Can God’s laws claim to be above those of man? No! Not in France, in any case! This is true for the secrecy of the confession evoked by Monsignor Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French Bishops’ Conference, as well as for the Islamic Sharia law that the supporters of political Islamism are trying to impose on the country of Voltaire, by means of community separatism and blackmail to Islamophobia.
Pakistan’s association with its nuclear programme and adherence to nuclear safety norms has always been marred by lack of clarity and shrouded in mystery, including the very acquisition of nuclear know how. From the very inception of the process of creating a nuclear weapon, Pakistan was aware that it was not in a position to put together a weapon system on its own. Moreover, Pakistan’s aspiration for acquiring a nuclear weapon saw an element of urgency as it needed to keep pace with India, which was confidently surging ahead with its own self sufficient nuclear program. This desperation compelled Pakistan to resort to unethical means to acquire sub systems for their nuclear program from different sources.
Dear Mr. President,
Let’s not abandon Afghanistan again!
At the end of November 1998, three years before his trip to Europe, Commander Massoud, entrenched in northern Afghanistan, besieged on all sides by the Pakistan-backed Taliban, wrote me a long text.
Five pages in which he explained the dramatic situation in his country, the yoke that women were under, the danger that the Taliban represented for the whole world, the threat of Al-Qaeda, the urgency of helping it. He also denounced Pakistan’s role in the war. All these accusations and warnings were repeated, almost word for word, in April 2001 before the European Parliament.
The terrible images of the abandonment of Kabul, with its groups of desperate Afghans clinging to the cabin of an American military plane ready to take off without them, will never stop haunting us. They confirm, twenty years after 9/11, that no lesson can be drawn from history, contrary to what has been preached on all the airwaves, all the platforms. Faced with Islamism, which, from Nice and Saint-Etienne-du Rouvray to Kunduz and Kandahar, slits the throats of both near and far, the “Never again” preachers, under their false airs of optimism, are nothing but pledges of resignation.
The whole world was stunned at the overwhelming images of Afghan civilians clinging, by dozens, to the cabins of American military planes, which were about to take off from Kabul airport, abandoning them to their sad fate under the Taliban cut back to power, twenty years after being driven out, in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
A tragic and unbearable distress which leaves no one indifferent. Almost nobody. Because, during this time, in the supposedly moderate Islamist circles, which advocate a “political Islam” known as “golden mean”, supposed to be the exact opposite of the obscurantist and medieval doctrine of the Taliban, some self-congratulate, in an obscene delight, of a “grandiose victory” falling under the “divine will”!
One cannot understand Afghanistan if one does not know its history, written in wars and punctuated by invasions from Alexander the Great, to the Soviets (20th century), via the Mongols (13th century) and, of course, the British in the 19th century. Each occupation obviously provoked a war of liberation until the invaders left. And every liberation of the country has been followed by a civil war. This is the Afghan curse. Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the last 2,500 American soldiers, along with 7,700 NATO and allied troops, may therefore have far-reaching consequences.
