Hospitable Jordan: Risky Geography and Questionable Alliances…….

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“He added that “this is also happening in Afghanistan,” warning that if the Islamic State (IS) was degraded in these countries “Iran will come in to fill the gap,” according to MEE’s source. Jordan has backed Saudi Arabia in its long-running rivalry with Iran……….. In the congressional meeting, Abdullah said that Shia Muslims had been “lumped in” with the executions carried out that day. To purely kill Sunnis would have “looked bad domestically,” he said. He added, however, that it was unfortunate that Nimr had been included among those executed……………”

Jordan, an early child of Sykes-Picot, is in a bind. It is a small country with a divided population and few economic resources, like most other Arab countries. It is sandwiched between large unstable neighbors (Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia), as well as Israel/Palestine. Jordanians have had a long history of unfortunate and failed alliances within the Middle East.

It goes back to 1967, when the King of Jordan joined the Six Day War, apparently without being prepared for the consequences. As a result, the Jordanians handed the West Bank and East Jerusalem (including the Al Aqsa Mosque) to Israel with barely a fight, and within two days. The biggest and most important loss of Arab “property” in modern history. That disaster in itself is sufficient to make any nation lose its sense of humor, assuming it had any such sense before.

In 1980, the Jordanians repeated their mistake. They sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran. They did not fight directly, but King Hussein made occasional visits to the Front and fired some symbolic shots towards the Iranian lines. Not very kingly behavior, but it stopped once Saddam started losing that war. Another defeat ensued eight years later, but by then King Hussein did not get involved directly, a wise decision.

In 1990, the Jordanians sided again with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait. They lost big in that one economically, although they were not involved directly in a military sense.

Then came the Syrian civil-proxy-Jihadi war after 2011. The Jordanians helped the Syrian Jihadist “opposition” that was sponsored by the Saudis and some other Persian Gulf autocrats. They also at one point reportedly allowed the US and the Saudis to start training some new opposition groups near the Syrian border. But apparently that did not last long, perhaps it petered out.

In Yemen the Jordanians threw their support more directly behind the Saudi paid alliance that has been bombing Yemen’s cities and infrastructure for over a year. And blockading the country. A futile and hopeless war. But that is a low-risk venture for them: limited military involvement in a faraway country, with the cost paid by the Gulf princes and potentates.

A long record of betting on the losing side. No wonder the king is often welcome to address the U.S. Congress under Republicans. No wonder Jordanians are among the most humor-challenged in our humorless region. Now the humorless Jordanians have gotten more wary of involvement in foreign adventures of other sisterly and brotherly Arab countries, and wisely so. They especially stay away from disputes that are on their border, lest they spill across into their country (the example of the growing instability in Turkey provides a good lesson).

One good thing about Jordan: they (and Lebanon) do welcome many refugees, which is a good thing and almost a national industry now in Jordan. Unlike the richer Arab countries that have provoked and instigated many of these civil wars but refuse to accept the resulting refugees. In that sense of hospitality, they are more characteristically Arab than most of the rest.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Control of Aden: Arab-African Royal Alliance Gives Jihadis a Head Start……

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Three sure signs that Saudis and Colombians and other assorted corsairs have liberated the largest Yemeni port city of Aden from the Houthis and Saleh and from law and order:

(1) Suicide bombings are escalating in the city. The latest today killed at least 22.

(2) There are no signs of escaped ex-president General Hadi Al Zombie and his PM Khalid Bahahahahah (except in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi 7-star hotels). This is is a blessing for all concerned.

(3) The city is largely lawless now, as is the surrounding country. Ripe for Al Qaeda and ISIS. AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), ISIS, and other local militias are now fighting for control of the city as well as the countryside.
Even the hired Sudanese forces have reportedly disappeared from the streets. Not that they matter much in a real fight. The Sudanese are probably some of the worst soldiers in the world, except against unarmed civilian women and children as in Darfur. The UAE pulled their own troops days (or maybe weeks) ago.

So Aden is now liberated from law and order as ell as from the Houthis and Colonel Saleh’s forces. Other parts of Southern Yemen as well are enjoying the same. All with extensive help from the weapons and intelligence provided by the USA and Britain. Yemen is now heading toward the same fate as Libya and Syria. In all three cases thanks to the sisterly and brotherly intervention by extremely democratic and extremely tribal Arab autocratic kings and princes and potentates.

I just hope these democracy-loving autocratic kings, princes, and potentates don’t get the notion of trying to liberate their own countries. That would be even more disastrous than liberating other countries.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

 

Freedom of Speech on the Gulf, Salafi Style……..

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قَالَتِ الْأَعْرَابُ آمَنَّا قُل لَّمْ تُؤْمِنُوا وَلَكِن قُولُوا أَسْلَمْنَا وَلَمَّا يَدْخُلِ الْإِيمَانُ فِي قُلُوبِكُمْ “
سورة الحجرات
(ديمقراطية)

Remember when I penned a post here in February on Internal Exile used by Arab regimes to punish those who displease them? I called it an Arabian Gulag here.
Yesterday I read a tweet from back home. Two Salafi leaders of the so-called political opposition were tweeting. They have been making noisy allegations for a couple of years about their “lack of freedom” of speech. Even as they insist that others should be denied the freedom of expression. Even as their goal is to establish a Wahhabi type of government: they almost did it in 2012 but it was vetoed by the Emir. Even as they praise serious violent repression in neighboring states.
What these two Salafist former parliamentarians were demanding in their tweets was that the government should ban another parliamentarian, one who is from another sect, from travel abroad. They said he might feel free to ‘speak freely’ outside the country, which they clearly think is a bad idea: he might criticize the dismal human rights situation in neighboring Gulf states.
@Altabtabie

What this Salafi former parliamentarian is saying in Arabic is that: “This D—- should be immediately banned from foreign travel so he will not use his being a member of the Assembly to besmirch the brothers in Saudi and Bahrain abroad….”
The other one, his comrade in Wahhabi Salafism, absolutely agrees with him. They are both asking the government (which they claim to oppose for allegedly restricting their freedom) to restrict someone else’s freedom of travel and speech. A kind of repression they always support when applied by regimes in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, but not at home.

Now I don’t know this man they are targeting, and I most likely disagree on at least some things he espouses (FYI: I disagree with almost everybody back home on the Gulf on most political, social and economic and any other subject or matter). But this falls within the usual pattern reflecting the fact that loud talk of freedom of speech by most Islamists, especially Salafis, is for media consumption, especially for foreign media. They do not believe in freedom of anything: speech, religion, expression, and even thought.

Long live freedom of speech, Wahhabi style, with a dash of Salafi hypocrisy.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Takhabur: a New Orwellian Post-Uprising Arab Weapon of Terror………

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An old new term has been adopted by Arab regimes to terrify, silence, and punish dissidents and opponents. It is one more weapons in their arsenal, to be added to prison, execution, and internal exile (banning from leaving the country) and others. A simple Arabic word now being used inside the Middle East’s kingdoms and republics of fear.

I posted about this in 2014. It has gotten worse since. The term Takhabur and its multiple threats has been exported from Egypt to the Persian Gulf region, where the oligarchs have adopted it eagerly and don’t hesitate to use it. My old post:

One headline I saw yesterday: “Muslim brothers caught with ‘certificates’ of Takhabur (تخابُر) with Hamas”. (تخابُر is a broad Arabic word that can have any of several connotations: communicating with; contacting; or exchanging information).
Certificates of Takahbur‘: imagine how far you can go in telling your people how stupid you believe they are, maybe not in so many words. This “Takhabur” in Arabic is a recent twist of the term that Arab regimes (and their controlled media) have been using against their foes and against those they don’t like or suspect.
Takhabur: “communicating, exchanging news or information but also perhaps ideas” or “talking to”. You can get arrested for takhabur with The Onion magazine or with Mad Magazine or with the CIA or the Mossad or Dhahi Khalfan, even with your next door neighbor, if they want to get you.
Anyway, they twist things to make the word sound so sinister in a way that some regimes can do with impunity. The Egyptian military regime has even brought the charge of “takhabur” against president Morsi, and he was the president of the country! He was supposed to do “takhabur” with leaders and countries, just like any other head of state! Imagine how much ‘takhabur‘ Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi is doing now with oily princes and potentates? How else could he do his job?

Now they are piling on Caliph Erdogan of Turkey, but that is okay: the Turkish Caliph ensconced in his billion-dollar palace deserves it. Suddenly the Egyptians are strongly pro-Greek on the Cyprus issue and on any other issues that come to their mind. They might even award ancient Troy to the Greeks, again. The Greeks must be amused.
Takhabur. A simple Arabic word has acquired terrifying connotations and meanings in the hands of Arab depots and potentates and their security agents and kangaroo courts. Journalists, former officials, dissidents, and doubters can spend many years in prison because of that word. From the Persian Gulf to the stagnant Nile, from Manama to Cairo, the regimes are using it to get you.
Remember the word: takhabur. Other non-Arab regimes in the Middle East (Iran, Turkey, Kurds, maybe Israel?) also use their own version of it to intimidate, but it sounds so pregnant with meanings and connotations in the Arabic language. So threatening on multiple levels.

Takahbur: it is the greatest  invention by Arab regimes and their controlled media minions since the failed uprisings of 2011. It is a simple word that has been twisted and now used to strike fear and to send people to prison and torture and even death.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Obama’s Middle East Doctrine: How Familiarity Bred Contempt……..

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Familiarity breeds contempt……….

The American and Middle East media have made a lot of President Obama’s recent long interview with columnist Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic magazine.

The result has been called the Obama Doctrine. In the series of interviews he complained, correctly, that much of the problems of the Arab states, especially those on the Persian Gulf, are the creation of their ruling elites. He also complained how the princes and potentates (he named Saudi Arabia) have tried to drag the United States into their sectarian campaign, and to drag him into another Gulf war against Iran. The coup de grace for the princes and potentates was his suggestion that they have to ‘share’ the region with Iran. This only further enraged the American neoconservatives, the hawks of both parties who have not heard of a new Muslim war that they did not like or encourage.

Back to Barack Obama. For years Mr. Obama has been facing a three-front war of warmongers: Gulf allies, Israel’s dominant right wingers, and American hawks in the Senate and in some think-tanks. And the lobbyists funding most elected officials. All pressing him to launch a couple of new wars of choice in the Middle East: a big one against Iran and a smaller one in Syria.

I believe that his other problem with some of the above has been partly racial. Not only with some Republican-Tea Party types at home, but also with some Arab leaders and with Netanyahu of Israel. The fact is that these Arab leaders, most of them, are used to dealing with white American leaders. Most of them have deep prejudices, even as they themselves are quite swarthy. A form of nuanced racism that lingers across the Arab world toward foreigners other than Westerners.  These potentates grew up seeing men like Eisenhower, JFK, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, even John Wayne bring order (or mayhem, depending) to countries or to towns like Abilene or Dodge City on the screen. Then suddenly John Wayne of Rio Bravo is replaced with Cleavon Little of Blazing Saddles.

It is partly psychological and partly racial. Suddenly and unexpectedly the leader of the Free World is a guy who looks to them like a neighbor or a cousin, albeit a lot smarter, more cultured, and better looking. How can you expect a Saudi king or prince or a UAE potentate to defer to someone who looks like one of his nephews, or even one of his many black servants who are barely this side of slavery? Well, much better looking and much smarter, but…….

Mr. Obama, on his part, got to know the princes and potentates well over the past years, too well for their good. Inevitably he developed a deep and healthy degree of contempt for them. And who wouldn’t? In that case familiarity was bound to work as the famous saying goes.

To add insult to injury, the failed Arab uprisings of 2011 uncovered how naked the  Arab emperors, the ruling elites, were. From the giant emperors in Cairo and Tripoli and Damascus to the little wee emperors in Sanaa and Manama. For a few glorious weeks the Arab masses pulled off the sheets to show how naked their leaders were underneath.
It was a brief spring that was followed by an even colder winter than ever. That was when the worst of them, the oligarchs, the moneyed kings and princes took over after the protesters were killed, imprisoned, exiled, cowed, or bought. They bought the Arab uprisings, from Egypt to Syria to Yemen. In fact they have bought the whole Arab League, which they now mostly own. With a couple of exceptions plus Tunisia, and Algeria.

Now, like some here in the USA, they can’t wait to go back to dealing with a “real American” leader. One who looks like the previous ones. It would be a great divine justice if they get Bernie Sanders, whom they will dislike for more than one reason and these reasons are all obvious.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Hypocrisy and Denial in Egypt: Banning “Normalization” with Israel…..

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Da Nile is a river in Egypt…….
Denial is a river in Egypt………

The Egyptian elite, in both media and politics, are becoming more ridiculous by the day. Ridiculous and hypocritical: almost a national characteristic now, more so than, say in Saudi Arabia. An occurrence last week serves to illustrate this:

Egypt has ‘normal’ diplomatic relations with Israel, the type of relations that it does not have with some other Muslim countries, like Iran. There is an Israeli embassy and an ambassador in Egypt, as expected. Egyptian officials often receive pro-Israeli American delegations (congressional and otherwise) and re-assure them of the ties between Egypt and Israel. Many Egyptians work in Israel. Yet the Egyptian elite pretend otherwise to their own people.

Last week a member of the Al Sisi parliament, a Mr. Okasha, hosted the Israeli ambassador at his home, and a photo was published in the media of the event. This caused an uproar in the media and in parliament, whose members denounced this “normalization” of ties. They voted to kick the guilty member out, so Mr. Okasha was declared a non-member. Regardless of the votes of his constituency.

In a country that welcome the exchange of ambassadors, and whose officials regularly meet with Israeli officials. So in that case, why not kick the government out (if they can, which they can’t) and risk losing billions of foreign aid?

What hypocrisy…..
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Humor in Politics: Donald Trump of the Middle East?………

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“Saudi Arabia’s moves against Lebanon seem amateurish. Even if the Lebanese parties wanted to, they could do little to diminish the role of Hizbullah, which acts as a state within the state and also dominates the government. “Saudi Arabia sometimes acts with bombast and violence that makes it look like the Donald Trump of the Arab world,” says Rami Khouri of the American University of Beirut. The result is likely to be that the Saudis lose influence in Lebanon, possibly to Iran………”

The Economist is often wrong about the Middle East, especially if it holds a view different from mine. This time it is quite wrong. Saudi Arabia is not quite a Trump of the Arab world: it is causing much more harm. Trump is not an extremist Wahhabi. Trump is not involved in bombing towns and cities in poor Yemen. Trump is not engaged in unleashing Jihadis terrorists in Iraq, Syria, and other places. Besides, Trump is a humorous person, highly entertaining, unlike Saudi Arabia and its potentates. No sir, it is a rather humorless place, and not only because of their current unsmiling foreign minister, the grim Mr. Al-Jubeir.

Besides, Saudi Arabia is not as much fun to watch as Trump is on the campaign trail. No Arab regime is. No Middle East regime is. In fact most Middle East comedians, not just princes and potentates and leaders, are not as much fun to watch and listen to. Even ex-president Hadi of Yemen issuing meaningless daily executive orders from a Riyadh hotel is not as funny.

Unfortunately, and in fairness, humor is fading away in most of the Middle East (and North Africa), from Iran through Turkey (especially Turkey) and into Egypt all the way to Morocco.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Lebanon Faces an Economic Blockade: the Other Saudi Quagmire………

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The Saudis brought enough pressure, and presumably wrote enough checks, to get most Arab Ministers of Interior at a meeting this week to vote on calling Hezbollah a “terrorist” group. Europeans only consider the military wing of it a sponsor of “terrorism”. Americans are more in line with the Saudis: everything that has anything to do with Hezbollah is terrorist, including its TV network.

This new vote does not create many problem for most Arab states. Most of them take the Saudi or Emirati money and go home. They make the occasional right noises about Hezbollah, but it is too far away and they know its focus is on the periphery of Lebanon, unlike the Wahhabi groups which are global.

But this does create an interesting dilemma for two Arab states: Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s man in Lebanon, former PM Saad Hariri, has said that negotiations with Hezbollah continue. Other politicians of the March 14 (Saudi-financed) movement disavowed that their foe, Hezbollah, is a terrorist group. Otherwise, how can they be seen to negotiate and form a cabinet with Hezbollah (which is also the largest political party in Lebanon)?
Complications for the Lebanese, no?
But complications for the Saudis as well. They have been embroiled in a war against Yemen for a year now. It is war without end, as I could have told them last year, actually I did. I had thought Vietnam proved that the most expensive weapons can’t win a foreign civil war. Apparently that period of history bypassed the princes. The deposed former ‘president’ of Yemen General Hadi Bin Zombie occasionally claims from his Riyadh hotel that Hezbollah agents were arrested in Yemen, he did so again last week. Yet he and his foreign bosses have failed to produce any such arrested Lebanese agents.
The Yemen war is easy to get out of, at some cost of losing face. They can always declare victory in Yemen and pull out. The USA did it in Vietnam, with no lasting negative effect.

Getting out of Lebanon is harder, more complex. Unlike the Houthis of Yemen, Hezbollah is a true ally and beneficiary of Iran. Unlike the Houthis and Iraqis and many Hezbollah members, its chief Hassan Nasrallah himself believes in the theocracy. It is not clear if he means that he believes in it in Iran only or even outside that country. His close Lebanese Christian allies don’t seem to take it seriously, nor do his Lebanese Sunni allies.
Still, giving the Iranian mullahs a black eye in Lebanon is an irresistible goal for the Saudis. It is a goal that seems to be moving farther and farther way from them. The Israelis have failed to do it militarily for them so far, and seem to have given up unless seriously provoked. The Americans, under both George W Bush and Obama, have declined to be drawn into the morass of the warlord-dominated shifting politics of Lebanon.
The Saudis have now persuaded their Persian Gulf allies to impose an economic blockade on Lebanon. It is not original (the Saudis are never original): they probably mean to ratchet it up, like the now-defunct Western blockade of Iran…..

And that is where it stands now………
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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