In the final episode of Yes Minister – before the show graduated to Yes, Prime Minister with Jim Hacker’s elevation as the premier of Great Britain as a ‘compromise candidate’ – the minister has a fantastic idea where he decides that he is going to take money from selling a popular art gallery and pour it into his local football club, which would make him very popular with his constituency. Obviously, this leaves Sir Humphrey Appleby aghast, because the idea of taking money from the arts and giving it to football is his idea of a civilisation being destroyed by barbarians.So, he comes up with an ingenious plan to stop Hacker from doing that by making him the minister responsible for art. When a colleague wonders if that’s a good idea, given that Hacker is a ‘philistine’, Sir Humphrey points out: “The industry minister is the idlest man in town, the education minister is illiterate, and the employment minister is unemployable.”
And now to continue in that vein of the Dilbert Principle – the most incompetent team member is often made the manager-in-charge – countries part of Trump’s Board of Peace, handpicked to bring peace to a new Trumpian world, appear to be at war. The Board of Peace was launched with much fanfare at the World Economic Forum at Davos as an alternative to the United Nations, with a slapstick golden photoshopped version of the UN logo and a billion-dollar entry fee.The countries which signed up could largely be divided into two groups: arm-twisted by Uncle Sam into joining in a bid to bring ‘peace’ to Gaza and smaller nations hoping to curry favour with Trump. The former consists of the US (with Trump as permanent chairman), Israel (Uncle Sam’s trust fund baby), the Gulf and Middle Eastern countries that couldn’t say no (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco) and smaller nations hoping to curry favour with Trump (Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Hungary, Kosovo and Argentina).And at the time of writing, nearly half of the members are actively involved in a war-like situation. For those keeping count, the US and Israel are part of an ongoing skirmish with Iran. That particular battle also involves five other members: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan.
For those lucky enough to have lives which don’t involve monitoring the situation, here’s what has happened in the Middle East and South Asia.A day after JD Vance told the Washington Post that there was ‘no chance’ of a protracted war in the Middle East, which means squat because Trump ran on a ticket promising to ensure America isn’t the globe’s policeman, the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran to ‘eliminate’ Tehran’s missiles and nuclear program, and to fuel a change in government.Incidentally, said nuclear program was also ostensibly eliminated in June last year during Operation Midnight Hammer.Iran responded by launching waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, and at US military targets in the Middle East including Bahrain (home to the US Fifth Fleet) and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Additional strikes were directed at UAE and Kuwait. Iranian missiles also crossed into Jordanian airspace en route to Israel and US-linked targets, prompting Jordan’s military to activate its air defence systems.Meanwhile, Pakistan, the only South Asian member of the Board of Peace, finds itself at loggerheads with Afghanistan. Days after the Taliban had swept to power in 2021, Pakistan’s then ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, while sipping tea, told reporters: “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”Much like other tea-related Pakistani endeavours, it definitely wasn’t okay. Pakistan had hoped there would be a differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban, but much like Hillary Clinton pointed out all those years ago, it’s asinine to believe one can keep snakes in the backyard that will only bite one’s enemy. The current situation sees Pakistan at loggerheads with the Taliban-led Afghanistan government, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and even the Baloch Liberation Front (which is also getting support from the Taliban). The fissure comes from the TTP carrying out attacks on Pakistan, and Pakistan’s anger at the Taliban government for not reining them in and acting with impunity from Taliban soil.In a post, Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s defence minister, claimed Islamabad’s ‘cup of patience’ had overflowed and now it will be ‘Dama Dam Mast Qalandar’ as a warning to Afghanistan, which might just be the first time a Sufi song, also repurposed as a Bollywood number (Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast), was used in a declaration of war.Pakistan launched airstrikes and drone attacks inside eastern Afghanistan in what it claimed were TTP militant camps. The Afghan Taliban responded by firing artillery and attacking Pakistani military positions along the Durand Line border, which has escalated further. Of course, the problem is also exacerbated by a weakened Iran, unable to help Pakistan ‘manage’ the Taliban.
To sum up the irony – given the Pakistani military’s hold over Pakistani politics – its military spokesperson Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told NYT: “This is not a government. They are warlords.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Of course, one would be amiss not to point out that there’s nothing particularly ironic – or even novel – about international organisations standing for values opposite to what they claim to uphold. Pakistan, the fount of a majority of terror attacks in the world, is one of the vice-chairs of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee. Iran, where women are tortured for not wearing a hijab, chaired the UN’s Human Rights Council’s Social Forum on advancing human rights. Saudi Arabia, where women couldn’t go out without a guardian or even drive, served on the UN Commission on the Status of Women. China, accused of detaining a million Uighurs in Xinjiang, has sat on the UN Human Rights Council.The surreality was finely summed up many years ago by a Vietnamese politician (incidentally, Vietnam is also part of the Board of Peace and isn’t currently at loggerheads with anyone). When asked why Hanoi didn’t trust the United Nations, the nation’s erstwhile foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach had quipped in the ‘80s: “…during the last 40 years, we have been invaded by four of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.” And beat them all. During the height of the anti-Vietnam protests in the US during the 60s and 70s, the slogan went: “Make war, not peace.” Trump’s Board of Peace appears to be already bored of peace.
