Middle East Focus: Riyadh Marriage Proposal: GCC, Morocco, Jordan…….

Arabia Deserta

Riyadh Marriage Proposal: GCC, Morocco, Jordan…….

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF
The heads of state, kings, emirs, sultans, shamans, and witch doctors of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) held an extra-ordinary two hour summit yesterday in Riyadh. The people of the region held their breath, fearing and hoping but mostly awaiting (actually many did not give a fuck, so inured they have become to the leaders’ shenanigans). Gulf media, always reliably sycophantic, beat the drums: this is our Potsdam, Cairo, Tehran, and Yalta all wrapped in one. The world awaits the outpouring of wisdom, they insinuated. The ordinary people of the Gulf (we have no extraordinary people, even our rulers are very ordinary at most) awaited the bestowal of some freedoms beside the freedom of eating; some awaited more of their own public money given by rulers as “gifts”. None of that happened: alas, the dynasties, mentally bankrupt, had nothing new to offer. They did however throw out a tantalizing balloon, just to make us forget the stink bomb they have deployed in Bahrain.

Which brings me to Jordan and Morocco. GCC rulers, these least surprising of world rulers, the most predictable rulers that ever lived anywhere, came up with a shocking one. They “welcomed” the “application” of Morocco and Jordan for membership in the GCC. The Jordanian government responded by welcoming the welcome extended by the GCC. The GCC did not in turn welcome the welcome expressed by Jordan as a response to their initial welcome by the GCC. Ad nauseam....

So this is a bunch of ruling dynasties on my Gulf inviting the remaining two Arab ruling dynasties to join them in a council of Arab absolute monarchies (no so absolute in the case of Morocco). That would go some way to offset the Saudis losing Egypt as their stooge in the Arab League. Jordanians have had close relations with Gulf monarchies in recent decades. Reports have filtered for at least two decades of some Gulf despots, especially in Bahrain and the UAE, availing themselves of the “interrogation skills” and “persuading powers” of Jordanian security agents. Besides, we have had Jordanian workers in the Gulf region for many years, although many of my earlier teachers were rather Palestinians and Egyptians.

Jordanians also have one other thing in common with the Gulf: neither people have a real sense of humor. Most my fellow Gulfies are as tense as someone suffering a sharp wedgie, most of the time. We take ourselves too fucking seriously: perhaps a result of some insecurity. As for Jordanians and their humor, you know the joke about the Jordanian responding: “Humor? What is that?” And he wasn’t even the king.

As for Moroccans: they are the wild card in all this. Most people in the Gulf know as much about modern Morocco as they know about, say, Israel or Kazakhstan or, well, Mauretania. Hardly any Moroccans show up on the shores of the Gulf, although Saudi princes like to convalesce over there after operations in America or Europe. Must be all those mineral waters.
More on this......
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com