Thunder of the North

By: Azhar Azam

Saudi Press Agency officially announced the launch of military drill dubbed as “Thunder of the North” also known as “North Thunder” or “Ra’ad Al-Shamal” in northern region, Hafr-el-Batin on February 27.

It is said to be the largest military drill in the world in terms of number of participating forces so as the breadth of the maneuver area. A total number of 21 countries including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and others are participating in the military drill to send a message of unity, power to combat terrorism.

North Thunder drill is being held in chary of growing terrorist threats as well as the political and security instability in the region. It also intensifies the desire of the participating countries to secure geographical territories and to fight against terrorism covering four major aspects that is intellectual, media, financial and military.

The unofficial sources describe that there would be nearly 150,000 soldiers, 2,540 warplanes, 20,000 tanks and 460 helicopters from different Arab and Muslim countries and the GCC-formed Peninsula Shield taking part in this gigantic military exercise.

Advisor to the ministry of Saudi defense Brigadier General Ahmad Assiri said “the sent massage is that the Islamic countries are working together, and today we have twenty Islamic countries carrying out this exercise. There are determination and desire to have peace and security prevailing in the region through all means, including the military means”.

"The drill includes helicopters and fighter jets targeting areas where ground forces engage with terrorist elements, in addition to saving members of the joint forces trapped in hostile areas, and clearing all enemy areas," Al-Asiri added.

Military forces from various countries reached the area of operations using Dammam, Dubai and Jeddah Ports, King Khalid Military City, King Saud Airbase, Riyadh Airport and road networks to experiment “sophisticated and unprecedented methods of war tactics using state of the art land, sea and air weapons and equipment”.

A number of heads of states and military officials including Pakistan have arrived in Saudi Arabia to partake in the closing ceremony of North Thunder today. Pakistan is also playing an active role to normalize the Saudi-Iran relations in the past few weeks.

This is yet another effort by Saudi Arabia to form a coalition of Arab and Islamic countries to fight threats jointly after last year in December, it announced to marshal 34-Muslims countries military alliance to fight ISIS.

Body Count in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan

By: Azhar Azam

War on terror continues to inflate throughout the world although its focal battlefield is South Asia and Middle East as more than fourteen years passes by since 9/11 tragic but potentially controversial incidence.

There are a number of conspiracy theories transpired immediately after September 11 where theorists posted doubts on certain happenings just before the twin towers collapsed.

The conspiracy theories are primarily based on the suspicious stock markets events, Air Defense was told to “Stand Down”, demolition of World Trade Centre by bombs not planes and former president George W. Bush secretly benefited from these attacks. “The 11 Most Compelling 9/11 Conspiracy Theories” by NewsOne provides the details on each of the compelling arguments.

Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan
Operation Enduring Freedom was then launched on October 7, 2001 in retaliation to 9/11 by the United States and British forces with air strikes on Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Latter few other countries including Australia, Germany, Italy, Netherland, France, Canada, Denmark and others also joined as coalition forces.

Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq
Then there was Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 19, 2003 by George W. Bush again charging Saddam Hussain to develop weapons of mass destructions (WMD) under his pledge to use unilateral, preemptive strikes against the states believed to be a threat for the United States of America.

Military Fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan
According to iCasualties, total military fatalities of the coalition forces in Operation Enduring Freedom reached 3,515 in 2016 with the United States (2,381) and United Kingdom (455) suffered the most. Other coalition partners bear the fatalities of a total of 679 such as Canada (158), France (86), Germany (54), Denmark (43), Australia (41) and others.

The total coalition military fatalities in Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003 to 2015 were 4,815 where the United States again had the largest loss of 4,495 while United Kingdom (179), Italy (33), Poland (23) and others bore loss of a total of 320 fatalities.

Death Toll in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
An investigation report released in March 2015 by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) draws a conclusion that the war on terror has, directly or indirectly, killed nearly one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan. The total number of people killed in the war reaches to whooping 1.3 million.

The study further estimates that the actual death toll could be over 2 million describing 1.3 million as conservative estimate which is 10 times more than what the public, experts, and decision makers know and propagated by the media and major NGOs.

Nafeez Ahmad, PhD, best-selling author and an investigative journalist in his article “Unworthy victims: Western wars have killed four million Muslims since 1990” published in Middle East Eye on April 8, 2015 illustrate the death toll of 2 million as “just a fraction” in US-led war on terror.

Disagreeing with PSR, he says that the war on Iraq began in 1991 not 2003 with the First Gulf War and refers to undisputed UN figures showing 1.7 million Iraqi civilian died due to brutal sanctions imposed by the West, half of whom were children.

Talking about Afghanistan, he submits “a retired biochemist at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Polya concludes that total avoidable Afghan deaths since 2001 under ongoing war and occupation-imposed deprivation amount to around 3 million people, about 900,000 of whom are infants under five.”

“Altogether, this suggests that the total Afghan death toll due to the direct and indirect impacts of US-led intervention since the early nineties until now could be as high 3-5 million.”

US-led Wars Killed Around 4.78 million Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
Taking into account the cautious figures, we may conclude that the total number of casualties of combatants and non-combatants, directly or indirectly, in US-led wars is about 4.8 million with Afghanistan 3 million, Iraq 1.7 million and Pakistan 80,000, a total body count of staggering 4.78 million.

The most itching point in this mammoth Muslims death toll is the killing of innocent, guiltless civilians including large number of children who unconsciously fall victims of terrorists and the forces combated or combating them.