 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. People what they want coming to you this week, the 20th of August 2021. Almost a week since the Taliban has returned to Kabul. Extraordinary news week for us, for people around the world. You're listening to Give the People what they want coming to you from people's dispatch from which we get Zoe Alexandra. Hello Zoe and we have Prashant. Nice to see you and I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. Can't start anywhere else this week but in Afghanistan. It is Friday, a very significant day in the calendar of Afghan politics and of the Taliban because on Friday at the main mosque in Kabul, all eyes were on who's going to give essentially, well, what is tantamount to being the sermon or the speech. This is the first Friday since the Taliban entered Afghanistan on the 15th of August which was a Sunday and standing up at the principal mosque in Kabul was Khalil Haqani. Very interesting that Mr. Haqani long considered a terrorist by the United States government, takes the floor holding a US made automatic gun, stands there and gives a speech and says our first priority he says is security. The Haqani family, very powerful in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jalaluddin Haqani, perhaps founder of the Haqani network, close ally of Osama bin Laden. Mr. Khalil Haqani has been a wanted man, a real fighter, but on the other hand, Siraj Haqani is the number two in the Taliban after Mullah Baradar alongside the son of Mullah Umar who's the other deputy leader of the Taliban. We have Anas Haqani, the third member of the Haqani family making a personal visit to Hamid Karzai in his residence to talk about the need for a broad based government. Interesting developments in Afghanistan. Western media focused on the airport in Kabul where the United States, the UK and others are struggling to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan. That's been the focus of the Western media. That's not our focus. Our focus is what's happening to the Afghan people. What can we anticipate within Afghanistan? The first signs show that the Taliban of 2021 are not that different from the Taliban of 1996. There's been some discussion about maturity of the Taliban and so on. That may be so, but the anchor of the Taliban remains in a very serious commitment to their worldview, to their ideology. Mullah Baradar, for instance, who returned from Doha Qatar, came into Afghanistan is one of the founders, the original founders of the Taliban. The Haqani family, deeply ideological, not interested in modulation or nationalism. They were protests immediately setting the mark properly that this is going to be a struggle. Protests in Kandahar, surprising. Protests in Kabul. Protests, yes, in the Panjshir Valley and we can get to that in a minute. Protests around the country on the 102nd Independence Day of Afghanistan. People should know this is the 102nd Independence Day from the British war. The 3rd Afghan war in 1919. 102nd Independence Day, the battle was over the flag. Should it be the Afghan national flag which was unfurled across the country? Should it be the flag of the Taliban, of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan? It is a contest. These are two contrasting visions of where Afghanistan should go. Now, the Taliban, they have not yet fully announced what a government will look like. It's likely that Mr. Hamid Karzai will play some role. The visit by Anis Khalil demonstrates that the Haqanis will bring in perhaps Hamid Karzai. It's likely that Gulbuddin Haqmatyar might be in this government. Mr. Haqmatyar, one of the most notorious men of the Mujahideen of the 1980s, a protege of Buruddin Rabbani, likely Mr. Haqmatyar will be in this government. It is also likely that Abdullah Abdullah who ran the National Reconciliation Council under President Ashraf Ghani will be in this government. It's a very interesting development. The Taliban would likely like to have a broad-based government. Please, it's important that nobody be confused by this because it will be a government dominated by the Taliban. Important to know, during the Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001, they abolished any shoes with the color white. The reason you were not allowed to wear white shoes was because it was seen as an insult to the Taliban flag. That's the kind of ideological commitment that the Taliban has. They also banned chess. Now, question of women on the table once again, it's very interesting. In the lead up to the 2001 war in October, lots of noise about women's rights and the importance of preserving women's liberties. This was long forgotten when the United States allied with the Northern Alliance. A rebranded version of the Mujahideen of the 1990s, they came in. Now, don't forget when they were in power in the camps in Peshawar in the 1980s, a survey from 1986 showed that in the schools only 1.4% of girls in Peshawar went to school. This is not the camp of the Taliban. These were the camps of the Mujahideen. During that long period of the United States, 20 years didn't think about women's rights. Now that the Taliban is back in power, language of women's rights back on the lips of policymakers. Again, I caution you, don't be misled. We've been down this road before. It's with a great sense of personal feeling that I say to you that Kabul beautiful city enjoyed walking those streets once again under the grip of the Taliban. It also does appear that I should focus on what's happening in Pakistan, in what's happening in China, what's happening in India. All of these countries, including Iran, are putting pressure on the Taliban not to go too far, not to allow terrorism to flourish on Afghan soil. The meeting between Mullah Baradar and Chinese external affairs of Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the 28th of July in Tianjin, very significant, don't know exactly what they decided. But friends, keep a close eye at the government when it is in fact announced. The Chinese, for instance, they don't need to recognize the Taliban. The Taliban exists. They will only withhold judgment till a government is founded. So we'll be looking carefully at this following the government of Afghanistan, what's happening inside Afghanistan. Our eyes friends are not focused only on the evacuation of Western aid workers and troops and so on. That's a Western story. Our story is a story that starts in the byways of Afghanistan and will continue in those byways. Meanwhile, in Belmarsh prison, sitting is a man who has a big role to play in this war on Afghanistan because he revealed several of the war crimes conducted by the United States and Britain. And that's of course Julian Assange. Prashant, what's happening to Julian Assange? Right Vijay. It's very difficult to talk about Afghanistan, like you said, without talking about Assange because the Afghan war logs actually presenting a very detailed picture of the kind of complete chaos. The kind of complete disorder, the complete broken down nature of the system that was the US and Western occupation of Afghanistan. And those who went through those war logs, those who went through those documents, it was clear from a long time ago that this invasion was this occupation was bound to fail. It happened in 2021, but the seeds were sown not only in 2001 when the US invaded but even before that like to point it out. On the other hand, of course, the United States has continued its war against Julian Assange. There's no other way to describe it. The latest is the fact that a British court has expanded the counts on which the appeal against the appeal of the recent judgment on Assange's expedition will happen in October. So as we remember in January, the judge had denied the expedition, citing that there was a legitimate risk that he might attempt suicide if he's extradited. Now, what has happened is that the United States and its allies in the British prosecution have been trying to appeal this decision and have been trying to increase the scope of this appeal. So initially it was a very technical aspect. Now they've got two more counts on which they can appeal this decision by the judge that is denying the extradition. Now, there is a lot of legalese here. I'm not really going into it. I think the broad point that we need to note is the arguments presented by the United States and the Crown prosecution were really appalling because what they basically said was that a psychiatrist who had treated Julian Assange did not reveal enough information about his partner and his children while he was testified. And the cynicism and the cruelty of this is appalling because basically Julian Assange's partner, Stella Morris, his children, all of them have received threats. There was this company, UC Global, which was monitoring his family very extensively, even an instance of one of the baby's diapers being stolen so that there could be a DNA test of who the kid's father was. So that was the extent and that is the extent of the threats that are taking place. But the prosecution basically trying to discredit the psychologist's analysis of Assange's mental health by saying that he did not talk enough details about his partner and his children. So that is the extent to which the United States is stooping on this count. And they're trying to muddy the waters by defining what constitutes a valid suicide threat. They're saying that there's not enough expert opinion that has been taken into account. And all this really at one level is insanely shocking because what we have is a journalist who is being prosecuted, a journalist who has been for over a decade, continuously in incarceration for revealing facts about war crimes and atrocities. And that is his original sin, so to speak. And today we are having all these discussions about the failure of the United States. The Western media has, every newspaper has a columnist talking about this, the past, the present. But the person who, one of the people who first talked about it, there is an outright attempt to bring him to the United States, give him, prosecute him. He could spend close to one, the punishment could be 175 years. And there is actually very little connection being drawn between the two. The fact that Assange is that this process is going on with respect to Assange and that he was the person who actually brought out a lot of these details. So the hearing will of course be heard, it will happen in October. And the US is going to appeal this judgment on various counts. They're very determined, they want to bring him back to the country and face prosecution. And I think the coming months are going to be very important for those defending pre-speech, those defending history for that matter, because what the US would like by targeting Assange is to basically make sure that there are no more Assanges, there are no more people who tell the truth. There are no more people who come out with uncomfortable and inconvenient details. So I think it's a very essential battle for all those who are fighting for pre-speech, of course, but also history. You know, if you criticize the CIA, you are therefore criminal. It's not just Julian Assange moving to Peru. A man critical of the CIA is given a senior post. By the way, an author of superb books, I learned a great deal from Hector Behar. He's an amazing character, very critical of the CIA. But that apparently is enough to not disqualify you from a government post. Zoe, what happened in Peru? Sorry, so as we spoke a couple of weeks ago about these really important appointments of ministers in Peru and the new government, Hector Behar was someone that we highlighted. A long time leftist in Peru who has been fighting within Peru, across the continent of Latin America and the region of Caribbean for an alternate path for Latin America. And he was assigned the Minister of Foreign Affairs. And since those appointments, there has been just constant attacks, just broadly in the sense of saying that all of the appointees of the Peru-Libre cabinet are under experience, that they, you know, how could they lead the government? Who are these people? What right do they have? You know, but specifically in the case of Hector Behar, he came under very, very sharp attack from sectors of the right within Peru, specifically the popular force party, which was of course the opposition to Peru-Libre in the last elections. And this was because Hector Behar, in a press conference in November 2020, highlighted that the Peruvian Navy had collaborated with the CIA in carrying out terrorist attacks and involved the detonating of two Cuban fishing boats. And basically these declarations, which he said that the CIA worked alongside the Navy to divide the Peruvian left, he also alludes to the shining path and what role that had in the history of the left in Peru. And he had faced constant attacks from the right wing. And it got to the point where the popular force party said they were going to have a motion of censorship in the session of parliament, that they were going to block his appointment. And essentially the prime minister in Peru, Guido Beigo, just asked Hector Behar to step down and to not present himself as the minister of foreign relations. And this is seen as an enormous blow, I think, of the Peru-Libre party and the government that's being formed right now because as we've talked about on this show, there are going to be very, very strong attacks from the sectors of Fujimoriismo, which is of course the legacy of Alberto Fujimori, the former dictator in Peru and the far-right in Peru, which has for decades enjoyed impunity, has enjoyed the access, the coffers of the state to be able to carry, just rob the money of the Peruvian people. And so Hector Behar, as the foreign minister, was also not only part of this government that wants to attack the local interests, but also international interests. And so he had spoken about Peru leaving the Lima group, the popular force party also hid back at that very hard. They don't want Peru to be part of the continental project that is represented by Venezuela, by Cuba. And so for these comments, Hector Behar was taken, essentially removed and forced to step down from being part of this government. It's a very curious thing that the disqualification rules include criticism of the CIA as a red line. It's news to me, frankly. Not news to me that elections are a tough business. Certainly something that one has experienced in India, one has experienced around the world. It's not news at all. Very tough business. You're listening to give the people what they want brought to you from People's Dispatch. Zoe Prashant and me, Vijay from Globetrotter. Elections are a tough business. You get reports of People's Dispatch on the elections. There's been an election recently in Zambia. Prashant, what's the story from that election? Vijay, yeah, very important election in Zambia. How can the Hilema becomes the president after the election that took place on August 12th? He's contested multiple times and it's after a very long time that he's after many, many efforts that he has become the president. So there's been quite a lot of celebration from his supporters, of course. The end of the reign of Edgar Lungu, who is president since 2015. His rule has been definitely marked by quite a bit of repression. For instance, internet services were cut in Zambia on the day of the election. There's been a lot of use of colonial rules against those who have expressed their views, who have been critical of the government. A lot of whole violence as well. What lies ahead for Zambia is a very difficult question because Hilema is also as committed to the same IMF run neoliberal policy that Edgar Lungu was. He's indicated that one of his first priorities will be to basically try to get a loan from the IMF, which is especially important because Zambia was the first African country to default during the pandemic. They have absurdly high rates of public debt. I think the ratio is about 115% to the GDP. And of course this connects to some of the earlier discussions we've had on why debts are not being waived at this time. But nonetheless, it doesn't look like Hilema's policy trajectory is going to be very different. So whether the Zambians are going to see a huge change is actually a very important question. The interesting thing in this election, like we have been consistently covering, has been the entry of a new party. That is the Socialist Party of Zambia. It's candidate Fred Bemember came fifth. But I think from the coverage in the reports you have received on the ground in Zambia, what we have seen is that this party really bought a lot of new aspects to electioneering itself. It was one party which was really centered on campaigning around the rich poor divide. It was one party which had a very different economic perspective and the rich poor divide is very important because it encouraged people to go out. Their slogan was vote for yourselves because they were like all these years you had people from outside, from the city's urban centers coming in, becoming your representatives. This is a time to change that. They had a very different perspective on the economy, especially of the development of the copper belt region where minerals are, say, really called, minerals are very abundant. Most importantly, they had a huge number of young people and especially young women's candidates. Very, very interesting, the kind of, we had a lot of posts in recent times on their Facebook page for many of these candidates, how the election campaign has transformed their perspective, their lives. So it's a great thing when young people, especially young women, are going to be active in the political scenario. And I think that was one of the great achievements of the Socialist Party. Fred's speech, after he lost the election, I get a master class because he specifically talks about how the constitution, the mandate has to be respected. Very warm wishes of congratulations to the winners. Very different from Lungu who immediately claimed that the election had been rigged. He was in power, but he was like the election has been rigged. So whereas Fred's message was, you know, warm, there was a sense of how the most important thing is to continue the struggle. The most important thing is to stick to the constitution and how it's not only a five year thing that politics and social service, working for society is not just something you do once in five years. It's something that is enduring. So I think all in all, it would be very interesting to see the trajectory of the Socialist Party, all these young people who have come into politics who have, you know, been the voice of the people. Many of them I'm sure will go on to very interesting achievements in later years as well. So definitely the elections are over, but we at People's Dispatch will be keeping our eyes on Zambia because both for the politics, the economics and the role the country plays in the continent as a whole. Elections are a tough business. Fred Mbembe concedes with a great deal of dignity and so on. In Bolivia, we earlier saw an election which overturned a cool regime, pretty powerful statement made by the people of Bolivia. Now there are retrospective investigations of the horrible nature of that cool regime. Zoe, bring us up to speed on that. For sure. Well, as you know, we've spoken about on this show, of course, in November 2019, there was a, you know, violent coup in Bolivia which removed Eva Morales as president. And leading up to his coup and then of course, following his coup, there were mass protests across Bolivia, not only in the capital, but really all across the country. You know, people who had participated in the electoral process and saw that, you know, their, their democratic participation, their, you know, their democratic right was violated. And people who, you know, not only supported the mass party, but saw that, you know, there was this grave violation of their fundamental rights. And, you know, these mass protests, which saw, you know, participation of students, of peasant organizations, of indigenous organizations, trade unions, you know, all sectors of life in Bolivia were met with very, very high levels of repression. And so, you know, this, you know, we saw, we saw images of, you know, the Bolivian army open fire against the people on the street in two of these instances in Sacaba, which is in Cochabamba. And in Sencata, which is in El Alto, which is a city next to the capital, there were massacres that took place where, you know, the army open fired and, you know, killed dozens of people. The total amount of people killed during, you know, the violent repression of these protests was 37. And so, you know, we see this in a lot of countries. We've seen this, you know, of course, the past couple of months in Colombia, we see this in Chile. We see a lot of instances of, you know, governments repressing their people who are demanding freedom, who are demanding that their rights be respected. And oftentimes, you know, there are human rights investigations done, you know, organizations are counting how many people are impacted and it stays there. It stays in recommendations and it stays in this happened. It was, you know, we lamented a lot, but this is what happened. In Bolivia, we've seen something different. So, you know, what happened this Tuesday is that a report was launched from the group of independent experts, which was, you know, essentially assembled through an agreement between the government and the international, in the Inter-American Human Rights Committee, which is, of course, a body of the Organization of American States, which is interesting because, you know, of course, they were, you know, the organization that kind of gave way for the coup to happen, gave the data for them to say this was a stolen election. But essentially this, and this group that was formed was not even able to start their work of investigation of interviewing victims of interviewing family members, interviewing the organizations that were on the ground participating in these protests because the coup regime of Jeninanias, you know, said, we don't really want this investigation to happen and that was blocked. And the group started these investigations a week after Luis Arte and Dovi Chokwanka took office in Bolivia and, you know, they did extensive investigation and, you know, found that, for example, what happened in Senkata and Sakao were massacres and that, you know, the army and the police used unrestrained violence against protesters, but also, you know, parallel to these investigations taking place. And I think they're very important, but the government of Bolivia has been, you know, prosecuting members of the army, members of the police. And of course, you know, Jeninanias and Arturo Murillo, who are, of course, sitting on the top of this government, has taken legal action against them. We've also seen the investigations in Ecuador, in Argentina about these governments even being complicit with the actions of the coup regime. So I think it's really important to point to these advances. You know, their support is very important because it gives, you know, the institutional recognition to what Bolivians have been saying for the past couple of years, but that they're actually taking action. The government of Bolivia is also saying that it will give reparations to these victims. And this is what happens when there's a government that's committed to justice and committed to truth. You know, let's keep following this story because issues of looking back, history and so on, very important for Bolivia. But imagine if somebody had to do this for Afghanistan. If they had to go back and look and we know that a special prosecutor, Fadi Ben Souda, at the International Criminal Court has an open file on war crimes in Afghanistan. I doubt very much that will proceed further. Now, little known, very, very mysterious developments. If this was happening to any other country, it would be front page news. In the last two and a half years, 20 Iranian oil tankers have been sabotaged on the road between Iran to Syria. 20 Iranian oil tankers to the cost of at least half a million dollars of damage, if not more. These tankers aren't sunk. They are sabotaged. This is a message sent both to Iran and to Syria. Herat's newspaper on the margins, not on the front page, seems to indicate that the likely perpetrator is the Israeli government. Maybe others. We don't know. Striking. If this had happened to ships carrying any other flag, there would be outcry. Meanwhile, and who knows what this is all about? Meanwhile, on the 29th of July in the Gulf of Oman, the MV Mercer Street, pay attention, friends. This is interesting. The MV Mercer Street carries a Liberian flag. It's owned by a Japanese company. It's managed by a London based company called Zodiac Maritime, which is owned by Al Offer, a big Israeli shipping family, the Offer family. This is the ship, the MV Mercer Street, going from Dar es Salaam Tanzania to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. Striking through the Gulf of Oman, it has a Romanian captain, a British security officer. They see a drone nearby, a strike on their ship. The second strike kills both the Romanian captain and the British chief security officer. Even the hue and cry, not on the front page of the reports. Anthony Blinken, we're confident that Iran conducted this attack. UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab, highly likely that Iran carried it out. And then what do we have here from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett? Iran knows the price that we exact when someone threatens our security. Our security is a Liberian tanker. Our security, not sure what's going on, friends, very little coverage of all of this stuff. But these are the provocations that lead to further escalation into conflict. 20 Iranian vessels sabotaged as they took oil from Iran to Syria. This is over the past two and a half years. Now, 29 July, one ship mysteriously struck by a drone. Nobody has claimed responsibility. The Iranians who are in the middle of serious negotiations in Vienna and have a new president say that they did not do this. Dangerous times in the waters, not only in the Gulf of Oman, where the Americans have started talking about freedom of navigation. Once again, freedom of navigation. This is the term of art used by US and European warships off the coast of China. Pay attention to these things. You're not going to read them on the front page of many newspapers, but you will get these stories at Globetrotter. You will get these stories at People's Dispatch. You've been listening to give the people what they want. We come to you every Friday, half an hour, high quality, credible, believable news about the world from the perspective of our movements. We come to you, we being Zoe Prashant and I, Vijay from People's Dispatch Globetrotter. See you next week. Thanks a lot.