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By Veterans For Peace

Veterans For Peace has condemned the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran, called for widespread resistance, and issued its own Iran War Talking Points.

“We call on our members, friends and allies to resist this dangerous and illegal war, said Michael McPhearson, Executive Director of the 41-year-old veterans’ organization. “We offer support and helpful information to members of the military who decide to refuse illegal orders and resist an illegal war.”

Iran War Talking Points:

The U.S. War on Iran Is Based on Lies
The Trump administration’s ever-changing rationales for going to war against Iran are lies. Iran posed no threat to the United States. This is not a defensive war, but rather a war of choice by Israel and the U.S., a war of aggression, a war for regime change – very much like the disastrous U.S. wars that killed millions of people in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – wars that many veterans remember with regret.

Iran Was Not Seeing to Build a Nuclear Weapon
Iran has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons, as Iranian leaders have stated repeatedly. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate hearing in March 2025 that there was no indication Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, at least not since 2003.

Rather, the United States, the only country to attack another nation with nuclear weapons, has unilaterally abrogated multiple arms control treaties, and is investing Two Trillion Dollars in a new generation of nuclear weapons. It was the U.S., not Iran that violated and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). Israel also has nuclear weapons – undeclared and uninspected. Two nuclear powers attacking Iran, claiming to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program is the height of hypocrisy.

The U.S. War on Iran Is Illegal
The U.S. war is a violation of the UN Charter, a treaty which is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the US Constitution. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state…”

The U.S. War on Iran is Unconstitutional
The unilateral war of aggression against Iran is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to declare war (Article I, Section 8). This power was intentionally given to the legislative branch to prevent unilateral military action by a single executive.

Congress Should Vote YES on Iran War Powers Resolutions
Congress must uphold its Constitutional responsibility to decide whether and when the United States will go to war by voting YES on Iran War Powers Resolutions that are being put before the Senate and the House of Representatives. As the U.S. war against Iran is clearly illegal, unconstitutional and not in the interests of the people of the United States, we should demand that our Congressional representatives also speak out loudly against this regime-change war of aggression.

Military Members Have the Right to Refuse and Resist this Illegal War
U.S. armed service members have the right and the duty to resist and refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace will support members of the military who refuse illegal orders or who protest and stand against this disastrous and illegal war.

Civilians Also Have the Responsibility to Resist
Veterans and civilians also have the right and the responsibility to resist the illegal actions of our government at home and abroad. This is a very critical moment for the United States and the world.

We must be in the streets protesting.
We must be on our keyboards, writing letters to the editors
And on our phones telling our representatives to Vote Yes on the Iran War Powers resolution.
.

DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE HALT TO U.S. MILITARY ATTACKS ON IRAN!

For more information about Veterans For Peace, visit www.veteransforpeace.org.

Veterans For Peace is a 40-year-old organization with chapters in over 100 U.S. cities.

3 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Pon Chandran

As of March 2, 2026, the attack on Iran has already begun to reverberate far beyond the immediate theatre of war. Financial markets reacted within hours. Oil prices surged. Shipping routes were disrupted. Currencies weakened. The world economy, still fragile after years of pandemic recovery and the prolonged Ukraine conflict, now faces a renewed crisis centered on the most volatile strategic corridor on earth.

The Middle East remains the world’s primary energy tap. When that tap is threatened, the consequences are immediate and global. What we are witnessing is not a regional disturbance, but a systemic economic shock with potentially stagflationary consequences.

The Energy Shock: Oil and Gas as Weapons of War

The most immediate and dramatic impact has been in the energy markets. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil and nearly 20% of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Even the possibility of disruption functions as a tax on global growth.

Brent crude has already jumped by 12–13%, trading around $82 per barrel. Analysts warn that if the Strait of Hormuz is closed or partially blocked, prices could rapidly climb to $100–$110 per barrel. Markets are pricing in risk — and in geopolitics, risk translates into higher energy costs.

For LNG-dependent nations such as Japan, South Korea, and several European countries relying on Qatari gas, the situation is equally serious. Supply disruptions would sharply raise electricity and heating costs, feeding into consumer inflation worldwide. Energy inflation is rarely contained; it spreads through transport, manufacturing, and food supply chains.

The lesson from previous Gulf crises is clear: oil shocks rarely remain confined to oil.

Supply Chain Disruptions: Trade Routes Under Siege

War in the Gulf transforms critical sea and air corridors into high-risk zones.

Major shipping carriers such as Maersk and MSC have reportedly suspended transits through the Gulf. Vessels are being rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 15–20 days to transit times between Asia and Europe. This not only increases freight costs but also insurance premiums and fuel expenses. The result: higher prices for goods across continents.

Air travel has also been severely affected. With Iranian and surrounding airspaces restricted or closed, flights between Asia and Europe are being rerouted over longer paths. Airlines face higher fuel costs, while cargo operations are delayed or grounded. Global supply chains — already vulnerable after pandemic-era bottlenecks — now confront renewed stress.

More alarming is the impact on fertilizer trade. Roughly one-third of the world’s fertilizer shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz. A prolonged disruption would threaten agricultural production cycles globally. Food inflation, already politically sensitive across much of the Global South, could surge by late 2026.

Energy and food — the twin pillars of economic stability — are now both exposed.

Impact on Major Economies

The consequences of the attack on Iran are uneven but universally destabilizing.

India: High Vulnerability

India imports approximately 85% of its crude oil. Every $1 increase in crude prices adds an estimated $2 billion to its annual import bill. With Brent already climbing, pressure on the Indian Rupee has intensified.

Higher oil prices widen the current account deficit, strain fiscal balances, and complicate monetary policy. For the Reserve Bank of India, this presents a dilemma: raising interest rates to curb inflation could slow growth, while holding rates steady risks currency weakness and imported inflation.

For a developing economy that relies on stable energy inputs to sustain growth and employment, this is a dangerous equation.

China: Strategic Exposure

China imports about 90% of Iran’s oil exports. Any sustained disruption would force Beijing to compete for more expensive Atlantic or Russian crude supplies. That would raise manufacturing costs in the world’s largest industrial economy.

Given China’s central role in global supply chains, increased production costs there translate into higher prices everywhere.

Europe: Energy Fatigue

Europe is already economically strained following years of energy turbulence triggered by the Ukraine conflict. Higher oil and LNG prices risk pushing parts of the Eurozone back toward recession.

Energy-intensive industries, already weakened, may face renewed shutdowns or cost pressures. Political instability could follow economic contraction.

United States: Partial Insulation

As a net energy exporter, the United States is somewhat shielded from supply shortages. However, high “prices at the pump” directly affect American households. Rising fuel costs could fuel inflationary pressures and complicate domestic politics, especially ahead of midterm elections.

No major economy emerges untouched.

Financial Market Volatility

The financial markets have responded in predictable fashion.

Investors are fleeing “risk” assets and moving toward safe havens. Gold has surged. The US dollar has strengthened. Equity markets across Asia and Europe opened sharply lower.

Indian indices such as the Sensex and Nifty recorded significant losses, particularly in oil-sensitive sectors such as aviation, chemicals, and paints. Similar patterns are visible in Japan’s Nikkei and European bourses.

Markets are signaling uncertainty — and uncertainty dampens investment, hiring, and expansion.

If volatility persists, capital flows into developing economies could slow dramatically, further pressuring currencies and fiscal balances.

The Stagflationary Threa

If the conflict lasts only days, markets may stabilize. But if it stretches beyond a few weeks, the global economy could enter a stagflationary phase — stagnant growth combined with high inflation.

This is the most dangerous macroeconomic environment for policymakers. Inflation demands higher interest rates; stagnation demands stimulus. The two responses contradict each other.

For developing nations, the challenge is particularly acute. Currency depreciation amplifies imported inflation. Higher interest rates slow job creation. Fiscal stimulus becomes expensive due to higher borrowing costs.

The memory of the 1970s oil shocks looms large. Then, too, geopolitical conflict in the Middle East triggered global stagflation. The consequences lasted years.

Beyond Economics: Structural Realignments

The attack on Iran may also accelerate structural changes in global trade and energy systems.

Countries may intensify efforts to diversify energy sources. Strategic petroleum reserves could be drawn down. Alternative corridors — such as overland pipelines or expanded shipping infrastructure — may receive renewed investment.

At the same time, geopolitical blocs may harden. Energy flows increasingly follow political alliances rather than pure market logic. Sanctions, counter-sanctions, and retaliatory trade restrictions could further fragment the global economy.

This would represent a step away from globalization toward a more fractured world order.

A Conflict with Global Consequences

The attack on Iran is not merely a military development. It is an economic shock with cascading global consequences.

Energy prices have surged. Supply chains are under strain. Major economies face renewed vulnerability. Financial markets are volatile. The specter of stagflation looms.

For countries like India, the crisis poses immediate fiscal and monetary challenges. For Europe, it threatens economic relapse. For China, it raises production costs. For the United States, it risks renewed inflation.

In an interconnected global economy, war in the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf.

If diplomacy fails and escalation continues, the world may soon discover that the true battlefield is not only geopolitical — but economic.

Pon Chandran is part of PUCL, Coimbatore

3 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

The new round of coordinated military attacks by the United States and Israel against Iran marks a dramatic escalation in an already volatile confrontation.

The strikes, capping months of tensions since a previous wave of attacks in 2025, have pushed the region into one of its most dangerous moments in decades.

At a time when diplomatic channels had reportedly shown signs of progress, the renewed use of force has raised urgent questions about legality, legitimacy and the long-term consequences for regional and international security.

There is a broad global consensus that the US-Israeli military campaign constitutes a clear violation of the United Nations Charter and international law.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, except in cases of self-defence or with Security Council authorisation. No such authorisation was granted, and international legal scholars have long emphasised that preventive or regime-change wars fall outside the Charter framework.

This is not the first time that Washington has faced accusations of undermining international legal commitments in relation to Iran. In 2018, the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, despite the agreement’s endorsement by the UN Security Council. The withdrawal was widely criticised by European governments and other signatories, including Russia and China.

Now, through direct military strikes against Iran, Washington has been accused of violating core principles of the UN Charter – particularly those related to sovereignty, the prohibition on the use of force, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

Political consciousness

History weighs heavily on current events. In 1953, the US, in collaboration with the UK, orchestrated a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The consequences of that intervention shaped Iranian political consciousness for decades and directly affected bilateral relations. The 1979 revolution, and the subsequent occupation of the US embassy in Tehran and hostage crisis, cannot be understood without that context.

More than seven decades on, the shadow of 1953 still looms over US-Iran relations. But this time, the stakes appear even higher. The US has officially called for regime change. In the course of the operation, Iran’s supreme leader and several top military commanders were assassinated.

The targeting of a sitting head of state marks a profound escalation. It moves beyond deterrence or limited military objectives, and enters the realm of overt regime-change policy. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the negative consequences of this action could be broader and more far-reaching than those of the 1953 coup.

Both the US-Israeli military strikes on Iran in June 2025, and the attack that began this weekend, occurred at moments when negotiations had achieved significant progress, according to Oman’s foreign minister.

Oman was a key mediator, facilitating indirect talks. The chain of events suggests that military action coincided with diplomatic momentum. From this perspective, diplomacy has effectively been sidelined, perhaps indefinitely.

Many are convinced that the US pursued negotiations not as genuine diplomacy, but as cover, allowing it to prepare for war. When bombs fall at the height of talks, trust collapses.

The consequences of assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei go far beyond the killing of an Iranian political leader. As one of the leading religious authorities in the Shia world, he held both political and theological significance. Some Shia clerics have already issued calls for retaliation, with Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi in Qom, Iran, saying revenge for Khamenei’s killing was the “religious duty of all Muslims in the world to eradicate the evil of these criminals from the world”.

Attacks have already occurred against US diplomatic missions in Pakistan and Iraq, resulting in casualties. Washington may now have to confront the prospect of long-term ideological hostility among segments of the global Shia population – a dynamic that cannot be addressed through military means alone.

Immense strategic costs

The collapse of a government because of a military attack does not produce a simple or controllable outcome. Even if Washington and Tel Aviv were to succeed in bringing about a political transformation in Tehran, the strategic costs could be immense.

For the first time since World War II, major US military bases across the region have come under sustained attack. The reputational impact on American prestige could surpass even the symbolic damage inflicted by the 1979-81 hostage crisis.

At the same time, Israel and Iran have entered what can only be described as an existential phase of conflict. Iran has sustained severe military damage, while Israel has faced the most intense strikes on its territory since its founding in 1948.

Iran’s heavy missile attacks have exposed vulnerabilities in Israel’s security architecture, despite its advanced defence systems. The perception of invulnerability – central to deterrence – has been shaken on both sides.

Yet within hours of Khamenei’s assassination, a three-member leadership council was formed to steer the process of transition, signalling that expectations of immediate state disintegration might have been misplaced.

The US-Israeli approach is troubling for several reasons. Firstly, by assassinating Iran’s supreme leader, they crossed a red line within Iran’s governing structure. Secondly, by officially declaring that its objective is regime collapse, the US framed the conflict as existential. Iran’s response is thus perceived domestically as a defence of national survival.

Thirdly, as anticipated, the conflict has become regional. Iran has launched missile strikes against US facilities in neighbouring countries, broadening the theatre of confrontation. The trajectory is deeply alarming: escalation breeds counter-escalation, as each side justifies its actions as defensive.

The risks of miscalculation grow with every exchange. Energy markets are destabilised. Regional actors are drawn in. Diplomatic space shrinks.

It would be wiser for US President Donald Trump to push now for an immediate ceasefire, to prevent further catastrophe. The longer this conflict continues, the harder it will be to contain.

Military force can destroy infrastructure and eliminate individuals, but it cannot extinguish national identity, religious conviction or historical memory. The lessons of 1953 still resonate. If history teaches anything, it is that interventions intended to secure stability often produce decades of unintended consequences.

The choice now is stark: continue down a path of open-ended confrontation, or halt the escalation and return to diplomacy – before the damage becomes irreversible.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Visiting Research Collaborator with Princeton University and a former Chief of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee.

3 March 2026

Source: middleeasteye.net

By Bharat Dogra

Visitors to Ranavara, a very remote village in Kherwara block of Udaipur district, are surprised by its many-sided progress as visible in its very impressive school building, pastures, trees, water conservation and supply works. This is the result of many years of community efforts and it is the small efforts over several years which have resulted in the highly impressive achievements that we see today.

Thavat Singh, an elder of this village says—ours was a typical neglected village of a remote area about three decades back. Then we had visitors from a sansthaa (voluntary organization) Seva Mandir who started an adult literacy campaign. In the course of this campaign there was increasing discussion of various development activities that are needed here.

Another elder Karma Singh, remembering old times, said—I think the real change came when we started thinking in terms of giving up various differences and started thinking in terms of working together for the development of our village. Our village has several communities, several settlements and it was important for people to start thinking in terms of working together for the welfare and progress of all people.

Narayan Joshi, a senior and long-time activist and member of Seva Mandir (SM) who has seen all these changes over the years said—the real change starts coming when people of all communities are willing to sit together on the basis of equality, leaving behind bhedbhav (all kinds of discrimination), that the possibilities of unity for achieving the welfare of all people are strengthened, and the jajam or the carpet on which people of all communities sit together without discrimination becomes the symbol of this.

The first big opportunities of reaping the gains of united efforts came with the pasture regeneration work. This was perceived to be beneficial to all community members, even though some touchy issues like the removal of some encroachments were also involved. Nearly 11000 trees, mostly of mixed indigenous species were planted. Under another individual farmer effort nearly 100 trees each were planted by about 150 farmers. Hence combining the community and individual efforts nearly 26,000 trees were planted.

In this as well as other environment protection work planned on watershed basis, three nearby villages or settlements—Reta, Karmla and Bhilwada– were taken together along with Ranavara.

This was followed up with a watershed project which further consolidated the earlier work with water conservation work including field bund related work. Some wells were also constructed.

Increasing green cover helped to raise the water table. Farm productivity increased. It was possible to keep more farm and dairy animals. With better water availability wheat could now be grown in fields which earlier could not support this crop.

Four water tanks were constructed and the water collected here could be used to meet the drinking water needs of many households, thereby reducing drudgery and the time spent in fetching water.

Vocational skill training particularly sewing work was introduced for women and several of the trainees could become skilled enough to also earn some income from this. Five self-help groups of women were formed and as their savings increased these could be used for various kinds of small development and income-earning opportunities. Villagers also contributed on the basis of their increasing income opportunities to create a village development fund which became an independent source of funding small development initiatives.

Villagers became very enthused about improving the village school and contributed from their own savings for its better furnishing and other improvements. As Narayan Joshi recalls, there were several unexpected problems in the course of efforts to improve the school but these could be overcome and the school could improve in significant ways.

An important part of such development initiatives should be try to ensure that the benefits reach all sections of people, all settlements and hamlets of the village. As Paro who leaves in the settlement of the Bhil community and had come from there to attend the group discussion said, the bhil community has also shared in the benefits of several of these initiatives. Nevertheless, there appears to be need for even greater awareness regarding higher concern for the needs of the weakest sections including the nomadic and semi-nomadic communities like the Kalbelia community who live in nearby areas.

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

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By V.A. Mohamad Ashrof

This paper examines the systematic legal framework enacted by the Taliban since their return to power in August 2021, through which the rights of Afghan women have been progressively dismantled under the stated objective of implementing Shariah. Focusing specifically on the 2025/2026 Penal Code—particularly provisions legalizing wife-beating without bone fracture and imposing imprisonment upon women who visit relatives without spousal permission—and the comprehensive bans on female education, this paper deploys the interpretive frameworks of Islamic scholarship to demonstrate the profound disjuncture between Taliban policies and the gender-just ethos of the Quran. This paper argues that Taliban jurisprudence represents not the application of Islamic law but its patriarchal distortion—a reading of scripture mediated through androcentric cultural traditions rather than the Quran’s fundamental affirmation of human equality before God.

The crisis of women’s rights in Afghanistan is not merely a regional political conflict; it is a global theological and humanistic emergency. When a state apparatus utilizes the vocabulary of the Divine to institutionalize the erasure of half its population, it necessitates a response that is both academically rigorous and morally resolute. This monograph seeks to dismantle the monopoly on “truth” claimed by the Taliban. By synthesizing legal documentation, human rights reports, and, most crucially, the liberatory exegesis of Islamic feminist scholars, we demonstrate that the Taliban’s anti-women decrees are an affront to the very religion they claim to defend. This is a scholarly project of reclamation—retrieving the Quranic spirit of ‘adl (justice) and rahmah (mercy) from the suffocating grip of patriarchal authoritarianism [1, 7].

The Codification of Erasure

In January 2026, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, signed into effect a new penal code (De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama) that formalized what human rights monitors had documented since August 2021: the systematic reduction of Afghan women to legal non-persons. This 119-article code, spanning three sections and ten chapters, represents the most comprehensive legal codification of gender apartheid in the twenty-first century [5, 12]. Yet its significance extends beyond the humanitarian catastrophe it produces; it poses fundamental theological questions about the relationship between divine revelation and its human interpretation.

The Taliban project is predicated on the claim of “purity”—a return to a perceived authentic Islamic social order. However, as this paper will argue, this “purity” is a modern construction, a hybrid of Deobandi-influenced revivalism and rigid Pashtun tribal codes (Pashtunwali), which ignores fourteen centuries of diverse Islamic legal thought. By examining two categories of Taliban restrictions—the juridification of domestic violence and the total ban on female education—we deploy the interpretive frameworks developed by scholars who read the Quran “with believers’ eyes” while refusing patriarchal mediation [1, 14].

We contend that the Taliban’s shariah is neither necessary nor authentic, but rather a contingent political project dressed in religious vocabulary. Through the lens of Maqasid al-Shariah (the higher objectives of the law), we find that these decrees violate the essential protections of life, intellect, and dignity [1, 6].

The Juridification of Violence

The February 2025/January 2026 Penal Code, bearing the authority of Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, contains provisions that fundamentally restructure marital relations through state coercion. Article 9 of the code establishes a four-tier social hierarchy—religious scholars (ulama/mullahs), elites (ashraf), middle class, and lower class—with punishments determined not by offense but by the perpetrator’s social standing [9]. This stratification alone contradicts the Quran’s repeated affirmation that human dignity derives from taqwa (consciousness of God) rather than social status: “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you” (Quran 49:13).

Of particular concern for this analysis is Article 32. This provision permits husbands to discipline their wives physically, with state intervention triggered only when beatings result in “broken bones or open wounds” [4]. Husbands face a maximum of fifteen days’ imprisonment for using “obscene force” resulting in bruises or fractures, contingent upon wives proving abuse under evidentiary standards that render conviction nearly impossible. This “bone fracture” doctrine effectively decriminalizes soft-tissue damage, psychological trauma, and repetitive battery, transforming the marital home into a site of legally sanctioned violence.

The 2026 Code represents a radical departure from the 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW), which criminalized twenty-two acts of violence against women, including battery and forced marriage. By replacing a rights-based framework with a “minimal injury” threshold, the Taliban have institutionalized what legal scholars call “gendered vulnerability.”

Under Article 33 of the new code, the burden of proof is placed squarely on the victim. She must present her injuries in a court where she is often denied female legal representation, as the Taliban have effectively banned women from the legal profession. Furthermore, she must be accompanied by a mahram (male guardian), who is frequently a relative of the abuser or the abuser himself. This creates a “closed loop” of systemic disenfranchisement. As noted by UN experts, this framework does not seek to adjudicate justice but to enforce a hierarchy of “ownership” [12, 13].

The Taliban’s wife-beating provision derives from a particular, stagnant reading of Quran 4:34. The verse reads in part: “Men are qawwamuna over women… As for those from whom you fear nushuz, admonish them, then abandon them in bed, then idribuhunna.” Traditionalist and patriarchal interpretations have historically translated idribuhunna as “beat them,” providing the basis for juristic permission of corporal discipline.

However, gender just Islamic hermeneutics fundamentally challenges this reading. Asma Barlas, in her foundational work Believing Women in Islam, demonstrates that patriarchal readings of 4:34 violate the Quran’s holistic hermeneutic principles. Barlas argues that the Quran consistently describes marital relations in terms of mawaddah (love) and rahmah (mercy) (Quran 30:21). Any interpretation permitting violence must be reconciled with these fundamental descriptions. Barlas posits that “the Quran does not sanction domestic violence; rather, it provides a method for its cessation by restricting the husband’s response to nushuz (disloyalty) to a symbolic gesture aimed at reconciliation, not harm” [3].

Abla Hasan’s linguistic analysis in Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Quran pushes further. Hasan examines the semantic range of the root d-r-b across Quranic usage. She notes that the root appears in contexts meaning “to set an example,” “to travel,” or “to separate.” Hasan suggests that idribuhunna may indicate a temporary separation—a withdrawal that creates space for reflection—rather than physical violence [6]. The Taliban’s codification of “beating without broken bones” ignores these scholarly nuances, opting instead for a reading that reduces women to bodies subject to male disciplinary power.

The Taliban claim to follow the Sunnah (the path of the Prophet Muhammad), yet the Prophetic record (Hadith) provides a direct rebuke to the “bone fracture” doctrine [1, 3, 15]. Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, famously stated, “The Messenger of God never hit anything with his hand, neither a woman nor a servant” (Sahih Muslim 2328) [3, 5, 14]. Furthermore, the Prophet explicitly stated, “The best of you are those who are best to their wives” (Tirmidhi 1162) [3, 14, 15].

By legalizing “moderate” violence, the Taliban are not reviving the Sunnah; they are reviving the Jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance) that the Prophet sought to dismantle. The Quranic trajectory was one of progressive restriction of male violence, moving toward a state of total mutual respect. The Taliban have inverted this trajectory, moving from the legal protections of the 21st century back to a distorted, mid-century tribalism.

Enclosure of the Female Soul

In the 2026 Criminal Procedure Regulations (De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama), Article 34 stands as a definitive instrument of domestic enclosure. The article stipulates that if a married woman visits her parental home or the home of other relatives without the express permission of her husband—and refuses to return upon his demand—she is subject to criminal prosecution, carrying a penalty of up to three months’ imprisonment [4]. Crucially, the decree extends criminal liability to the woman’s family members if they “harbour” her, thereby dismantling the traditional social safety net that has historically protected Afghan women from domestic abuse.

This provision represents a radical shift from marital companionship to a carceral relation. By making a woman’s physical presence in her own parents’ home a “crime” against the husband’s authority, the Taliban have effectively codified the concept of women as mamluk (owned property) rather than sharik (partner). This legal framework creates a “total institution” within the home, where a woman’s social existence is entirely mediated by a male gatekeeper.

The Taliban justify these restrictions as a means of ensuring “domestic stability” and preventing fitna (social discord). However, an enlightened critique through the lens of Quranic ethics reveals that Article 34 constitutes a direct violation of one of Islam’s most sacred mandates: Silat al-Rahim (the joining of the ties of kinship).

The Quran places the maintenance of family ties in a position of supreme ethical importance, often linking it directly to the worship of God. The Quran commands: “Fear God, through whom you ask one another, and [do not cut] the wombs (al-arham). Indeed, God is ever, over you, an Observer” (Quran 4:1). The term al-arham (the wombs) serves as a metonym for the sacred bond between parents, children, and siblings. By criminalizing a daughter’s visit to her mother, the Taliban are forcing a woman to choose between a state-enforced “obedience” to a husband and a divinely-enforced duty to her parents.

Furthermore, the Quran explicitly commands “good treatment” (ihsan) of parents (Quran 17:23). This duty is not conditional upon a husband’s permission. In the Quranic worldview, marriage is a mithaqan ghalizan (a solemn covenant, 4:21) that enhances a woman’s status; it is not a contract of enslavement that nullifies her prior religious obligations to her lineage. As scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl argues, “Any interpretation that permits the severing of the most basic human bonds of mercy is a betrayal of the Shariah’s objective of preserving the family” [1].

Since August 2021, the Taliban have issued dozens of decrees (notably the 2022 Decree on Hijab and the 2024 Law on the Promotion of Virtue) mandating that women be accompanied by a mahram (a male blood relative or husband) for travel beyond short distances (approx. 45 miles/72 km). The stated justification is “protection” (hifz).

However, from a humanistic and liberatory perspective, the mahram system functions as a form of paternalistic surveillance. It treats women as perpetual minors who lack the moral and intellectual agency to navigate the public square. This contradicts the Quranic portrayal of women as autonomous moral actors. The Queen of Sheba (Bilqis), for instance, is depicted as traveling across borders, engaging in high-level diplomacy, and making independent theological decisions without a mahram gatekeeper (Quran 27:22-44).

Islamic scholarship, such as that of Fatima Mernissi, demonstrates that the restriction of female mobility in Islamic history was often a tool of the “male elite” to monopolize the public and political sphere [7]. In the context of 21st-century Afghanistan, the mahram requirement has catastrophic economic and health consequences. When a widow or a woman with no adult male relatives is barred from the market or a clinic, the “protection” offered by the state becomes a death sentence through starvation or medical neglect [13].

The Closure of Minds—Educational Restrictions as Intellectual Genocide

The Taliban’s war on women’s intellect has not been a single event but a compounding series of decrees designed to phase women out of the cognitive life of the nation. The trajectory reveals a systematic intent to create a permanent, uneducated female underclass:

•          September 17, 2021 (Directive Edu-786): Shortly after the fall of Kabul, the Ministry of Education ordered the reopening of secondary schools for boys; the deliberate omission of girls effectively banned education for females from grades 7 through 12.

•          March 23, 2022: Despite international assurances, the Taliban leadership in Kandahar issued a last-minute verbal decree keeping girls locked out as they arrived for the first day of the school year.

•          December 20, 2022 (Order HE-2022-011): Neda Mohammad Nadim, the Minister of Higher Education, issued a formal letter to all public and private universities suspending female attendance “until further notice.”

•          December 2024 (Order No. 402): In a move that signaled the end of any vocational path, the Taliban banned women from medical education, midwifery, and nursing training, effectively dismantling the future of female healthcare [11].

By early 2025, over 2.2 million girls were barred from secondary education. This is what international legal scholars now term “Gender Apartheid”—the systematic exclusion of a protected group from the fundamental resources of life, the most critical of which is knowledge.

The Taliban justify these bans by citing the need for an “Islamic environment” and “curriculum purification.” However, from an enlightened theological perspective, the ban on female education is not merely a human rights violation; it is an act of religious apostasy against the first command of the Quran.

The very first word of the Quranic revelation was Iqra—”Read!” or “Recite!” (Quran 96:1). This command was addressed to the Prophet Muhammad and, through him, to every human being (insan). The Quran does not contain a single verse that restricts the pursuit of knowledge to a specific gender. On the contrary, the text repeatedly asks: “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” (Quran 39:9). The implied answer is a resounding no; knowledge is the primary source of human distinction and moral standing.

Islamic scholars, such as Amina Wadud, argue that because the Quran identifies both men and women as Khulafa (vicegerents or stewards) on earth (Quran 2:30), both must possess the intellectual tools to exercise that stewardship. To deny women education is to prevent them from fulfilling their divine purpose. It is a form of Zulm (oppression) that attempts to override God’s mandate for human growth [14].

The Taliban’s claim that Islam mandates a domestic-only role for women is historically illiterate. Aisha bint Abi Bakr, the wife of the Prophet, was one of the leading jurists, political leaders, and scholars of her time. She is credited with narrating over 2,210 Hadiths and was a primary source of legal knowledge for the male companions of the Prophet.

Prophet Muhammad himself stated: “Seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim” (Ibn Majah 224) [5, 14, 15]. In Arabic, the word “Muslim” in this context is a collective noun including both men and women [1, 5, 14]. The historical record shows that the Prophet even designated specific days for the education of women (Bukhari 101) [5, 11, 14]. By barring women from universities, the Taliban are returning to a pre-Islamic Jahiliyyah (ignorance). As scholar Muhammad Faizul Haque notes, “The restriction of education is a cultural projection of patriarchal fear… it stems from the realization that an educated woman is a woman who can challenge the misinterpretations of the state” [5].

The Morality Law and Auditory Erasure

On August 21, 2024, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice promulgated a 114-page law that codified the total auditory and visual erasure of women from the public square.

•          Article 13 (The Auditory Ban): This article stipulates that a woman’s voice is considered Awrah (an intimate part of the body to be concealed). Consequently, women are prohibited from singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public. Even within the home, a woman’s voice must not be loud enough to reach non-relative men outside [13].

•          Article 13 (The Visual Ban): It mandates the full-body covering and requires that the face be covered to avoid “temptation.”

•          Article 17 (The Ban on Images): Prohibits the publication of images of living beings, further erasing women from media and public documentation.

Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl argues that the Taliban’s interpretation is a “pathology of modesty” [1]. By categorizing a woman’s ordinary speech as a “temptation” (fitna), the Taliban shift the entire burden of male self-control onto the forced silence of women. This contradicts the Quranic mandate for men to “lower their gaze” (Quran 24:30).

The “Theology of Silence” contradicts Surah At-Tawbah: “The believing men and believing women are protecting friends (Awliya) of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong…” (Quran 9:71). To fulfil this duty, a woman must be able to speak. By silencing women, the Taliban prevent them from performing the very religious duty the Ministry of Virtue claims to promote. As Amina Wadud notes, “A silent woman cannot be a protector of the community” [15].

In December 2024, the Taliban mandated the total suspension of women from medical education (Order No. 402). By early 2025, this produced a “brain drain” of midwives and doctors. In a nation where maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world, the removal of the next generation of healthcare workers constitutes an assault on the fundamental right to life [11].

In the framework of Maqasid al-Shariah, the preservation of life (Hifz al-Nafs) is paramount. The Quran establishes: “…if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind” (Quran 5:32). By dismantling the female medical workforce while simultaneously forbidding women from being treated by male doctors, the state is effectively sentencing the female population to death. This is not Shariah; it is a form of Zulm (gross oppression) [15].

The Shariah of Liberation vs. The Shariah of Erasure

What has been observed since August 2021—culminating in the January 2026 Penal Code—is a carefully constructed “closed loop” of disenfranchisement. The education bans ensure future dependency; the mobility bans (Article 34) remove social safety nets; and the legalization of battery (Article 32) removes bodily integrity. Synthesized, these decrees constitute Gender Apartheid [13].

The Taliban project fails on every metric of Maqasid al-Shariah (Teleological Spirit of the Shariah). It destroys the intellect (‘Aql) through education bans, life (Nafs) through medical prohibitions and normalized violence, and lineage (Nasl) by severing sacred bonds of kinship (Silat al-Rahim). True Shariah is not a static list of punishments but a dynamic path toward justice (‘Adl). As Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d.1350) profoundly affirmed, “the Shariah is entirely justice, mercy, benefit, and wisdom; any ruling that produces injustice, cruelty, harm, or folly cannot be attributed to God, even if cloaked in juridical language.” Measured against this classical criterion, the Taliban’s policies collapse morally, legally, and theologically.

This paper has demonstrated that the “Shariah of Erasure” implemented by the Taliban is a dead-end for civilization. It produces a society that is half-blind, half-silent, and entirely broken. In contrast, the “Shariah of Liberation” envisioned by the Quran is one of Rahmah (Mercy). It is a system where the education of a girl is a sacred duty and the voice of a woman is a moral witness. The daughters of Afghanistan continue to resist, testifying that the human spirit and the voice that carries it cannot be erased by decree. “Truth has come, and falsehood is bound to perish” (Quran 17:81).

Bibliography

1. Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001.
2. https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/144809/Grand-Imam-of-Al-Azhar-announces-decisions-on-women%E2%80%99s-rights.
3. Barlas, Asma. Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Quran. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
4. https://giwps.georgetown.edu/2026/01/30/taliban-regulation-legalizes-slavery-violence-repression-women/.
5. Haque, Muhammad Faizul. “Women Empowerment: An Analysis from the Quranic Perspective.” PhD dissertation, International Islamic University Malaysia, 2020.
6. Hasan, Abla. Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Quran: Retrieving Lost Voices on Gender. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020.
7. Mernissi, Fatima. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
8. https://femena.net/2025/09/05/factsheet-the-prevention-of-vice-and-promotion-of-virtue-law-in-afghanistan-and-implications-for-womens-rights/.
9. https://rawadari.org/press_releases/press-release-regarding-the-implications-of-the-the-criminal-procedure-code-for-courts-issued-by-the-taliban/
10. Siregar, Muhammad Sururi Alfajri Wannahar, et al. “Feminist Interpretation of Quran Surah al-Nisa’ Verse 34: An Educational Study.” Ahlussunnah: Journal of Islamic Education, 2025.
11. UNESCO. New report warns that Afghanistan’s education crisis threatens the future of an entire generation https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/new-report-warns-afghanistans-education-crisis-threatens-future-entire-generation
12. https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/english_-_unama_hrs_update_on_human_rights_in_afghanistan_april-june_2025_final.pdf.
13. https://docs.un.org/en/CEDAW/C/SR.2160
14. Wadud, Amina. Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
15. Wadud, Amina. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006

V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism. With a deep commitment to advancing Quranic hermeneutics that prioritize human well-being, peace, and progress, his work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

When Prof. James Small stated that Europe never built a civilization, he was not indulging in exaggeration. He was dismantling a carefully constructed historical illusion – one that presents Europe as the natural source of human progress and the rest of the world as late, grateful recipients. That illusion collapses the moment history is allowed to speak honestly. Small argues that Empire Is Not Civilisation. War cultures are not true civilisations. Conquest, extraction, and domination — hallmarks of Europe’s imperial past — are death projects, not human ones. When a system is built on supremacy, equality becomes its greatest threat.
Parity exposes the myth of superiority — and that is what terrifies supremacists.

Civilization did not begin in Europe. Long before Europe emerged from scattered tribes and feudal loyalties, ancient civilizations had already laid the foundations of organized human life. Along the Nile, the civilization of Kemet – misnamed “Ancient Egypt”- developed mathematics, geometry, astronomy, medicine, engineering, moral philosophy, and monumental architecture more than three thousand years before Europe’s rise. The pyramids were not acts of primitive labour; they were products of advanced knowledge systems that Europe would only encounter much later.

The statement “Europe did not build civilization” is a core tenet of critical, post-colonial, and revisionist history that seeks to dismantle Eurocentrism. It argues that modern civilization is a global, cumulative achievement, not a singular product of European genius. If one were to conduct a breakdown of the historical, cultural, and political arguments supporting this perspective, the following dimensions would be what we arrive at within the scope of understanding inherited parts of Civilization. Several crucial affirmations follow:

Inherited Parts of Civilization*

The “Cradle” Was Not European: The earliest civilizations – Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China—arose in North Africa and Asia between 4000 and 3000 BC. These cultures developed writing, metallurgy, urban planning, and organized religion long before advanced complex societies formed in Europe.

Middle Eastern Roots: Western civilization traces its roots to the Middle East, not Greece. The foundations of urban life, scientific inquiry, astronomy, engineering, and the “religions of the book” originated in Sumeria and Egypt.

Borrowed Greco-Roman Foundation: Greek and Roman civilizations, the supposed, “cradle of Europe,” were heavily influenced by, and borrowed from, the older civilizations of Egypt and the Levant.

Borrowed Much of It

· The Islamic Golden Age Transmission: During the European “Dark Ages” (roughly 5th–10th century AD), knowledge was preserved and expanded in the Islamic world, Persia, and China.

· Scientific and Mathematical Contributions: Essential technologies and knowledge—including the compass, gunpowder, paper, the decimal system, and advanced medicine—were brought from China and the Islamic world to Europe.

· Translation and Anonymization: In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arabic texts were translated into Latin in Toledo. Often, the original Muslim and Persian authors (like Avicenna/Ibn Sina) were anonymized or misrepresented in later European tradition, casting them merely as “transmitters” rather than innovators.

Dominated Others and Erased Origins

· “Civilizing Mission” as Justification: During the 19th-century “New Imperialism,” European powers justified their global dominance by framing it as a “civilizing mission” to bring progress to “savage” peoples.

· Cultural Erasure: European colonization often aimed to eradicate indigenous languages, religions, and knowledge systems, replacing them with European models.

· Rewriting History: Eurocentric narratives, such as the “Ancient Greece to Dark Ages to Renaissance” model, often ignore or downplay the contributions of non-European cultures, presenting Western culture as the pinnacle of human development.

· Cartographic Distortion: Traditional maps (like the Mercator projection) visually distort the world to make Europe and North America appear much larger and more central than they actually are.

Civilization Belongs to Humanity, Not Empire

· Decolonizing Knowledge: Modern scholarship increasingly recognizes that global progress is a collaborative, cross-cultural process.

· Post-Colonial Perspective: Acknowledging this perspective is not a rejection of European achievements, but a call to restore historical truth—recognizing that the “modern world” was built through global interactions, including, but not limited to, European imperialism.

In essence, this viewpoint emphasizes that civilization was built by humanity over thousands of years, with many cultures contributing before, during, and after Europe’s rise to power.

In Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians created writing, legal codes, irrigation systems, and city-states. The Code of Hammurabi articulated principles of justice when Europe had none. In the Indus Valley – Harappa and Mohenjo-daro—urban planning, sanitation, standardized measurement, and trade networks flourished around 2600 BCE. These cities had drainage systems that European capitals would lack for millennia.

China developed one of the world’s longest continuous civilizations. It gave humanity paper, printing, the compass, gunpowder, silk production, advanced metallurgy, agricultural innovation, state bureaucracy, and ethical philosophy rooted in Confucianism and Daoism. India produced profound philosophical traditions, advanced mathematics including zero and the decimal system, astronomy, medical science through Ayurveda, and universities such as Takshashila and Nalanda when Europe was still intellectually dormant.

In Africa beyond Kemet, Nubia, Axum, Mali, Songhai, and Great Zimbabwe built trading empires, centres of learning, architecture, and governance. Timbuktu housed universities and libraries when Europe’s literacy was confined to monasteries. In the Americas, the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations developed astronomy, mathematics, agricultural science, architecture, and governance independent of European influence. The Maya charted celestial movements with extraordinary precision; the Inca engineered roads, terraces, and water systems across the Andes.

At the time these civilizations were thriving, Europe was peripheral to human advancement. Its later intellectual awakening did not occur in isolation. Greece, often declared the cradle of Western civilization, openly borrowed from Egypt and Phoenicia. Greek thinkers studied African knowledge systems, absorbed them, and rearticulated them. Rome followed Greece, mastering administration and conquest, not original civilizational thought. Roman science, philosophy, medicine, and religion were largely inherited.

After Rome’s collapse, Europe entered centuries of stagnation. Meanwhile, Islamic civilization preserved and expanded global knowledge. From Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and Cordoba came algebra, optics, chemistry, medicine, cartography, hospitals, universities, and scientific method. Europe’s Renaissance was not a spontaneous rebirth; it was the return of knowledge Europe had previously lost, transmitted through Arab and Muslim scholars.

Europe’s later dominance was not the result of civilizational superiority but of militarized expansion, colonization, and extraction. Wealth accumulated through the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the systematic plunder of Asia and Africa. Entire civilizations were dismantled, their histories erased, their achievements rebranded as “Western.”

Colonialism did not civilize; it de-civilized. It destroyed local economies, languages, governance systems, and educational traditions. India’s impoverishment, Africa’s fragmentation, and the Americas’ devastation were not signs of native failure but of European violence.

Even today, modern life rests on ancient, non-European foundations. Mathematics uses Indian numerals transmitted through Arab scholars. Medicine draws from African, Indian, and Chinese knowledge. Agriculture depends on crops domesticated outside Europe. Navigation, engineering, and philosophy all trace their roots beyond the European continent.

What Prof. James Small confronts is not Europe’s participation in civilization, but Europe’s false claim to authorship. Civilization is not white, Western, or European. It is human—built over thousands of years by African, Asian, Indigenous, and Middle Eastern peoples long before Europe claimed the title.

Europe did not build civilization. It inherited parts of it, borrowed much of it, dominated others, and erased origins to justify power. To acknowledge this is not to reject Europe, but to restore truth—and to remind the world that civilization belongs to humanity, not to empire.

*The section on “Inherited parts of civilization” are based on a google search

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.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Hiren Gohain

Frequent shocks from Donald Trump’s apparently wild and wayward decisions, contrary to all received wisdom and established practices of international relations, seem to have so benumbed observers and policy experts that they have been reduced to declaring Trump a mad maniac with whom no reasoning is possible. But after observing his acts and opinions, one may argue that, to borrow from Shakespeare, “there is a method in his madness.”

After all, 45 p.c. of American voters have voted him to power, and there are people in the establishment, in the administration, and in politics who are happy to serve under him.

Consider the recent deal (Trump’s favourite word) thrust down India’s throat with the threat of bringing to a grinding halt a big chunk of Indian small and medium manufacturing industries. India evidently buckled under the pressure. It was forced to concede that it would buy £500 billion of American goods. Now that specifically included agricultural goods, which would certainly hit our farmers hard. But obviously, that does not cover the entire amount.

Now, American manufactures constitute a small part of its exports. Back in the fifties and sixties of the last century, booming American plants were producing half the exports of the whole world. Now that has been reduced, inasmuch as services make up one-third of all exports and solid goods have registered a decline. It is China today that is playing the same role as American industries did in those days.

But America still has an advantage in the latest high-tech products like AI and robotics. Its biggest producers, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others, are Trump’s closest advisers. But they still have a narrow market, which receives protection from the economic sovereignty of once colonised countries. Since they played a big part in seeing him through a fraught election, he is obliged to treat their demands on a priority basis. And so he has done. Doubtless, a considerable part of the deal with India would be composed of such ‘knowledge-based’ industrial products.

That explains the extraordinary publicity given to the recently concluded GLOBAL AI SUMMIT, and the gloating hype about India being the ‘Vishwa…’

However, given the logic of imperialism, it is unlikely that the fillip to production and productivity given by AI will result in a fall in prices of goods in general demand. The hefty royalty, as well as other possible costs like initial installation fees, will most probably be passed on to the final consumer, raising prices further. The monopoly ownership by big business and government will also probably lead to attenuation of customer as well as civic rights. This development, unfortunately but predictably, increases imperialist influence on the economy and politics of our country.

The speed and alacrity with which such an event was organised within days of the signing of the Indo-US trade deal arouse some suspicion that the Modi government was hustled into holding it. Whether Trump’s repeatedly muttered threat that he could destroy Modi’s career at any time he chooses is true is quite another story.

I can’t make out what Youth Congress demonstrators were shouting about, but everyone, up to learned courts, is saying it is a disgrace to the country. But all this noise covers up the real and mortal shame during the event: the showcasing of a second-rate Chinese toy, a robotic dog, as a specimen of India’s prowess in AI and robotics. I am sure any IIT could have put up a much better show if it had been given sufficient notice. But there was little time. Everything was to be done to meet Modi’s impetuous demand. Trump’s style leaves no time for such considerations, as if there is no other option.

The logic behind Trump’s ‘go-it-alone’ policy is revealed in the choice of his contemplated objectives. He wants, for his new capitalist cronies, monopoly control over sources of rare earths, manufacturers of semiconductors, and the most common fuel driving modern industries—oil. Plus a prostrate market in the targeted country. As a consequence of such aims and methods, he is driven to back an aggressive Israel, which is expected to keep the oil routes open and browbeat countries that might revolt against American dominance in the Middle East. The current threat of all-out war against Iran is again in defence of Israel and of American stakes in Iranian oil. The aborted but once dangerously close seizure of Greenland also proceeded from the same logic.

These are immediate tactical issues, but the long-term strategy has roots in the familiar ground of imperialism. However, abandoning the orderly ‘rule-based’ system of yesteryears, Trump has revived the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ of an even earlier colonial era. Buoyed by the knowledge that it has the world’s largest and most advanced weaponry, and an army kept in readiness to spring into action at a moment’s notice, America under Trump tends to think like the mafia dons of thrillers and films: “I am going to make an offer they cannot refuse!”

The big idea, the contribution of Trumpism, is to hog the lion’s share of imperialist loot under the banner of international trade by systematic use of threat and force. (Cont.)

Trump, like many of his countrymen, is harking back to the good old fifties of the last century as typical of American ‘greatness’. At that time, GDP of the United States was growing at the rate of 3–7%. In the next decade, despite recessions, the ratio of investment to GDP was 24%. Today, it is between 15% and 16%. That includes both national and American imperialist capital’s share.

Since profit is the crux of investment decisions, American imperialist capital might invest more on foreign soil than at home, and moreover plough back the profit abroad too. Besides, sharing the imperialist ‘super-profits’ with labour also made for a substantial rise in wages in those days. But since then, there has been a striking decline in real wages. While productivity has increased by 74.4%, wages have risen by only 9.2%. The grim stagnation in workers’ wages may be gauged from the fact that while back in 1960 those in the highest salaried group used to receive, on average, a pay packet 24 times that of the average worker, by 2025 the difference has risen to as much as 262 times. (All figures culled from the internet.)

The situation has imposed on the government the release of funds for massive social security measures, reminding us of the GOI’s scrambling to hand over large amounts of cash under various schemes with fancy names to workers. But such measures, designed to blunt or lull popular fury, are hotly denounced by pro-capitalist right-wing journalists and think tanks as freebies and unearned income. They demand a ‘level playing field’ between ‘privileged’ workers and hard-working businessmen. (Cont.)

As long as the capitalist class is absorbed in activity to capture the national market and consolidate its power over the state apparatus to ensure policies in its favour, its commitment to nationalism is total. But when competition becomes intense and lowers the rate of profit, it starts thinking beyond national borders and exporting capital to maintain and raise profit margins. Correspondingly, its volume increases and the rate of exploitation on foreign soil also rises to deadly levels. This trend is accompanied by the transformation of nationalism into envenomed chauvinism and racism in support of imperialist capital, partly offsetting lukewarm investment at home and stagnation in productivity.

By the time we reach the stage of a neo-liberal economy, with transnational corporations and the increasing role of phantom financial production and profit, the urge to promote the growth of the national economy and raise productivity at home slackens. Profits are redirected to other regions rather than home as investments. Hence, in terms of national income and gain, the data appear rather listless and discouraging.

In the nineteen fifties, the USA actually accounted for 40% of the volume and value of world trade. By the nineteen eighties, it had slid down to a little above 24%, and by 2024 it had come down further to a little over 15%. China has overtaken it as the largest exporter of manufactured goods. It still remains the biggest importer of goods from other countries, and the volume of such imports amounted to a massive figure, £4.11 trillion in 2024. But the catch is that this has also been accompanied by serious trade deficits, which by 2024 had grown to £911 billion.

Partly, the deficit seems to be caused by tax-free imports like minerals and oil from African countries, which perhaps stem less from benevolence than from making such raw materials cheaper for American industry.

The huge trade gap, as well as state expenditure on social welfare programmes, have resulted in steadily rising national debt. At present, the ratio of national debt to the country’s GDP is 120%.

These figures have fuelled mounting anxieties about an epochal decline of the American economy and stagnation in the condition of the so-called middle class—actually its working class. 40% of American households today are in a debt trap they are unlikely to overcome.

Trump’s reading of the situation echoes these popular anxieties, and he is taking peremptory steps to reduce government expenditure by blunt and shocking refusal to honour long-term commitments and traditional responsibilities of the state. He is arbitrarily annulling many earlier obligations to other states, insisting on brand new ‘deals’. And if other states resist, he confronts them with punitive measures or plain military threats.

All conventional, time-honoured policy frameworks and customary strategies, which have done duty so far in order to avoid raw conflict, have been contemptuously junked. It is indeed as if the new American doctrine is the familiar law of the jungle: “might is right.”

Thanks to its superiority in arms, other countries are loath to offend it, but also wary of the one-sided ‘deals’, even when sweetened by fulsome praise of the victim.

No doubt, this approach—unless undone by some yet unforeseen development—is leading to extraordinary volatility in the world situation and the defeat of all calculation and prediction in world affairs. An expected crisis of capital, but exacerbated by the personal interventions of a dangerously unpredictable leader of a ‘great’ power.

Hiren Gohain is a political commentator

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nick Turse

Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pulled over several cars in Eagle County, Colorado. They took the people away in handcuffs, according to a witness, and left the cars idling at the side of the road. When family members of the disappeared immigrants arrived, there was no sign of their loved ones. What they found instead were customized ace of spades playing cards that read “ICE Denver Field Office.”

When I saw an image of that card, the memories came flooding back. I’d seen something similar many years before. Sitting in the U.S. National Archives building — Archives II — in College Park, Maryland, sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I’d spent parts of several afternoons watching film footage shot by — and of — U.S. troops in Vietnam back in the 1960s. One of those silent military home movies always stuck with me.

That short film opened with a Vietnamese woman clutching a child next to a group of 10 or 15 other children huddled together. They all look wary. Worried. Scared. The camera lingered on a young girl, perhaps five years old, clutching a baby. If that girl survived, she would be around 64 years old today.

After several shots of those children, the source of their fear was revealed. The film cut to a group of foreign young men — heavily armed U.S. soldiers. They were tanned and gaunt, smoking and talking, standing over the corpses of some young Vietnamese men or boys. We see the dead bodies at a distance, again. Lying together and yet eerily alone. Next, the film cuts to a collection of weapons — perhaps a cache found in or near the Vietnamese village where all of this occurred — that resembled old junk more than lethal armaments. The film kept cutting between short scenes of American troops and Vietnamese bodies until it happened.

I’ve never forgotten the scene that followed because I was initially shocked that it had been immortalized on film. I was also surprised that the film had never been destroyed. But then I remembered how ubiquitous such activity was at the time. How soldiers bragged about it. How it was covered — positively — in the U.S. press. How it even showed up in the Congressional Record, not as an outrage deserving of investigation but essentially as a thank you to a manufacturer of playing cards.

In the next scene, we see a soldier pull an ace of spades from what looks like a big stack of such cards. He’s nonchalant. He’s clearly not worried about an officer seeing what he’s doing. He obviously knows he’s being filmed. He reaches down and, as another soldier presses his boot into the chest of that corpse to hold it steady, he tries to insert the card into the mouth of one of the dead Vietnamese. It’s apparently not so easy. It takes a bit of doing, but it proves possible. The next scene shows an ace of spades sticking out of the dead boy’s mouth. The camera lingers. It’s oddly and sickeningly cinematic. The following scene shows another Vietnamese, his face blackened. There’s a battered ace of spades jammed in his mouth, too.

“Impeding” ICE

Such “death cards” — generally either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for a kill — were ubiquitous among U.S. troops in Vietnam in those years. Some soldiers, like those in that unit of the 25th Infantry Division operating in Quang Ngai Province in 1967, used a regular ace of spades of the type you’d find in a standard deck of cards. But Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade, for instance, left their victims with a customized ace of spades sporting the unit’s nickname “Gunfighters,” a skull-and-crossbones, and the phrase “dealers of death.” Helicopter pilots, like Captain Lynn Carlson, occasionally dropped similar specially made calling cards from their gunships. One side of Carlson’s card read: “Congratulations. You have been killed through courtesy of the 361st. Yours truly, Pink Panther 20.” The other side proclaimed, “The Lord giveth and the 20mm [cannon] taketh away. Killing is our business and business is good.”

The cards found last month in Eagle County harken back to that brutal heritage. They were the same general size and shape as those shoved into the mouths of dead Vietnamese: black and white 4×6-inch cards with an “A” over a spade in their top left and bottom right corners. A larger ornate black-and-white spade dominates the center of the card. Above it is the phrase “ICE Denver Field Office.” Below it, you find the address and phone number of the ICE detention facility in nearby Aurora, Colorado.

The 10 people taken away by ICE in Eagle County are now reportedly being held in that very same Aurora Detention Facility.

In a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Democrats in Colorado’s Congressional delegation called out ICE’s use of the ace of spades. The card, they wrote, “has long been known as the ‘death card’ and has been used by white supremacist groups to inspire fear and threaten physical violence. It is unacceptable and dangerous for federal law enforcement to use this symbol to intimidate Latino communities.” They continued: “This behavior undermines public trust in law enforcement, raises serious civil rights concerns, and falls far short of the professional standards expected of federal agents.”

ICE’s Denver field office offered a boilerplate response to TomDispatch when questioned about the use of the cards. “ICE is investigating this situation but unequivocally condemns this type of action and/or officer conduct,” a spokesperson wrote in an email, adding, “Once notified, ICE supervisors acted swiftly to address the issue.” The spokesperson said that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which deals with employee misconduct, will conduct a “thorough investigation,” but the Colorado lawmakers asked for more. Those lawmakers called for an independent investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

“As the son of immigrants and the father of two young children, I am horrified by the abuses being committed by the Trump administration — from the streets of Minneapolis to right here in Eagle County,” said Democratic Representative Joe Neguse, a member of the delegation that wrote the letter. “These outrageous, aggressive intimidation tactics,” he added, “are meant to stoke fear among our neighbors, and it is immoral and wrong. This administration must be held accountable, and we cannot allow this to continue unchecked.”

ICE Denver has a much different opinion. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, ICE is held to the highest professional standard,” the spokesperson there told TomDispatch. “America can be proud of the professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out.”

Americans think otherwise. A clear majority of voters — 63% — disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job after more than a year of immigration crackdowns across the United States, according to a January poll by the New York Times and Siena University. Sixty-one percent of voters said that ICE had “gone too far,” including nearly one in five Republicans. The poll was conducted after Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and legal observer, was gunned down in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

Federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people since September, according to data compiled by The Trace, killing at least five, including Good and Alex Pretti, a Minnesota resident who was gunned down by Border Patrol agents last month. Before their killings, Good and Pretti had been observing the activities of agents. Federal officers frequently confront and threaten those observing, following, and filming them for “impeding” their efforts. In numerous prior instances, they had unholstered or pointed weapons at people who filmed or followed them.

A recent report by the Cato Institute notes that it is “crucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in ‘impeding.’” It goes on to note that DHS “has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them.” In the wake of Good’s death, to take one example, the Justice Department opened an investigation of Good’s widow for allegedly “interfering” with an ICE operation — apparently for filming the shooting.

A Death Card Moment

Killing, wounding, threatening, or investigating observers are just some of the many abuses and violent tactics of immigration officers in the era of Donald Trump. Others include brutally beating detainees, employing banned chokeholds, or spraying chemical irritants on protesters. They also have carried out arbitrary and unlawful arrests and detentions, fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades into crowds, and shattered the windows of vehicles.

Colorado specifically has seen numerous abuses by immigration agents in addition to the use of those death cards. ICE officers in Colorado continue to arrest people because of the color of their skin and in violation of a federal judge’s order, according to a complaint filed earlier this month by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and two Denver law firms. In November, U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson found that ICE was routinely conducting illegal arrests in the state.

“Just in Colorado, we’ve seen ICE agents pepper-spray protestors in the face. We’ve seen ICE drag elderly women on the ground,” said Judith Marquez, a volunteer for the Colorado Rapid Response Network and a campaign manager for the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition. “We don’t want to wait for another Renee Nicole Good to be murdered.”

Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas, the immigrant rights group that took possession of those death cards in Colorado, fears that ICE might be using such cards as an intimidation tactic elsewhere, too, but that information about such acts remains unreported because those affected are unlikely to trust local law enforcement officers, elected officials, or even mainstream human-rights groups.

In the wake of the killings of Good and Pretti, the Trump administration quickly branded those observing ICE as domestic terrorists, and federal authorities insisted that Minnesota had “no jurisdiction” to investigate those killings, while blocking the access of state investigators to evidence at the crime scene.

As U.S. District Judge Alex Tostrud wrote in an 18-page decision: “Federal agents collected evidence from the scene… They won’t share it with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension [BCA]… After BCA agents arrived, federal agents blocked them from accessing the scene.” Earlier this month, Tostrud, an appointee of President Donald Trump no less, lifted the emergency order he had issued the day of Pretti’s shooting that required federal investigators to preserve evidence gathered at the scene of that fatal shooting.

In the absence of independent oversight of the crime scenes, TomDispatch asked DHS if the federal agents who gunned down Good and Pretti had left death cards at the scene of those killings.

The Department never responded.

For more than two decades, America’s forever wars have been coming home in large and small ways. But in 2026, death cards made famous in a war that ended more than 50 years ago — a war that America’s president dodged via a draft deferment for seemingly spurious bone spurs — have made a reappearance. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a war of extreme brutality rooted in racism would have resonance with ICE any more than that those macabre calling cards are on brand for a self-proclaimed peacemaker president who has made war on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, as well as on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. While he might not have actually dealt those cards in Colorado, it’s hard not to see them as Donald Trump’s death cards.

Nick Turse is a senior reporter at The Intercept and a fellow at the Type Media Center.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

We know you are a world superpower. We request you to understand your responsibilities and move the world beyond wars.

I hope this letter finds you well, by which I mean alive, awake, and not currently declaring another war before breakfast. I also hope it finds you seated comfortably, because history suggests that whenever you stand up suddenly, something international tends to happen, mostly not good for the planet and its people.

Donald, I write to you not as an enemy, nor as a supporter, not as a war expert, nor as a person deserving or begging for a Nobel Prize for peace, but as a concerned bystander, someone watching a man juggle chainsaws while explaining that gravity is a hoax.

You see, the world has noticed a pattern. Whenever things get complicated, you simplify them. Sometimes too much. For example, diplomacy is complex, so you replace it with volume. International law is tedious, so you substitute instinct. Nuance is exhausting, so you tweet.

And yet, Donald, I admire your confidence. Truly. It takes remarkable self-belief to assume that centuries of history, geography, culture, and human suffering can all be fixed with one decisive strike, preferably before lunch.

Take Iran an example. A civilization older than most buildings in Washington. A country with layers upon layers of memory, pride, grievance, and resilience. And the solution being considered is well a “very strong message.”

Donald, I once sent a very strong message to my neighbour by slamming my door. He responded by slamming his. We both are now at war. Our cats are casualties. This is how things escalate.

You may believe that striking leaders brings peace. History believes otherwise. Recent examples are Iraq and Libya. History is annoying like that. It keeps interrupting great ideas with inconvenient outcomes. Further, Iran is neither Iraq of 2004 nor Libya of 2011. Please revisit your plans for greater good of this planet.

Also, about regime change, Donald, you should know this, regimes do not fall because outsiders ask them politely, threaten loudly, or bomb selectively. They fall when their own soldiers stop listening. Iran’s soldiers are not doing that. In fact, they seem to be listening very carefully. This is not encouraging for your plans.

It is like, you want to knock down a door by slamming it, remember you will hurt your foot, as the doors hinges are strong and won’t bend by your slamming, the Iran’s defense forces are its hinges.

I worry that you may be confusing noise with control. Loudness does not equal dominance. Fireworks are loud too. They are also brief and followed by smoke, confusion, and people asking, “Was that really necessary?”. Your advisers say a strike would be “limited.” History laughs whenever humans say the word “limited.” Wars begin limited the way snacks begin limited. No one plans to eat the whole packet. It just happens.

Donald, you are standing near a room full of gasoline, holding a matchstick explaining that you only want a little light. This is not reassurance. This is a physics problem.

I know you believe strength means never backing down. But sometimes strength is sitting down. Or staying quiet. Or reading a map. Or realizing that winning an argument is different from surviving the consequences. Fall of Iran will have ripple effect across globe including Kashmir. We are afraid people of the world may collapse and that is not good.

The world does not need another demonstration of power. It needs a demonstration of restraint. Or at least a pause long enough for everyone to put down the missiles and pick up a cup of water. Please remember, empires don’t collapse because they hesitate. They collapse because they rush.

Yours sincerely,

A concerned citizen of planet earth who wishes it to remain habitable

Dr. Ashraf Zainabi is a teacher and researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora J&K

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chuck Idelson

President Donald Trump’s expansion of the blockade is the latest chapter in an aggression waged by 12 successive US presidents. It’s time to close the book.

In the shadow of President Donald Trump’s military assault on Venezuela and threats to Iran, an escalation of the longest war in US history, the 65-year war on Cuba, is being waged while Congress is virtually silent.

This is the latest chapter in an aggression waged by 12 successive US presidents, with an all too brief break when President Barack Obama initiated diplomatic steps toward normalcy in his last year in office. It has included a failed invasion by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, multiple covert assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro, and secret chemical and biological attacks on Cuban agriculture and livestock to sabotage Cuba’s food self-sufficiency.

The US launched the war to overturn a socialist Cuban revolution that kicked out longtime dictator Fulgencio Batista who allowed US mobsters and corporations to dominate the island. US corporate interests owned “90% of Cuba’s mines, 80% of public utilities, 50% of railways, 40% of sugar production, 25% of bank deposits,” posted journalist Afshin Rattansi.

Most grievously, Kennedy in 1962 introduced an economic blockade of Cuba, in violation of international law, in retaliation for his Bay of Pigs humiliation. The rogue nation globally is not Cuba, it is the US. The United Nations has voted repeatedly, 33 years in a row, demanding an end to the embargo, most recently last October by a 165-7 vote. Only five right-wing allies joined the US—Argentina, Hungary, Israel, North Macedonia, and Paraguay, plus Ukraine, dependent on the US for defensive arms against Russia.

In January, shortly after invading Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and seize Venezuela’s rich oil resources, Trump issued a sweeping expansion of the blockade. It was enforced with Naval ships that impounded one oil tanker while Trump imposed tariffs and other threats on nations that offer to provide aid to Cuba. The war on Cuba has long been sustained, primarily for political purposes by both major parties to appease and win the votes of Cuban emigres. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family left Cuba decades ago, has long been desperate to impose regime change on the island. He was the principal proponent of both the invasion of Venezuela, which he viewed as step one to end economic support for Cuba, and the follow-up quarantine.

Trump’s harsh blockade has already produced catastrophic suffering. It is not just crippling the economy, Cuba’s Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda told the Associated Press, but threatens “basic human safety.” The New York Times reports frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas, and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps.

But the devastation to public health and Cuba’s crown jewel healthcare system forms the most calamitous consequences. Israeli researcher and activist Shaiel Ben-Ephraim cites “rising mortality rate among the elderly and those with chronic illnesses who cannot access life-support or specialized care” and a surge in diseases such as dengue fever and Orupuche virus, “which have become increasingly fatal due to the shortage of basic medicines and rehydration fluids.”

“Public health data shows a spike in infant mortality, rising from 7.1 per 1,000 live births in 2024 to an estimated 14 per 1,000 in late 2025/early 2026,” Ben-Ephraim added on Twitter. “Over 32,000 pregnant women are currently classified as ‘at high risk’ due to the lack of fuel for obstetric monitoring and emergency medical transport.”

Portal warned that 5 million people in Cuba living with chronic illnesses will face disruption of medications or treatments, including 16,000 cancer patients requiring radiotherapy and another 12,400 undergoing chemotherapies. “Cardiovascular care, orthopedics, oncology, and treatment for critically ill patients who require electrical backup are among the most impacted areas. Kidney disease treatments and emergency ambulance services have also been added to the list of impacted services,” he reported.

It is an undeclared war, illegal under international law, without approval from Congress. Yet only a small handful of lawmakers are expressing opposition. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern introduced H.R. 7521 in early February with just 18 co-sponsors to date. It calls for an end to the embargo paralleling similar legislation last year by Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “It’s time to throw away the old, obsolete, failed policies of the past and try something different. Let’s focus on the people of Cuba—and let’s treat them like human beings who want to live their lives in dignity and freedom. The Cuban people—not politicians in Washington—ought to decide their own leaders and their own future,” McGovern says.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) compared the Cuban crisis to that of Gaza, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota called for the “cruel” and “despotic” blockade to be lifted, and Rep. Chuy García of Illinois said the blockade is “deliberately starving civilians” in Cuba. “The US is creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Trump’s & Rubio’s blockade is punishing the Cuban people, not the regime. We must learn from 6 decades of failed Cuba-policy & reverse course,” tweeted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

Ironically, the only setback for Trump’s attack on Cuba has come from the Supreme Court. Its February 20 decision striking down his use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) for tariffs appears to also invalidate his tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba. Hopefully it’s “a measure of relief. The siege must be broken,” Michael Galant, a member of Progressive International’s secretariat, told Julia Conley in Common Dreams. “The siege must be broken.”

In 2018, National Nurses United Board members saw first-hand the accomplishments of the Cuban medical system in a professional “people to people” research visit. Seventy percent of care is delivered in localized polyclinics and family clinics. The polyclinics are the centerpiece providing integrated, comprehensive services, including 24-hour urgent care, prenatal, maternity, pediatric, dental, vision, hearing, vaccinations, counseling, physical therapy, x-ray, and more, serving about 30,000 area residents. The family clinics are neighborhood based, providing home visits, and serving schools and workplaces that refer people to the nearby polyclinics for more specialized care. Together, both staffed with doctors and nurses, they reduce the need and pressure for hospitalization, with less waiting time for specialists. There is universal access to care with nearly all services free, including for most medications. Cuba’s patient outcomes often exceed the US from infant and maternal mortality to life expectancy despite reduced access to some medical equipment and other restrictions due to the blockade.

Cuba even developed its own medical biotech research and development programs including a vaccine for lung cancer treatment that extends life that is unavailable for US residents due to the sanctions. Cuba also trained medical professionals from throughout the world, especially the Global South, and sent doctors and nurses to multiple countries in need, a program the US has also tried to destroy. Cuba’s healthcare model is widely regarded around the world, and yet is now in grave danger due to the draconian Trump-Rubio assault.

Sadly, the Trump administration’s disdain for the lives it destroys in Cuba shows little difference from its lack of compassion with how it treats US residents, including immigrants or citizens, whether by terrorizing communities or slashing social programs. All the more reason for all of us to continue to challenge the lawlessness at home and abroad.

“This is what we’ve seen with Gaza—a new era of depravity,” says Ocasio-Cortez. “There used to be stated protections for innocent civilians, and now it’s almost acceptable for the Western world to look the other way as people are starved or deprived—simply because political actors or regimes in that country are found objectionable. What we’re seeing is the possible precipice of hospitals running out of fuel. Innocent children and women could be put in harm’s way. It’s incumbent upon all of us to defend human rights no matter where.”

Chuck Idelson, retired, is the former Communications Senior Strategist for National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses with 225,00 members.

25 February 2026

Source: countercurrents.org