuals speak with heroic fluency about Palestine, Hindutva, Trumpism, colonialism and global fascism. Their advocacy may be admirable. But universalism that expires at the passport office is merely careerism in revolutionary costume.

Yes, speaking about Pakistan may bring consequences: family pressure, surveillance, cancelled travel, poisoned professional networks. Fear is real. But fear explains silence; it does not transform silence into wisdom. An intellectual unable to speak truth because it may inconvenience him is not practicing strategy. He is managing access.

More disgraceful still, many who cannot pronounce Munir’s name remain perfectly capable of mocking Imran Khan and sneering at his supporters. Khan’s own accommodation with the military, his treatment of opponents and his contributions to coercive politics deserve criticism. But one did not need to worship Benazir Bhutto to oppose Zia’s persecution of her. One did not need to canonize Lula to understand the meaning of his imprisonment.

A political prisoner becomes symbolic not because he is flawless, but because the state compresses an entire conflict into his body.

Khan’s cell is therefore larger than Khan. It announces that no civilian politician, however popular, may possess legitimacy independent of Rawalpindi. His imprisonment, isolation and political exclusion communicate the regime’s essential doctrine: the people may vote, organize and speak only so long as their choices remain militarily acceptable.

Pakistan’s left once claimed to understand precisely this. Yet its signature contribution to the present catastrophe may be a vocabulary of contempt for the millions who turned against military domination. “Youthia” became less an insult than an intellectual sedative — a way to avoid asking why ordinary Pakistanis, especially in Punjab, had ceased to revere the army. Imranophobia became an alibi for dictatorship.

These intellectuals need not become PTI partisans. They need only recover the elementary courage to describe reality. They may criticize Khan and still oppose his persecution. They may defend Baloch and Kashmiri movements without romanticizing every actor. They may condemn military rule without absolving civilian collaborators.

But they must name the system. They must name its prisoners. And they must name the man.

History will remember Asim Munir without difficulty. The harsher judgment will fall upon those who built careers denouncing military domination, then discovered — when military domination arrived in its most naked form — that muteness was nuance, cowardice was complexity and self-preservation was political wisdom.

The dictatorship already possesses generals, judges, propagandists and prisons.

It does not require progressive stenographers.

History is not asking Pakistan’s intellectuals to become martyrs. It is asking them to stop behaving like courtiers terrified of losing their invitations.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID – https://csidpk.org), Islamabad, Pakistan.

2 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

I was watching a speech the other day of a senior American social activist who had just returned from a visit to Cuba. After describing the increasingly difficult conditions in Cuba he made an important point which was very appealing. He didn’t just say that we all should try to help Cuba and its people in these difficult times, he instead emphasized that the world owes it to the people of Cuba to help Cuba in its most difficult times because in the past the doctors and medical workers and relief workers of this tiny country, despite lacking resources, have been rushing to so many countries at the time of a disaster or a medical or humanitarian crisis wherever their services were needed, providing invaluable help with great dedication. There is no other example of such a small country taking up its international responsibilities with such deep commitment.

It is this very country which is being targeted by the USA and the Trump administration today in very cruel ways, creating such extreme shortages that people may die due to this.

At a time when the world faces a very serious humanitarian crisis as well as a huge shortage of resources to meet the needs of very seriously affected people, President Trump has just gone ahead to create an additional humanitarian crisis very close to his own country. Of course earlier also the USA had imposed many sanctions on Cuba but Trump has recently done the most he can to make the situation as unbearable for the people of Cuba, including women, children and the elderly, as possible. Due to completely crazy and unjustified fuel blockade on top of multiple other restrictions and sanctions, Cuba has faced unprecedented fuel, electricity, water and food shortages in recent months while at the same even its most elderly leaders are being victimized in highly unjust ways. So heavy-handed and stupid is Trump’s cruel strangulation of a tiny neighbour that this has become an embarrassment for ordinary decent Americans, as is reflected in criticism of Trump’s Cuba policy even in those media outlets that normally would not touch anything communist with a pair of tongs. This embarrassment increases further when senior persons in the defence establishment refer to Cuba as a security risk for the USA and also identify those trying to provide a bit of humanitarian help as subversive elements. Are they serious?

‘Veterans for Peace’ organization (VfP) has captured the spirit of the feelings of a very large number of people within the country and outside in a recent statement which states, “Veterans for Peace condemns the recent report by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing Cuba of interfering in the internal affairs of the U.S. and, conversely, accusing U.S. peace and solidarity activists of being agents of a foreign country, Cuba. Talk about turning things on their head! It is the U.S. that has waged an economic war against Cuba for 64 years with a blockade that prevents it from normal trade relations with the U.S. and other countries, stunts its economic development, and denies it access to medicines and other essentials.”

Reminding the US elites of historical as well as current facts this statement further says, “It is the U.S. CIA that organized a failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, setting the stage for the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that almost led to a nuclear war. It is the U.S. that is currently enforcing a deadly oil embargo on Cuba, and it is the U.S. president and secretary of state who are openly threatening a U.S. military invasion of Cuba. What has Cuba ever done to the U.S.? Cuba is being punished for declaring its independence from U.S. imperialism and for attempting to develop a socialist economic model that is not based on exploitation and profiteering.”

Indicating domestic connections this statement adds, “We reject the Trump administration’s sudden return to “anti-communism” as a means of undermining the credibility of its political opponents — whether from the Democratic Party or actual left-wing organizations. If this is an attempt to intimidate those who are organizing for a just and peaceful world, it will not work. We will not be intimidated. If Trump’s and Rubio’s sudden obsession with “communists” and “political terrorists” is telegraphing their intention for a clampdown on dissent in the U.S., we take this very seriously. Will the racist ICE attacks on people of colour be expanded to suppress all political dissent? Will the private prisons built with ICE’s billions become concentration camps for peace activists? Will the pretext of foreign interference be used to cancel or undermine the midterm elections? Will illegal and unpopular U.S. wars abroad be accompanied by fascist repression in the United States?”

Further VfP says, “Many Veterans for Peace members have visited Cuba, and we have made friends in Cuba. We are very concerned that the U.S. blockade — made even more devastating by Trump’s oil blockade — is causing great suffering in Cuba, including many needless deaths. We reiterate our long-time demand for an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba.Veterans For Peace will not be intimidated. We stand in solidarity with Cuba and with all those who struggle for human rights and democracy in the U.S.”

Despite increasing demands from many parts of the world and repeatedly from the United Nations for ending the USA sanctions and embargo against Cuba, these now exist in increasingly extended and stronger ways. This blockade has resulted in billions of dollars being lost for Cuba in terms of loss of trade and economic opportunities. In fact this loss has now exceeded a trillion dollars.

An even bigger loss of Cuba has been in terms of denial of imports of essential needs like food and medicine. Despite all this, hats off to the determination and hard work of the Cuban people that the latest recorded infant mortality, child mortality rate and life expectancy of people have been more or less the same in Cuba compared to the USA for a long time, and it is only in the recent blockade that the situation deteriorated in Cuba. While the infant mortality rate in the two countries has been between 5 and 6, the under-five child mortality has been between 7 and 8, the life expectancy in both countries has been 78 years. The Human Development Index ranking of Cuba in the year 2023 was found to be in the high human development category, despite the fact that already the country had faced decades of very difficult sanctions and restrictions.

The USA-imposed longest ever embargo on Cuba has continued for almost six and a half decades with very limited relaxations for short durations. For over three decades the United Nations General Assembly has been regularly passing resolutions against the USA blockade or embargo for its violation of UN charter as well as international law. It has been common for over 90 per cent of member countries to support this resolution. European Union countries, Canada and other allies of the USA also join and support such resolutions. (The only major country which time and again supports the USA on this issue is Israel).

The expression of such massive international opposition to the blockade of Cuba must have been adequate reason for ending the blockade, but the USA has continued the blockade by passing several laws for this over the years. This has happened despite the fact that several important voices even within the USA have been in favour of lifting the embargo, and some surveys suggest that more US citizens favour a reduction of restrictions on business and travel. At least two US Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barak Obama, expressed their opposition to embargo, but could introduce only limited relaxations. Whatever they could achieve was moreover hastily undone by their successors. Trump in his first tenure made the embargo more restrictive than before, leading to more problems for Cuban people.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz said that this policy (of embargo and isolation) is ‘insane’. Another prominent political leader and a Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern stated bluntly—It is a stupid policy. Several business leaders in the USA have spoken against it. Several leading human rights groups inside and outside the USA including the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have expressed their opposition to the blockade.

Legal luminaries have also commented on the illegality of the embargo in the context of international law. To give one example Paul A. Shenyer and Virginia Barta have written in a paper titled ‘The Legality of the US Economic Blockade of Cuba Under International Law ( Western Reserve Journal of International Law), “ Whatever view is adopted, either that of coercion or aggression, it is quite evident that the imposition of the US economic blockade of Cuba constituted an illegal act…If there still remains doubt as to the illegality of the economic blockade under the traditional view, there is no doubt that the blockade is a fragrant violation of the contemporary standard which is founded on economic principles and sovereign equality between states.”

If the blockade was illegal earlier, it has become more glaringly so now with the latest most extreme and strangulation policies followed by the Trump administration.

Some critics of Cuba’s socialist system have used these difficulties to falsely allege that the regime has failed in meeting basic needs of people. In fact in recent years the agro-ecology approach of Cuba to increase food production in ecologically protective ways has attracted international praise and appreciation, including at UN/FAO level. However the fact that at one time Cuba had become a one-crop land and had become highly dependent on imports, implies that despite several successes, it takes time to achieve self-reliance in diversity of foods needed, particularly when a big and powerful neighbour is creating problems all the time. Similarly despite the widely admired successes of Cuba in health sector, shortages in terms of specific medicines are likely to occur in trade blockade conditions.

Clearly the increasing difficulties Cuba is facing in meeting essential needs are a reflection of unjust actions taken against this small country by its giant neighbour. Let us also not forget that despite these problems Cuba’s doctors have served over 40 countries at the time of special difficulties and disasters.

Hence there is a very strong case now for the USA to respect all the numerous UN General Assembly resolutions and lift the longest ever embargo against Cuba. No more!—this blockade should go away and never return. Meanwhile everyone should try to extend help and solidarity to Cuba as best they can in these extremely difficult times.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril and When the Two Streams Met.

2 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Hugh J Curran

The Lord said “ask what thou wilt that I should give thee” and Solomon replied:: “Give therefore to thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people and discern between good and evil” (Kings, Ch3)

Having been a long time Lecturer in Peace & Conflict Studies I was deeply impressed by Omer Bartov, a leading genocide and Holocaust scholar who teaches at Brown University, and who recently published a book” “Israel: What Went Wrong” . He asks, among other questions, how can we understand Israel and Zionism and the long term consequences of its treatment of Gaza and Palestinians in general?

Bartov grew up in Israel and wondered how the country had undergone such radical changes so as to become a perpetrator of violence, not only against Palestinians, but also to Jewish moral standing in the world. He explored the transformation of a nation dedicated to emancipating Jews from persecution to the embrace of an ideology of ethno-nationalism.

He also discussed why the U.S. enabled the Gaza bombing, the results which were broadcast to viewers throughout the world. The initial excuse of self-defense by Israel, following the Oct 7, 2023 assault by Hamas into Israel, which killed 1200, became less consequential as the bombing of Gaza took a daily toll, far surpassing the results of the Hamas’ attack. The destruction of hospitals, schools, universities and the deliberate targeting of medical personnel and journalists has continued without let-up for two years and ten months.

Bartov asks why Israel has become such a violent and divisive land. Although he lived in Israel in his youth he aspired to high ideals, wishing to work out accommodations with the Palestinians. But that potential is now in the past as Israel became wedded to the most extreme elements of Zionism, impelling tens of thousands of Israel’s most educated to flee the country. .

Bartov asks why a nation, inspired by European and Zionist values in the late 19th century, and given legal status by the British through the Balfour Declaration in 1917, as well as being given support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. After WWII, Israel opened the country to survivors of the Holocaust. But under such circumstances, why would a nation, aspiring to be in accord with religious principles, presumably inherited from ancient Israel, have succumbed to committing genocide on a people who were not from Europe and had no involvement in the Holocaust?

An additional question is why such “chosen people” could forcibly displace 750,000 Palestinians eighty years ago and do so with such impunity? Why were these “crimes against humanity” ignored by a Jewish population which has given overwhelming support to extremist policies. Bartov asks whether Nazi war crimes against the Jews provides a link to the Israeli genocide? In an interview on “Democracy Now” he observed that “you cannot use the Holocaust to continue to draw on the credit of the past as a justification. Israel can no longer say we can do whatever we like because we were a nation subjected to genocide. You cannot continue to use this argument allowing the mass killing of another people. Future generations of Israeli people will not easily be cleansed of this immense moral stain. Although such cleansing may come from the shadow of the Holocaust when Israelis begin to look at reality as it is [rather than relying on shallow self-justifications].. At that point they can begin to think how they can reconstitute their own nation”.

One of the dangers Bartov warned against was that some nations in the future may use the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Gaza to justify future genocides. This “normalization” of such massacres may take place if there are no consequences from the international community, especially the International Criminal Court (ICC)

In still another interview, Bartov noted that there are countries in Europe and North America which have facilitated this genocide and they also need to be held to account. “If there is no mechanism existing to bring people to be held accountable for their actions we will slide back to pre-WWII days. After all, it was due to the horrors of WWI and WWII “that the international community organized humanitarian laws to prevent such a genocide ever taking place again”. But here we are again, gazing at blinding atrocities taking place in Gaza while those directly engaged, as well as those nations which have been complicit in providing weapons, attempt to find ways to excuse themselves from the consequences of their actions.

Bartov, who had studied in Germany, noted how difficult it was for Germans to admit to the horrors perpetrated in WWII. Their tendency was to blame particular units in the military, such as the SS, rather than assuming that all of the military were engaged in atrocities. In the same way Israelis do not want to ascribe atrocities to their own family members who are part of the IDF. They prefer to dehumanize the “Arabs” just as Germans dehumanized Jews, by referring to them as “untermensh”(ie subhuman). In the same way Palestinians are referred to as sub-human by many Israelis, therefore not deserving of consideration as being fully human.

Bartov, in an interview on Al Jazeera, stated that “up to 90% of homes and schools in Gaza have been destroyed ” He observed that: “In Rafah there is nothing, it’s just one big pile of rubble” and other parts of Gaza are the same. “Most of what the IDF is engaged in is demolition . What the IDF is doing is an intentional, deliberate destruction of the place so that people will not be able to live there again.” It is, in fact, “as great as the destruction that took place in Hiroshima which suffered the consequence of having a nuclear bomb dropped upon its civilian population, causing the death of over 100,000 people.

Bartov believes that the genocidal destruction of Gaza was not inevitable. “Israel could have evolved in a more humane direction after its founding in 1948. He asks, “How is it that the appeal to humanitarianism, tolerance, the rule of law, and protection of minorities, which characterized the beginning of Jewish self-emancipation, gradually acquired all the traits of the relentless, remorseless, and increasingly racist ethno-nationalism from which Zionism sought to liberate European Jewry?”.

Hugh Curran is a former lecturer in Peace & Reconciliation Studies at the University of Maine

2 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The month of July has seen the highest number of martyrs in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of 2026 and is seen as the most deadly.

The Health Information Center of the Health Ministry in Gaza stated that Israeli military strikes killed 152 people in July alone.

It added this is the highest since the beginning of 2026. It added the number of deaths registered by hospitals came from all over the Gaza Strip.

The highest number of deaths related to children at 21 killed, women at 14 and the elderly, at four who lost their lives to Israeli fire. The center added this shows that Israeli military targeting is increasingly towards neighborhoods and residential places.

The Israeli military is continuing to violate the ceasefire agreement reached last October 2025 by maintaining its military strikes from the air and through the tanks towards the tents and displaced people. This is while they are continuing to destroy homes and infrastructure inside the so-called “yellow line,” as well as hindering the entry of goods and aid into the Strip.

This article is based on data from the Palestine Information Center and is reproduced in crossfirearabia.com

2 August 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

Annual global military spending today is close to $3 trillion or $3000 billion. If we add all the other costs of wars, war preparations and war mongering then this spending is much higher. This is many times higher than what the world needs to end the problems of hunger and deprivation of essential needs.

At the same time it is to be deeply regretted that total spending on peace is much less than 1% of the spending on wars, war preparations and war mongering. In fact it is likely to be less than 0.1%. What is more, not all that is spent in the name of peace is spent in the wisest way.

There must be something incredibly wrong with a world which on daily basis spends billions on killing and wounding, and not even 1% of this on saving and protecting. Yet such a cruel paradox hardly draws a mention from the world’s leaders or even from the big media.

While peace efforts must certainly involve a lot of voluntarism, nevertheless substantially more funds are needed to take forward the cause of peace and non-violence in several ways and at several levels. First and foremost, a strong base for peace and non-violence should be created with a well thought out educational effort at the level of schools and colleges, at the level of families and at community level as well as at the level of various spiritual, religious and social organizations.

Secondly, media organizations that have distinguished themselves with their commitment to justice-based peace and for finding solutions based on non-violence, or those who want to start such media efforts, should get adequate financial support. I have often seen such organizations struggling to raise support in the form of small donations. I think that they should get better and more firm economic base for carrying out their work of very high importance.

Thirdly, we need economic support for initiating peace-making efforts by several experienced diplomats who are not in active service of their governments now and hence are free to participate in unbiased peace-making initiatives. Some of those who have held leadership positions in various countries in the past, and were known for their commitment to peace, can also extend their unbiased help. Senior academics and other scholars committed to peace can also have a very useful role. These initiatives can be helpful in making important breakthroughs for ending several wars and conflicts as well as for preventing new wars and conflicts.

Leading peace activists and activists of youth movements and women movements can also play a very helpful role. A strong peace movement must emerge all over the world which can take forward the task of creating a world without wars and a world without weapons of mass destruction with continuity and commitment. This peace movement must of course have a lot of voluntarism but nevertheless substantial funds are needed for supporting full time activists and supporting secretarial and other staff.

In addition more funds are required for peace forces of the United Nations which may be needed for some time in existing war and conflict zones for helping to end these conflicts and wars. While all those who have worked in difficult and dangerous conditions for peace deserve our respect, it must nevertheless be mentioned that such operations have sometimes been marred by undesirable and harmful activities and decisions. All precautions to minimize these possibilities must also be taken.

It must be clear moreover that the peace work should be free from bias. Sometimes the American lobby or the Chinese lobby or other lobbies try to create or support their own versions of highly biased peace work which cannot be very helpful. The funds coming from such lobbies for so-called peace work cannot create real peace work at all. Once this is remembered, we realize that the availability of funds for real peace work is even less than what appears at surface level as some of the peace work being done is actually only the work of some lobbies.

These are just a few indications of why substantially more support is needed for unbiased, sincere and true peace work which has the most chance of success.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, A Day in 2071, Planet in Peril, Man over Machine and Earth without Borders.

31 July 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Al Jazeera English

16 Jul 2026

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. More than 230 of them are children. Attacks by settlers on rural Palestinian communities have increased, destroying property and capturing livestock, driving families from their homes. At the same time, the Israeli military has launched a large-scale assault on the densely populated Jenin refugee camp.

This film provides a comprehensive picture of the tactics the Israeli government uses to support the settlers and then, through infrastructure and building programmes, annex Palestinian land.

Western governments claim to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and uphold international law. However, undercover reporters from Al Jazeera expose how donors based in some Western countries fund the expansion of illegal settlements.

Al Jazeera journalists secretly film meetings with pro-settler organisations in Israel, claiming to be donors based in the UK looking to make large contributions to their projects. They’re told how funds can be paid as tax-deductible donations to charities in the UK and Canada who then pay the money on to their organisations. It is unlawful for charities in the UK and Canada to use donations to support the illegal settlement of the West Bank.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otagSl7eYMs]

3 August 2026

Source: transcend.org

By Mariam Barghouti

Settler attacks are not isolated incidents. They are all part of a strategy to grab land and colonise.

27 Jul 2026 – The violent scenes playing out in the West Bank over the past few days are painfully familiar. Settlers setting fire to homes and places of worship, Palestinian villages coming under vicious attacks, families forced to leave their homes at gunpoint with nothing but what they can carry, and the Israeli army carrying out lethal raids.

This latest episode of violence is framed as a consequence of a deadly confrontation in the village of Tal in the northern West Bank, where Israeli settlers who attacked the community were confronted by Palestinian men. Two settlers died.

In its aftermath, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase military operations in the West Bank to target “terrorist hotbeds” while Defence Minister Israel Katz said the expansion of Israeli outposts and settlements in the West Bank is now a strategic and important aspect of Israeli security.

Listening to Israeli officials, one may think Israeli military operations and settlements in the West Bank are a reaction. But they are not. They are a strategy – a strategy of colonisation.

The settler-soldier sequence
For years, the presence of the Israeli military in the West Bank was justified by the presence of Israeli settlers. Perhaps this may have held some truth in the past, but within the past five years, the distinction between a soldier and an average Israeli settler has diminished to the fact that one wears a uniform and has a chain of command while the other dresses in jeans and can shoot on a whim.

There may be little difference between the two, but each plays a specific role in an important strategic sequencing.

First, the Israeli army weakens Palestinian communities through military operations that sweep through villages and towns, destroying infrastructure, detaining, torturing and even killing Palestinians. Then, the settler incursions increase and finally the administrative arm of the government consolidates territorial reconfiguration.

This is what happened in Jenin. The Israeli army launched several deadly offensives on the city and the refugee camp, the latest being “Operation Iron Wall” in 2025. Then the settlers came. Today, three new Israeli settlements are being built near the city with others under way in Tulkarem.

Not only do the Israeli government and security apparatus provide protection to Israeli settlers, but the reverse is also true. For years, Israeli soldiers who have committed torture, rape and murder against Palestinians were acquitted due to support and lobbying from settler groups.

This is precisely why reporting on Israeli violence in the West Bank as “settler violence” does not tell the full story. Settler violence suggests sporadic lawlessness that operates outside the state, rather than a well-thought-out strategy of colonisation of illegally occupied land.

Permanent colonial terror

For years, Palestinians spoke of settler violence as a warning of what might come. Every year of the past decade set new records in settlement expansion, land dispossession, frequency of Israeli violence and Palestinians killed.

Every olive harvest disrupted, every outpost expanding over the hills was understood as part of a gradual encroachment whose ultimate consequences remained just over the horizon.

Today, that horizon has collapsed. The Palestinians are living in a constant state of colonial terror, besieged and abandoned. They are expected to survive under conditions in which women are forced to endure miscarriages while stuck at checkpoints, where schools are teargassed by the army, where children never get to school because settlers attack their bus. Every day the space to exist safely shrinks.

While land is stolen, Palestinian bodies are treated as objects through which Israelis perform domination, publicly and repeatedly. Stories of displacement, torture and humiliation punctuate daily Palestinian life.

Perhaps this is precisely why last week, Forouq Ramadan, a resident of Tal, decided to capture a gun from an invading Israeli settler and shoot him.

That moment is significant because Israel’s violent response in the West Bank over the weekend was not really over the fact that an Israeli was killed. It was over the idea that a Palestinian man could successfully capture the weapon of an armed Israeli settler and shoot him dead.

In any case, this violent episode is now used as yet another opportunity to accelerate the colonisation project. This is why it should not be identified as an “escalation”. It is not a separate incident of settler violence; it is part and parcel of a colonisation strategy.

Israel’s hunger for land

What happened in Tal on Thursday and what is happening in the West Bank today cannot and should not be divorced from what’s been happening regionally.

Settler violence, genocidal military campaigns, illegal eviction orders for entire communities, mass detentions all function within the same strategic logic: territorial acquisition. Israel will constantly search for justifications and recycle the same security narrative that has effectively shielded it from international scrutiny for decades.

The recent events in the West Bank are not extraordinary but serve as a reflection of the overarching reality. Territorial fragmentation and conquest advance faster than the world is willing to acknowledge.

This is not a security issue. This is a territorial project. While the methods differ, Israel is reshaping the landscape in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and even in Syria and Lebanon in the same direction.

There was a time when Israeli territorial expansion into the West Bank was a warning sign for the world. Today, it is a reality well beyond the occupied Palestinian territory. And yet, the world still frames it as an issue of “Israeli security”.

Mariam Barghouti is a Palestinian American writer based in Ramallah. Her political commentary has been featured in the International Business Times, The New York Times, TRT-World, among others.

3 August 2026

Source: transcend.org

By Vijay Prashad

The tapering off of news coverage on the US-Israeli genocide has done little to abate the violence. In fact, its permanence is precisely what allows the world to look away.

30 Jul 2026 – Some catastrophes disappear because they end. Others disappear because they continue for so long that the world grows accustomed to them. They cease to interrupt television schedules and Instagram reels, just as they no longer command the front pages of newspapers. Financial markets return to their ordinary calculations, the daily machinery of political and economic life resumes its familiar rhythm, and diplomats are asked to put away their briefing books on that tired but painful subject. Yet, the catastrophe remains intact: the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has not disappeared because of a new peace but because the permanence of the genocide makes it unmarketable news.

There was a time when every explosion in Gaza flashed across my phone – horrible images of children being pulled from rubble, medical workers trying to help patients as the hospital itself gets bombed, and families howling in grief as Israeli bombs obliterated entire Palestinian lineages. Israel’s attacks continue as families flee from one temporary shelter to another and children search through shattered concrete for fragments of lives they once knew. But the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere as the genocide has become routine. We have become comfortably numb.

The scale of death and destruction is impossible to comprehend. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that since October 2023, Israeli violence has killed at least 73,221 Palestinians (half of whom are women and children) and wounded 173,654 others. By February 2026, at least 21,289 children had been killed and 44,500 injured in Gaza. Even after the so-called ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025, Israeli violence has killed 1,100 Palestinians, including at least 260 children, and injured 3,546 others. That means that, on average, the Israelis have killed four Palestinians every single day since then.

There are moments in history when words lose their meaning. Not because dictionaries are rewritten, nor because language itself changes, but because political power empties words of the realities they once described. The word ‘ceasefire’ has increasingly acquired this desolate quality when used by Israeli and US officials. What was once understood to mean the suspension of violence, the silencing of guns, and the creation of political space for peace has become something else entirely: a managerial term for the continuation of bombardment, displacement, siege, and military control in the name of peace.

Statistics attempt to quantify the horrific destruction, but numbers cannot capture absence. Behind every number lies a family with a broken history and a child who will always remember a home that no longer exists, or, in many cases, an entire family lineage erased. These figures are horrifying enough on their own, as reflected in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reports, for which a donation is overdue. Each report from the UN reads less like an emergency bulletin and more like an archive of permanent catastrophe.

What is the meaning of outrage when it seems to carry no political cost for Israel’s total violation of international law? Beyond the ruins of Gaza, the map of Palestine continues to be rewritten in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Not a day goes by without reports of land confiscations and settler expansion, the demolition of Palestinian homes and violent attacks by settlers, and the steady fragmentation of Palestinian territory. Ir Amim (City of Peoples), a public and legal advocacy group from Jerusalem, reports that Israeli planning authorities have voted to destroy 800 houses from the Palestinian neighbourhood of Umm Lison in occupied East Jerusalem and build 450 homes for illegal settlers – part of a broader policy of expulsion and annexation. As Gaza is being devastated by overwhelming military force, East Jerusalem and the West Bank are being transformed through bureaucratic annexation, legalistic pretexts, permanent settlements, and the brutality inflicted upon the Palestinian population by administrative detention and home demolition. These attacks on the Occupied Palestinian Territory are expressions of the same project: the genocide of the Palestinian people and the seizure of their land in the name of building a so-called ‘Greater Israel’.

While groups such as Ir Amim continue to painstakingly document settlement expansion and dispossession, moral decay in Israeli society has metastasised with a new intensity. In 2014, Haaretz columnist Carolina Landsmann wrote with clarity that Israeli military rule over Palestinians is not a hidden mechanism operated by the army alone but ‘the largest, most visible project, with broader participation than any other endeavour in Israel’. In other words, the occupation is sustained not only by its military presence but also by the institutions, resources, habits, and everyday participation of Israeli society itself.

More than a decade later, Landsmann returned to the question of Israeli society’s internal transformation, arguing in a 10 July 2026 column that the language of ‘Israeli’ identity has been increasingly displaced by ‘Zionist’ identity – and therefore by Zionist-military identity. While Israeli identity has been wedded to Zionism since its inception, this shift is significant because it indicates that even the limited possibility of a civic identity – one not wholly organised around occupation, militarisation, and Jewish supremacy – has been pushed further from view.

The psychological consequences of this social order are visible within Israeli society. As a recent report from the Israeli Centre for Addiction and Mental Health showed, one in four Israelis have turned to hard drugs to cope with the psychosocial strain produced by this Zionist-military society and its genocide against Palestinians. Such data should never be used to create a false equivalence between the occupier and the occupied, nor should it distract from the incomparable devastation inflicted upon Palestinians. However, it reveals something important: a society organised around permanent militarisation cannot remain untouched by the violence it inflicts. Fear, trauma, addiction, moral injury, and isolation have become woven into the fabric of everyday life in Israel.

My Palestinian friends in Gaza, meanwhile, tell me that they have survived bombardment before, and that they are sure they will be able to rebuild their homes. What is harder to rebuild, they said, is the Palestinian people’s confidence in their collective political life and the hope that it will lead to a better future. Interrupted education, untreated illnesses, repeated displacement, rampant hunger, and the loss of family networks leave scars that extend far beyond concrete walls. So too does the psychological violence inflicted on Gaza’s children, almost all of whom, according to UNICEF estimates, will require mental health and psychosocial support for decades to come.

Buildings can be reconstructed, but Gaza’s people require the reconstruction not only of place but of historical time itself: the time needed to learn, heal, mourn, organise, and imagine a future. To recover that future, they will also have to rebuild political confidence and the political instruments through which collective hope becomes collective power.

In an attempt to foreclose the future of the Palestinian people, Israel also attacks their past. The ferocious assault on Gaza alongside the continued displacement campaign in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is accompanied by the systematic destruction of memory. Israeli violence surgically targets archives, cemeteries, family photographs, galleries, libraries, municipal records, museums, neighbourhood landmarks, and theatres. Violence against these institutions tries to erase the material foundations through which a people remember themselves, allowing historical denial to become fact. There are the dead, and there are the injured, but there is also the terrible violence inflicted upon Palestinian consciousness.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the international conversation on Gaza has become quieter. Not because the violence has diminished in any way, but because its implications are too awful for the world to confront honestly. To confront this violence would mean reckoning with the absolute collapse of a moral order that still claims to speak in the language of human rights. It would mean asking uncomfortable questions about arms sales and transfers, diplomatic protection, media censorship, military alliances, and the unequal value assigned to different human lives. Because of that discomfort, some names disappear before their graves have settled while others become etched in public memory and destruction is forgotten before it unsettles dinner party conversations above the sound of cutlery working its way through the best cuts of meat.

Writers and artists cannot clear rubble with the efficiency of trained rescue teams or lead the reconstruction of hospitals and schools. But we can refuse silence and insist that history is measured not only by treaties and military campaigns but by the lullabies that are interrupted, the poems left unfinished, and the voices that continue to sing through the ruins. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has been very clear from our inception a decade ago that the systematic violence inflicted on the Palestinian people and the amnesia about that violence are unacceptable and that we will never allow forgetting to become normal.

Watching the new music video from our friends Roger Waters and acclaimed Palestinian singer-songwriter Mona Miari reminds us of this refusal. Their song ‘Comfortably Numb Re-imagined’ does not pretend that music can overcome catastrophe but sets for itself a quieter task: to prevent Gaza’s suffering from becoming ordinary. In a world that is being trained to look away, their song asks us to keep looking and to insist upon remembering as the basis of struggle for a better world. Every imperialist formation seeks not only obedience but forgetfulness. ‘Comfortably Numb Re-imagined’, whose proceeds go to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, offers the fragile yet indispensable persistence of human solidarity and a refusal to let the stories of the victims disappear from our moral imagination.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBmrT3uqmeM]

At the centre of the song is ‘Hind’s Lullaby’, a segment written by Mona Miari in honour of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza while pleading for rescuers to reach her. The lullaby turns that unbearable memory into a promise of liberation:

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

3 August 2026

Source: transcend.org

By Mirko Casale

24 Jul 2026 – In 1948, a system of racial segregation was officially established in South Africa, through which the indigenous African population was marginalized by laws imposed by a white minority descended from European settlers.

Thanks to their enormous repressive power, their more or less covert connections with Western countries—which took decades to adopt serious measures against that racist regime—and their close alliance with another “apartheid” regime, that of Israel, the South African authorities managed to remain in power for decades despite resistance from the Black population, which constituted the overwhelming majority of the country.

In the 1970s, South Africa was also one of the region’s greatest military powers. It not only enforced racial segregation within its borders but also illegally occupied the territory of present-day Namibia and intervened against the anti-colonial and liberation movements emerging throughout southern Africa.

“Cuba’s true contribution to the fight against ‘apartheid’ extended far beyond South Africa’s borders,” explains Cuban journalist Hedelberto López Blanch, an expert on those events. Pretoria, he recalls, exerted enormous military and political influence over the entire southern African region at the time and had numerous allies and subordinate forces throughout the region.

To understand Cuba’s role in this story, we spoke with López Blanch, to whom we extend our special thanks for his efforts in sending us his responses despite the numerous technical and energy-related obstacles currently facing the island.

The First Ties to African Struggles

Cuba’s contribution to the collapse of apartheid began long before the major battles fought in Angola. During the 1960s, in parallel with the early years of the Cuban Revolution, numerous liberation movements took up arms against the European colonial powers. A mutual sympathy soon emerged, which translated into varying degrees of political, diplomatic, and military collaboration.

One such connection was forged between Havana and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which was fighting to end Portuguese colonialism.

López Blanch identifies a decisive moment in the contacts maintained by Ernesto “Che” Guevara with African revolutionary movements. It was then that Che met the Angolan leader Agostinho Neto, who asked Cuba for instructors to train his fighters. “Cuba began training some Angolan guerrillas in the Congo,” the journalist recounts. From that initial cooperation, an increasingly close relationship developed between the Cuban Revolution and the MPLA.

Cuban and Angolan troops, members of the MPLA, gather for a weapons training session at a training center in San Vicente, near Cabinda (Angola), in 1976. AP

A decade later, Angolan independence groups with revolutionary and anti-imperialist leanings were on the verge of seizing power. That possibility set off alarm bells across the Western world, which, when it could not prevent the formal dissolution of its colonies, sought to replace them with supervised independence and governments subordinate to its interests.

Apartheid-era South Africa, for its part, feared that the anti-colonial example would spread throughout the region and jeopardize its control over Namibia and its own segregationist structure. Pretoria therefore decided to intervene directly in Angola.

As López Blanch explains, by 1974 the MPLA was already the dominant force in much of the country and controlled twelve provinces. To prevent it from declaring independence and taking power on November 11, 1975, South African troops advanced from the south, while forces from Zaire, under the command of Holden Roberto—leader of the National Liberation Front of Angola and an ally of the CIA and Pretoria—advanced from the north.

Operation Carlota

It was in this context—with Angola newly independent and various forces vying for power—some with an anti-imperialist orientation and others backed by the United States, South Africa, or both—that Cuba launched Operation Carlota.

The name paid tribute to an African slave who, in the 19th century, had led a rebellion against slavery in Cuba. The name encapsulated the political and historical significance that Havana attributed to its intervention in Africa.

Over the following years, and at the request of the Angolan government, tens of thousands of Cubans traveled to the country. Among them were military personnel, but also doctors, teachers, engineers, technicians, and numerous civilian aid workers. Neither Pretoria nor Washington was willing to accept what they interpreted as a “Cubanization” of southern Africa. The MPLA’s victory and consolidation threatened both the regional position of the racist South African regime and U.S. geopolitical interests.

1976: A destroyed highway bridge over the Luchis River, blown up by UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) to halt the advance of the Cuban-led MPLA forces during the Angolan Civil War. Gettyimages.ru

The conflict escalated. The United States and South Africa backed armed groups such as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which operated on Angolan territory. At the same time, South African regular forces carried out constant military incursions into the country.

In the mid-1980s, a major offensive by UNITA and the South African Army put Angolan government troops in a critical situation. The fighting had destroyed or seriously weakened several of their battalions and threatened to bring about a defeat capable of destabilizing the government itself.

Faced with this situation, López Blanch recalls, President José Eduardo dos Santos once again requested military aid from Cuba. Havana agreed after assessing the circumstances, but set one condition: the leadership of the operations had to remain under Cuban command.

Cuito Cuanavale, the Turning Point

Those events culminated in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, considered the major turning point of the Angolan War and, by extension, of the regional dominance exercised by apartheid-era South Africa and its allied forces.

For months, clashes continued between Cuban and Angolan troops on one side and South African and UNITA forces on the other. Cuba significantly reinforced its military presence, deployed airpower, and combined the defense of Cuito Cuanavale with an offensive toward the southwest, in the direction of the Namibian border.

“There was constant fighting between Cuban, Angolan, and South African troops,” explains López Blanch. The entry into action of the Cuban MiG-23s proved particularly significant: “The air force began to strike the South Africans very hard,” while ground forces advanced southward and threatened Pretoria’s strategic positions.

South Africa eventually withdrew, leaving UNITA weakened and unable to achieve its military objectives. That defeat did not merely signify the failure of an offensive in Angola. It also dealt a decisive blow to the prestige, deterrent power, and regional hegemony of the apartheid regime.

The human cost was enormous. Cuba’s nearly fifteen years of involvement in the conflict left thousands dead, including more than 2,000 Cubans who died during the internationalist mission.

Their names are inscribed on the memorial at Freedom Park in Pretoria, where Cuba’s contribution to the struggle against the racist regime that oppressed Africa’s southernmost country for decades is recognized and commemorated.

Namibia’s Independence and the Weakening of ‘Apartheid’

Following the fighting in Angola, South Africa was left militarily and diplomatically weakened. Its policy of racial segregation and its interventions in neighboring countries had led to growing international isolation, but it was the defeats on the ground that definitively altered the regional balance of power.

“Those setbacks changed the course of history,” López Blanch asserts. The new situation allowed for progress in implementing United Nations Resolution 435, which established the process for Namibia’s independence—a territory that had been illegally occupied by South Africa for decades.

Subsequent agreements led to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, but also to South Africa’s withdrawal from Namibia and the country’s independence in 1990. Shortly thereafter, the apartheid regime itself began to dismantle itself within South Africa.

Díaz-Canel: “We bring teachers to the world, not bombs—that is socialism”

Of course, the Cuban sacrifice has been systematically ignored, downplayed, or erased from the narrative disseminated by the mainstream media and the political elites of the Global North.

In these sugarcoated versions of history, the racist regime appears to have collapsed almost magically thanks to peaceful resistance, benefit concerts, and indignant statements by Western leaders.

When Cuba’s presence is mentioned, Havana is often reduced to the role of a mere Soviet pawn in the Cold War.

López Blanch rejects that interpretation. In his view, the idea that Cuba’s intervention in Angola was carried out on orders from Moscow falls apart when one examines Cuba’s own history and its deep ties to Africa. During the colonial period, he recalls, more than a million Africans were forcibly brought to the island as slaves. Many of them and their descendants later fought alongside Cuban independence fighters against Spanish rule. “That is the legacy left by the Africans who arrived in Cuba, fought alongside the mambises, and helped shape Cuban culture,” he notes.

A Historical Debt to Africa

The Cuban intervention was therefore not presented as a conquest or as an operation aimed at acquiring territories, natural resources, or economic privileges. It was officially conceived as an internationalist duty and as the repayment of a historical debt.

López Blanch recalls a reflection made by Fidel Castro during a visit to Panama in 1998. Cuba, the revolutionary leader explained at the time, was paying off the debt it owed to Africa: the sons of that continent had been forcibly brought to the island and had contributed decisively to building its culture and winning its independence.

Nelson Mandela never forgot who had stood by the South African people when the major Western powers were still collaborating with “apartheid”

That is why, the journalist argues, Cuba’s presence in Angola cannot be understood without considering that historical bond. “That explains why Cuba went to Africa, why Cuba went to Angola, and why tens of thousands of soldiers traveled there, along with many other professionals in medicine, engineering, and various civilian sectors,” he states.

It was a story of solidarity and sacrifice that, despite attempts to distort or rewrite it, was always perfectly clear to the most renowned figure in the struggle against “apartheid.”

Nelson Mandela never forgot who had stood by the South African people when the major Western powers were still trading with, collaborating with, or appeasing the racist regime. That is why, when he regained his freedom, Cuba was the first country he visited outside of Africa. A story that cannot and must never be forgotten.

3 August 2026

Source: transcend.org