Even as North Korea test-fired yet another intermediate range rocket that briefly overflew Japan, Hurricane Harvey flooded out the US State of Texas, fortunately distracting President Donald Trump. If not for the gigantic natural disaster that devastated southern Texas and parts of neighbouring states, Trump would surely have made more bellicose noises about Pyongyang’s own bellicose antics, perhaps bringing US-North Korean tensions even closer to military confrontation – which could mean nuclear war!
Meanwhile, the multiple wars against the Islamic State group in West Asia ground on with slow advances against that pseudo-religious, fascist type, armed movement on several fronts that could speed up the end of its remaining strongholds in Raqqa and more remote parts of Syria and Iraq. Sadly, as Muslims throughout the world mark the Haj Pilgrimage (the poor Qataris are shut out), little attention is being paid to what seems to be a slow ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Bengali origin Rohingyas in Myanmar.
US President Donald Trump visited hurricane-devastated southern Texas last week but again came under criticism for only touring various government installations responding to the disaster and failing to meet any of the tens of thousands of storm victims. The supposedly ‘People’s President’ spoke much about the reconstruction and economic recovery effort and hardly referred to the deaths and injured and displaced people in his speeches and internet messaging.
US news commentators, however, noted that subsequently US Vice President Mike Pence also visited southern Texas disaster areas and mingled with affected communities in a move clearly intended to compensate for Trump’s failure.
Meanwhile, Trump begins the month of September awaiting the resumption of Congress (Senate and House of Representatives) after its August recess and return to complicated Washington politics. The Republican Party, which now has a workable majority in the House and a narrow one in the Senate, may return to the US capital perhaps less enthusiastically than even Trump.
While Donald Trump ostensibly has ‘policies’ that he wants to implement such as tax reform, the so-called southern Border Wall, and healthcare reform, he seems pre-occupied with the on-going simultaneous probes into a Russian covert intervention in US elections. Trump’s primary concern even with regard to the Russia probes is the focus on possible conspiracy between his presidential election campaign and Russia.
The Russia probes are formidable in that the investigations now under way are by several powerful Senate and House oversight committees as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Last week the US news media reported that the FBI had expanded its probe into possible collusion between Trump and Russia. On the one hand Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has begun probing the Trump family finances including the history of Trump’s dealings with Russia and the family indebtedness to Russian banks. On the other hand, the FBI is digging deeper into the allegations and emerging evidence that Donald Trump and his close associates had attempted to obstruct the Russia probe in various ways, including the sudden sacking of FBI Director James Comey.
Thus, with the ‘net’ seemingly closing in on him, Trump may not be able to nurse an increasingly wary Republican Party in its own internal wrangling over sharp policy differences on all these agenda items.
While Japan reacted with strong language over the North Korean missile test, both China and Russia adopted quite a different stance. Both firmly warned against further worsening of tensions in a situation where powerful US military units were holding invasion practice close to North Korea and Pyongyang was reacting typically with rocket tests. Statements from Moscow and Beijing categorically ruled out anything by more diplomatic and political action to resolve the tension, clearly rejecting Washington’s militaristic tone.
After all, North Korea has been countering the annual joint US-South Korea military exercises every year with some kind of military posturing. Since Pyongyang’s armed forces are puny in the face of US military might, all that the North Korean dictatorship can do is to test launch rockets and talk loudly about nuclear armament.
Last week also saw more progress in the ground wars against the IS in West Asia.
Lebanon’s army last week launched a minor offensive that successfully dislodged the IS and its allied Syrian rebel groups (similarly pseudo-religious) from strongholds straddling the Lebanon-Syria border. This was done with help from the Lebanese Shia militia, the Hezbollah. On the Iraqi side, US-supported Iraqi forces, also with the help of Iraqi Shia militia, last week also successfully dislodged the IS from smaller towns west of the major city of Mosul recaptured from the IS last month.
Meanwhile, the IS ‘capital’ of Raqqa in Syria’s north is now under siege on three fronts. US-backed Syrian rebel groups are on offensive from the west, Russian-backed Syrian government forces are attacking from the south and US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces are closing in from the east.
This has prompted the UN’s senior official handling the Syrian crisis to tell the news media last Friday that ISIS’s remaining Syrian strongholds are likely to fall by the end of October, which must be the trigger for the international community to push for free and fair elections in Syria.
UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said in a BBC radio interview: “What we are seeing is in my opinion the beginning of the end of this war… what we need to make sure is that this becomes also the beginning of peace. And that is where the challenge starts at this very moment.”
What the contours of such a ‘peace’ are, remains to be seen.
More importantly, while the IS may be dislodged from its hunting grounds in West Asia, this particular disease of pseudo-religious militancy that is essentially a modern form of warlordism, has already spread worldwide. In any case, even the non-state-controlled regions of West Asia are denied to these war bands, the Western Powers led by the US have seen fit to create similar ‘stateless’ regions in Somalia and Libya and these regions are already hosting IS offshoots.