“KARACHI: ISI asked Saudi Arabia not to fund Nawaz Sharif for his election campaign, a secret cable of 2008 revealed. According to WikiLeaks, National Security Adviser Tariq Aziz told Asif Zardari that after being elected as a prime minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi could challenge his authority, as Zardari was considering Qureshi as a PPP candidate for prime minister. Aziz told US Ambassador Anne Patterson on February 15 that Saudi Arabia has provided heavy funds to Nawaz Sharif for his election campaign in order to defeat Pakistan Peoples’ Party. In the same meeting, he also told Patterson that ISI requested Saudi Ambassador to stop funding Nawaz Sharif. ………..”Pakistan is a huge country, population wise. The Saudis must have spent multiple what they spent (and still do) in Lebanon and Iraq and other places for election and coup campaigns. Reports indicate they outspent the Iranians, actually swamped them, in terms of spending in the last Lebanese elections (they did get to control the parliament, briefly). I bet they will have to spend much more in Egypt in the coming elections. Then there is Libya, whenever it ever gets to elections (NTC promises to hold them in 2013), and Syria if it ever gets to having elections. Of course there is still Saudi Arabia (aka Arabian Peninsula): if they ever decide to hold opsn elections, sometime on the other side of doomsday…… Cheers
mhg
BFF “Particularly worrisome in the Saudi case is the potential departure from the Gold Standard established by the UAE 123 agreement. If, as has been suggested, the Saudi agreement is concluded without an accompanying commitment to abjure reprocessing and enrichment technologies, there could be profound consequences for the administration’s nonproliferation objectives and for the long-term stability of the Middle East. Although Saudi Arabia has not previously been judged to be a proliferation threat, as it “lacks the technological expertise, industrial base, and disciplined commitment required to develop an indigenous weapons capacity,” recent developments may have altered this assessment. The alacrity with which the United States dispensed of its long-standing support for the regime of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak no doubt gave pause to the House of Saud, which continues – 30 years later – to be troubled by American abandonment of the Shah on the eve of the Iranian revolution. Nor is Saudi threat perception likely to be relieved by the regional meddling of its frequent ideological competitor. This is to say nothing of the Kingdom’s concerns regarding Iranian weaponization. Indeed, Saudi Arabia appears increasingly unnerved by the trajectory of the Iranian program, a trend that can be seen in the country’s shifting characterizations of its own nuclear ambitions. ……..”
There are fears that Saudi Arabia may try and shift any nuclear program toward military use. In fact that is exactly what Prince Turki al-Faisal warned about last month. There is now this fear, but the difference is that the Saudis will need American (and maybe other) help in any nuclear plan they have.
There are, there have been, fears of the Iranian nuclear program. These fears are based on possibilities that the Iranian may be trying to either build nuclear weapons or, more likely, reach the point ehre they can build nuclear weapons.
Then there is Israel. Everyone knows that Israel has many nuclear warheads, although no one can prove it. Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), hence it is not under any Western pressure to allow international (IAEA) inspection.
Pakistan has several nuclear weapons, and it is not an NPT signatory either. Pakistan was created as a quasi-theocratic state: it was carved up as an Islamic state from parts of India. The country has been veering toward fundamentalism and back over its history. It may be closer now than at any other time.
What do all these West and South Asian countries have in common? No, not the geographic proximity. They are all either declared theocracies, undeclared theocracies, quasi-theocracies, or threatened theocracies. They are all within one of these categories I noted above. Scary, no? (The United States is not a theocracy, although the Tea Party and other elements would like it to be and try to push it that way). Cheers
mhg
BFF “During a recent, rare briefing to parliament, a top Pakistani air force commander made a surprising claim: a remote southwestern airfield long suspected of housing US drones used in missile strikes was actually under the control of the United Arab Emirates. The comment stunned lawmakers and ordinary Pakistanis, who – in the wake of the May 2 US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in northwest Pakistan – had been questioning whether their nation has been surrendering its sovereignty. But this week, a UAE official only added to the mystery by strongly denying to The Associated Press that the Gulf state has any operational role in the Shamsi airfield, although, the official, said wealthy Arabs have occasionally used it to fly to Pakistan on hunting expeditions……The extent of its involvement today is that UAE sheiks and others may use the airfield for “recreational purposes” such as hunting expeditions, the official said. Those private, civilian planes that come in for hunting and falconry trips must get clearance from Pakistani aviation authorities and file flight plans, according to the UAE official. The base “was never operated nor controlled by the UAE,” said the official, who had been briefed on the subject by the Gulf state’s Foreign Ministry and requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. The US used the Shamsi field as a forward staging point inthe initial period …..….” A strange story: a Pakistani airfield under UAE control that is used by the United States? It almost sounds like a script for a cheap action film.
Shamsi Airfield. The Shamsi are a UAE clan with close ties to the ruling family. They are like the Al Al Shaikh in Saudi Arabia: they dominate many government organizations and businesses. Could that be the source of the name? So the Abu Dhabi honchos spend millions a year on Pakistani religious schools that reportedly raise Salafi terrorists, then invite the U.S. to bomb the same from “their” base? Somehow it doesn’t sound accurate. I need to investigate it.
(It is true , though, that the Pakistanis give certain preferential treatment to some Gulf potentates from ruling families, especially Saudis and Emiratis. They are allotted areas in which to hunt even while others are banned. I read over a year ago that some potentates have set areas where they have exclusive hunting rights. Some of these are in supposedly ‘protected’ reserves). Cheers
mhg
BFF “Tehran: Al Qaida founder Osama Bin Laden was a prisoner in US custody for “sometime” before he was killed by the American military, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday. “I have exact information that Bin Laden was held by the American military for sometime… until the day they killed him he was a prisoner held by them,” the hardline president said in a live interview on Iranian state television. “Please pay attention. This is important. He was held by them for sometime. They made him sick and while he was sick they killed him,” Ahmadinejad added. He accused US President Barack Obama for announcing the Al Qaida leader’s death for “political gain”. “What the US president has done is for domestic political gain. In other words, they killed him for Obama’s election and now they are seeking to replace him with someone else,” Ahmadinejad said without elaborating……”
It is starting, predictably. It is tempting for me to explain this as Ahmadinejad being just a ….Middle Easterner. Conspiracy theories and all that. But then there is another possible explanation. Maybe the Pakistani military or ISI leaked this tidbit of gossip to the Iranians, just to muddy the waters, and counter American anger. Okay, that in itself is also a conspiracy theory. I have another one: old Papa Bin Laden had many wives, many sons; suppose there was another man who looked exactly like Bin Laden, but without wearing an iron mask……..
(FYI: Alexandre Dumas is dead, actually both are dead; no copyright, no nothing). Cheers
mhg
BFF “This puts people like Abd al-Hamid al-Mujil in an uncomfortable position. Described by fellow jihadists as the “million-dollar man” for his successful fundraising on behalf of al Qaeda and other jihadi groups, Mujil directed the office of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a charity in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Both he and the IIRO office he headed were designated as terrorist entities by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2006. But even if being “named and shamed” forced Mujil out of the terror-finance business, there are many others just like him. Just this week, David Cohen, the head of the Treasury Department’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence branch told CNN that major donors from the Gulf states remain the key sources of funding for the al Qaeda core. There are no doubt dozens of radical funders now worrying that their names, bank accounts, or addresses will comes up in bin Laden’s spreadsheets — or “pocket litter” —and for good reason.……..” I have always argued that all these terrorist operations from Iraq to Pakistan must cost a lot of money. More money than the locals could provide. I have always written here that following the money trail from Iraq or Pakistan or Yemen will lead so a huge field of petroleum, an oil well. This is part of someone’s ‘foreign policy’, at least the Iraq part is. Bring pressure on Iraq by sending suicide terrorists across the border and finance them (the money is peanuts for the deep pocketed princes). Bring pressure on Pakistan and others the same way. Meanwhile, the money and the Salafi fatwas will keep the bombers away from the home front. As for the Western allies, and the other Arabs who fall victim? Oh, well, there is such a thing as collateral damage. Cheers
mhg
Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF