Monitoring Desk

Two CIA ‘ninja missiles’ have killed Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri who was the co-architect of the 9/11 attacks in New York with the notorious Osama Bin Laden.

The American foreign intelligence service deployed two R9X Hellfires, which uses huge blades to take out targets, to target the 71-year-old Egyptian as he walked on his balcony at a safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The airborne axe is known to be able to cut through buildings and cars and anyone who stands in its way is likely to meet a sticky end.

Referred to as a ‘flying Ginsu,’ and a ‘speedy anvil’, the missiles do not use explosive warheads to make sure collateral damage is minimized.

Osama Bin Laden’s “number two man” took over from the murderous terrorist after he was killed by US Special Forces in 2011.

He was suspected of playing a major role in the attacks at the US embassy bombings at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998.

The Egyptian’s death was confirmed by President Joe Biden late on Monday, August 1. The president confirmed al-Zawahiri had been killed the day before.

“Since the United States delivered justice to Bin Laden 11 years ago, Zawahiri has been a leader of al-Qaeda,” Biden said.

“From hiding, he coordinated al-Qaeda’s branches and all around the world, including setting priorities for providing operational guidance and calling for and inspired attacks against US targets.”

Though the leader of a feared terrorist organization, al-Zawahiri was increasingly considered a fringe figure in the group and only delivered the occasional message.

He appeared in a video last year commemorating 20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks despite rumors that he died months earlier.

Biden added: “This mission was carefully planned, rigorously minimizing the risk of harm to other civilians.

“And one week ago, after being advised that the conditions were optimal, I gave the final approval to go get him. And the mission was a success.”

He was appointed leader of Al Qaeda a month after bin Laden was shot dead by US forces at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

According to the FBI’s most wanted list, Al-Zawahiri had a £20.4 million bounty over his head.

In a statement on Monday night, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed a strike took place, calling it a violation of “international principles.”

Speaking on August 31, 2021, after the last US troops left Afghanistan, Mr Biden said the US would not let up on its fight against terrorism in that country or elsewhere as it continues targets Al-Qaeda.

“We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries,” he said.

“We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.”

Previewing the strike that would occur 11 months later, Mr Biden said at the time: “We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed.”

Al-Zawahiri was a physician and the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).

According to the FBI, the organization opposed the secular Egyptian Government and sought to overthrow it through violent means.

He moved to Jeddah in the 1980s, where he met bin Laden. In around 1998, the EIJ, led by Al-Zawahiri, merged with Al Qaeda.

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Courtesy: Mirror, London

The post Bin Laden’s successor and 9/11 mastermind killed in US drone attack first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Ivan Lim

During the last acts of the United States’ precipitous retreat from Afghanistan in mid-August, Singapore got a piece of action —helping in the historic, if chaotic airlift of thousands of Americans and Afghans fleeing the Taliban forces closing in on the capital, Kabul.

US President Joe Biden’s decision to pull out ahead of his Sept. 11 deadline, led to the unexpected rout of the Afghan government and its defence forces, collapsing literally like packs of moth-eaten cards.

Putting a brave face on the debacle, Biden claimed “mission accomplished” in suppressing Islamic terrorist threats to the US, and in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the master-mind behind the Sept 11, 2001 incident in which Al Qaeda operatives hijacked commercial airlines and crashed them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000. That heinous act had triggered the all-out US invasion of Afghanistan to eradicate the jihadists. .

The Republic of Singapore Air Force was nimble in dispatching an A330 multi-role Tanker and Transporter aircraft, not to Kabul Airport, but to Qatar to pick up a clutch of refugees who had arrived there from the Afghan capital, desolate and exhausted, and send them onward to Germany for settlement.

Singapore’ role in the airlift was motivated by a common concern, as PM Lee Hsien Loong put it: “US intervention had stopped terror groups from using the country as a safe base for 20 years. For this Singapore is grateful.”

However, the Singapore leader also sounded a word of caution. “We hope Afghanistan doesn’t become an epi-center for terrorism again.”

While there is hope that a Taliban government might moderate its extreme Islamic model of running the country, there is concern about the influence and role of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now morphed into ISIS-Khorasan and the rump, robustly active, of Al-Qaeda in the country.

Playing its part in the long US-led war to defeat the jihadists in Afghanistan, Singapore had deployed Singapore Armed Forces personnel to serve the International Security Assistance Force (ISA) from 2007-2013 – to help train Afghan military and rebuild key government institutions.

And for a good reason, Afghanistan is a key battlefront in the global fight against terrorism. Extremist ideology has often been exported to South-east Asia and posed security threats.

The Al-Qaeda had spawned offshoots in South-east-Asia, including the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) based in Indonesia. Its mission was to create an Islamic caliphate comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, southern Philippines, Brunei and Singapore.

Singapore was an early JI target in December 2001. Its plans included hijacking a plane, crashing it into Changi Airport, bombing United States, Israeli, British and Australian embassies, and setting off explosives on trucks simultaneously in the city.

The plots were foiled with the arrest that month of 15 suspects and their detention under the Internal Security Act. But in October 2002, JI carried out a suicide-bombing attack in Bali at the touristic Kuta night-club that killed over 200 Australians, Britons and Australians and Indonesians – that attested to the lethal terrorist threat it posed.

In 2006, a blow to the JI came when Indonesia extradited an Afghanistan-trained bomb-maker, Mas Selamat Kastari, who acted as a Singapore cell leader.

The JI group appeared crippled for good until Mas Selamat made an audacious escape from a detention centre on February 27, 2008. A massive manhunt failed to find him till the following April 1 when he was captured by Malaysian police in the neighboring Johor state. …

The foiled plots and the Mas Selamat’s escape have been etched in the public psyche, serving as constant reminders of the terrorist threats facing Republic.

The US retreat has paved the way for the establishment of a Muslim caliphate in Afghanistan has raised concerns over the likely rise in terrorist attacks in South-east Asia, not least in Singapore.

Security experts believe the clear and present dangers have grown ominous with the installation of a hardline Taliban government in Kabul that included Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a co-founder of the movement and Mr. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who heads the Haqqani militant group.

Singapore’s Law and Home Affairs Minister, K. Shanmugam, told the media on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, that Afghanistan had been “a safe haven for training, access to weapons, people became hardened and radicalized even more.”

While there was no immediate threat to the republic, “the Internal Security Department surveys the landscape, what’s happening elsewhere, both in the region and further afield, including Afghanistan,” he said.

He cited the Sept 3 incident in Auckland where an Islamic State-follower stabbed and wounded six people before being shot and killed by police.

In comments on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, PM Lee spoke of the “lone-wolf” attackers who have been radicalized on the Internet.

Enlarging on this point, Senior Minister coordinating national security told the media: The Internet creates more opportunities to be radicalized through the echo chamber effect,

“The Internet has also accelerated the process from a few years to a few months. This has sped up the timeline for conducting attacks, particularly those by lone wolves, making it more challenging for security agencies to detect and pre-empt them.”

Meanwhile, the ISD has flagged the emergence of self-radicalized individuals and far-right extremists as new terrorist threats.

In its Terrorism Threat Assessment Report 2021, the ISD noted that in the past two years, 14 out of 16 people slapped with terrorism-linked orders were self-radicalized.

The first woman to be detained under the ISA for radicalism in June 2017 was identified as Syaikha Izzah Zahrah Al Ansair. At 22, she had offered to be a ‘martyr’s widow” for the ISIS and had planned to travel to travel to Syria with her child. She has been rehabilitated during her detention through religious counseling and has been released.

Religious counseling by Muslim scholars has been part of the authorities’ tools in dealing with individuals who fell under the spell of jihadist ideology preached by ISIS agents.

In March this year, a self-radicalized 20-year-old Muslim, inflamed by the Israeli-Palestine conflict, was detained for plotting to attack Jews at a synagogue.

In the first case of an individual influenced by far-right extremist ideology, 16-year Christian was detained last December for plotting to attack two mosques in a copycat plot to mark the second anniversary of the  massacre of Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Thus far, Singapore has been able to pre-empt young self-radicalized actors from carrying out violent attacks, thanks to tough laws. A key law is the Internal Security Act that allows for detention without trial of those who posed threats to social order and security.

A additional piece of legislation is the (Terrorism) Suppression of Fund Act to make it an offence for people to provide material support to terrorist groups

The Act was invoked on Sept 9, when a radicalized Singaporean, Mohamed Kazali Salleh, 51, detainee was sentenced to jail for three years and 10 months.

Ivan Lim

Ivan Lim is a senior journalist of Singapore and former President of South Korea-based Asia Journalists Association.

The post Singapore Keeps Eye on Kabul after Aiding Refugee Pull-Out first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Tom Arms

To nation build or not to nation build? That is the question vexing Western capitals in the wake of humiliating defeat and failure in Afghanistan.

Is it nobler to continue to attempt to export/impose Western political and cultural values to the rest of the world or does Afghanistan spell the end of a policy which has dominated foreign affairs since the end of World War Two.

When NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 they had clear goal: Remove the ruling Taliban from power so that the country ceased to be a base for international terrorism.

But then the policy changed to nation building for two reasons. First of all, the Taliban was never completely defeated. It merely retreated to their caves, waged a guerrilla war and waited for NATO to tire and withdraw. Secondly, it was decided that the best way to insure that the Taliban did not return to power was to establish political structures that created a human rights environment that offered a better alternative to life under Islamic fundamentalism.

This was never going to be an easy job in a country whose social and political structures were closely tied to religious beliefs inimical to the West. It was made impossible by the fact that the task of nation building was being constantly undermined by the war.

There are examples of successful nation building. Germany and Japan are the two best. But in each of those cases the country was totally laid to waste, the government unconditionally surrendered, there was a long period of demilitarization, the political system was imposed,  and the countries were occupied— are still occupied—by Western forces. This was considered essential to prevent the return of militarism in Germany and Japan.

Other examples of nation building applied mainly to decolonization and generally speaking did not fare so well. The main exception was India which had its ups and downs with partition, Mrs. Gandhi’s emergency and constant battles between the states and Delhi over language and religion. India is currently suffering another democratic glitch with Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism. But its parliamentary structures are intact, widely valued by Indian voters and well-entrenched.

That is not the case in most of the rest of the former colonies. The leadership pays lip service to the principles of democracy, but Western political tenets have fallen victim to tribalism, corruption, religion, cultural differences, language, endemic warfare, and exploitation by Western companies, neo-colonialism and a host of other problems.

They are looking for an alternative. And it exists in the form of China. The Western—in particular American model—appealed too many around the world because the West was politically stable and economically successful, especially in the 30-40 years following World War Two. The only real alternative was Soviet-style communism, and that was clearly flawed and eventually collapsed.

Face it – most people everywhere in the world are concerned almost exclusively with how much they have in their pockets and the health and security of their loved ones. They looked towards America and saw big houses, big cars, and big plates of food and wanted a slice of the good life. America told them, follow our political lead and you can have it. In almost all cases it has not worked.

China, on the other hand, is urging the developing world to adopt and adapt their style of communism. The Soviet-style failed because it ignored basic human instincts. The Chinese communist model has married the craving for individual reward to a highly centralized one-party state. It allows individuals to amass huge fortunes, as long as they agree to work within the parameters established by the party. The result– so far– is political stability and economic growth.

On top of that, the Chinese have made it clear that as far as other countries are concerned, their primary interest is trade. Unlike the West, they say that they do not want to export their political system as a condition of that trade. This has a strong appeal to the leadership of third countries.

At the same time, the West is appearing less attractive. Riots, unilateralism, climate change, the response to the pandemic and the failure in Afghanistan have undermined their claim to a moral and political supremacy.

As have Brexit, the Northern Ireland Protocol and the failure of the EU to successfully develop political structures or deal with recalcitrant East European members and refugees.

There has always been a clear link between domestic and foreign policy. If the West wants to continue its long-standing policy of nation-building then it must first ensure that their nations are worthy of emulation. If it fails to do so, then other countries will inevitably look elsewhere, and the West can look forward to an inevitable decline.

World Review

• In one of history’s ultimate ironies, the West may end up working with the political organization it overthrew and fought for 20 years. The reason? To prevent another more extreme Islamic organization from using the central Asian country as a base for terrorism. ISIS-K has made it clear that it wants to use terror to undermine the West and export Islamic fundamentalism. It has also said that the Taliban leadership is as much a target for their suicide bombers as Americans. At a Pentagon press conference this week, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Staff, described the Taliban, as “ruthless” but added that in war “you do what you must.” When asked if the US would cooperate with the Taliban, he said: “that is a possibility.” Meanwhile British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab flew to Qatar which has been acting as intermediary between the West and the Taliban. He ruled out recognition of the Taliban but added: “We do see the need for direct action.” In London, the Foreign Office, revealed that Simon Gass, Britain’s Special Envoy for the Afghanistan transition, is holding talks with Taliban officials. Gradually, the West appears to be reluctantly accepting that it has no choice but to cooperate, possibly even support, the Taliban if its original goal is to be achieved.
• One of the winners from the Afghan debacle is the Gulf state of Qatar. The ruling Al-Thani family and its diplomats have managed to establish their country as the region’s number one power broker by making itself the essential intermediary between the key players. Ten thousand US troops and Britain’s Number 83 Air Group are based at Qatar’s Al Udeid Airbase. British and American envoys are currently in Qatar talking with Qatari and Taliban officials about organizing the safe passage from Afghanistan of Westerners and Afghans who worked with NATO forces. Qatar is one of the key staging posts for Afghan refugees. On the other side of the fence– the Qataris help to fund Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and maintain close relations with Iran. It has been reported that they also turn a blind eye to “charities” raising money for Al Qaeda and Isis. Then there is Al Jazeera which is the only region’s only critical and relatively free news organization. The only Arab monarchy safe from its searching reports is the Al-Thani’s.
• Near the top of Washington’s wish list is that Europe takes more responsibility for military roles in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. A meeting in Slovenia this week of EU foreign ministers appears to have taken a step towards fulfilling that wish. The meeting was preceded with an agenda-setting article in the New York Times by EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Morrell in which he wrote that Afghanistan demonstrated that it was time for Europe to “step up.” The result was that the foreign ministers in Slovenia agreed in principle to the establishment of an EU-wide rapid deployment force of “willing countries.” Details are vague with talk of anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000 troops. Small but a start. Of course, if Europe takes more responsibility it will demand more say and more independent action. The Europeans think that it was a mistake to withdraw from Afghanistan and are appalled and ashamed that they are linked in the public’s mind with the humiliating chaos of the American-led retreat. Washington should be careful of the axiom that one should be careful of what wish they for.
• Germany would be key to whether or not the planned rapid deployment force goes ahead, its size and its responsibilities. But at the moment, Germans are heavily focused on federal elections. With just over three weeks until polling on September 26, it looks as if this vote could be one of those watershed events. For a start, Chancellor Angela Merkel (“Mutti” or mother as she is known to the German voters) is stepping down after dominating the German and European political scene for 16 years. On top of that, it looks as if her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and its Bavarian partner the Christian Social Union (CSU) may lose. An end of August poll of polls showed the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) three points ahead at 24 percent—the first time in 15 years it has been in the lead. Other parties are also doing well. The Greens are up at 12 percent and the centrist Federal Democratic Party (FDP) are polling 17 percent. The only party other than the CDU/CSU to have dropped is the right-wing anti-immigration Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) which has fallen five percentage points from the last election in 2017. Germany’s proportional representation system allocates Bundestag seats based on the percentage that each party polls. This almost always means a coalition and the party with the biggest percentage claims the Chancellor’s job and is given first crack at forming a government. Of course, three weeks is a long time in an election campaign and the CDU/CSU has pushed its biggest gun onto the campaign trail—Mutti.
• Texas has thrown a massive spanner into America’s abortion debate. Republican Governor Greg Abbott this week signed a law which says that anyone who aids and abets an abortion later than six weeks after conception can be sued for a minimum of $10,000. But what makes this new law so interesting is that no state official will be involved in the legal process. Instead the law suits can be brought by individuals or organizations from anywhere in the world. This will effectively create a worldwide team of anti-abortion vigilantes. The Texas legal chicanery also prevented the Supreme Court from ruling on the issue. For it to hear a case there must be a plaintiff and a defendant. At the moment, there isn’t. And when there is it will take years to work its way through the legal system to the Supreme Court. By then, other Republican-led anti-abortion states will have followed the Texas example and further muddied the legal waters. The Supreme Court, however, is expected to rule on the underlying legal principles of abortion by next June when a Mississippi anti-abortion law is appealed. With the current conservative complexion of the court and the success of Texas it appears that a June ruling could overturn the 49-year-old legal precedent of Roe v. Wade. The Democrats could attempt to pass legislation to strengthen Roe v. Wade or Biden could appoint two liberal justices to re-balance the pro-abortion court. Both those options are fraught with political dangers. It is clear that the abortion issue has moved to the top of the agenda for the November 2022 mid-term elections. The latest polls show that 57 percent of Americans support legal abortion which should be a plus for the Democrats and the pro-abortion lobby. But then, they have to vote.

Tom Arms

Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. and the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War”.His book “America: Made in Britain” is published on 15 October.

The post Observations of an Expat: Nation Building first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Tom Arms

Can we trust the Taliban? President Joe Biden says the US has to work with them. But can we accept their assurances that women will be allowed to be educated and not forced to wear the oppressive burka? That foreign journalists can remain in Afghanistan to monitor their activities?

Do we believe the Taliban leadership when it says it will allow foreign nationals and Afghan citizens who worked with them to leave the country, and that American and British troops can protect Kabul Airport until 31 August to ensure their safe departure? And, most importantly, can we trust their pledge to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a base for international terrorism?

Or are those the right questions? Should we instead ask: Do we trust the Taliban to control a historically uncontrollable Afghanistan? If they can’t, any other pledges are worthless.

The Taliban is comprised of individuals in the same way as any other political group anywhere in the world. They are united in their belief that Afghanistan should be governed by Sharia law, but a bewildering variety of conflicting groups disagree about the interpretation of that law and the tactics to be used in achieving that goal.

There are three basic camps within the Taliban. The first is the leadership. Twenty years in the wilderness, prisons and negotiations with America is believed to have invested them with a greater degree of political sophistication and realism than when they were last in power. Then there are the military commanders who have had no involvement in the discussions with American negotiators. Some of them support the leadership. Some of them are working with the third rogue group who are ignoring the leadership, closing down schools, arresting and sometimes killing Afghans who worked with Westerners; forcing women into burkas and imposing the harshest tenets of Sharia law.

But that is only part of the chaos. There are the organizations tangentially linked to factions inside the Taliban but outside the main group.  Specifically there is Al Qaeeda and ISIS-Khoramshar Province (aka ISIS-K). The latter organization is responsible for the double bombing outside the Kabul Airport Perimeter which has—as of this writing—claimed 90 lives and 150 wounded.

ISIS-K is not a big organization in Afghanistan. It is believed to be only about 2,000-strong in the country. But, as they proved this week, it only takes one well-placed suicide bomber to put them at the top of the world news agenda.

ISIS-K is the most extreme Islamic terrorist group operating today. Founded in 2015, its members follow the Salafi tradition which rejects religious innovation and demands the strictest possible interpretation of Sharia law. It operates an international network and in Afghanistan is believed to be responsible for a number of recent murderous attacks on hospitals and schools.

But perhaps most important of all, ISIS-K believes its mission is to destroy all those who work with non-believers as well as the non-believers themselves. This means that the current Taliban leadership is as much a target as American troops.

In the eyes of ISIS-K, Abdul Ghani Baradar, the current de facto leader of the Taliban, made a fatal mistake meeting with CIA director Bill Burns this week and agreeing to help protect the perimeter around Kabul Airport and facilitate the evacuation of foreign nationals and Afghan citizens who had worked with them. Add to that his pledges about women, journalists and the suppression of terrorists, and Baradar’s days could well be numbered.

Abdul Ghani Baradar was one of the co-founders of the Taliban in the 1990s. He was an American prisoner from 2010 to 2018 when he was released to participate in US-Taliban negotiations in Qatar. Baradar was the man chosen for the breakthrough telephone conversation with President Trump and was delegated to sign the agreement for US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Bill Burns is the only CIA director to have been recruited from the ranks of America’s career diplomatic corps. He has served as ambassador to Jordan and Russia and as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

The two men almost certainly talked about more than the protection of the airport perimeter. The Taliban needs access to the $7 billion in frozen assets in the Federal Reserve Bank, the $5.3 billion for projects that the World Bank has “paused”, $440 million for new hospitals which is now being blocked by the World Bank and food aid which is feeding roughly half of Afghanistan’s 38.4 million people.

Perhaps most of all, it needs American help in persuading Afghan professionals to remain in the country to keep the schools and hospitals open, clean water flowing and the electricity running.

All of the above are dependent on the Taliban proving that is in control of the security situation in Afghanistan. When the bombs went off — it failed the first test.

World Review    

• As Kabul descends into chaos it is becoming painfully clear that this is largely due to poor political leadership in the West. America—Trump and Biden—bear the lion’s share of the blame. Trump for laying the groundwork and Biden for failing to jettison Trump’s work and the serious miscalculation that the government of Ashraf Ghani could hold back the Taliban tide. But the Europeans also have to accept a big share of the blame, especially British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The British were the lead European partner in Afghanistan. They have (or had) the second largest NATO military force and have a historic involvement in the country. President Biden made it clear back in April that he would withdraw US troops by 9/11 at the latest. Boris did nothing. It was not until the Taliban was banging on the gates of Kabul that he started trying to organize European NATO to persuade Biden to remain in Afghanistan or, at the very least, substantially delay US withdrawal. Even then something may have been salvaged if Boris had not been leading the charge. As one former senior diplomat said: “He has virtually zero credibility with the Biden Administration and every EU capital. He is regarded as lazy, untrustworthy and a political lightweight.”
• Western diplomats are fleeing Afghanistan in droves. In fact, most of their embassies now stand empty. But that is not the case with the Russians. Their diplomats are operating at full tilt strengthening relations with the Taliban with whom they have been quietly working for several years. Taliban leaders have been in out of Moscow since for some time, and at one point the Trump Administration was accusing the Russians of supplying the Afghan Islamic rebels with weaponry. The charge was successfully denied. But the change of regime has been warmly and publicly welcomed by the Russians who maintain that the Taliban victory will bring peace and prosperity to the streets of Kabul and hills and valleys of rural Afghanistan. Part of the reason for the Russian diplomatic offensive in Afghanistan is to fill the political vacuum left by the West and exploit America’s humiliation and discomfort. But there are also practical considerations. Russia retains wide-ranging economic and military interests in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It is concerned that instability, Jihadism and a rogue Taliban will destabilize the other Asian stans and encourage Chechen rebels. They are also concerned that a failed state in Afghanistan will result in an increase in the drug trade with Russia. Moscow still has painful memories of their nine-year war in Afghanistan, but practical politics have won the day.
• More signs that Brexit is beginning to bite. It has taken longer than expected, but the reality factor is replacing the fear factor. As predicted by Remainers, it is the lack of EU immigrant workers which is causing the current problem, especially in the agricultural and trucking industries. The two sectors rely on what is classified as unskilled labor to harvest the crops and move those products to super market shelves while still fresh. Unskilled jobs have been traditionally filled by immigrants, mainly because they are dirty, physically exhausting, and low-paid and involve long hours. British workers don’t want them. The result is that the number of lorry drivers is down by 20 percent and agricultural workers by at least 25 percent. Supermarkets are seriously worried about empty shelves. The response of British Home Secretary Pritti Patel is “pay more money and hire British workers.” There are several problems with this diktat. First of all, there is already a general labor shortage caused partly by Brexit and partly by Covid. Next, although, agricultural work and truck driving are classed as unskilled, that is a labor fallacy. Anyone who has spent a day picking strawberries or trying to drive a heavy goods vehicle will testify to the fact. So recruiting indigenous Brits will involve a training period – Which means a delay. Then there is the impact that such a move will have on inflation. Increasing the salaries of 320,000 lorry drivers and 176,000 agricultural workers will have significant impact wage inflation. It will also substantially increase the cost of products across the entire range of commerce as transport costs are added to the retail price. Already supermarket chains are paying drivers bonuses of up to 25 percent to move goods to shelves before they spoil. Unable to two compete with the private sector will be the public sector, which means, for instance, that local councils face the prospect of a shortage of drivers of dust carts to collect rubbish.
• The cult of Xi Jinping continues to grow. The thoughts of the Great Helmsman (a title now conferred on Xi and previously reserved for Mao) have already been written into the Chinese constitution and Chinese Christians have been instructed to replace pictures of Jesus with smiling images of the Chinese leader. Now Xi’s the philosophy is becoming an official and required part of the educational curriculum from primary school right through to the final day of university. There are 14 main principles to the Thoughts of Xi, but they boil down to unswerving loyalty to the nation, socialism, the communist party, one-party rule, a united China (i.e. absorption of Hong Kong and Taiwan) and the principle of two systems in one state. Cult politics makes it easier to enforce policies when the subject of the cult is hale and hearty. But when the grim reaper makes his inevitable entrance and the cult figure his inevitable exit there is usually a substantial political price to pay. It happened with the death of Stalin and Mao.  President Xi Jinping is 68 years old. A healthy 68, but still in the early winter/late autumn of his life.
• An innovative legal move by the Mexican government has caused America’s gun control lobby to shift its interest south of the border. Mexico has one of the worst gun homicide rates in the world as drug cartels shoot it out between themselves and the federalists. This should be surprising as Mexico also has one of the world’s toughest gun control laws. There is only one gun shop in the entire country and it only sells low caliber pistols. But the shop and the restrictive gun laws are an irrelevancy as the weapons used by the cartels are smuggled in from the US. This is why the Mexican government is suing 11 American gun manufacturers in the Massachusetts courts. It will be tough. Gun manufacturers and retailers are protected from law suits by the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Acts (PLCAA) which says that the gun industry cannot be held liable for the actions of people who buy their weapons. The Mexican government claims that the restrictions of the act do not apply to Mexico because they are not American. If the Mexican government’s suit is successful than gun control enthusiasts will argue that American citizens should be given the same protection from the US gun lobby as foreigners.

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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. and the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War”.His book “America: Made in Britain” is published on 15 October.

The post Observations of an Expat: Trusting the Taliban! first appeared on Sindh Courier.