Archives: Articles

By Tunç Türel

The year 2026 marks the eighty-third anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad. The battle was not merely a decisive military engagement in the Second World War, but a historical rupture that reshaped the trajectory of the 20th century. Fought between August 1942 and February 1943, it marked the first total strategic defeat of Nazi Germany and shattered the myth of fascist invincibility upon which Hitler’s war of conquest depended. Yet in much of today’s dominant historical memory, particularly in the Anglophone world, Stalingrad is reduced to a dramatic episode, abstracted from its political meaning and severed from its consequences. This minimization is not accidental. To acknowledge Stalingrad as the turning point of the war is to acknowledge the centrality of the Soviet Union in the defeat of fascism, and, by extension, to confront the uncomfortable fact that the greatest victory over Nazism was achieved not by liberal capitalism, but by a socialist state fighting for its very survival.

In Western historiography and popular culture, the narrative of the Second World War has been persistently reorganized to center the United States and its allies as the principal agents of fascism’s defeat, while the Soviet contribution is treated as secondary, incidental, or morally compromised. Hollywood’s fixation on the Normandy landings in June 1944, the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, and the Pacific theater stands in stark contrast to the relative silence surrounding the Eastern Front, where the war was decided. This imbalance is not a matter of oversight, but of ideology. From the early Cold War onward, the memory of the war was refashioned to reconcile two incompatible facts: that Nazism was the greatest crime of the 20th century, and that it was defeated primarily by a socialist state. The result has been a systematic downplaying of Soviet military, economic, and human sacrifice, replaced by a depoliticized narrative in which fascism collapses under the abstract weight of “Allied unity,” rather than being crushed through a protracted and devastating class war in the East.

Already in 1941, Operation Barbarossa was conceived not as a conventional military campaign, like those the Nazi war machine had conducted in the Low Countries or in France in 1940, but as a war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg), aimed at the physical destruction of the Soviet state and the biological, social, and political eradication of entire populations. Nazi strategy in the East fused military conquest with genocide: the planned starvation of tens of millions, the extermination of Jews, Roma, communists, and Soviet officials, and the reduction of Slavic peoples to a reservoir of slave labor.[1] As historian Stephen G. Fritz writes:

“Ostarbeiter (eastern workers), overwhelmingly young men and women, often just teenagers (their average age was twenty), were put to work, normally in deplorable conditions, in the Reich’s factories, mines, and fields. By the end of July, over 5 million foreign workers were employed in Germany, while, by the summer of 1943, the total foreign workforce had risen to 6.5 million, a figure that would increase by the end of 1944 to 7.9 million. By that time, foreign workers accounted for over 20 percent of the total German workforce, although, in the armaments sector, the figure topped 33 percent. In some specific factories and production lines, foreign workers routinely exceeded 40 percent of the total; indeed, by the summer of 1943, the Stuka dive bomber was, as Erhard Milch boasted, being “80% manufactured by Russians.” [2]

The Wehrmacht was not a neutral instrument dragged unwillingly into this project, but an active participant in it. Stalingrad must be situated within this context. It was not simply a battle for territory or supply routes, but a decisive moment in a war whose objectives were openly colonial and genocidal. To lose at Stalingrad was, for the Nazi leadership, to confront the first concrete limits of a project premised on unlimited violence.

The Eastern Front was not one theater of the war among others; it was the war. Between 1941 and 1944, the overwhelming majority of German military forces were deployed against the Soviet Union. “By October 1, 1943, some 2,565,000 soldiers—63 percent of the Wehrmacht’s total strength—were fighting in the East, as were the bulk of the 300,000 Waffen SS troops,” write historians David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House. “On June 1, 1944, a total of 239 German division equivalents, or 62 percent of the entire force, were on the Eastern front.”[3] And it was there that the Wehrmacht suffered the vast bulk of its casualties. Approximately three-quarters of all German military deaths occurred on the Eastern Front, as did the destruction of entire armies whose loss could never be replaced. By comparison, the Western Front—while militarily and politically significant—opened only after the Red Army had already broken the backbone of Nazi military power. Stalingrad stands as the clearest expression of this asymmetry. It was on the banks of the Volga, not the beaches of Normandy, that the strategic initiative of the war was irreversibly seized from Hitler’s Germany.

The scale of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad cannot be understood without confronting the scale of the disaster that preceded it. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Red Army was caught profoundly unprepared for a war of such speed, coordination, and technological concentration. Entire formations were encircled and destroyed, millions of soldiers were killed or captured, and vast territories were overrun within months. This unpreparedness was not simply military, but structural: a rapidly industrializing socialist state faced an existential assault from the most advanced war machine capitalism had yet produced, backed by the resources of occupied Europe. Stalingrad therefore did not emerge from a position of strength, but from the edge of collapse. That the Soviet Union was able to absorb these blows, reorganize its economy, relocate its industry, and reconstruct its armed forces under conditions of total war is itself one of the most extraordinary, and least acknowledged, achievements of the twentieth century.

Stalingrad marked the moment when the Nazi war machine ceased to advance and began, irreversibly, to bleed. The German offensive toward the Volga in the summer of 1942 was intended to secure oil resources, sever Soviet transport routes, and deliver a symbolic blow to the heart of the Soviet state. Instead, it culminated in a protracted urban battle that nullified Germany’s operational advantages and drew its forces into a war of attrition it could not win. Street by street, factory by factory, the Red Army transformed Stalingrad into a killing ground that consumed entire German divisions. The encirclement and destruction of the Sixth Army was not merely a tactical defeat; it was the first time a full German field army was annihilated, rather than forced to withdraw. From this point forward, the strategic initiative passed decisively to the Soviet Union, and with it the fate of the war.

The victory at Stalingrad was purchased at a human cost almost without precedent, borne overwhelmingly by Soviet soldiers and civilians whose lives were subordinated to the imperatives of collective survival. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble; hunger, exposure, and exhaustion were as lethal as artillery and bombs. Yet what distinguished Stalingrad was not simply endurance, but the social form that endurance took. The defense of the city relied on mass mobilization, political commitment, and a degree of collective discipline that cannot be explained through coercion alone. Workers fought in the ruins of the factories they had built; civilians sustained production and logistics under bombardment; soldiers held positions measured in meters, not kilometers. These were not abstract acts of patriotism, but expressions of a society fighting a war that threatened its very existence, and in which defeat meant not occupation, but annihilation.

The impact of Stalingrad extended far beyond the battlefield, reshaping the political and strategic landscape of the entire war. For the first time since 1939, fascist expansion was not merely slowed, but decisively reversed, sending shockwaves through Axis leaderships and occupied Europe alike. Just prior to the invasion Hitler had told to his generals, “We need only to kick the door in and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” For Hitler, and it should be said, for many of his generals and for large sections of the German population, the Soviet military was assumed to be incapable of matching the Wehrmacht. It was dismissed as rotten and weak, supposedly reflecting the inferiority of the peoples who made up the Soviet Union. This assumption, however, proved catastrophically false. The Red Army did not simply absorb defeat, it learned from it. Through bitter experience, it mastered the modern art of war, refining and applying the tactical and operational concepts of Deep Battle and Deep Operation with increasing effectiveness.[4] But not only that, resistance movements across the continent drew renewed confidence from the defeat of the German Sixth Army, while Allied strategic calculations were fundamentally altered by the realization that the Red Army would carry the war westward. Stalingrad also punctured the ideological aura of inevitability that had surrounded Nazi conquest, demonstrating that fascism could be defeated through sustained mass resistance rather than diplomatic maneuvering or technological superiority alone. From this point onward, the question was no longer whether Germany would lose the war, but how quickly and at what further human cost. That cost was determined by the increasingly fanatical resistance of Hitler’s army and the continued political and social support it received from large sections of German society.[5]

By the war’s end, the scale of the Soviet Union’s sacrifice dwarfed that of all other Allied powers. Approximately twenty-seven million Soviet citizens, soldiers and civilians alike, were killed, entire regions were devastated, and much of the country’s industrial and agricultural base lay in ruins. These losses were not incidental to victory; they were its material foundation. Yet in the postwar order that emerged under U.S. hegemony, this reality was increasingly obscured. As Cold War antagonisms hardened, Soviet suffering was detached from Soviet achievement, acknowledged in numbers but stripped of political meaning. Stalingrad was recast as a tragic episode rather than a decisive triumph, its significance diluted to accommodate a narrative in which socialism could not be credited with saving Europe from fascism. The debt owed to the Red Army was thus transformed into an ideological inconvenience—one to be minimized, relativized, or forgotten altogether.

This distortion of Stalingrad’s meaning is not confined to the past; it is an active political process in the present as well. Across Europe and North America, with the help of bourgeois historians and researchers; movies or video games, which form key components of the superstructure; the historical record of the Second World War is increasingly rewritten through the lens of anticommunism, equating fascism and socialism while obscuring the genocidal character of Nazi war aims. In this revisionist framework, the Red Army appears not as a force of liberation, but as a symmetrical oppressor, and the annihilation war waged against the Soviet Union is displaced by narratives of abstract “totalitarianism.” Such distortions serve contemporary imperial interests, legitimizing the rehabilitation of far-right movements, the militarization of historical memory, and the normalization of endless war. To remember Stalingrad accurately is therefore not an act of nostalgia, but an act of resistance against the political uses of forgetting.

Stalingrad offers no comfortingly simple lessons, but it does offer clarity. It demonstrates that fascism is not defeated by moral appeals, institutional gradualism, or abstract commitments to “democracy,” but through organized, collective struggle capable of confronting imperial violence at its roots. It reveals the scale of sacrifice demanded when capitalist crisis turns toward exterminatory war, and the price paid when such a war is allowed to advance unchecked. Above all, Stalingrad affirms that history is not moved by inevitability, but by mass action under conditions of extreme constraint. The Soviet victory was neither accidental nor preordained, it was forged through political will, social mobilization, and a readiness to endure losses that liberal societies—then and now—prefer not to imagine.

As the anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad is marked, the question is not simply how the battle is remembered, but who controls its meaning. To treat Stalingrad as a distant tragedy or a neutral military episode is to evacuate it of the historical force it still carries. It was there that the Nazi project of annihilation was broken, and it was there that the fate of the war, and of millions beyond the battlefield, was decisively altered. At a moment when fascism is again normalized, imperial war once more presented as necessity, and socialism routinely dismissed as historical error, Stalingrad stands as an enduring counterpoint. It reminds us that the greatest defeat of fascism in history was achieved through collective resistance, social organization, and the uncompromising defense of a future that, at the time, could not yet be guaranteed.

Notes
[1] Stephen G. Fritz, Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), xx; Hans Heer and Christian Streit, Vernichtungskrieg im Osten: Judenmord, Kriegsgefangene und Hungerpolitik, 2020.

[2] Fritz, Ostkrieg, 222. Milch was the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation from 1933 to 1944 and Inspector General of the Luftwaffe from 1939 to 1945.

[3] David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), 357.

[4] David M. Glantz, Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle (New York: Frank Cass, 1991).

[5] Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945 (New York: Basic, 2015).

Tunç Türel is an Ancient Historian and a member of the Workers’ Party of Türkiye.

29 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

The Doomsday Clock maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has become a widely recognized symbol of the threats to life and life-nurturing conditions of our planet. The closer this gets to midnight, the greater the threat of catastrophe. In 2025 this was placed at 89 seconds to midnight and in a very recently released statement in year 2026 this has been placed at 85 seconds to midnight. In other words, the world came closer to catastrophe in year 2025 by 4 seconds. In our opinion, this seriously underestimates the new dangers that were created in 2025 by the breakdown of whatever international rules based order existed earlier in poor health and in fragments, and by a series of highly aggressive and arbitrary actions taken by the Trump administration in the USA. This is far from fully captured with all its serious implications in the Doomsday Clock Statement (DCS) 2026. Despite this failure, the DMC nevertheless remains a very useful document drawing attention to several serious problems albeit with a western bias that generally exists in DCS.

The DCS says, “Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers.”

Further the DCS warns, “Competition among major powers has become a full-blown arms race, as evidenced by increasing numbers of nuclear warheads and platforms in China, and the modernization of nuclear delivery systems in the United States, Russia, and China. The United States plans to deploy a new, multi-layered missile defence system, Golden Dome, that will include space-based interceptors, increasing the probability of conflict in space and likely fuelling a new space-based arms race. As these worrying trends continued, countries with nuclear weapons failed to talk about strategic stability or arms control, much less nuclear disarmament, and questions about US extended deterrence commitments to traditional allies in Europe and Asia led some countries without nuclear weapons to consider acquiring them. As we publish this statement, the last major agreement limiting the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Russia, New START, is set to expire, ending nearly 60 years of efforts to constrain nuclear competition between the world’s two largest nuclear countries. In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race.”

Coming to climate change and disasters this report says, “An array of adverse trends also dominated the climate change outlook in the past year. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide—the greenhouse gas most responsible for human-caused climate change—reached a new high, rising to 150 percent of preindustrial levels. Global average temperature in 2024 was the warmest in the 175-year record, and temperatures in 2025 were similar. With the addition of freshwater from melting glaciers and thermal expansion, global average sea level reached a record high. Energized by warm temperatures, the hydrologic cycle became more erratic, with deluges and droughts hopscotching around the globe. Large swaths of Peru, the Amazon, southern Africa, and northwest Africa experienced droughts. For the third time in the last four years Europe experienced more than 60,000 heat-related deaths. Floods in the Congo River Basin displaced 350,000 people, and record rainfall in southeast Brazil displaced over half a million.”

Speaking about a new risk this report tells us, “In December 2024, scientists from nine countries announced the recognition of a potentially existential threat to all life on Earth: the laboratory synthesis of so-called “mirror life.” Those scientists urged that mirror bacteria and other mirror cells—composed of chemically-synthesized molecules that are mirror-images of those found on Earth, much as a left hand mirrors a right hand—not be created, because a self-replicating mirror cell could plausibly evade normal controls on growth, spread throughout all ecosystems, and eventually cause the widespread death of humans, other animals, and plants, potentially disrupting all life on Earth. So far, however, the international community has not arrived at a plan to address this risk.”

“At the same time, the accelerating evolution of artificial intelligence poses a different sort of biological threat: the potential for the AI-aided design of new pathogens to which humans have no effective defences. Also, concerns about state-sponsored biological weapons programs have deepened due to the weakening during this past year of international norms and mechanisms for productive engagement.”

On other aspects of AI related threats the DCS states, “The United States, Russia and China are incorporating AI across their defence sectors, despite the potential dangers of such moves. In the United States, the Trump administration has revoked a previous executive order on AI safety, reflecting a dangerous prioritization of innovation over safety. And the AI revolution has the potential to accelerate the existing chaos and dysfunction in the world’s information ecosystem, supercharging mis- and disinformation campaigns and undermining the fact-based public discussions required to address urgent major threats like nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change.”

The DCS has made a number of important recommendations–

• The United States and Russia can resume dialogue about limiting their nuclear arsenals. All nuclear-armed states can avoid destabilizing investments in missile defence and observe the existing moratorium on explosive nuclear testing.
• Through both multilateral agreements and national regulations, the international community can take all feasible steps to prevent the creation of mirror life and cooperate on meaningful measures to reduce the prospect of AI being used to create biological threats.
• The United States Congress can repudiate President Trump’s war on renewable energy, instead providing incentives and investments that will enable rapid reduction in fossil fuel use.
• The United States, Russia, and China can engage in bilateral and multilateral dialogue on meaningful guidelines regarding the incorporation of artificial intelligence in their militaries, particularly in nuclear command and control systems.

There should be more such efforts to draw attention to the survival crisis as the most serious challenge facing humanity. In particular a specific campaign demand for which this writer has been working for several years is that the next decade should be declared by the UN as the Decade for Saving Earth and all its life-forms within a framework of justice and peace. More wide-ranging world governance system changes should be considered seriously to protect the life-nurturing conditions of our planet. Some of these possibilities are discussed by this writer in his book Earth without Borders. The youth in particular should get many more opportunities for creating a new protective world based on peace, justice and protection of environment, instead of merely carrying the burden of the mess that ruling elites of the present and the preceding generation have created.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. 

29  January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ranjan Solomon

Escalating geopolitical tensions in Asia, driven by the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, Taiwan disputes, and Japan’s remilitarization, are reshaping the regional order, creating a “new cold peace” defined by structural suspicion. This shift is marked by a “first island chain” defense strategy aimed at monitoring Chinese naval operations. While some view this as containment of a rising power, others interpret these developments as a potential, albeit gradual, shift in the regional balance of power.

Asia once again finds itself at the centre of a global power struggle not of its own making. The escalating tensions over Taiwan, Japan’s accelerating remilitarisation, and the United States’ strategic pivot toward the Indo-Pacific reveal less about regional insecurity and more about the anxieties of declining empires confronting an irreversible shift in global power. Beneath the language of “democracy,” “rules-based order,” and “freedom of navigation” lies a familiar imperial instinct: to control, contain, and discipline any force that refuses subordination.

At the heart of this manufactured crisis lies a deliberate distortion of history—particularly the one-China principle, which is routinely treated in Western discourse as a negotiable claim rather than what it actually is: a settled international consensus.

As of late 2025 and early 2026, the intersection of the “One China” principle, the revival of historical imperial narratives, and rapid military modernization defines a new era of Chinese assertiveness. Under President Xi Jinping, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is transforming into a world-class force designed to secure national rejuvenation, project power globally, and assert control over territorial claims, with a particular focus on the 2027 centennial goal. The primary driver of China’s military development is the goal of achieving capabilities to seize or coerce Taiwan by 2027. This involves increased PLA incursions, which surged by 200% between 2020 and 2024.

The narrative emphasizes the “integral” nature of territories such as Taiwan, the South China Sea, and border regions, framing them as essential to national sovereignty and the end of the “century of humiliation”.

Meanwhile Japan is drifting away from its post-1945 exclusively defensive, pacifist posture (under Article 9 of its constitution) towards becoming a “normal” military power. Since the mid-2000s, and accelerating under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and later Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (as of late 2025/2026), Japan has revised national security documents to focus on “counterstrike capabilities” and a significantly expanded defense budget.

Japan now officially frames China as an “unprecedented strategic challenge” and a “pressing security concern”. This surge in military activity is seen as a return to regional rivalry between China and Japan, echoing the competition for regional dominance during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g., the First Sino-Japanese War).

The One-China Principle: An International Settlement, not a Chinese Claim

The question of China’s international representation was conclusively resolved in 1971, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758, recognising the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative of China. This decision was not procedural housekeeping; it was a decisive geopolitical settlement that reflected historical reality and ended decades of diplomatic fiction. Taiwan was not recognised as a separate sovereign entity, nor was the question left open for reinterpretation at a later date.

Since then, over 180 countries – across continents, ideologies, and political systems—have established diplomatic relations with the PRC on the basis of the one-China principle. This sustained and uniform state practice has elevated the principle to a basic norm of international relations, rooted in both legality and custom. To challenge it today is not to uphold international law but to subvert it in service of strategic objectives.

Yet this is precisely what is happening. Strategic ambiguity is weaponised, diplomatic language is hollowed out, and militarisation is presented as prudence. The burden of instability is shifted onto China, even as external powers inject arms, alliances, and war rhetoric into a region that has no interest in becoming the next global battlefield.

Imperial Memory and the Taiwan Question

The Taiwan question cannot be divorced from the long history of imperial intrusion into China. Taiwan’s separation from the mainland was not the product of self-determination but the outcome of Japanese colonialism and the unresolved legacy of China’s civil war, compounded by Cold War interventions. From the Opium Wars to the Japanese occupation, China’s modern history is marked by humiliation imposed through foreign coercion. Sovereignty, for China, is therefore not an abstract concept—it is existential.

Western powers that once carved China into concessions now present themselves as guardians of its peripheries. The irony is stark. The same forces that denied China sovereignty for over a century now lecture it on restraint, while refusing to apply similar standards to themselves. No Western state would tolerate foreign militarisation along its core territorial claims; yet China is expected to accept precisely that.

Japan’s Dangerous Amnesia

Japan’s re-entry into military assertiveness is particularly troubling. Asia has not forgotten Japan’s imperial past—its invasions, atrocities, and colonial rule across China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. That history is not ancient; it lives in memory, trauma, and unresolved accountability. Japan’s post-war pacifist constitution was not a burden imposed upon it, but a safeguard for the region.

Today, however, Japan seeks strategic relevance through rearmament and alignment with US containment strategies against China. Advanced technology is being repurposed for military expansion, while historical responsibility is quietly sidelined. This is not leadership; it is regression. An Asia that needs trust-building and cooperation is instead being offered missiles and manoeuvres.

The United States and the Fear of Decline

The intensification of the Taiwan issue must also be understood as a symptom of American imperial decline. For the first time since the end of World War II, the United States confronts a power it cannot easily dominate, sanction into submission, or overthrow. China’s rise is not merely economic—it is civilisational.

China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, built the world’s largest industrial base, achieved technological breakthroughs in infrastructure, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and space exploration, and emerged as the primary trading partner for most of the world. Its economic scale now dwarfs all other powers, reshaping supply chains, development models, and global institutions.

This rise did not occur through colonial plunder or military conquest. It emerged through long-term planning, state capacity, and integration with the global economy—often under conditions set by Western institutions. That China succeeded despite these constraints is what unsettles the old order.

Unable to reverse this transformation economically, the United States resorts to militarisation and alliance-building, dragging regional actors into a confrontational posture that benefits none of them. Taiwan becomes a pawn, Japan a forward base, and Asia a theatre of escalation.

Militarisation Is Not Stability

The portrayal of military build-ups as deterrence ignores history’s most basic lesson: arms races create insecurity, not peace. Asia’s future lies not in NATO-style blocs or Cold War revivalism, but in regional autonomy, economic cooperation, and diplomatic maturity. The people of Asia—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Southeast Asian—do not benefit from becoming collateral in great-power rivalries.

To challenge the one-China principle today is therefore not an act of principle but of provocation. It destabilises an established international settlement, erodes global norms, and risks igniting a conflict whose consequences would be catastrophic.

Asia’s Future Lies Beyond Militarisation

Asia stands at a crossroads. It can either allow old empires to redraw its future through force and fear, or it can insist on peace, legality, and sovereignty. The choice should not be difficult.

Asia’s future cannot be built on aircraft carriers, missile shields, or revived military blocs that replicate Europe’s twentieth-century disasters on a far larger scale. It must instead rest on demilitarisation, regional sovereignty, and civilisational dialogue—a conscious rejection of the logic that security is achieved through dominance. Asia is home to the world’s oldest cultures, the majority of its population, and the engines of global growth; its destiny lies in cooperation, trade, cultural exchange, and shared development, not in becoming a permanent theatre for foreign power projection. The militarisation of the Taiwan question, the rearmament of Japan, and the strategic encirclement of China threaten to drag the region into conflicts that serve imperial anxieties rather than Asian interests. To insist on peace in Asia is not naïveté; it is historical wisdom. The one-China principle, upheld through international consensus, offers a framework for stability precisely because it rejects coercion. The real challenge before Asia is not choosing sides in a great-power rivalry, but refusing to inherit the ruins of an empire in decline – and instead asserting a future rooted in dignity, restraint, and peace.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local/national justice.

29 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Mohmad Maqbool Waggy

The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2803 on 17th of November 2025 to give effect to what was termed a “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.” In the heart of this plan is the establishment of a Board of Peace. This Board of Peace is entrusted with the responsibility to reconstruct Gaza and its economic recovery programs, and the coordination and supporting of and delivery of public services and humanitarian assistance in Gaza. This resolution also authorizes the members of the Board of Peace to deploy International Stabilization Force (ISF) in Gaza. Many governments hailed the resolution as a long-awaited breakthrough, an instance of decisive international action after years of devastation in Gaza. Yet implicitly in its humanitarian language lies the undercurrents of deeper and more troubling dilemma. This has been long recognized by scholars of international relations: the tension between sovereignty and trusteeship, relief and justice, external management and self-determination.

The Gaza is effectively placed under a form of international trusteeship by the Resolution 2803. It assigned Palestinians technocratic, and apolitical roles responsible for delivering the day –to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. While meaningful authority remains with the external actors, the Board of Peace headed by Donald J Trump. This arrangement closely mirrors what Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, in Rules for the World, identify as the bureaucratic authority of international organizations. Such institutions claim legitimacy by presenting governance as technical, neutral, and humanitarian, yet in practice they reproduce existing power hierarchies. The Board of Peace is framed as a humanitarian necessity, but its structure consolidates U.S. and Israeli influence, ensuring that reconstruction aligns with their geopolitical priorities rather than Palestinian political aspirations. This is not peacebuilding rooted in self-governance; it is trusteeship without consent.

The dilemma posed by Resolution 2803 is not new. Roland Paris, in At War’s End, tests the hypothesis that liberalisation promotes peace in conflict-torn states by reviewing the success or failure of every major peacebuilding mission launched between 1989 and 1999: Namibia (1989), Nicaragua (1989), Angola (1991), Cambodia (1991), El Salvador (1991), Mozambique (1992), Liberia (1993), Rwanda (1993), Bosnia (1995), Croatia (1995), Guatemala (1997), East Timor (1999), Kosovo (1999) and Sierra Leone (1999). He famously argued that post-conflict interventions often prioritize “institutionalization before liberalization,” placing societies under external management in the name of stability before allowing meaningful sovereignty or democratic agency. While this model is intended to prevent chaos, it frequently produces a condition of suspended sovereignty. Kosovo remains the clearest illustration. Following NATO’s intervention in 1999, the UN’s interim administration (UNMIK) delivered stability and humanitarian relief, yet left the question of sovereignty unresolved for nearly a decade. Even after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, its international status remains contested. Humanitarian governance thus produced what might be called a frozen sovereignty, order without resolution.

East Timor offers a contrasting lesson. The UN Transitional Administration (UNTAET) initially marginalized local voices, but crucially, international oversight gave way to full independence in 2002. That transition succeeded not because of prolonged trusteeship, but because trusteeship was explicitly temporary and ultimately relinquished. Gaza now stands at a similar crossroads. Resolution 2803 may deliver immediate relief, but unless Palestinians are recognized and empowered as sovereign political actors, it risks replicating Kosovo’s failures rather than East Timor’s conditional success.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is undeniable. Entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins, healthcare systems operate on the brink of collapse, and generations of children are growing up amid trauma and displacement. Relief is urgent and morally necessary. Yet relief without rights sets a dangerous precedent. Humanitarian aid can alleviate suffering, but when detached from political agency it risks institutionalizing dependency. Palestinians may receive food, medicine, and reconstruction funds, but without sovereignty they remain subjects of external administration rather than citizens shaping their own future. This is precisely the danger identified by David Chandler in his critique of liberal peacebuilding. Chandler argues that such interventions often produce a “post-liberal peace”: stability without sovereignty, governance without accountability, and order without justice. Resolution 2803 risks reproducing this model in Gaza, a managed calm that defers, rather than resolves, the underlying political question.

The legitimacy of Resolution 2803 is therefore deeply contested. Although it passed with 13 votes in favour and none against, the abstentions of Russia and Algeria signalled unease within the Security Council itself. More critically, Palestinians were side-lined during negotiations. This raises a fundamental question: can international governance ever be legitimate when it excludes the very population it claims to protect? As Barnett and Finnemore remind us, international organizations exercise authority through bureaucratic rationality, masking political choices as technical imperatives. The Board of Peace embodies this logic. Reconstruction is framed as an administrative necessity, obscuring the reality of external control. Yet legitimacy cannot be manufactured through humanitarian language alone; it requires consent. Palestinians have not consented to governance by a body dominated by actors widely viewed as complicit in their dispossession.

The regional politics surrounding Resolution 2803 further expose its contradictions. Pakistan’s decision to join the Board of Peace in January 2026 triggered significant domestic backlash. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly formally rejected the move, while opposition parties accused the government of subordinating the Palestinian cause to U.S. strategic interests. India’s position is more ambivalent. Historically, India was among the earliest and most vocal supporters of Palestinian self-determination. Jawaharlal Nehru opposed the 1947 partition plan, and India voted against Israel’s admission to the UN in 1949. For decades, Palestinian sovereignty formed a core pillar of India’s non-aligned foreign policy. Since the 1990s, however, India has deepened strategic ties with Israel, particularly in defence and technology. Today, New Delhi attempts to balance its historical commitments with contemporary geopolitical partnerships, often resulting in cautious or muted responses. Resolution 2803 places India in a delicate position: endorsing the Board risks complicity in side-lining Palestinian sovereignty, while opposing it risks diplomatic costs. For a state aspiring to global leadership, silence is not neutrality, it is abdication.

From an international relations perspective, Resolution 2803 invites multiple readings. Realists see power politics cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric, with the Board of Peace consolidating U.S. and Israeli influence. Liberals emphasize multilateral cooperation, but one distorted by asymmetrical power. Constructivists highlight the normative contradiction between self-determination and trusteeship, while critical theorists see global governance reproducing hierarchies that marginalize voices from the Global South. Despite their differences, these perspectives converge on a common conclusion: Resolution 2803 may stabilize Gaza materially, but it undermines its political future. It manages conflict without resolving it.

The implications extend far beyond Gaza. Resolution 2803 speaks to the future of global governance itself. Can international institutions provide humanitarian relief without eroding sovereignty? Can peace be constructed without justice? Can those most affected by intervention meaningfully shape the structures imposed upon them? The Board of Peace is a test case. If it evolves into a mechanism that genuinely empowers Palestinians, it could signal a new model of intervention that reconciles relief with self-determination. If it does not, it will reinforce long-standing critiques of international governance as paternalism cloaked in humanitarian language.

Resolution 2803 may ultimately be remembered as a turning point in Gaza’s history. Whether it becomes a pathway to justice or a mechanism of dispossession depends on one central question: are Palestinians treated as sovereign political actors, or as subjects of international trusteeship? As Barnett and Finnemore remind us, international organizations are never neutral. As Roland Paris warns, stabilization without sovereignty freezes conflict rather than resolving it. And as David Chandler argues, peace without justice is merely managed order. Resolution 2803 is therefore a stark reminder that humanitarianism without self-determination is not peace. True peace begins with sovereignty.

Dr. Mohmad Maqbool Waggy is PhD Scholar from Central University of Kashmir in Political Science with his research focus on Climate Change, Migration, Conflict, and Gender.

29  January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mazin B. Qumsiyeh

(and why everyone should boycott Chevron) [footnotes below]

The U.S. and Israel have had a special arrangement since 1979 under which the United States would supply oil to Israel if Israel could not secure enough oil on its own due to shortage or supply disruption [1]. This pact is unique: No other country receives a similar guaranteed emergency oil supply from the U.S. and the agreement has been extended routinely with the last extension for ten years! [2]. The US sent refined fuel to Israel to bomb Gaza in 2008/2009 even when gas prices at the pump got higher for US citizens [3]. In 2023, 60% of the crude oil imported by Israel (totals imports $3.23 billion) came from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to Turkish ports through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (in which Chevron has the largest stakeholder- Chevron is also to be the main beneficiary of the attack on Venezuela). The percentage rose to 70% of crude supply through that pipeline between late 2023 and late 2025 [4]. Refined imports of $1.35 billion worth came mostly from Russia, Egypt, Turkey, and Romania. The U.S. is the sole documented supplier of military-grade jet fuel (JP-8) under aid programs during the war [4] of course paid for by US taxpayers to decimate Gaza and dramatically increase greenhouse gases.

In 2020 Chevron completed a major acquisition of U.S.–based Noble Energy, which had been the lead developer of Israel’s largest offshore natural gas fields. This deal brought Chevron’s operations directly into Israel’s energy sector [5]. Chevron integrated into its global portfolio the “Tamar and Leviathan” offshore gas fields (Most portions of these belong to Palestine based on UN partition lines) and at least part of the ownership of the current Gaza strip [6]. In 2025, Egypt signed a deal to import $35 billion in gas from the Chevron operated gas fields (and a new “Nitzana” pipeline) off the coast of Gaza benefitting the apartheid state and the rich Chevron. Hence the ethnic cleansing and genocide on Gaza continues to empty it and allow for money to continue flowing. Here are the biggest institutional shareholders of Chevron (and people should write to them to divest): The Vanguard Group, Inc.; State Street Corporation; Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.; BlackRock Inc. And ofcourse boycott Chevron stations [See 7].

Venezuelan people and most of the world are fully aware that 1) Trump consulted with his partners in crime (Chevron CEO and Netanyahu) but not Congress when he decided to bomb for oil (and rare minerals), 2) The market bumbed up Chevron stock price upon hearing the news [8], 3) They are merely a stepping stone for taking over other countries (Panama, Canada, Greenland, Cuba)… But the imperial power WILL fail. I leave that to another analysis. But in the meantime do continue to act and we all need to work harder to stop the lunatics pushing us to WWIII.

[1] https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/894BE546-C7E6-4BC4-A3F0-9E352549109B
[2] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/flashes/323545
[3] https://wespac.org/2009/01/16/us-taxpayers-spending-over-one-billion/
[4] https://oilchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Israel-Gaza-Fuel-Data-v2.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[5] https://israel.chevron.com/en/about
[6] https://www.timesofisrael.com/chevron-seals-acquisition-of-noble-energy-which-operates-in-israel-gas-fields/
[7] https://bdsmovement.net/chevron https://afsc.org/BoycottChevron
[8] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/05/market-sees-chevron-the-big-venezuela-winner-but-oil-majors-face-a-long-road.html

Mazin Butros Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches.

7 January 2026

By Jonathan Whittall

Former CIA Director David Petraeus—one of the godfathers of the modern doctrine of counterinsurgency warfare—last week visited the U.S.-military run coordination center established in southern Israel to oversee the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, multiple sources from the diplomatic community told Drop Site News.

In his remarks at the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat, Petraeus praised Israel’s shift to clearing, holding, and rebuilding—a change from his previous criticism that Israeli forces were not implementing lessons from the U.S. counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, in particular the creation of “gated communities.”

One week prior to Petraeus’s visit, the U.S. Army presented the CMCC with plans for a “Gaza First Planned Community” in Rafah, as first reported by Drop Site. The residential compound would house up to 25,000 Palestinians in an area under full Israeli military control and would include biometric entry, identity checks, reeducation programs, and controls over aid and housing.

According to two sources with knowledge of the daily workings of the CMCC, the “Gaza First Planned Community” is intended to function as a pilot project—the first known step in the overall reconstruction plan of a “New Gaza.” The compound will be funded by the UAE, according to The Guardian.

Petraeus’s January 21 appearance at the CMCC coincided with President Donald Trump’s inauguration of the so-called Board of Peace the following day at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. At the ceremony, Trump said he was “committed to ensuring Gaza is demilitarized, properly governed and beautifully rebuilt,” adding: “I’m a real estate person at heart and it’s all about location. And I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property.” Trump was followed by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who listed among the priorities for the coming 100 days a “Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza.” There will also be a process to “synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments,” Kushner said.

In his remarks to the CMCC, Petraeus compared the 2007 U.S. troop surge in Iraq to the military operation in Gaza. Petraeus, who presided over a massive escalation of U.S. troops during the occupation of Iraq and the arming of local militias in what became a brutal sectarian civil war, is the former commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). He also dramatically expanded night raids and CIA and Special Operations missions inside Afghanistan. He was a key player in the expansion of U.S. covert warfare in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa before President Barack Obama installed him as CIA director.

Apart from promoting the implementation of gated communities based on his history in Iraq and Afghanistan, Petraeus is likely taking a special interest in Gaza because of the business opportunities Trump appears to be selling. Soon after his resignation from the CIA in 2012, Petraeus began work for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), a powerful U.S. private-equity and investment company. Petraeus is currently a partner at KKR, chairman of the KKR Global Institute, and chairman of KKR Middle East, which has offices in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Petraeus also used his CMCC address to highlight the field manual for counterinsurgency that he developed at the end of 2006. That manual (which is available here) “establishes doctrine (fundamental principles) for military operations in a counterinsurgency (COIN) environment.” In it, Petraeus writes “Not all Islamic insurgents or terrorists are fighting for a global revolution. Some are pursuing regional goals, such as establishing a Sunni Arab-dominated Iraq or replacing Israel with an Arab Palestinian state.”

Petraeus also took time to praise the CMCC’s efforts in coordinating humanitarian aid into Gaza since a ceasefire deal went into effect in October, despite the fact that Israel has completely blocked essential items, such as caravans and other shelter items, and banned 37 aid organizations from operating in Gaza. A number of European countries even stopped sending personnel to the CMCC last month saying it has failed to increase aid flows, according to Reuters.

The CMCC was created by CENTCOM one week after the October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas went into effect. It includes representatives from more than 50 countries and international organizations, and is tasked with coordinating aid, monitoring the ceasefire, and planning reconstruction. The CMCC is headed by Lieutenant General Patrick Frank, who served under Petraeus in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petraeus has long argued that lessons from the U.S. troop surge in Iraq could guide Israeli operations. Writing in Foreign Affairs in June 2024, he argued that Israel was repeating U.S. mistakes—but could also replicate U.S. “successes,” particularly the counterinsurgency strategy adopted in Iraq after 2007 that he oversaw. Central to Petraeus’s argument is the creation of gated communities with biometric entry points, identity cards, and constant patrols. In an interview with Al Majalla in October he said: “You clear every building, floor, room, cellar, and plug every tunnel entrance. … As long as you’ve found all the tunnel entrances and have a good entry control point. Then you have biometric ID cards that allow people who live in that area to return and access better shelters near their homes, which are largely damaged or destroyed.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv in March 2024, Petraeus told the Times of Israel that Israel should pivot to a counterinsurgency approach: “The foundational concepts of counterinsurgency are that you clear an area, you hold it, and you hold it in a very significant manner…You wall it off. You create gated communities, as we call it, 12 or 13 of them in Fallujah alone. You use biometric ID cards because you’re trying to separate the enemy, the extremists, from the people. That’s the fundamental idea.”

Like Petraeus’s gated-community model, the “Gaza First Planned Community” envisions implementing biometric screening to regulate entry. The CMCC presentation on the housing compound described systems that cross-reference applicants against security databases as a condition for access to housing and services. The advancement of technological capacity in counter-insurgency operations is something that Petraeus recently referred to as “Software-Defined Warfare.”

Petraeus resigned as CIA director in November 2012, amid a public scandal over an extramarital affair with his biographer, during which he shared classified materials with her. He later pled guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge that he mishandled classified information.

Soon after his resignation, Petraeus began work for KKR whose portfolio includes companies that have technology and defense interests in Gaza. In 2017, KKR acquired a majority stake in Optiv, which maintains strategic partnerships with the Israeli cyber-security industry. In May 2022, KKR led a $200 million funding round for Sempris, an identity driven cyber security company founded by former Israeli intelligence officials. In 2023, KKR acquired Circor, which is a supplier to the aerospace and defense markets. KKR has also invested in Global Technical Realty, a secure underground data centre in Petah Tikvah, Israel.

KKR has further links with Israel through their ownership of Axel Springer, a German media and technology company which has been accused of profiting from West Bank settlements through the Israeli company Yad2, which it owns. In December 2024, Yad2 ran an advertisement in an Israeli financial newspaper, The Marker, with the slogan “From the river to the sea”, with dropped pins across the entirety of historic Palestine, indicating real estate opportunities. The ad read: “Yad2 helps you look ahead and build a future in your next home in Israel.”

Amjad Shawa, the head of the Palestinian NGO network, speaking to Drop Site from Gaza City, criticized the presentation Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner gave at Davos, saying it “was not consulted with any Palestinian, whether civil society, Palestinian Authority, or Palestinian private sector.” He added, “It is just a beautiful photo designed by AI that does not reflect reality. It doesn’t deal with the recent situation, it is just dealing with construction here and there. It is not talking about political horizons, social cohesion, about order, about different issues important to Palestinians. Who will own this? Will we the Palestinians own this? Or others will own it and we will serve it as Palestinians?”

In fact, Palestinian energy resources may be under consideration as the financial underpinning for Gaza’s reconstruction. Under this model, the undeveloped Gaza Marine field, estimated at one trillion cubic feet of natural gas, would be monetized to support reconstruction.

Both British prime minister Tony Blair—who is named on the executive board of the Board of Peace—and Petraeus have strong ties to the UAE that converge around energy interests. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, acquired a 22% stake in Israel’s Tamar offshore gas field in December 2021. Blair has been a paid advisor for Mubadala. KKR, together with Blackrock, held a $4 billion investment in the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and has a minority stake in ADNOC Gas Pipeline Assets, which has the technical expertise required for offshore gas exploration and extraction, and to manage infrastructure, such as pipelines or LNG terminals, and handle commercial gas sales.

In Iraq, Petraus gained experience in financing smaller scale reconstruction projects with redirected state resources. An Iraq Development Fund was created to channel Iraqi resources to reconstruction. In 2007, as Petraeus was leading U.S. forces in Iraq, he reoriented captured Iraqi funds into a counterinsurgency tool through the Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP). The approach has been outlined in a U.S. military manual called “Commanders Guide to Money as a Weapons System.”

The exploration of Gaza’s gas would fit into the economic and energy cooperation between Israel and the UAE under the Abraham Accords. In 2025, a formal UAE–Israel energy cooperation memorandum of understanding was signed, outlining gas sector cooperation. UAE involvement in Gaza gas would further position it as a regional energy hub linking the Gulf’s capital and infrastructure with Eastern Mediterranean resources and European markets.

Shawa contended that “investors are most welcome,” but they have to “accept the rules.” The rules are that Gaza must be rebuilt according to the Palestinian perspective, “not according to their perspective.”

Petraeus’s visit is part of what is sure to be a convergence of parties looking for involvement in Trump’s plans in Gaza, where Palestinians would remain relegated to the status of inmates or future labor, but not the drivers of their own destiny.

“Trump’s plan for Gaza follows the tried-and-tested model of North American genocide, in which survivors are confined to Indigenous reservations. In this model, Palestinians’ racialized bodies are viewed as only needing to be fed and watered, stripped of any subjective depth,” Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon who has worked extensively in Gaza, is the chair in conflict medicine at the American University of Beirut and rector of the University of Glasgow, told Drop Site.

“The map of the proposed ‘New Gaza’ presented by Jared Kushner in Davos looks exactly like the internal architecture of a prison. Rather than Gaza functioning as an open-air prison, the plan would turn it into a closed prison, where the inmates—Palestinians—are micromanaged.”

Jonathan Whittall Political analyst and humanitarian worker with two decades of work in emergencies with MSF and the UN.

31 January 2026

Source: dropsitenews.com

New York, New York

January 31, 2026

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

Crimes against humanity represent one of the most serious affronts to human dignity and collective conscience. They embody patterns of widespread or systematic violence directed against civilian populations — including murder, enforced disappearances, torture, persecution, sexual violence, deportation, and other inhumane acts that shock the moral order of humanity. The United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime against Humanity presents a historic opportunity to strengthen global resolve, reinforce legal frameworks, and advance cooperation among states to ensure accountability, justice, and meaningful prevention.

While the international legal architecture has evolved significantly since the aftermath of the Second World War, important normative and institutional gaps remain. The Genocide Convention of 1948 and the Geneva Conventions established foundational legal protections, and the creation of the International Criminal Court reinforced accountability mechanisms. Yet, unlike genocide and war crimes, there is still no stand-alone comprehensive convention dedicated exclusively to crimes against humanity. This structural omission has limited the capacity of states to adopt consistent domestic legislation, harmonize cooperation frameworks, and pursue perpetrators who move across borders. The Conference of Plenipotentiaries seeks to fill this critical void.

The Imperative of Prevention

Prevention must stand at the core of the international community’s approach. Too often, the world reacts to atrocities only after irreparable harm has been inflicted and communities have been devastated. A meaningful prevention framework requires early warning mechanisms, stronger monitoring capacities, transparent reporting, and a willingness by states and institutions to act before crises escalate. Education in human rights, inclusive governance, rule of law strengthening, and responsible security practices are equally essential elements of prevention.

Civil society organizations, academic institutions, moral leaders, and human rights defenders play a vital role in documenting abuses, amplifying the voices of victims, and urging action when warning signs emerge. Their protection and meaningful participation must therefore be an integral component of any preventive strategy. Without civic space, truth is silenced — and without truth, accountability becomes impossible.

Accountability and the Rule of Law

Accountability is not an act of punishment alone; it is an affirmation of universal human values. When perpetrators enjoy impunity, cycles of violence deepen, victims are re-traumatized, and the integrity of international law erodes. Strengthening judicial cooperation — including extradition, mutual legal assistance, and evidence-sharing — is essential to closing enforcement gaps. Equally important is the responsibility of states to incorporate crimes against humanity into domestic criminal law, ensuring that such crimes can be prosecuted fairly and independently at the national level.

Justice must also be survivor centered. Victims and affected communities deserve recognition, reparations, psychological support, and the assurance that their suffering has not been ignored. Truth-seeking mechanisms and memorialization efforts help restore dignity and foster long-term reconciliation.

The Role of Multilateralism

The Conference reinforces the indispensable role of multilateralism in confronting global challenges. Atrocities rarely occur in isolation; they are rooted in political exclusion, discrimination, securitization of societies, and structural inequalities. No state, however powerful, can confront these dynamics alone. Shared norms, coordinated diplomatic engagement, and principled international cooperation are vital to preventing abuses and responding when they occur.

Multilateral commitments must also be matched with political will. Declarations are meaningful only when accompanied by implementation, transparency, and accountability to both domestic and international publics.

Technology, Media, and Modern Challenges

Contemporary conflicts and crises unfold in an increasingly digital and interconnected world. Technology can illuminate truth — enabling documentation, verification, and preservation of evidence — but it can also be weaponized to spread hate, dehumanization, and incitement. Strengthening responsible digital governance, countering disinformation, and supporting credible documentation initiatives are essential tools for both prevention and accountability. Journalists, researchers, and human rights monitors must be protected from reprisals for their work.

Climate-related stress, demographic shifts, and political polarization further complicate the landscape in which vulnerabilities emerge. The Conference should therefore promote a holistic understanding of risk factors that may precipitate widespread or systematic violence.

A Universal Commitment — With Local Realities

While the principles guiding this Convention are universal, their application must be sensitive to local histories, languages, cultures, and institutional realities. Effective implementation depends on national ownership, capacity-building, judicial training, and inclusive policymaking that engages women, youth, minorities, and marginalized communities. The pursuit of justice must never be perceived as externally imposed, but rather as an expression of shared human values anchored within domestic legal systems.

The Kashmir Conflict and the Reality of Crimes Against Humanity

Crimes against humanity do not emerge overnight. They develop through sustained patterns of abuse, erosion of legal safeguards, and the normalization of repression. Jammu and Kashmir presents a contemporary case study of these dynamics.

Under international law, crimes against humanity encompass widespread or systematic attacks directed against a civilian population, including imprisonment, torture, persecution, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts. Evidence emerging from Kashmir—documented by UN experts, international NGOs, journalists, and scholars—demonstrates patterns that meet these legal criteria.

The invocation of “national security” has become the central mechanism through which extraordinary powers are exercised without effective judicial oversight. Draconian laws are routinely used to silence dissent, detain human rights defenders, restrict movement, and suppress independent media. This securitized governance has produced what many Kashmiris describe as the “peace of the graveyard”—an imposed silence rather than genuine peace.

Early-warning frameworks for mass atrocities are particularly instructive. Gregory Stanton identifies Kashmir as exhibiting multiple risk indicators, including classification and discrimination, denial of civil rights, militarization, and impunity. These indicators, if left unaddressed, historically precede mass atrocity crimes.

The systematic silencing of journalists, as warned by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the targeting of academics and diaspora voices—such as the denial of entry to Dr. Nitasha Kaul and the cancellation of travel documents of elderly activists like Amrit Wilson—demonstrate repression extending beyond borders.

The joint statement by ten UN Special Rapporteurs (2025) regarding one of internationally known human rights defender – Khurram Parvez – underscores that these are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern involving arbitrary detention, torture, discriminatory treatment, and custodial deaths. Together, these acts form a systematic attack on a civilian population, triggering the international community’s responsibility to act.

This Conference offers a critical opportunity to reaffirm that sovereignty cannot be a shield for crimes against humanity. Kashmir illustrates the urgent need for:

· Preventive diplomacy grounded in early warning mechanisms.

· Independent investigations and universal jurisdiction where applicable.

· Stronger protections for journalists, scholars, and human rights defenders, including Irfan Mehraj, Abdul Aaala Fazili, Hilal Mir, Asif Sultan and others.

· Victim-centered justice and accountability frameworks for Mohammad Yasin Malik, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Masarat Aalam, Aasia Andrabi, Fehmeeda Sofi, Nahida Nasreen and others.

Recognizing Kashmir within the crimes-against-humanity discourse is not political—it is legal, moral, and preventive. Failure to act risks entrenching impunity and undermining the very purpose of international criminal law.

Conclusion

The United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries carries profound moral, legal, and historical significance. It represents not only a technical exercise in treaty development but a reaffirmation of humanity’s collective promise — that no people, anywhere, should face systematic cruelty without recourse to justice and protection. By advancing a comprehensive Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime against Humanity, the international community strengthens its resolve to stand with victims, confront impunity, and uphold the sanctity of human dignity.

The success of this effort will ultimately depend on our willingness to transform commitments into action, principles into practice, and aspiration into enduring protection for present and future generations.

Dr. Fai submitted this paper to the Organizers of the Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity on behalf of PCSWHR which is headed by Dr. Ijaz Noori, an internationally known interfaith expert. The conference took place at the UN headquarters between January 19 – 30, 2026.

Dr. Fai is also the Secretary General
World Kashmir Awareness forum.
He can be reached at:
WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435
gnfai2003@yahoo.com
www.kashmirawareness.org

By JEREMY SCAHILL AND JAWA AHMAD

“I never lost hope, and I never will,” said Nael Barghouti, a 68-year-old Palestinian from the occupied West Bank who spent more than four decades in Israeli captivity. It has been a year since Barghouti won his freedom through a prisoner exchange deal signed between Hamas and Israel in January 2025. As a condition of his release, Barghouti had to agree to go into exile and was deported to Egypt a month later. “I have been optimistic from the very first day I began my struggle,” he said. “In prison, I was optimistic that I would be free one day. And, even if I were to die in prison, I would remain content, because those who come after me will continue the path, because they are convinced that we are in the right.”

According to the most recent and reliable statistics, there are approximately 9,300 Palestinians currently held in Israeli captivity. Nearly half of these have not been charged or brought to trial. Additionally, there are an unknown number of Palestinians held in military camps run by the Israeli army. At least 87 Palestinians have been killed inside Israeli prisons since October 7, 2023, including several documented cases of death by torture, abuse, or intentional neglect. “Without any prior warning, a prisoner is detained with no charge—a 15 year old [boy], or a woman. Malicious arrest—arrest simply to send a lesson to entire generations. They are received with beatings, bone‑breaking, and the spread of infectious diseases,” Barghouti told Drop Site.

In a wide-ranging, in-person interview in Istanbul, Barghouti reflected on his time in Israeli captivity, the torture he endured alongside other Palestinian prisoners, and why he believes the Palestinian cause will ultimately triumph. “We are not seekers of blood or wars, but we will accept nothing other than defending ourselves and our rights,” Barghouti said. “Why is it forbidden for Palestinians to live like any other people—to leave when they wish, return when they wish, go to the sea when they wish? Personally, I have seen the sea only once, in a prison transport vehicle, and when I was released. The sea is thirty kilometers (18 miles) from my village—why? Why are olive trees hundreds of years old uprooted? Why do settlers go to villages to uproot trees, attack people, and kill their animals? Why does the occupation prevent the families of released prisoners from leaving to meet them?”

In the struggle for Palestinian liberation, political prisoners occupy a space of immense national pride and importance. They are widely seen as heroes of the cause, and they participate in the decision-making process for the factions to which they belong. “Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s prisons are one of the most respected and esteemed groups among the Palestinian people—regardless of which faction the prisoner belongs to,” said Husam Badran, who spent 14 years in Israeli prisons and is currently Hamas’s head of national relations. He told Drop Site, “I believe there is hardly a Palestinian household that does not have a Palestinian prisoner. In some families, the father, mother, and children are sometimes all inside prison at the same time. We are talking about a long experience since [the Arab-Israeli war of] 1967; we are talking about a period of almost sixty years. We define ourselves as fighters for freedom—certainly not terrorists, as the occupation describes us.”

Badran, a former commander of Hamas’s armed wing Al Qassam Brigades in the West Bank, described how Hamas and other factions held democratic elections inside the prisons and remained intimately engaged in the broader decision making of their movements on the outside. “I wouldn’t trade the prison experience for all experiences in the world. It is bitter and difficult, true, but you gain a lot from it—on a human level, a personal level, and in understanding life. You cannot learn this anywhere else except in prison, despite how difficult it is. Your ability to innovate and invent [ways] to communicate surpasses imagination,” he said. “Yes, we studied, we learned, we went to university, we earned master’s degrees, because the Palestinian by nature has an extraordinary ability to confront hardship. The world is not capable of understanding that this is who the Palestinian is. This Palestinian today is part of the decision‑making body in the Palestinian cause. So how do you expect to break him? And how do you expect to impose international forces on him, take away his weapon, and bring [Tony] Blair to rule him? How could he accept that?,” Badran asked.

“The whole story is connected together. If you want to understand the current Palestinian situation by looking only at the last two years, you will not succeed in understanding the Palestinian cause—you will fail,” he added. “You must go back decades and study the Palestinian personalities and leaderships. So how do you expect to deal with this type of leadership—whether in Hamas or others—through submission, surrender, and raising the white flag?”

This week President Donald Trump pushed ahead with his Gaza Plan and announced the first round of appointments to his so-called Board of Peace. They include his son-in-law Jared Kushner, venture capitalists, ex-Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair, and an assortment of non-Palestinian heads of state and political leaders, as well as business figures—some with close ties to Israel. “States want to sign agreements on behalf of the Palestinian people, but the Palestinian people did not authorize them and never will. Money will not tempt us, and airplanes will not frighten us. This resistance will continue until the Palestinian people return to their lands, and until American politicians regain their reason, along with everyone who supports this entity,” Barghouti said. He added, “Anyone who truly wants America to remain a state that upholds justice in the world must stand with the Palestinian people—not [submit] to the influence of a Zionist lobby that is damaging America more than it is damaging the rest of the world.”

“Our spirits and our will were not broken”

When he was freed last year, Barghouti was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner held by Israel. He spent more than 45 years behind bars—nearly 34 of them consecutively. In 2009, the Guiness Book of World Records certified him as “the longest serving political prisoner ever.” The previous record was also held by a Palestinian, Said Alatabah, who served more than 31 years before being released in 2008.

As a ten year old boy, Barghouti witnessed Israeli forces invade his family’s West Bank village of Kobar, near Ramallah, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as Israel began its decades-long occupation. Barghouti began his anti-occupation actions by joining other youth in throwing stones and writing graffiti on walls. He came from a family with deep roots in Palestinian resistance. “My uncle was imprisoned during the British occupation and the beginning of the Zionist entity. My father was imprisoned twice during the occupation, as were my mother, brother, sister, wife, and many other family members,” Barghouti said. “We come from a family that rejects the occupation. We lived in a simple village, but it was one that hosted refugees from [the Nakba in] 1948. We knew that these refugees had land, homes, and property, and that overnight they became poor people waiting for the United Nations to grant them some aid,” he added. “What we witnessed of the crimes of the occupation and its soldiers, and the humiliations, instilled in us a refusal to accept this occupation. From a very young age, since 1967, I saw my father being humiliated by soldiers while I was still a child—him being beaten in front of me by patrols.”

In 1977, Barghouti was arrested for the first time and spent three months in jail. In April 1978, just as he was preparing to complete his high school final exams, Barghouti was again arrested, along with his brother Omar and cousin Fakhri, but this time he was accused of being involved with the killing of a former Israeli paratrooper working as a bus driver. They also detained his father. “I was tortured in front of my father, and my father was tortured in front of me. They threatened to arrest my mother, and later they did arrest her,” Barghouti recalled.

In the end, he was hit with a life sentence plus 18 years. “We entered prison unjustly, were sentenced unjustly, and were assaulted unjustly,” he said. “We will not submit, and we will not be ashamed that we resisted—we will not disown our actions. Those who must disown their crimes are the leaders of the Zionist occupation.”

When Barghouti entered prison, he originally affiliated himself with Fatah, the party of the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. In the 1990s, when Arafat signed the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel, Barghouti joined Hamas.

“The Palestinian people have been fighting for more than a hundred years. This is not tied to Hamas, Fatah, or any other organization. Every phase will have its own names and labels until the goals of the Palestinian people are achieved: return and self‑determination. This is a point that no Palestinian will ever abandon,” he said. “We entered prison and resisted the occupation, and we are not ashamed of that. It is the right of the Palestinian people—and of any people under occupation—to resist. The American people resisted British injustice. How did Ireland gain its freedom? Through the use of all forms of resistance.”

Inside the prison, Barghouti earned a reputation as a leader, organizer, and political thinker. He was a voracious reader of history books and studied foreign languages. As the years went by, he became known as the “Dean of the Palestinian Prisoners” and Abu Al-Noor, “Father of Light.” He often organized protests and strategized how to resist the prison authorities.

“We Palestinian prisoners entered prison at a time when the torture was the same as the torture that exists today. We carried out multiple [hunger] strikes with the support of our people. Sometimes the occupation wanted calm from us so that the Palestinian people would not rise up, so through our strikes, we achieved certain gains: the pen, the paper, the notebook, the book, and bedding—the blanket,” he said. “Everything inside the prisons was achieved through our [hunger] strikes. Our organization was disciplined because we are political prisoners: we do not accept living the life of a criminal prisoner.”

Over the decades, Barghouti was imprisoned with other high-profile Palestinians, including Yahya Sinwar, who would go on to become the leader of Hamas in Gaza and was one of the main architects of the October 7 attacks. Sinwar was killed in October 2024 in battle in Gaza. “If we wanted to speak about the martyred brother Yahya, I knew him and lived with him. He was among the most humane people I have ever known,” Barghouti said. He recalled how they both studied Hebrew, and that Sinwar had translated the memoirs of various Israeli intelligence chiefs from Hebrew to Arabic and encouraged other prisoners to study Israel’s history and tactics.

“We learned about Zionist life in prison through the Hebrew language—yes. We came to know them, and we came to know the extent of their criminality,” he said. “It should not be surprising that in prison we understood them, studied them, and came to know their criminality through their own books and through what they wrote in their press,” he added. “Sinwar and his brothers and comrades learned and understood that this enemy cannot coexist with this region as long as it carries a racist Zionist ideology. This is the truth.”

Sinwar and Barghouti were both released in 2011 as part of an exchange deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been taken captive by Hamas fighters in 2006. More than 1,000 Palestinians were freed in the deal. Sinwar, who was held more than 20 years in Israeli captivity, played a central role in negotiating the deal from inside prison.

Upon his release, Sinwar returned to Gaza and went on to become the political leader of Hamas. “He understood more deeply how to influence the occupation. And so, after leaving prison, it was in his mind that we must do something that makes this occupation reckon with its continued presence,” said Badran, who lived in the same cell with Sinwar for years. “He chose to set an example for all Palestinian leadership that the true leader is one who lives among his people—exposed to harm as they are, fights as they fight, is martyred as they are martyred, and goes hungry as they go hungry.”

As Sinwar rose to the leadership of Hamas in Gaza following his release from prison, Barghouti returned to his village of Kobar on October 18, 2011. After nearly 34 years in captivity, he tried to build a life in a world he had not inhabited for more than three decades. A month after winning his freedom, he married Iman Nafi, who had also served 10 years in prison, from 1987-1997. “Nael is a Palestinian hero. I have known of his heroism, his steadfastness and leadership in prison for many years. He is a special person. He belongs to a revolutionary school that is true and authentic and comes from the land itself. I have known so many details about his life, from what I have read and heard,” Nafi wrote in an essay published in the 2019 book, These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. “When he came asking for my hand, I told my family that I agree without any hesitation.”

Like Barghouti, Nafi was arrested when she was still in high school. “As a freed prisoner, I consider my marriage to another freed prisoner a victory against prison, a challenge to those who deprived us of our freedom, and a triumph of the spirit of faith and hope,” Barghouti said on his wedding day. “The idea that Nael would be released from prison and he and I would be together gives the Palestinian people hope that we could all be free and happy,” Nafi said. Barghouti enrolled at Al Quds Open University and farmed his land along with his brother Omar, who was also released in the Shalit deal. “The world has changed and developed so much since I was gone. But the longer the occupation lasts, the worse things are,” Barghouti said soon after his release. “I am being welcomed not as a person, but as an idea, a symbol for Palestinians.”

On June 12, 2014, three Israeli settlers were abducted near an illegal settlement outside of Hebron. Israel accused Hamas of being responsible and launched a sweeping military action throughout the occupied West Bank, codenamed Operation Brother’s Keeper, and took more than 350 Palestinians prisoner. Among these were some 70 Palestinians released in the 2011 Shalit deal. On June 18, Israeli forces descended on Kobar and snatched Barghouti—claiming he had violated the terms of his release after he delivered a speech at Birzeit University and citing rumors that he was considering accepting a ministerial post in a possible unity government between Fatah and Hamas. Barghouti dismissed their justifications and charged he was snatched as another act of collective punishment.

Prosecutors, claiming to have secret evidence, sought to have his life sentence reinstated. A year later, a military court in Ofer Prison ruled the charges baseless that Barghouti had “committed a crime under the security laws,” but the court nonetheless sentenced him to 30 months in prison, claiming secret intelligence showed he was involved with “terrorist financing.” Barghouti was not permitted to see the alleged evidence. In 2017, again citing secret files, the military court reversed its decision and reimposed Barghouti’s original life sentence. He remained in captivity until Hamas and Israel signed a ceasefire deal in January 2025. He was freed from prison on the condition that he live in exile.

Barghouti, whose freedom was achieved through negotiations in the aftermath of Operation Al Aqsa Flood, recalls hearing the news of the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023. “Honestly, I felt the same feeling that the Israelis felt in 1967—how within six hours the Arab air force was destroyed and Arab land was occupied. [The Israelis] felt happiness and arrogance. I did not feel arrogance. Despite our limited and simple capabilities and [living] under siege—we don’t have F‑16s, we don’t have Patriot missiles—this arrogant army, which goes to Yemen and bombs Yemen, bombs Iraq, bombs Iran, was confronted by simple people coming out of the siege saying, ‘Enough,’” Barghouti remembered. “Yes, we took pride in it—yes. Even though we wish that this Flood had never had to happen—that we had already been free and had no need for such battles. But, tomorrow, there will be another flood, and another, until this occupation and this injustice come to an end.”

Barghouti also said that, soon after the October 7 attacks, the Israeli guards inside the prison began to intensify their abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners. “Israeli policy against prisoners used every method of repression: beatings, humiliation, dogs, tear gas, stun grenades, and starvation. I personally lost 22 kilograms (48 pounds) in weight. I was deliberately poisoned more than three times—myself and those living with me in the same section,” he said. “It was intentional poisoning—some of the guards put substances in the food, and everyone who ate it suffered from diarrhea, and we received no medication. Those who contracted contagious diseases like scabies were taken to rooms with healthy prisoners so the disease would spread, and it spread intentionally and systematically. This demonstrates a fascist mindset.”

“Our hands, legs, and ribs were broken, but our spirits and our will were not broken,” Barghouti added. “Dogs fitted with iron collars were used against me more than once: they were given orders. My shoulders were broken. My blood covered my back—from iron shackles, from plastic restraints. Hunger. Cold—for two full months I walked barefoot in the cold. Barefoot,” he recalled. “The clothes I was wearing—the guards all called me ‘homeless.’ I believe there are photographs they took—they boasted about it. The food—they would kick it with their feet, spit on it, spit into the food. These are things that happened.”

Solidarity With Other Palestinian Prisoners

Since his release in February 2025, Barghouti has used his time advocating for the freedom of other prisoners, demanding that families of those forced into exile be allowed to reunite, and promoting the cause of Palestinian liberation. When he was freed, Israel denied his wife exit papers to join him in Egypt. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Israel routinely blocks families from being reunited with their loved ones once they are freed and forced into exile, with the organization calling the Israeli practice “collective revenge.”

“Why, at this moment, are the families of Palestinian prisoners who were released under an agreement prevented from meeting their children? Why is this happening? Why are the wives, sons, and daughters of detainees prevented from joining their children in visits? Why?” Barghouti asked. “All prisoners who have been [exiled]—their families are punished by being forbidden to meet them.”

Since 1967, Israel has also maintained a practice of holding the bodies of Palestinians who die in prison and refusing to allow their families to bury them. Conservative estimates indicate there are more than 700 bodies held in numbered graves or refrigerators, though these estimates do not include many of the Palestinians killed in Gaza whose bodies were taken back to Israel since October 7. In one case, Israel has continued to hold the body of a Palestinian who died on hunger strike in prison in 1980. “There are dozens, even hundreds, of Palestinian victims to this day in numbered graves and in secret prisons, and the Red Cross is not allowed to see them. They trade in bodies, and this goes against everything that is human,” Barghouti said.

Barghouti’s thoughts are never far from his comrades still in captivity, including high-profile political prisoners like Marwan Barghouti, the single most popular Palestinian leader. “These prisoners, and dozens like them, are heroes of the Palestinian people,” he said. “But if these prisoners were to be tried under a fair legal system, they would not—and could not—have received the sentences they were given. I challenge international law: if it truly wants to resolve the issue of Palestinian detainees, it must review all their cases.”

Hanan Barghouti, Nael’s 60-year-old sister, has been “administratively detained” by Israeli forces three times without charge or trial in the past two years. A prominent organizer of mobilizations in support of Palestinian prisoners, Hanan was first detained in September 2023 and released in November 2023 as part of the “Flood of the Free” prisoner exchange during the temporary truce between Hamas and Israel. After her 2023 release, Hanan recalled how an Israeli officer threatened her against appearing in the media or allowing celebrations for her freedom, reminding her that four of her sons were also under administrative detention. She told Al-Araby’s Al-Jadeed that she confronted him as a “sadistic oppressor.” Reflecting on the cost of resistance, she said: “The price is heavy and painful, and there is a sea of blood, but this blood will water the land, and the land will bloom in all colors.”

She was then taken again by Israeli forces in March 2024 and held for nine months—an Israeli violation of the terms of the November 2023 exchange deal. On September 30, 2025, she was detained for a third time under a new administrative order and is being subjected to repression, abuse, and starvation in Israel’s Damon Prison, according to the Prisoners’ Media Office. Barghouti told Drop Site that Hanan was taken shortly after he spoke with her by phone.

“Today, my sister—my own sister—is in prison. Why? Because she spoke with me on the phone,” Barghouti said. “Can you imagine? She is taken under an administrative law dating back to the period of British occupation. My sister is [imprisoned] simply because she spoke with her brother. What justice is this?”

Israeli politicians have recently intensified their threats to begin executing Palestinian prisoners, and the conditions inside of the prisons have dramatically worsened as torture and extrajudicial killings have intensified since October 7. In November, the Israeli Knesset moved forward a bill introducing the death penalty for those it deems terrorists, a measure expected to apply almost exclusively to Palestinians living under occupation. The bill grants immunity to the state, allows death sentences without a prosecutor’s request, and imposes total isolation on those condemned. Passed in its first reading by 39–16, the vote was celebrated by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who wore a noose-shaped pin and declared that “terrorists will only be released to hell.”

Barghouti argues that the escalating abuse and torture and threats to begin executions, will foreclose meaningful negotiations toward a broader peace, given the importance of the prisoners to the Palestinian struggle. “They have left the prisoners’ file as a fuse for future confrontations. Release them, and I believe the region could enjoy a long period of calm. [These prisoners] are an inseparable part of the Palestinian struggle. Keep them imprisoned, and you will drive many generations, and the children of future generations, to struggle for their liberation, and the cycle will continue unchanged,” he said. “Stupidity is one of God’s soldiers deployed upon the minds of these criminals—it will ultimately contribute to the end of this entity. Part of their stupidity, animosity, and criminality will contribute to their downfall in front of the people of the world, not only in the eyes of our people.”

In striking ways, Barghouti’s life is a metaphor for the entire Palestinian struggle. “We endured beatings and humiliation, but our spirit and our will were not broken, and will never be broken by any torture. We endured because we were people of conviction. Even when we were prevented from praying, and forbidden from practicing our religious rituals, we prayed in secret—just as Christians once prayed in secret under the Byzantine and Roman empires when they were persecuted,” he said. “We held onto hope, we remain hopeful, and we will continue to hope. The jailer will never defeat us, no matter what methods he uses, because we are people of a just cause,” Barghouti added. “We deserve a state under the sun—a state with scientists, poets, writers, and artists, no less than any other country in the world.”

19 January 2026

Source: dropsitenews.com

By Quds News Network

US President Donald Trump has named former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as members of his so-called “Board of Peace”, a body which he says will oversee the governance and reconstruction of Gaza after two years of Israeli genocide.

With Trump serving as chair, the Founding Executive Board will oversee the work of a committee of technocrats tasked with the temporary governance of Gaza and its reconstruction. It will also include US special envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank President Ajay Banga, and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

There will also be a separate “Gaza Executive Board” – responsible for overseeing all on-the-ground work of yet another administrative group, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

Meanwhile, the Board of Peace is expected to sit above these two executive bodies and comprise a number of world leaders.

Here is everything you need to know about Trump’s “Board of Peace” members:

Tony Blair

Blair is known for his role in the 2003 US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

After leaving office, Blair’s consultancy organisation, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), has drawn widespread criticism for advising a raft of autocratic governments including Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

TBI has also received money from a financial fraudster linked with illegal Israeli settlements and an American Islamophobic network.

Blair also serves as an honorary patron of the UK branch of Israel’s Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has faced heavy criticism for its activities – including donating £1m ($1.3m) to what it described as “Israel’s largest militia” and erasing Palestine from its official maps.

TBI was more recently linked to a widely condemned plan which proposed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, involving a sweeping postwar redevelopment of the besieged Strip.

The project includes turning the devastated enclave into a “Trump Riviera,” with infrastructure named after Gulf monarchs and was created by Israeli businessmen with support from Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

He described Trump’s plans for Gaza as the “best chance of ending two years of war, misery and suffering”.

Conceding that Blair’s inclusion on the executive board is controversial, Trump said in October: “I’ve always liked Tony, but I want to find out that he’s an acceptable choice to everybody.”

A map on TBI’s website includes the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights as part of Israel, reinforcing concerns over the organization’s alignment.

He will serve on the Gaza Executive Board.

Jarad Kushner

Former Middle East advisor and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was one of the main architects of Trump’s Abraham Accords, and he formed an especially close friendship with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

He floated a plan dubbed “The Deal of the Century”, which called for Israel to annex 30 percent of the West Bank and a Palestinian pseudo-state to be created with no military. The plan tried to entice the Palestinian Authority by offering $50bn in economic aid. It was rejected.

When Trump left the White House, Kushner launched Affinity Partners, a private equity fund that blended Kushner’s taste for exotic properties, adventure and geopolitics. Saudi Arabia is Affinity Partners’ main backer, with its sovereign wealth fund giving Kushner $2bn dollars.

With the Gulf money, Affinity Partners has invested in two Israeli companies: Phoenix Holdings, an insurance company, and the car leasing division of Shlomo Holdings, whose parent company, Shmeltzer Holdings, is part owner of Israel Shipyards, the only domestic shipbuilder for the Israeli navy.

When Kushner began his White House role, the little experience he had in the Middle East was based on religious Zionism through his synagogue. Kushner was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, and Trump’s daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism after marrying him.

The 44-year-old hails from a family of Jewish New Jersey real estate developers known for their cut-throat ways. The Kushner family is especially close with ICC-wanted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So close in fact that Netanyahu once slept in Jared Kushner’s bedroom at the family house in New Jersey decades ago when he was visiting the US, the New York Times reported previously.

When Trump called for the US to take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into a Middle East Riviera with the Palestinians forcibly displaced, many Arab officials in the region and analysts saw Kushner’s hand at work.

In February 2024, Kushner gave a talk at Harvard where he advocated for the forced displacement of Palestinians and highlighted the destroyed enclave’s real estate potential.

“Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable,” he said. “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

Steve Witkoff

Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate developer and investor, was a relatively unknown political newcomer in Trump’s team who emerged as a key figure in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations.

After the first deal was announced in January and later violated by Israel, Trump said Witkoff would continue “to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven”.

Witkoff, who is Jewish himself, has been a friend of Trump for four decades. Now, he’s Trump’s Middle East envoy.

Witkoff has consistently blamed Palestinians for Israel’s assault on Gaza and claimed that humanitarian aid is reaching starving Palestinians despite Israel’s blockade. “There is hardship and shortage, but no starvation,” he once said, at a time when Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

Marco Rubio

As US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio is central to the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy.

Before Trump’s return to office, Rubio had spoken out against a ceasefire in Gaza, saying that he wanted Israel “to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on”.

In October, he said the Gaza security force must include nations Israel is “comfortable with” and that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) can have no future in the running of Gaza.

Rubio has long been known as a strong opponent of the BDS movement and pro-Palestine activism, and for cracking down on anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian protests.

Ajay Banga

Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank, has advised a number of senior US politicians, including President Barack Obama, during his career.

Born in India in 1959, Banga became a US citizen in 2007, and later served as the CEO of Mastercard for more than a decade.

Former US President Joe Biden nominated him to lead the World Bank in 2023.

In 2024, he warned that a significant widening of Israel’s assault on Gaza could lead to major impacts on the global economy, calling the steep loss of civilian lives “unconscionable.”

Banga said war damage from Israeli strikes on Gaza was at that time probably in the $14-20 billion range, and destruction from Israel’s bombing of southern Lebanon added to that regional total.

Marc Rowan

Marc Rowan, an American billionaire investor and co-founder of Apollo Global Management, is among the most prominent financial figures on the board. He is currently serves as Apollo’s chief executive officer and is widely regarded as one of the firm’s principal strategists.

Apollo Global Management is one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms. Rowan’s personal wealth is estimated at approximately $8.2 billion, based on Forbes’ 2026 rankings. He has also been active in philanthropic initiatives and is known for supporting organizations focused on combating antisemitism.

Observers say Rowan is likely to play a central role in designing complex financial structures aimed at attracting private global capital to Gaza, shifting reconstruction from emergency relief toward long-term investment.

Yakir Gabay

Israeli businessman Yakir Gabay, who also holds Cypriot citizenship, is another key figure named to the board. Gabay is a major player in European real estate and is expected to focus on housing solutions and investment models for Gaza’s massive displacement crisis.

Gabay owns approximately 15 percent of Aroundtown, Europe’s largest commercial real estate company by assets under management. The firm’s portfolio is valued at around $30 billion and spans Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, according to Forbes.

Gabay began his career at Israel’s Securities Authority before moving into the private sector, later serving as chief executive of the underwriting arm of Bank Leumi. He entered the real estate market in the early 2000s, capitalizing on depressed property prices in Berlin before expanding across major European cities.

Gabay also comes from a family with deep institutional ties in Israel. His father, Meir Gabay, served as director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Justice and as civil service commissioner. His mother, Yemima Gabay, held a senior position in the public prosecution and headed the pardons department at Israel’s Ministry of Justice.

Robert Gabriel

Robert Gabriel, a US national security adviser, will be the final member of the “founding executive board”.

Gabriel has worked with Trump since his 2016 presidential campaign, shortly after which, according to PBS, he became a special assistant to Stephen Miller, another of Trump’s key current advisers.

Nickolay Mladenov

The 53-year-old former Bulgarian foreign minister and defence minister is the most critical figure in the newly launched phase two of the ceasefire.

While not on the Executive Board, Mladenov has been confirmed as the director-general of the United States-proposed “Board of Peace”. His mandate is to oversee the transition to a new technocratic administration.

For five years from 2015-2020, Mladenov served as the United Nations’ top envoy to the region.

Now, he is tasked with supervising the new “technocratic committee”, which will manage daily life for two million war-battered Palestinians who have lost homes and now displaced after two years of Israeli genocide and ongoing violations of ceasefire.

The “Board of Peace” signals a new governance architecture for post-genocide Gaza, one that shifts management from local frameworks to an internationally led structure with clear political, security, and economic mandates.

19 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Phil Pasquini

In acknowledging the unwarranted and chaotic realignment of the federal government in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, a rally and protest took place at Farragut Square to “honor and acknowledge the freedoms, principles, public services and essential national values trashed by the Trump Regime since it took power a year ago.”

Fittingly, the action began at Farragut Square named for US Navy Admiral David Farragut, famous for his quote “Damn the torpedoes” who in defiance of overwhelming odds ordered his fleet to charge into the heavily mined Mobile Bay in a successful bid to defeat the enemy during the Civil War battle.

In that same spirit of prevailing, in this case against the “fascist Trump regime,” protesters began a day-long series of actions to show that “we are not going away,” by charging ahead to bring about change in realigning America presently from what is clearly “not normal” during their “One Year Later: A March of Reckoning.”

Susan, one of the organizers, addressed the crowd recalling how Trump had begun his first day in office by issuing a flurry of executive orders “designed to systematically erode our government, and the very democratic ideals this nation has stood for since 1776. In just one year, the extensive corruption, grift, lies and cruelty have touched every segment of our country.” As a result, she proclaimed that “We no longer enjoy the protections that once made us the envy of the world.”

She went on to say that “We have lost the confidence of our allies, trust in our leadership has eroded and the very freedom laid out in our Constitution, which we once took for granted, are now slipping away. We will not stand idly by as our nation falters. We reject the dismantling of democratic ideals, and we say emphatically NO to the corruption, the lies, and the total incompetence of this regime. Together we are here to remember and together we will resist!”

Before they began their march to, around the White House, and beyond after having been warned not to engage with counter protesters or those who may express their dislike for the protest, the first such person appeared and began admonishing the press for covering the event which the gentleman found offensive as the march inhibited his ability to walk to work.

He was soon followed by a second irritated citizen at the White House who repeatedly accused the participants of being professional activists, asking repeatedly how much they were being paid. The answer to his very vociferous and antagonistic inquiry was met by the participants responding in unison with “We hate Donald Trump for free.”

After marching around the expansive White House campus, the protest ended at the recently unveiled WWI Memorial at Pershing Park, where two other rallies and protests intersected, organized by Free DC, and the Women’s March.

The DC residents protest portion heard from speakers who are “…sick of this administration’s attacks on DC” and “for a Free DC.” Among their concerns are the deployment of National Guard troops in the streets, home rule, taxation without representation, and for long overdue statehood. “… our fight is more urgent than ever: ICE is kidnapping our neighbors, MPD is cooperating with federal agents, Congress has introduced bill after bill to overturn our local laws, and local elections on the horizon will require us to actively ensure their fairness and integrity.”

The nationwide “Walk out on Fascism” action also being held at the park with an overflowing crowd filling the memorial. This event was also taking place in cities and towns across the country, in Puerto Rico and Frankfurt, Germany. Many in attendance had walked out of their schools, left their place of work, withheld their services, or forewent any commerce. Participants collectively promised to support both national and local reforms by echoing the theme of “turning your back to fight against fascism.”

During the rally, several speakers affirmed their commitment of resisting the Trump regime’s reforming of our government into his autocratic view of America.

On speaker, Jackie Johnson, related how “This administration is openly using the tools of government as weapons of retaliation and control. Congress itself is being used as a weapon against the people of the District of Columbia.”  She illustrated her point by saying that more than fifty bills relating to DC being able to govern itself were thwarted by Congress through a “concerted effort” to place local control in the hands of the executive branch in weakening local democracy and nationally to “silence communities across the country that stand in the way of an authoritarian agenda. The people who live in the district deserve the right to govern our own community.”

“Military forces should not be occupying the capital city or any city in the United States,” she continued. “Ignoring this occupation is dangerous. The National Guard deployed in DC until the end of this year…does not make DC any safer. Get the National Guard out of the nation’s capital.”

In addressing Congress, she said that “…rather than being manipulated, it needs to stand up and do its job.” She charged that both the House and the Senate to use the power of the purse and the Constitution to execute “real and true oversight of this increasingly lawless White House.”

She accused the White House of “using the nation’s capital as a testing ground, punishing critics, criminalizing poverty, and reshaping public safety according to political wind. The American people want Congress to show us they have some backbone. Nothing about government is working as it should, especially since January 20th of 2025.”

Organizers and participants expressed their continuing disgust for “more of our tax dollars [going] to endless wars abroad and more militarization here at home,” including, as reported by Politico, a compromise budget bill to be voted on this week for the fiscal year ending in September to fund Homeland Security at a cost of $10 billion.

While the protest was taking place, President Trump was conducting a rambling two-hour press conference at the White House before departing for Davos where he will attempt to coerce the EU into supporting his taking of Greenland, at the peril of his adding additional tariffs against any holdouts.

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

21 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org