THE casual way in which US President Donald Trump has talked about ‘taking Cuba’ is being discussed worldwide, including in the American media. We in Pakistan need a reminder of why we should care about what happens across the oceans to a small island nation. You might ask, why. Because we owe them a lot, just as everyone who cares about the rights of people suffering from aggression and foreign occupation owes them — from Palestine to South Africa, from Kashmir to Vietnam, Cuba has supported them. There may also be lessons for us in this.

Trump was recently quoted as saying, “You know, all my life, I’ve been hearing about the United States and Cuba. You know, when will the United States do it? I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba.” When asked by a journalist what exactly he meant by ‘taking Cuba’, Trump said, “Taking Cuba in some form ... I mean, whether I free it, take it, think I can do anything I want with it.”

Do you wonder why Washington has an itch for regime change in Cuba, despite its lack of oil and rare minerals that the US is desperately seeking worldwide? Jon Lee Anderson, the author of To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban, who recently wrote a piece in the New Yorker on........

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