This article appears in the April 1, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
LaRouche Candidates Bring ‘Operation Ibn Sina’ to Muslim Communities,
Supporting Afghanistan and World Security
[Print version of this article]
March 25–This month, LaRouche Independent Candidate Diane Sare, who is running for United States Senate in New York, visited two mosques in the Borough of Brooklyn, New York City with her team. She is intervening into the Islamic community in New York City as part of her commitment to cut through the blackout of world crisis situations, particularly in Afghanistan, where over 23 million people are on the brink of starvation.
For well over a century, Brooklyn has been the center of a large Muslim population, with about 58,000 of New York City’s 700,000 Muslim residents, and is home to the most mosques of any borough—nearly one hundred. As a result of her interventions, Sare has already been joined by several prominent members of the Islamic community, one of whom is Farzana Niemann, the founder of the Farzana Foundation, which is building wells in her homeland of Afghanistan, to bring safe water to those in need. Unlike other candidates, Sare is uniting people from all over the world, to create a peaceful future based on mutual cooperation and economic development for all.
Sare will be petitioning for ballot access beginning on April 19, in which she is required to obtain at least 45,000 signatures in just a six-week period, to place her name in the listings for the November 8 general elections. The primary elections for Senatorial candidates will be held June 28, for which, so far there are six Republicans, and two Democrats lined up for their party’s choice to unseat the infamous incumbent Charles Schumer (D), known as the Senator from Wall Street. For the most part, they are a dismal swamp, with few or no policies or programs showing the leadership required of a Senator of our republic. Sare has made the goal of defeating Schumer, who has held office since 1998, an international campaign.
In Brooklyn, Sare was very well received by the two hundred congregants who assembled in each of the two mosques she visited. After prayers had concluded, she was given the opportunity to give a speech. In her comments, she talked about the imminent danger of annihilation of all of mankind, from the increasingly dangerous drive toward a global thermonuclear war with Russia. Right now, there are hundreds of millions of lives at risk of starvation from the world deficit in food and fertilizer, a result of first, the increasingly fragile state of the hopelessly bankrupt trans-Atlantic financial system, and second, the debilitating extraterritorial sanctions by the U.S. against Russia. The only way out of the current crisis, Sare pointed out, is to create a new security and development architecture, in which nations from all over the world come together to address the problems of humanity, including the danger of war, famine, disease, and most notably, the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.
Sare described the current crisis in Afghanistan, where over 95% of the people lack reliable access to food, healthcare, and clean water, as a result of the 40-plus years of warfare in the region, and the United States stealing over $7 billion in foreign reserves belonging to the Afghan Central Bank. Instead of destroying nations through endless warfare and sanctions, Sare briefed her audiences on the Schiller Institute’s call for the U.S. and its allies and partners to endorse its Project Ibn Sina proposal to build a new, modern health care delivery system in Afghanistan, to begin the process of an economic transformation of the war-stricken nation from a region of mass poverty and famine into a bastion of development and growth. China’s Belt and Road Initiative could also play a major role in reconstructing the nation, possibly even integrating Afghanistan into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
This proposal is no pipedream. It was discussed by leaders of China and Afghanistan, when China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a surprise visit to Kabul on March 24. Wang Yi came from Islamabad, where he was on hand at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, hosted by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. The OIC, comprised of 57 member nations, has already established an Afghanistan Humanitarian Aid Trust Fund.
The Power of a Beautiful Vision
Sare briefed the mosque gatherings on the role of Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD), the famous Islamic physician, as the inspiration for today’s campaign for modern healthcare systems and economic development for all nations. Ibn Sina, who hailed from the Afghanistan region, was one of the most extraordinary thinkers of his time and since. His discoveries were outstanding in the field of medicine, but also covered astronomy, theology, and physics—all of which contributed to universal history.
In order to once again become a pearl of all nations and the world, Afghanistan should look towards Ibn Sina as a model for a beautiful vision of scientific, cultural, and economic development. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the international Schiller Institutes, announced in October 2021 an international campaign to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, titling her campaign, “Operation Ibn Sina.” Because Ibn Sina is known and beloved by the people of the region, and the health needs of the people are so urgent, Helga named her campaign after him.
The people of Southwest Asia, people in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, have all been put through hell as a result of regime-change attacks on their governments in the name of “humanitarian interventions,” but for a mission to be truly humanitarian, it must generate a future for these nations, reversing the disasters created by geopolitics by addressing the needs of the most abused.
Those listening to the words of Diane Sare were relieved. Many remarked that she was the only candidate who cared about the starving children of Afghanistan, and referred to her as the U.S.A. founder of the Ibn Sina Project. many left their contact information and a donation as well. Everyone took copies of her campaign’s newspaper, the New Federalist. Sare initiated the New Federalist as a monthly newsletter in May 2021, precisely to give her constituents the broadest view of world events, and what can be done.
Of significant note was the amount of praise Sare received for her association with the ideas and policies of Lyndon LaRouche. Many recalled the late economist’s works favorably, along with his campaigns for the presidency, and his lifelong commitment to eliminating poverty, backwardness, and geopolitical conflicts in all parts of the world.
Candidate Dejean in Texas
Another candidate this election cycle is likewise acting as the messenger of Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas in general and Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call for a modern health care delivery system in every nation. Joel Dejean is running as a LaRouche Independent for U.S. Congress from the newly-created 38th District, northwest of Houston, Texas.
Among their other meetings and interventions, Dejean and his team have twice visited one Harris County mosque this month and will visit others over the course of the campaign. In the first visit, about 40 men coming out of the Friday prayer services, mostly Pakistanis, stopped to hear the candidate speak about the hypocrisy in the outpouring of offers to help the people of Ukraine, who “look like us,” compared to the inhuman treatment meted out to the people—almost 100% of whom are Muslim—of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan, “who don’t.”
The second visit drew an even larger crowd. Mentioning Project Ibn Sina, and handing out a relevant Schiller Institute leaflet, Dejean said: “Instead of spending $2 trillion destroying Afghanistan, the U.S. should have been building hospitals, water treatment plants, and power plants.” A number openly agreed with Dejean.
As a result of the mobilization undertaken by the Schiller Institute and other initiatives, including the electoral campaigns of Diane Sare and Joel Dejean, the call by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to bring modern health care infrastructure into Afghanistan, as a model for the rest of an increasingly depressed and desperate humanity, is gaining worldwide attention. Rather than abetting the deadly crisis in Afghanistan through withholding foreign reserves and enforcing deadly sanctions, governments must take the responsibility now to implement Operation Ibn Sina, and to collaborate with each other based on a common, shared goal of peace through economic development.
