Some news can only be understood when seen as part of the broader picture, even if that news comes from geographically distant places and deals with different issues. Today, we are facing two pieces of breaking news, which outlets reported on the same day, that sum up the absurd path we have been put on by the causes that have preoccupied us for a long time.
The first report came out Saturday from Lebanon, where “Electricity of Lebanon has totally stopped operating.” “It is unlikely to resume operations before next Monday or several days,” and there are reports of using the army’s fuel oil reserves, but that will not happen anytime soon.
The second breaking news came out that same day; the Taliban’s foreign minister met with an American delegation in Doha. The Taliban’s delegation asked the US to lift its ban on the Afghan Central Bank’s reserves.
A Taliban official also announced that Washington would send vaccines against the coronavirus to Afghans and that the Taliban’s delegation focused on humanitarian aid during their meeting with the Americans, as well as “turning a new page” on relations between the two countries.
All right, with the first piece of news, we are facing a state that had been radiant until Iran interfered. It has left the Hezbollah militia, which has become above the state, free to carry out its criminal and terrorist activities, and not just in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s crimes and terrorism are not perpetrated in Lebanon alone, where it is destroying the state and assassinating rivals, alone. Indeed, it has carried them out in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Africa and South America, where it has launched terrorist attacks and trafficked drugs.
The outcome of all the havoc Iran has wreaked in Lebanon through Hezbollah is that “Lebanon’s electricity grid has totally stopped operating...” This is the same Lebanon Iran depicts as a country of resistance and a front for resistance that will wipe Israel off the map!
As for the news from Afghanistan, it leaves us dealing with those who claim to be “jihadists.” They have harbored terrorists, have not evolved, and have returned to power under the name of an Islamic Emirate. Now, they are begging for help from the United States!
The Islamic Emirate, today, after all this “jihad,” which was nothing but civil wars, violence, terrorism and the repression of Afghans, suddenly wants to “turn a new page” with the US. It is negotiating with Washington, after all those wars it waged and empty slogans it raised, to receive American humanitarian aid. It is also negotiating to have the ban on the central bank reserves lifted and have Washington send vaccines against the coronavirus to Afghans.
Is there hardship worse than that facing these two countries? Do they have anything to show for the lives, time and resources they have squandered, Hezbollah and the Taliban, in the name of religion and resistance?
One might say that Afghanistan and Lebanon would be better off if we had helped them. The same is said about Hamas in Gaza, but it is simply not true. These groups are not interested in building states, preserving lives, or ensuring stability and national cohesion. They are not concerned with development, education or the state fulfilling its minimal responsibilities. All they care about is reaching power and implementing their destructive agenda, which leaves the countries in a state that not even the members of these groups accept to live under, and when they do, they live in a different world than that which ordinary citizens live in.
And so, the rational must wake up. We should say that enough is enough, and we cannot continue to tolerate or cajole these lunatics.
