The Secret Houthi-U.S. Deal That Could Push Saudi Arabia Back to Beijing

By Simon Watkins - Sep 21, 2026

• The Houthis could further escalate Red Sea disruptions.
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• Washington has reportedly opened direct talks with the Houthis while declining Saudi requests for military intervention, potentially complicating Riyadh’s security relationship with the United States.
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• Growing Chinese influence around the Red Sea and Indian Ocean could ultimately encourage Riyadh to deepen its ties with Beijing.

Back at the start of the U.S.’s ‘Operation Epic Fury’, OilPrice.com predicted three courses of action that Iran would take as it moved through the conflict escalation gears. First, most obviously, although apparently not to President Donald Trump’s team, was to close the Strait of Hormuz to cause oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and refined products prices to soar -- check. Second, was to launch attacks on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure via the Tehran-backed Yemeni Houthis to further inflate energy prices and undermine the idea that U.S. allies in the Middle East could rely on Washington to protect them from Iran -- check. Third, was the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the other critical regional transit route for the world’s oil, LNG and refined products, to ramp up both the higher energy price- and regional insecurity-pressure still further. This last element has not yet been fully activated, but it is not far off. So, where do Iran and its Houthi protagonists go from here?

Within the next few days, the Houthis are likely to ‘officially’ close off the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to all ‘enemy’ shipping rather than to just the Saudis, as has been the case, a very senior energy source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com over the weekend. “That will mean Iran effectively holds hostage up to 42% of the world’s crude oil flows [the Strait of Hormuz roughly 30% of oil, and Bab el-Mandeb about 12%] historically flowed on a historical basis and up to 30% of its LNG flows [Strait of Hormuz roughly 20% and Bab el-Mandeb around 10%], and the figures for refined products are at least as disturbing,” he said. Indeed, before the current blockades, the Strait of Hormuz accounted for up to 5.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of fully refined petroleum products including diesel, jet fuel, and petrochemical feedstocks like naphtha that were already cracked at Middle Eastern mega-refineries before entering maritime transit lanes. Meanwhile, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait -- the key gateway into southern Europe from the Gulf of Aden through the Red Sea and then Suez Canal -- handled up to 2.6 million bpd. “The soaring prices of many of these refined products -- notably diesel and jet fuel -- are possibly even more serious than for oil and LNG because Europe shut down many of its own ageing refineries over the years, so it relies on importing pre-cracked, finished diesel and jet fuel directly coming from the Middle East through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” he added. The recent seizures by the Houthis of several key islands in the Red Sea -- including the centrally-positioned Perim Island in the mouth of the Strait between Yemen and Djibouti -- give the group and Iran far greater leverage over the Red Sea/Suez Canal transit route than they had before. In fact, International Monetary Fund (IMF) PortWatch data shows that overall shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has dropped nearly 90% below normal averages, even without the Houthis declaring a general blockade on it. “Using the Houthis on the Bab el-Mandeb has been a clever move from Tehran because it stretches already-stretched U.S. forces, and leaves Washington’s previous assurances that it would look after its allies in the region looking like hot air,” he highlighted.

Staggeringly for many observers -- not least, the Saudis -- came recent news that not only had the U.S. directly refused to help the country militarily against the latest Houthi, and by extension Iranian, threats but also that Washington was in direct contact with the Houthi leaders. Confirmed by OilPrice.com through Iranian and Washington sources with close knowledge of the matter, just over a week ago Trump refused to authorise direct U.S. air strikes to halt the Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast when asked to do so by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in two separate telephone calls on 10 September. This was the day the Houthis completed their capture of the strategic port city of Mokha and were pushing quickly across several Red Coast targets. Trump instead sent CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper to Riyadh for emergency intelligence-sharing coordination and has still not authorised any military assistance for the Saudis. Given Trump’s legendary long memory when it comes to grudges, perhaps the refusal was partly because MbS had persistently refused to take the telephone calls from former U.S. President Joe Biden in March 2022, when Washington desperately needed help from the Saudis to help bring spiralling oil prices down after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as analysed in full in my latest book. Perhaps it was due to ‘assurances’ from the Houthis that they would not attack U.S. vessels in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Such assurances were reiterated during the direct U.S.–Houthi negotiations that took place at the U.S. Embassy in Muscat, Oman, mediated by the Omani government, over the weekend of 12–13 September 2026, with the specific face-to-face session occurring on 13 September. “Up until then, the Saudis still thought the U.S. had its back,” a senior source who works closely with the European Union’s (E.U.) security complex exclusively told OilPrice.com last week. “After that, it [Saudi Arabia] knows it’s on its own now,” he added.

Widening the current military campaign against Saudi Arabia is certainly another of the next steps the Houthis will take, if it gets the chance, according to the Iranian source. This may come sooner rather than later, given Saudi plans -- discussed again over the weekend -- to form a standalone 14-country task force called the Multinational Maritime Defense Coalition (MMDC), which will also include elements of the recently formed Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (MJDA) framework analysed by OilPrice.com. The MMDC comprises MJDA countries (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey), Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Yemen (the anti-Houthi Presidential Leadership Council), Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. The inclusion here of Djibouti may not be helpful to the Saudis because -- as also examined in my latest book on the new global oil market order -- Iran’s main superpower backer, China, has a vice-like grip over the country due to predatory loans connected to its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ multi-generational power-grab project. In fact, following Chinese investment of around US$14 billion in the country (totalling over 70% of Djibouti’s debt, and making it the country’s biggest debtor), Beijing in 2017 created its first overseas military base there. Given that Chinese vessels remain largely unaffected on the orders of Iran from the current blockades on the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it appears that Djibouti’s involvement in the MMDC will just be part of a balancing act geared toward protecting Chinese economic self-interest, rather than a genuine geopolitical desire to undermine Iran’s strategic goals. Consequently, anything China does in this ‘alliance’ is likely to be confined to quietly pressuring Tehran to tell the Houthis to keep the disruptions selective.

Worse still for Saudi Arabia’s plans to quell the Houthis threat is that Beijing’s highly integrated BRI-related economic and logistics corridor runs all the way from the Horn of Africa to the wider western Indian Ocean, and into another of Riyadh’s ‘partners’ in the MJDA -- Pakistan. Djibouti is not just home to a massive Chinese military base but also acts as the maritime centre for Ethiopia, with Beijing owning the US$4 billion Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway essential for Ethiopia’s exports. To the south of Ethiopia is Kenya, which China has established as its primary commercial maritime gateway into the African continent through the building of the Mombasa Port Expansion project and the Lamu Deep-Water Port.  And northeast of Djibouti across the Arabian Sea is the crown jewel in China’s maritime choke point strategy -- Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. As thoroughly detailed in my latest book, Gwadar is directly tied to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, officially a commercial deep-water port operated by China Overseas Ports Holding Company, but it is heavily constructed to act as a dual-use facility capable of resupplying, repairing, and docking the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s capital ships. Moreover, in each of these areas there is also ample opportunity for the Houthis to hook up with fellow like-minded Islamic extremist terrorists too, thus creating a force multiplier effect across the region. Aside from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan operating widely across that country, Al-Qaeda-affiliated extremist group Al-Shabaab is based in Somalia with a very broad reach into Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan. Looking at all of these factors, and given the strong relationship that had built up between Saudi Arabia and China in the years following the end of the 2014-2016 Oil Price War, it may well be that the key victory for the Houthis to come will be a switch back in Riyadh’s primary geopolitical alliance to China, and away from the U.S

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

As the far-right in Germany aims to take power, churches are fighting back

BURG near Magdeburg, Germany (RNS) — The AfD may gain power on Sept. 6 in Saxony-Anhalt, posing a direct threat to refugees and the German churches that serve them. Inspired by past resistance in East Germany, faith leaders are doing everything they can to stand in the way of the far-right group.

The Rev. Ulrike Bischoff, left, pastor of St. Petri Kirche in Burg near Magdeburg, and Zholia Parsi, a women's rights activist from Afghanistan who has been living at St. Petri as part of the church's asylum program, video chat with Parsi's family on August 26, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

Liam Adams
September 3, 2026

RNS


BURG near Magdeburg, Germany (RNS) — Zholia Parsi bounced on a blue-and-white Noxon mountain bike as she rode laps around the fieldstone sanctuary of St. Petri Kirche, speaking to family on the phone and laughing.

Parsi, who led a women’s rights movement in Afghanistan and fled after imprisonment and death threats from the Taliban, is known internationally for her work on human rights. But in her past three months living at St. Petri as part of its church asylum program, she’s careful not to venture beyond the cement wall that encloses the congregation’s chapel and parish house.

But the bike, which she’d never ridden before coming to St. Petri, is enough freedom for now.

“Believe me, learning was not easy. I fell many times,” Parsi said in an interview, using a translation app on her phone.

She rolled up her corduroy pant leg to reveal a scar on her shin as proof of her practice. “Now, whenever I get on my bicycle … I forget all my sadness and worries. Cycling is not just a hobby for me.”

Under the leadership of the Rev. Ulrike Bischoff, pastor of St. Petri since 2023, the church dedicated the parish house to church asylum. As many as 20 people stay there every year, Bischoff said.

She tells the refugees that beyond the church’s campus, they risk run-ins with law enforcement and might be detained. Refugees in church asylum have suffered a particular hardship and are waiting for immigration officials to review their cases more carefully. The outcome of that review determines whether the person is eligible to work and rent an apartment elsewhere, allowing them to leave church asylum.

The day before RNS visited, a family of five who are also refugees from Afghanistan had moved in.

A campaign sign for Ulrich Siegmund, lead candidate for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in Saxony-Anhalt, near Magdeburg, August 11, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

The Rev. Ulrike Bischoff in her office at St. Petri Kirche in Burg near Magdeburg, Germany, on August 26, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

But on Sunday, this could all change if the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has its way. The AfD could gain power in state elections for Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6, which would be the first time a right-wing party in Germany has done that since World War II.

If that happens, the AfD has vowed to send police into churches to detain refugees and initiate deportation proceedings.

“We are an open sport right now,” Bischoff said.
RELATED: As Germany’s far right builds ties with US conservatives, churches push back

The proposed attack on church asylum is one part of the AfD’s larger plan to oust refugees from Saxony-Anhalt. But it’s also a blow to churches, which criticize the AfD as antithetical to their Christian values.

Amid this conflict, the AfD wants to strip funding from “state churches” — Catholics and a Protestant, or Lutheran, body known as the Evangelische Kirche — that they claim are too liberal and have veered from their core mission.

Clergy participate in a panel about the upcoming elections in Saxony-Anhalt during the “Festival of Hope” in Dessau Market Square, August 30, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

But the churches are fighting back, and fiercer than ever. Local clergy have arranged counterdemonstrations, hosted town halls on defending democracy and, in at least one instance, run for office with the main purpose of unseating a powerful AfD politician in the state parliament.

The Catholic Diocese of Magdeburg, which is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, and the regional Evangelische Kirche in Mitteldeutschland, or the regional Protestant authority, each coordinated public awareness campaigns, with banners, podcasts and video interviews, and participation in anti-AfD rallies and festivals.

One of those festivals was a week before an election in Dessau on Aug. 30.

Norbert Weiß, left, a volunteer with the Catholic Diocese of Magdeburg, talks to patrons about upcoming elections in Saxony-Anhalt as part of the Magdeburg diocese's “Vote Consciously” campaign during the “Festival of Hope” in Dessau Market Square, August 30, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

Udo Israel, rear left, and Frieder Weigmann help kids stack a “democracy Jenga tower” at the “Festival of Hope” in Dessau Market Square, August 30, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

As thousands of parishioners and clergy enjoyed bratwursts, musical acts and panels with top church leaders addressed the election. As this mostly older crowd listened or danced, kids climbed a rock wall, took selfies with a famous influencer who briefly showed up and stacked a “democracy Jenga tower.”

Klemens Schubert said the tower, imprinted with phrases like “solidarity and human rights,” is a fitting metaphor, whether it stands or falls.

Bishop Friedrich Kramer, the top administrative leader for the Protestant church in most of Saxony-Anhalt, said all this activity is unprecedented for churches, but it wasn’t their choice.

“The churches are not the motor of escalation. In this case, it’s the AfD,” he said in an interview, which a colleague translated from German. “We have to say something against them, and we have to defend the people or the groups that are affected by the AfD.”

The person within the AfD who’s most responsible for the proposals and messaging that’s stirring this outcry among churches is Hans-Thomas Tillschneider.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, third from right, a top politician within the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, participates in a “Christians ask politicians” candidate forum on August 17, 2026, in Magdeburg, Germany. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

Tillschneider, deputy state chairman for the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, walked with determination through the state parliament building in Magdeburg, his footsteps reverberating through the halls.

He’s balding but sports a scruffy beard and thick-rimmed glasses, which Tillschneider removed to pause and think of an answer to a question about whether the AfD serves only white, Christian Germans.

“We make politics in the interest of our citizens, and our citizens are mostly German. Whiteness, I am not interested in this race question. And if there’s a Black German voting for AfD, no problem” Tillschneider said. “Muslims of course can practice their religion. But this doesn’t alter the fact that Germany is a Christian country. Hundreds and hundreds of years of German history is influenced deeply by Christianity.”

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies this AfD state branch as a confirmed “right-wing extremist” organization.

Known within and beyond Saxony-Anhalt for his inflammatory comments about LGBTQ+ people and immigrants, Tillschneider was the key figure behind an election manifesto that drew international attention for controversial policy proposals.


Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, deputy state chairman for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in Saxony-Anhalt, at his office on August 17, 2026. Tillschneider has been a top strategist behind the party’s most controversial police proposals in advance of upcoming elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

One proposal that drew attention was a tax incentive for families to have more children. Another is ending inclusive classroom programs for for children with disabilities and restricting some immigrant children to continue attending class.

Tillschneider was in the middle of a firestorm the week before the election after a media interview aired that showed a mug he owns with the insignia of the Russian army ­— a reminder of his controversial visit with others in the AfD to the Russian-occupied Donbas region in Ukraine in 2022.

When he spoke to RNS, he showed off a different mug: It was bright red and emblazoned, “Donald Trump 45-47 USA President.”

Tillschneider has also led the charge on proposals that aim to weaken the Catholic and Protestant churches, which would strip them of two public funding sources and even redirect some of that income to so-called free churches.

This is partly motivated by Tillschneider’s ongoing conversion to Orthodoxy, inspired by a visit last year to a monastery that infuses German language and cultural customs with Greek Orthodox liturgy.

“In the church, prayer should do no more than this. Not talking about parties, not talking about political tendencies, not talking about political agenda,” Tillschneider said. “Only praying for our country.”

The state of Saxony-Anhalt, red, in Germany. (RNS graphic/Kit Doyle/Datawrapper)

Saxony-Anhalt is home to the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation. Ironically, it’s now one of the most irreligious parts of an already secularized country. This is because it was one of five states that comprised the former German Democratic Republic, which was part of the Soviet bloc and functionally atheist. Today only about 10% of the total population identifies as Protestant and just 3% as Catholic.

Conflict between churches and the AfD has been growing since 2017, when the Catholic and Protestant churches barred AfD politicians from speaking at the largest Christian gatherings in Germany.

Then, the German Catholic Bishop’s Conference denounced the far-right party in 2024. That same year, the Protestant church demoted a pastor in Saxony-Anhalt who ran for city council as an AfD candidate.

In August, a nursing home operated by the Protestant church’s social welfare agency fired an employee who is running for city council as an AfD candidate.

The Rev. Kate Harris Weishaupt, pastor of EmK-Gemeinde Halle, a United Methodist Church in Halle, a city in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, on August 30, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

“I’m really proud the church is taking a stand and, for example, not allowing people to continue in workplaces if they run for the AfD,” said the Rev. Kate Harris Weishaupt, an American pastor who has lived in Germany since 2015. “I’m hoping we can prevent it before it gets too far.”

This past June, a regional United Methodist Church assembly declared it was “incompatible” to be associated with the AfD and part of the UMC in Germany, based on a paper from Harris Weishaupt, who leads a United Methodist congregation in Halle, a city in Saxony-Anhalt.

Pastors in more rural parts of the state are resisting as well.

The medieval city of Salzwedel, pictured on August 25, 2026, is located in the heart of a region in northern Saxony-Anhalt that is geographically isolated from major economic hubs in Germany. It was once the heart of commerce in Prussia. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

In Salzwedel in northern Saxony-Anhalt, the red-brick Marienkirche towers over a medieval village with hidden courtyards and buildings that slouch and slump under the pressure of sinking foundations.

The region, known as the Altmark, was the center of commerce in Prussia centuries ago, and its share of church buildings per capita reportedly outnumbers other parts of the country. But today, its job market and churchgoing culture struggle.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere, and the people have it in their minds they are forgotten by everyone,” said the Rev. Alexander Tiedemann, pastor of Marienkirche.

The Rev. Alexander Tiedemann, pastor of Marienkirche in Salzwedel, a city in northern Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, on August 25, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

Tiedemann said he’s trying to follow the example of his father and grandfather, who were Protestant pastors in the German Democratic Republic when churches were being repressed. He has sought to embody the tradition of preachers finding clever ways to resist from the pulpit using “parables,” rather than outright denunciations.

The so-called Peaceful Revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall began with protests in 1989 that sprang from churches where demonstrators gathered for Monday morning prayer meetings. That history is on the minds of many faith leaders in their recent advocacy against the AfD.

“Especially when I look at a historic place like this, there are so many difficult times the church went through,” Tiedemann said. “The message nevertheless found a way.”

Marienkirche, a Protestant congregation in Salzwedel, a city in northern Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, on August 25, 2026. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

The medieval city of Salzwedel, pictured on August 25, 2026, is located in the heart of a region in northern Saxony-Anhalt that is geographically isolated from major economic hubs in Germany.(RNS photo/Liam Adams)

Back in Burg near Magdeburg, Bischoff confronted the current heated political climate when vandals spray-painted a pro-Nazi reference and other divisive phrases on the wall surrounding St. Petri. In response, she organized a party to repaint the wall and focus on “election empowerment,” she said.

Now, the façade is more uplifting, but the refugees inside still struggle as the election nears. Parsi had expected an update on her asylum case by early August, but she was still waiting in church asylum just a few days before the election.

“I don’t know what is going to happen with my case, and the upcoming elections in Sachsen-Anhalt make me even more anxious,” she said in a message. “I just want to know what my future will be and whether I can stay safe.”

Zholia Parsi looks out the window of the St. Petri parish house on August 26, 2026, in Burg near Magdeburg, Germany. (RNS photo/Liam Adams)

 

 A refugee aid group in Germany welcomes atheists shunned by Muslim governments

Liam Adams is a journalist from Nashville, Tennessee, and is currently based in Berlin, Germany, as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship 2026 class.

REST IN POWER

Emma Bonino dies at 78 after decades of political and human rights activism

Copyright AP Photo

By Stefania De Michele & Euronews

Published on 11/09/2026 

From the fight for abortion and women's rights to her commitment to Europe and human rights: Emma Bonino's political journey.

Emma Bonino has died aged 78.

The founder of More Europe, a longtime leading figure in Italy's Radical Party and former government minister, passed away after her health deteriorated in recent weeks.

Bonino had recently been admitted to the Santo Spirito hospital in Rome after a respiratory crisis. She arrived in critical condition and was transferred to intensive care so that her condition could be monitored. After an initial improvement, on 10 September, she left the ward and was moved to a private facility.

In 2015, Bonino revealed she had a tumour in her left lung. She underwent treatment for years while remaining active in politics. In 2023, she announced that she had overcome the disease.

In the following years, however, new health problems emerged. In autumn 2024, she was admitted to hospital in Rome for respiratory issues and, in November 2025, she suffered another serious episode that required admission to intensive care. On that occasion, doctors ruled out a recurrence of the cancer, instead identifying a metabolic problem.

A life devoted to Radical Party causes

For more than half a century, Bonino was one of the most recognisable figures in Italian radical politics. From abortion to contraception, from the liberalisation of drugs to the fight against the death penalty, she became closely associated with many of the country's major civil rights campaigns.

Born in Bra, in the province of Cuneo in 1948, she joined the Radical Party as a young woman and in 1976 was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Even before entering Parliament, in 1975 she had founded the Information Centre on Sterilisation and Abortion (CISA), working to make safe and accessible abortion available in Italy.

Her activism also involved putting herself directly on the line. She deliberately risked arrest to draw attention to the dangerous conditions faced by women who sought illegal abortions. Such campaigns helped make Bonino a leading figure in Italy's feminist and radical movements.

From Italy to Europe

She entered the European Parliament in 1979. From Brussels, she focused in particular on human rights in Eastern Europe and opposition to authoritarian regimes.

In the late 1980s, she supported the Solidarność movement in Poland and was arrested and expelled from the country. In the years that followed, she was also arrested in New York during a campaign for the distribution of sterile syringes, and in Afghanistan, where she was detained by the Taliban after photographing women.

At the same time, her work broadened to major international issues: war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the fight against the death penalty and the construction of an international criminal justice system. She was also among the supporters of the creation of an International Criminal Court.

From 1994 to 1999, Bonino served as a European Commissioner, with responsibility for humanitarian aid, fisheries and consumer policy. During those years, she followed the crisis in the Balkans closely and spoke out about the responsibilities for, and consequences of, the violence in Bosnia.

Her support for Western military intervention in the Balkans was one of the most controversial choices of her career and brought her into conflict with part of the peace movement.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, she continued to work on women's rights, supporting campaigns against female genital mutilation and for the protection of women in Afghanistan while also working for the recognition of the rights of African women.

Minister and key player in Italian politics

Bonino returned to Italy's government in 2006 as minister for International Trade and European Affairs in Romano Prodi's second government. In 2013, she was foreign minister in the government led by Enrico Letta.

Over the course of her career, she was elected seven times to the Chamber of Deputies and twice to the Senate. Her parliamentary experience spanned different political camps, although her political path remained above all linked to the radical, liberal and pro-European area.

In 2017, she was among the driving forces behind the creation of More Europe, a liberal and pro-European political movement that became a party in 2019. Even in her later years, she remained an active voice in public debate on civil rights, Europe, and international affairs.

A radical voice spanning five decades

With her death, Italy loses one of the most influential political figures during the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the 21st.

Alongside Marco Pannella, with whom she shared decades of Radical Party campaigns, Bonino brought issues into the streets and political institutions that, when she first championed them, were often still on the fringes of public debate.

Over time, she became an enduring part of Italian political history: combative, divisive for some, but hard to ignore.

From the battles over abortion to the death penalty, from Afghanistan to the Balkans, through to her pro-European commitment, Bonino built a political career around a conviction that never changed: rights are only truly rights if they can be defended even when doing so is uncomfortable.

GENDER APARTHEID

Plight Of Afghans Going ‘From Bad To Worse’


A family collects water from a river in a village in Kunar province, Afghanistan.

 Photo Credit: UNICEF/Muzamel Azizi

September 10, 2026
By UN News


Key Takeaways:

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk says life in Afghanistan has worsened since the Taliban returned in 2021, with poverty rising and daily rights abuses while global attention fades.

Restrictions hit education, work, movement, and public life; the UN cites arrests over dress, beards, and music, plus media crackdowns, punishment of former opponents and minorities, and at least 449 corporal punishments in the first half of the year.

Women face what Türk called “gender apartheid,” including more than two million barred from secondary and higher education and exclusion from UN premises; more than 400,000 Afghans have been forcibly returned as humanitarian need remains huge and aid shrinks.

Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the plight of Afghans has only deteriorated, with millions impoverished while authorities violate basic human rights daily.

“Today, the plight of many in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse,” stressed the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk.

“Yet, it seems the world has forgotten and abandoned the people of Afghanistan to a plight deepening by the day,” he told journalists in Geneva. “The silence is deafening.”

Scaling up the oppression

Mr. Türk deplored the ongoing restrictions cutting severely into education, employment, freedom of movement, and access to public life.

Notably, both women and men are being arrested by the Taliban’s Office for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, primarily for alleged violations of strict dress codes, beard length, and the playing of, or listening to, music.

Human rights violations against former adversaries of the Taliban during the long war that followed the allied invasion of 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks on the US and restrictions against religious minorities – including Shi’a and Ismaili communities – continue to be documented.

Censorship of the media, temporary closures of media outlets and arrests of journalists also continue.

At least 449 men and women were subjected to corporal punishment by the de facto authorities in the first half of the year, according to the UN.

‘Gender apartheid’

Women, in particular, are facing the brunt of the Taliban rule.

Since 2021, over two million Afghan girls and women have been denied access to secondary and higher education.

Fresh decrees issued by the de facto authorities this year also make it more difficult for a woman to separate from a spouse and implicitly authorise child marriage and violence against women and children.

Women are also being excluded from politics. Mr. Türk condemned the “absolute absence of women in any public decision-making fora.”

A year ago, Taliban leaders restricted Afghan women – including UN staff, contractors and visitors – from entering the United Nations’ own premises across the country.

“Such restrictions imposed on women and girls – which amount to gender apartheid – have no place in any society,” the OHCHR chief underscored.
Forced return

At the same time, Afghans who had fled to neighbouring countries are facing growing hostility from their hosts abroad while forced returns continue.

According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) more than 400,000 Afghans have been forcibly returned, mainly from Iran and Pakistan, but also from Türkiye, Tajikistan, and EU Member States.

“Many are forced to enter a country where they have never even stepped foot, and where they will face deep poverty, and inadequate food, clean water, and access to healthcare, education and employment,” Mr. Türk said.


He pointed to the estimated 21.9 million people, or about 45 per cent of the population, who require humanitarian aid, while foreign aid inflows are “[trickling] dry”.

“I implore all States to reconsider their actions, and to put the lives of the suffering population first,” he stressed.

25 Years of War Was the Exact Wrong Response to 9/11

Stop throwing money at a broken, destructive war machine. Stop threatening and blockading our neighbors. Close overseas bases and bring our troops home. Tax the wealthy and start rebuilding our country.


Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers walk toward reporters after conferring together at the President’s ranch August 23, 2004 in Crawford Texas.

(Photo by Duane A. Laverty-Pool/Getty Images)



Medea Benjamin

Nicolas J.S. Davies
Sep 09, 2026

Common Dreams

The lesson of 9/11 should be that war is not the answer to any of the problems facing the United States. After inflicting violence and chaos on country after country for twenty-five years in a “global war on terror” that has evolved into a Zionist genocide and a revived Cold War against Russia and China, the widespread public opposition to Trump’s war on Iran suggests that most Americans have finally learned that lesson.

Unfortunately, powerful sections of our corrupt business and political elites have not.

Most Americans old enough to remember September 11, 2001, can still recall the horrifying images played endlessly on our TV screens as the scale of the mass murder became clear. But we also remember something else: the sinking feeling that the hopes and dreams of billions of people, in the US and around the world, would be pushed to the back-burner for the foreseeable future, as our leaders and corporate media all too predictably embraced a new agenda of revenge, fear-mongering, jingoism and military violence.

As Rumsfeld made clear to his subordinates from the outset, the 9/11 crisis provided an open-ended pretext for endless wars against enemies who had nothing to do with the attacks...

We found out later that only hours after the attacks—less than six hours after the first plane struck the World Trade Center and barely five hours after the Pentagon was hit—the planning for America’s military response to the 9/11 massacre was already under way.

At 2:40 pm, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld convened a meeting at the Pentagon. Notes taken by Undersecretary Stephen Cambone, later obtained by CBS News, recorded Rumsfeld demanding the “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.”—meaning Saddam Hussein—“at the same time” as Osama bin Laden. Then came the chilling instruction: “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

Twenty-five years later, we can look back and see how the US government used September 11 to unleash a crusade of violence, war crimes and chaos across the world. Experts like Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz and military historian Michael Howard warned from the beginning that declaring a “war on terror” made no sense and would make matters worse.

They were right, of course. But when the State Department’s annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report for 2004 showed an unprecedented increase in global terrorism following the US invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply cancelled and discontinued the report, replacing it with a new one with different criteria to prevent comparison with previous years.

But, as Rumsfeld made clear to his subordinates from the outset, the 9/11 crisis provided an open-ended pretext for endless wars against enemies who had nothing to do with the attacks, and for the remilitarization of the United States after the small reduction in its military spending after the end of the Cold War.

Total US military spending for the past 25 years has exceeded $21 trillion (in 2024 dollars), surpassing the combined spending of the other 18 largest military powers in the world. During that time, China has built a whole new civilization and infrastructure, and leapfrogged the US economy to become the world leader in clean energy, high-speed rail and technological sectors in which the US was once preeminent.

Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for these counter-productive choices, and the appalling human costs of these wars on the countries the United States has attacked, bombed or invaded make this an especially atrocious way to squander our nation’s wealth.

The history of the United States during this period calls to mind an old Greek myth. Croesus, the famously wealthy king of Lydia, asked the Oracle at Delphi what would happen if he invaded Persia. The Oracle told him, “If you cross the Halys river, a great empire will fall.” Encouraged, Croesus launched the invasion. But he lost the war, and the empire that fell was his own.

In pursuing their global imperial ambitions, our leaders and ruling classes have discounted and betrayed the real sources of America’s prosperity and security: the well-being of the American people and peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world.

They have led us into war, poverty and extreme inequality, and hollowed out a system of government that was slowly becoming more democratic. At home, decades of political struggle by labor, civil rights and other social movements produced enormous advances, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, major investments in public infrastructure and education, and a highly progressive tax system—with the top income tax rate at 91% until 1963—that helped finance those public goods and narrow the gap between rich and poor.

Contrary to the “End of History” theory embraced by many policymakers after the Cold War, and Margaret Thatcher’s famous insistence that “there is no alternative” to the extreme neoliberal capitalism that she and Ronald Reagan ushered in, societies always have political and economic alternatives. It is only a transparently self-serving choice by America’s corrupt ruling classes that saddles us with a system that keeps all decision-making power in their own hands in order to build their own wealth to the detriment of the country we all share.

We can see one alternative today in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pursuing a different set of priorities: expanding free childcare, making major investments in affordable housing, improving public transportation, and freezing rents for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments. Electoral politics can be part of the solution, but only if it reflects what ordinary people really want, instead of limited choices between oligarchic “lesser evils.”

Americans are demanding a renewal of social progress, with universal healthcare, quality public education, and all the things we need but can’t afford as long as this bloated, destructive war machine remains our government’s top priority. As Martin Luther King lamented in 1967, “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube.”

Twenty-five years is a long time to keep moving in the wrong direction, especially when that direction involves endless war and the destruction of other countries. We are a long way from where most Americans would like our country to be. But we have a pretty good idea of what is wrong and what we need to do:

Stop throwing money at a broken, destructive war machine. Stop threatening and blockading our neighbors. Close overseas bases and bring our troops home. Tax the wealthy. Start rebuilding our country, and replace war and militarism with cooperation and problem solving. Take public ownership and responsibility for things we all need and use, like education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure, and utilities. Abolish ICE, and other militarized institutions that waste our national resources and do not serve the public good. Insist that the military be scaled back to its legitimate role of defending the United States against a possible, but very unlikely, foreign military attack.

If we have truly learned the lesson of the past twenty-five years, then we must translate it into policies that reflect that. The real test is not whether we can finally see what went wrong after 9/11. It is whether we are able to change course.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Medea Benjamin
Medea Benjamin is co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. She is the co-author, with Nicolas J.S. Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. Other books include, "Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran" (2018); "Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection" (2016); "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control" (2013); "Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart" (1989), and (with Jodie Evans) "Stop the Next War Now" (2005).

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Nicolas J.S. Davies
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist and a researcher with CODEPINK. He is the co-author, with Medea Benjamin, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
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Revealed: The shocking reason Trump is dismantling America’s spy agencies

U.S. President Donald Trump and John Ratcliffe, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), speak as they depart after a Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, U.S., July 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/Pool

Sarah K. Burris

September 09, 2026

ALTERNET

As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, President Donald Trump has decided to overhaul the post-9/11 overhaul of the intelligence community, which he has seen as his enemy for so long.

Trump has held a notable hostility toward the intel community since his first term, when he learned that he was included in investigations around 2016 Russian meddling in the election. Trump has a belief that officials investigated him, specifically, and leaked damaging information about him. That paranoia that the "deep state" is quietly leaking things about him and his Cabinet has only deepened in his second term.

National Public Radio reported on Wednesday that Trump's attitudes toward the intelligence community are now leading to changes that don't make the U.S. safer; rather, they make Trump feel better personally.

Ex-CIA officer John Sipher told NPR that when he was working at the agency, he spent much of his time focusing on Russia, but after the U.S. was attacked in 2001, the community shifted to crafting new technologies, expanding data collection, improving communications and using drones and other tools to track terrorist networks.

He explained that all of those things helped in locating Osama bin Laden and bringing down al-Qaeda and ISIL.

"Frankly, tracking and hunting terrorists, finding people, finding a needle in a haystack was not something that we trained for," said Sipher.

When the Department of Homeland Security was created, it became one of the largest departments in the U.S. government, second only to the Pentagon.

Trump appears readying to dismantle that. He portrays national security and intelligence officials as corrupt actors working against him. Critics say that after decades of work, Trump is tearing it down without any plan to replace it. He's now installing loyalists with little experience into key positions, including Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, Kash Patel at the FBI and John Ratcliffe at the CIA. They are all more likely to tell Trump what he wants to hear rather than provide an independent assessment.

John Feeley, the former US ambassador to Panama, told The Guardian last month about an incident in which he first entered Trump's office, where the president demanded to know what Panama did for the United States. Feeley walked through all the ways that the East Coast is able to purchase affordable goods because the Panama Canal has ships that can shuttle goods from one hemisphere to the other more easily.

He recalled Trump's response was "Huh... Who knew?"

"I kid you not, man," said Feeley. "And that's one of the things that contributed to my — I mean, all joking aside, that contributed to my unease about continuing to be his personal representative. This is a man who is so fundamentally ignorant, who is surrounded by people who are not ignorant, who in their presentation toward a region that I dedicated about 30 years of my life to have such a fundamentally superficial view."

The report mentioned Steven Cash, who abandoned government employment after he said Trump turned work of career officials against Americans.

One issue is that Trump has essentially eliminated the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. While someone is there, the one who briefs Trump is the CIA director. So, instead of using the person who coordinates 18 separate intelligence agencies, Trump wants his CIA guy.

"Counterterrorism is getting second fiddle to the threats from China and Russia, and the current administration's focus on the border and narco-trafficking means a shift of resources to the Americas," said former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos. "I am afraid that counter-terrorism will not be a priority until a mass casualty event, and then it very much will be once again," Sipher says one of the most damaging ideas that's taken root is that career intelligence officials actively take sides in partisan politics.

"We have allowed our partisan anger, and specifically the Trump administration, to create this narrative that there's a deep state and that the intelligence services work for one party or another. I think it's a real danger," he said.

But the damage has already been inflicted after Trump alienated the world with his trade war, tough talk and bombastic rants online.

"The CIA in particular relies or depends on intelligence sharing with friendly and not so friendly foreign intelligence services," Weiner said. "It it is still only 20,000 people, and they cannot cover the entire world. They need the British. They need the Dutch. They need the Saudis. They need help."

After Sept. 11, help was easy to come by, he said. That has changed, however.

After 9/11, the ‘War on Terror’ Was a War of Terror

The crusade that George W. Bush launched 25 years ago to “rid the world of evil” only compounded it.

A fiery blasts rocks the World Trade Center after being hit by two planes September 11, 2001 in New York City.
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

LONG READ

Norman Solomon
Sep 09, 2026

Common Dreams

Three days after terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush stood behind a pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral and spoke to a nation in shock. “Our responsibility to history is already clear,” he proclaimed, “to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” The vow was, of course, preposterous. Yet the “war on terror” that followed was scarcely more realistic.

“Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic,” retired US Army General William Odom told C-SPAN viewers in 2002. “It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.” But the American military crusade became more about persisting than winning. The ultraviolent momentum became its own reason. The destructive search for enemies created more. As years went by and the “war on terror” label faded, US warfare was so normal in so many places that it no longer needed a name or much of a rationale.

But 25 years ago, the impulse to avenge the horrors of 9/11 was instant. Fear and rage blended into high octane for war machinery. Suddenly, overwhelming public emotions were fully in sync with the psychology of a military-industrial complex set for large-scale killing.

Even as the trauma of the terrible day eased for the general public, 9/11 continued to serve as a political license to kill without an expiration date.

None of the 19 hijackers were Afghan, and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s ties were much tighter with Saudi Arabia, but his presence in Afghanistan put that country in the Pentagon’s gunsights. The question in US media was not about whether, but when, to attack. The answer came on October 7 when American missiles began to explode in Afghanistan. Hours later, a Gallup poll found that “90 percent of Americans approve of the United States taking such military action, while just 5 percent are opposed, and another 5 percent are unsure.”

The air war remained quite popular in the United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held daily live televised briefings that catapulted him to national adulation. A pattern set in, taking for granted that American warfare was beneficent in intent and benign in meaningful impact. People dying under American bombs and less directly didn’t count for much. “The targeting capabilities, and the care that goes into targeting, to see that the precise targets are struck, and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see,” Rumsfeld asserted. And he added, “The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of.”

Rumsfeld’s style went over big. “Everyone is genuflecting before the Pentagon powerhouse,” exclaimed the Washington Post’s media reporter, Howard Kurtz, who called Rumsfeld “America’s new rock star.” That winter, after the Taliban government fell, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press program congratulated Rumsfeld on the air: “Sixty-nine years old and you’re America’s stud.”

The war in Iraq, launched with a March 2003 invasion, relied on massive air power and more than 150,000 US ground troops. The Saddam Hussein dictatorship fell quickly, but the promised “cakewalk” turned into year after year of combat and slaughter. Mainstream US media outlets were more than comfortable with above-it-all bombing that signified American air prowess. But the toll of American deaths and severe injuries gradually depleted enthusiasm as soldiers were called back for two, three or even more tours of duty. For many, the images of glory days turned into real-life nightmares.

The ongoing war effort that began in autumn 2001 had an implicit throughline in dominant media and politics: while American lives really matter, the victims of American firepower really don’t.

President Bush could not accept defeat in Iraq, and later Barack Obama could not countenance defeat in Afghanistan. Early in his presidency, Obama—in deed and word—made the “war on terror” expressly bipartisan. Less than a year after he received the Nobel Peace Prize in late 2009, the American troop level in Afghanistan reached 100,000, triple the number when he had entered the White House. During a visit to Bagram Air Base near Kabul, Obama provided the service members with star-spangled oratory that could be heard as uplifting or perhaps macabre: “I’ve been humbled by your sacrifice in the solemn homecoming of flag-draped coffins at Dover, to the headstones in section 60 at Arlington, where the fallen from this war rest in peace alongside the fellow heroes of America’s story.”

In effect, even as the trauma of the terrible day eased for the general public, 9/11 continued to serve as a political license to kill without an expiration date. Through it all, the ongoing war effort that began in autumn 2001 had an implicit throughline in dominant media and politics: while American lives really matter, the victims of American firepower really don’t.

* * *

Faraway uses of Pentagon air power had human consequences that hardly registered on political scales back home. For officialdom, tech innovations like drones were unalloyed marvels. The people who experienced terror had no voices, no faces, no names. On the rare occasions when that wasn’t the case, general interest was scant. After seven months in Taliban captivity, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from rugged terrain in Pakistan and later recounted what it was like to have US drones constantly hovering overhead: “The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”

The proclaimed war on terror had also become a war of terror.

A few days into his presidency, Obama sent Predator drones into Pakistan, killing three children and a dozen adults. A week later, a former “whiz kid” at the Pentagon during escalation of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Pierre Sprey, appeared on the PBS program hosted by Bill Moyers. Sprey saw where US officials were headed with their air war. “I’d be astonished if one in five people they kill or wound is in fact a militant,” he said. “You can’t tell with a camera or an infrared sensor or something whether somebody’s a Taliban…. Most likely, you’re relying on some Afghani of unknown veracity and unknown motivation and who may, may very well be trying to settle a blood feud rather than give you good information.” But, Sprey added, “bombing is always politically popular, relative to sending infantry and killing our boys.”

Obama officials were enamored with the American air war, in spite of evidence that it was routinely killing many bystanders. In 2022, Phyllis Bennis at the Institute for Policy Studies offered this assessment: “The so-called ‘global war on terror’ has, from its origins, been characterized by attacks by US Special Forces, by airstrikes, by armed drones, and more, that routinely kill far more civilians than the targets identified on the ‘kill lists’ prepared by presidents and top White House officials. The routine recitation of ‘there is no military solution to terrorism’ has always been an anodyne rhetorical ploy, never an actual guide to what actions might actually work to change the conditions that give rise to terrorism.”

Ironically and tragically, the conditions giving rise to terrorism included the US war waged in the name of ending it. The process was foreseeable. In 1998, the Pakistani-American political scientist Eqbal Ahmad wrote: “A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place. It won’t work in this shrunken world.”

Killing from the skies fueled desires for retribution. “For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant,” Pakistani photographer Noor Behram said in 2011. For three years, he had been documenting the immediate aftermath of drone attacks in the mountainous Waziristan region near the Afghan border. “There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims.” As a result, Behram said, “The youth in the area surrounding a strike gets crazed. Hatred builds up inside those who have seen a drone attack.”

Many thousands of miles away, military personnel in the US were peering at blurry images on computer screens and firing the drone missiles. “The truth is that we could not differentiate between armed fighters and farmers, women or children,” former tech sergeant Lisa Ling recalled. For several years, she had trained Air National Guard members on how to operate Air Force drones. Ling was among the drone whistleblowers who went public during the terror war’s second decade. One of them, the young intelligence analyst Daniel Hale, spent nearly three years in prison because he disclosed facts about the drone program’s human toll. “With drone warfare, sometimes nine out of ten people killed are innocent,” he said. “You have to kill part of your conscience to do your job. But what possibly could I have done to cope with the undeniable cruelties that I perpetuated? The thing I feared most was the temptation not to question it. So I contacted an investigative reporter… and told him I had something the American people needed to know.”

Hale provided The Intercept with classified documents that led to a landmark expose in October 2015. It reported, “Documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, US special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the US has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse.”

Early in his second term, at the National Defense University, Obama gave a much-ballyhooed speech that addressed downsides of the terror war, then in its twelfth year. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.” Unlike the men who immediately preceded and followed him in the Oval Office, Obama seemed aware that perpetual war had negative effects on US society. Yet he didn’t proceed to do much about it. During the 44 months that followed his speech, through his last year in office, Obama maintained bombing of Afghanistan at about half the rate of his first term while drastically escalating the attacks in Iraq and Syria, with 30,743 bombs and missiles dropped on those two countries in 2016 alone.

* * *

Like Obama, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden ordered air strikes on Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. In his second term, Trump has widened US bombing missions to also include Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela along with targeting nonmilitary boats and killing more than 225 civilians during the last year in international waters.

The withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021 seemed to mark a turn away from nonstop warfare. “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war,” President Biden declared weeks later at the United Nations. He added, “We’ve turned the page.” But actually, America was bound into a high volume of war. The “war on terror” was morphing and continuing on several continents. In fact, during the same month as Biden’s UN speech, the Costs of War Project at Brown University released a new report documenting that “counterterrorism operations have become more widespread in recent years.” The project’s co-director, Catherine Lutz, said: “The war has been long and complex and horrific and unsuccessful… and the war continues in over 80 countries.”

Throughout the last 25 years, since the first missiles struck Afghanistan, a racial aspect of the terror war has been hidden in plain sight.

The day after the Hamas-led attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations stood outside the Security Council chambers and said, “This is Israel’s 9/11. This is Israel’s 9/11.” During the next six weeks, the New York Times later revealed, Israel “routinely” used 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza “in areas it designated safe for civilians.” Within nine months, Reuters reported, the large quantities of munitions supplied to Israel by the Biden administration included “more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs.” Speaking to the UN General Assembly as the war in Gaza neared the end of its second year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We’re wiping out the terror regime of Hamas and ensuring that its savagery will never threaten Israel again.” By then, the US government had provided more than $21 billion in military aid to Israel since October 7. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli organizations Physicians for Human Rights—Israel and B’Tselem unequivocally concluded that what has happened in Gaza is genocide. It was enabled by the United States.

Throughout the last 25 years, since the first missiles struck Afghanistan, a racial aspect of the terror war has been hidden in plain sight. While institutional racism is widely understood to exist inside the United States, an unexamined assumption is that its pernicious aspects stop at the water’s edge. But public discourse about the “war on terror” has eluded a fact well worth pondering: virtually every man, woman and child killed by Pentagon firepower in this century has been a person of color. This is not to say that they were attacked because of their racial identity. But racial biases in the US, unconscious and otherwise, have made it politically easier to launch and sustain wars bringing horrors to their lives.

Current findings from the Costs of War Project include: “An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died ‘indirectly,’ as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.”

In foreign countries, the overall “reverberating effects” have crushed countless lives. However, the only casualties of the “war on terror” that have really resonated in US politics are American losses. Yet many of the casualties are far from obvious. While “over 7,053 US service members died in the post-9/11 wars,” the Costs of War Project notes, “at least four times as many US service members and veterans of the post-9/11 wars died by suicide than in combat.” In addition, “An estimated 8,189 contractors for the US military died during the post-9/11 wars. Foreign workers for US contracting firms often do not have their deaths recorded or compensated.”

Such figures don’t include the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The Veterans Administration now says that 15 percent of those wars’ veterans were suffering from PTSD “in the last year” and 29 percent “at some point in life.” Meanwhile, traumatic brain injury (TBI) from the two wars often afflicts veterans who were violently jolted by explosions and other wartime events. Analyzing Pentagon data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that “more than 450,000 US service members were diagnosed with a TBI from 2000 to 2021.” Four years ago, the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA published an in-depth study of TBI among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. “Our study suggests that post-9/11 military veterans face a higher mortality burden across multiple causes of death than the total US population,” the study said. “We also found that exposure to moderate to severe TBI was associated with even higher mortality rates and excess mortality from accident, suicide, cancer, CVD [cardiovascular disease], homicide, and other causes.”

* * *

One day in mid-December 2002, three months before the “shock and awe” bombardment of the city began, I sat at a picnic table in a Baghdad park with the middle-aged Iraqi man who was my driver. There was no one around, no walls or fixtures that might conceal listening devices. He said that he wished Iraq had no oil, because then there would be no reason to fear an invasion.

Whatever people’s beliefs about the goals behind US warfare during the last quarter-century, there can be no doubt of its immense profitability.

During the last 25 years, while plenty of public discourse has faulted policymakers for tactical mistakes and dubious judgment in war policies, more nefarious motives have received little attention. The rallying cry “No blood for oil” was common among those actively opposing war in Iraq but a nonstarter in mainstream media and politics. “The slogan is neither intelligent nor honorable,” Washington Post columnist George Will said in a commentary for ABC News shortly before the Iraq invasion began. “Intelligent people can honorably differ about the wisdom and morality of war against Iraq. But we should be able to agree that oil, an economic motive, is not driving US policy.”

Four years later, General John Abizaid, former head of US Central Command and military operations in Iraq, said: “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that.”

In his memoir, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan wrote: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Before becoming Defense secretary, Senator Chuck Hagel said in 2007: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.”

Whatever people’s beliefs about the goals behind US warfare during the last quarter-century, there can be no doubt of its immense profitability. The start of the Afghanistan War in October 2001 began supercharged bonanzas for Pentagon contractors. The 20 years of that war overlapped with upward of $2 trillion in government funds going to the biggest contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman—an increase of 188 percent. “Those five firms spent over $1.1 billion on lobbying between 2001 and 2021,” Quincy Institute senior advisor Eli Clifton wrote. “That number seems like a staggering sum to spend on influencing policymakers but it may have been the most financially prudent decision these companies have made in the past 20 years.”

Investing in war stocks was likewise prudent for stock-market players. As the war in Afghanistan came to a close, journalist Jon Schwarz did the math: “If you purchased $10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defense contractors on September 18, 2001—the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks—and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295. This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613. That is, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58 percent during the Afghanistan War.”

* * *

The “war on terror” brand has gone out of fashion, but underlying military boosterism remains intact. Midway through Trump’s first term, the Democratic Party’s leaders in the House and Senate saluted when the commander in chief proposed an 11 percent Pentagon budget increase over two years. “In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense,” Representative Nancy Pelosi boasted. “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request,” Senator Chuck Schumer proclaimed. “US taxpayers spend far more on the military and war than most people realize,” says a recent report from the Project on Government Oversight, which documents that “there are several ways to calculate the true cost of our military” and “all add up to at least $1.5 trillion.” A two-year 11 percent military spending increase now looks almost dovish in comparison to the outlays on the near horizon. Even without enactment of Trump’s proposed half-a-trillion-dollar increase for the 2027 fiscal year military budget, the status quo is deeply mired in what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” If budgets are moral documents, America has been plunging into one moral abyss after another.

The “war on terror” brand has gone out of fashion, but underlying military boosterism remains intact.

With a very different style, Donald Trump’s basic lawless approach to international conflict is akin to Bush’s “war on terror” approach. Rhetoric aside, the actions have been clear: if the USA wants to attack another country, it will. This year’s unprovoked bombings of Iran signify how America’s foreign policy comes full spiral.

The crusade that George W. Bush launched to “rid the world of evil” only compounded it. Now, as the nation’s military juggernaut advances, the mindsets that propel it are in dire need of direct challenge.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Norman Solomon
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.
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