Broken Bangles: Life, Stories, Thoughts

  Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, one of the few leaders who was left in Gaza to lead the war on the Palestine side. For many in the Western world, Yahya Sinwar will be just a terrorist, and for many in the Middle East, he will remain a hero. It is difficult to answer who he really was amidst the chaos of misinformation and troubled history that has turned this region into a hellhole of violence and mistrust.  Obviously, Sinwar was a strong leader, a man capable of making the hardest of hard decisions, as witnessed in the October 7 attack of Hamas against Israel. The last interview that Sinwar gave to foreign media was with VICE News and journalist Hind Hassan in 2021. Al Jazeera Television has interviewed Hassan in the aftermath of Yahya Sinwar’s assassination.  Hassan remembers Sinwar as a man who unceremoniously walked out of a mosque in Gaza, surrounded by his colleagues, amidst an escalation of the conflict in 2021. She and her TV crew could walk up to ...

  Naim Qassim has assumed charge as the new Secretary-general of the Lebanese military-political group, Hezbollah. He is another Hezbollah hardliner, referred to as the “Hezbollah intellectual” in the outside circles.  The New Chief of Hezbollah Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut by Israel on September 27, 2024. Naim Qassim, the new Secretary-General, was the founding member of Hezbollah, a cleric, and has been the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah since 1991. After Nasarallah’s assassination, he has served as the acting Secretary-General.  Naim Qassim has also been the general coordinator of Hezbollah's parliamentary election-related campaigns since 1992 when the organisation debuted in electoral politics. He lacks the charisma of Hasan Nasrallah. Qassim has been Hezbollah's face before international media, giving interviews and functioning as its spokesperson. Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and the potent...

  Lebanon: A Reminder Israel has begun to send missiles, bombs, and foot soldiers to Lebanon in the name of destroying Hezbollah. The US is also expected to step in if the conflict worsens. One would wonder why America has been obsessed with the Middle East. The answers are complex and related to how economically powerful countries thrive for world dominance. Lebanon has a unique place in history as the first country in the Middle East to experience a US military action.  This is the story of how the Middle East became a battleground for America. The first step was taken in Lebanon. The year was 1958. The Beginning of the US Military Action in Lebanon and the Eisenhower Doctrine A summer in Lebanon half a century back, the beachgoers of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, saw a curious sight. Boats after boats of US Marines began to arrive on the shores of Beirut. Bruce Riedel, the author of the book, ‘Beirut 1958: How America’s Wars in the Middle East Began’ (2019), writes that t...

  Revisiting history is how we understand the present and keep alive the memories of the mistakes of the past. Those memories are our precious heritage that encourages us to become better people.  Today, I am reading about the Spanish colonists' conquering of the Aztecs. What an eye-opening tale with equal doses of human greed and innocence, but it is not fictional! We, humanity, did it to ourselves. We are the victims and perpetrators.  It does not matter to us which category we belonged to if we lived in that era because, on both sides, there were people like us who wanted to live in peace and people like us who wanted to conquer the world's riches.   It begins to matter when we put the past against the present and introspect. Then we realise that we are the perpetrators, or we are the ones who must feel the survivor’s guilt and act upon it before it is too late. Or we will go down in history as one of the cruellest people to ever inhabit Earth.  How the ...

  Is Iran a Full-fledged Nuclear State? Iran is a nuclear threshold state. It has in its possession enough enriched Uranium to make several atomic bombs. The US intelligence has warned that if Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb, it can do it at some point in future. Iran has always maintained that its nuclear programme was meant for peaceful purposes alone. According to a 2024 US Congressional Research Service Report, Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons programme and did not have all the technologies necessary to develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s Uranium enrichment programme has been running since 2000. These facilities, in theory, could generate highly enriched Uranium used in nuclear weapons. In nuclear reactors used for generating energy, low enriched Uranium is used, and Iran has always said that the enrichment programme is solely for that purpose. Which International Treaties restrict Iran from Developing Nuclear Weapons? In 2015, a nuclear agreement was signed between Iran and...

  Hezbollah is an intriguing phenomenon, a nation inside a nation that is volatile and out of control beyond the reach of Lebanese state machinery. Still, it has a huge presence socially, politically, and militarily.   Hezbollah is basically a Shiʿah Muslim political party and a militant group. The role of Hezbollah in Lebanon is one legitimate yet without responsibility. Curiously, Hezbollah is assessed as having the military prowess to take over Lebanon if it wants to. Yet, the organisation seems not inclined to do so. However, it commands its own armed force.  Hezbollah operates inside and outside Lebanon and is not accountable to the Lebanese government. The Lebanese democratic system has many cracks, which Hezbollah takes advantage of and grows roots in. The group also has informal agreements with the country's elite groups. Yet, it is not as if this organisation is holding hostage the Lebanese government with military might. The reality is much more complex....