Middle East

Pakistan’s most influential Islamist political party is allying itself with the most popular politician in Islamabad. On Monday, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami announced the party would join former Premier Nawaz Sharif’s protest march against a court ban on his candidacy. A court decision last week upheld an earlier court verdict that banned Sharif from any parliamentary post. “Sharif has asked the nation to stand up to the pro-Western government of President Asif Ali Zardari,” reported Deutsche Presse Agentur on March 2. It is feasible that Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz could mobilize street rallies powerful enough to deliver a deathblow to the current coalition government in Islamabad.

On March 10, the Taliban rejected U.S. President Obama’s proposal of working with so-called moderate Taliban to end the insurgency in Afghanistan. A spokesman for Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar labeled the idea as “illogical,” saying he did not know what the term “moderate Taliban” meant. While this response reflects a certain amount of posturing on the part of the Taliban, the message to Washington could not be much clearer. Any successful negotiation—indeed, any negotiation at all—will only be achieved through much compromise on the part of the U.S., which would in fact constitute a defeat for Washington against terrorism.

The highest-level warning that Iran has achieved independent nuclear capability came from Israel’s top military intelligence officer on Sunday, the Associated Press reports. At a cabinet meeting, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin said Iran is now capable of producing atomic weapons. Iran has “crossed the threshold,” Yadlin said, and has the expertise and materials needed for an atomic bomb. Yadlin warned that Tehran wishes to exploit the Obama administration’s desire for negotiations as a cover for its nuclear weapons program. The same day, Iranian media reported that Tehran has test-fired a new air-to-surface missile. The Fars News Agency claimed the plane-to-ship missile has a range of 70 miles.

On March 10, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, considered a pragmatic conservative, was reelected as the chairman of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the nation’s most powerful state body. Among other powers, the assembly chooses Iran’s supreme leaders, who hold ultimate authority in the Islamic Republic. Stratfor reports that it appears Rafsanjani has consolidated his grip on Iran’s political establishment (March 10). While Rafsanjani is not as hardline as Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, as theTrumpet.com has detailed before, his goals for Iran are the same: domination of the Middle East, development of nuclear power, and the downfall of America. Read “The Return of Rafsanjani” from our March 2007 Trumpet for more.

Since the conclusion of the Israeli counterstrike on Gaza in January, the popularity of Hamas has soared among Palestinians. According to a poll conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would beat Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas by 2 percent if elections were held today. Three months ago, Abbas would have beat Haniyeh by a margin of 10 percent. Hamas’s overall popularity now stands at 33 percent—5 percent higher than before the Israeli counterstrike commenced.

Europe

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden once again asked Europe for help in Afghanistan on Tuesday. This time, he emphasized the need for civilian assistance more than troops. “I know the people of Europe, like the people of my country, are tired of war, and they are tired of this war,” said Biden during a press conference after his meeting with nato ambassadors. “But we know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred. We know that it was from the very same area that extremists planned virtually every major terrorist attack on Europe since 9/11, and the attack on Mumbai.” Biden also clarified his earlier statement that nato “is not winning” in Afghanistan, saying, “We are not winning the war, but the war is not lost.” America is going begging to foreign governments. Its constant encouragement for Europe to assist in military conflicts is prophesied in the Bible to bite it in the end. For more information, see our Feb. 14, 2008, article “Germany vs. NATO: Playing Hard to Get.”

Romania may soon be the third EU country to go to the International Monetary Fund (imf) for a loan. “Romania needs a safety belt, meaning a foreign loan,” said Romanian President Traian Basescu to parliament on Monday. He urged the parliament to cut spending, warning that any loan from the European Union or imf would force Romania to adopt tough conditions on public spending and impose structural reforms. Romania’s main problem is with private-sector loans that firms obtained from overseas. If it defaults on these loans, this will spread the problem to other countries also. Watch for the global economic crisis to increasingly affect all of Europe over the short term.

Asia

The biggest challenge currently facing China is not slowing economic growth, but increasing unemployment. The current unemployment rate in China stands at around 4 percent, yet analysts are predicting this figure could rise to 14 percent before the economic crisis subsides. This means the number of unemployed Chinese could rise to 170 million in the coming years. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said last week that if the Chinese economy does not grow by at least 8 percent this year, the country risks political destabilization and social unrest.

In the midst of this economic downturn, the Chinese government is increasing military spending by 14.9 percent. In the near future, China may seek to avert social catastrophe and alleviate its unemployment problems through massive military conscription. The Bible foretells of a time when an Asian military alliance will amass an army of 200 million men. For more information on China’s future role on the world scene, read our free booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.

Africa, Latin America

Morgan Tsvangirai became prime minister on February 11 after a violent election process that yielded him only minimal power; on March 6, he was injured and his wife was killed in a car accident. Tsvangirai himself said the chances the crash was intentional were only “1 in 1,000.” Zimbabwe’s minister of defense, a member of the opposition party, blamed the usual culprit: America and Britain. President Mugabe blamed the “hand of God.” Simple timing, of course, is not enough to suggest foul play, but two facts remain: 1) Tsvangirai was targeted for assassination multiple times during the election process; and 2) Zimbabwe has a history of suspicious car accidents where President Mugabe’s opponents are concerned: “I’m skeptical about any motor vehicle accident in Zimbabwe involving an opposition figure,” said Tom McDonald, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe from 1997 to 2001. “President Mugabe has a history of strange car accidents when someone lo and behold dies—it’s sort of his M.O. of how they get rid of people they don’t like.”

The U.S. Navy has released official figures on efforts to prosecute pirates, and the results are discouraging. Of 238 suspected pirates investigated, about half were prosecuted. Many of those prosecuted were sent to prison in Puntland, a northeastern region of Somalia, where pirates seldom stay long: “They either walk out or someone pays a bribe for them to be released,” according to Roger Middleton, expert on Somali piracy at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. The French Navy has caught 57 pirates, and 45 went to Puntland. The U.S. Navy sent nine pirates to Puntland at the beginning of March. For more on why the U.S. can’t solve the piracy problem, read “Pirates Expose America’s Broken Will.”

President Obama has begun the process of lifting restrictions on Cuba, perhaps only a footnote amid the sweeping changes enacted in his first 100 days in office. The initial changes do not remove the travel embargo—they are instead geared toward things like allowing Cuban-Americans to send money home and make annual visits—but the direction is clear. Cuba’s government has been the sworn enemy of the U.S. for 50 years despite military threats, embargos, sanctions and general opposition around the world. For more on how the relationship developed and where it is headed, read “What’s Ahead for Cuba?”

Anglo-America

The Bank of England is creating £75 billion out of thin air. The bank announced March 5 it would cut its interest rate to 0.5 percent and buy £75 billion (us$106 billion) of government and corporate debt, 5.4 percent of Britain’s entire gross domestic product. That proportion of gdp is even greater than what the American Federal Reserve has artificially injected into the U.S. economy. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has authorized up to £150 billion in “quantitative easing,” printing money to stanch financial hemorrhaging. But printing money to stave off debts just a little longer does not solve problems.

In British-American news, the British administration continues to suffer slights from the White House. After removing a special bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and not holding a joint press conference with Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his visit to the United States, Barack Obama gave Brown a gift of 25 dvd movies, including Star Wars. Coming from the executive of the most powerful nation in the world, the gift is seen as a snub, especially since Brown is blind in one eye and American dvds often do not work in British players. This week, the Obama staff has been incredibly difficult to get a hold of by Downing Street to plan the coming G-20 summit in England, according to the head of Britain’s civil service. “There is nobody there,” Gus O’Donnell said. “You cannot believe how difficult it is.” The ongoing indifference toward Britain reveals a crack in the American-British alliance that the Trumpet believes will widen drastically.

One month after spending more money than anyone in history with a $787 billion spending bill, President Obama is due to sign another bill for $410 billion of spending. Critics of the 1,132-page bill point out that politicians from both parties have inserted 7,991 earmarks, politically selfish spending initiatives the Obama campaign vowed to cleanse from Washington. The Trumpet does not take sides politically, but notes that just as in the case of every other politician, the stratospheric hopes generated during the Obama campaign are now crashing back to Earth.

The U.S. is losing even its notional status as a religious country. Although Americans generally identify the nation and its values as Christian, believing and obeying God long ago evolved into simply claiming Christ. Now, the number of Americans who even identify with Christianity has dropped. The recently released “American Religious Identification Survey” found that from 1990 to 2008, the number of professing Christians in the U.S. dropped 10 percent. The report also found that the number of Americans who claim no religious identity rose from 8 percent to 15 percent.