Western media, and many Western politicians, like to simplify things when it comes to the Middle East. This is also mutual: Muslims and Arabs tend to simplify things Western, often engulfing them in conspiracy stories real or imagined. Western media is used to picking one or two villains from the ‘opposing camp of the season’, and vilify them. The easiest form of vilification, the best sound bite, the cheapest shot is the “Hitler” comparison. It has been used by the media, by politicians, even recently by Hillary Clinton (about Putin in Ukraine). To his credit President Obama has not stooped down to using the Hitler comparison yet.

Suddenly there is a potential new Arab leader being slowly groomed in the media for the ‘villain’ role. Actually an unlikely one: that is why he is considered a rather ‘soft’ villain, perhaps a bumbling one. That is Nouri al Maliki of Iraq, the man who won the job through parliamentary votes. I know, I know, the Iraqi parliament is divided along sectarian and ethnic lines and probably needs a stiff kick in the derriere, but name one Arab parliament (of those few who have parliaments) where it is not divided along sectarian or tribal or ethnic lines? Lebanon? You can’t get more sectarian than that, with hereditary warlords thrown in for good measure. Egypt? You’d probably get chased out of town if you try to run as member of a smaller Muslim sect (not to mention a Muslim Brother). Gulf GCC? Most members of the GCC have appointed legislatures that the kings or shaikhs appoint and dis-appoint (Kuwait being the only GCC country where the legislature is really elected, although along tribal and sectarian lines). Talking the eastern Arab countries: the western part from Libya to Morocco is somewhat more complex. In Iran candidates require approval to run (or stand if you are British or sit if you are Arab) for office.

So back to al Malilki. The vast media of the kings and princes and potentates of the Gulf are already setting the tone for the next attempted political coup in Iraq. They tried it once before a few years ago, when they sought to push Saudi agent Iyad Allawi to the leadership post. Against the opposition of a majority of Iraqis, but he had no real hope of getting a parliamentary majority. I agree that Al Maliki should not seek a new term, not because of the self-serving claims made in the media of the despotic Saudi and Qatari and UAE potentates. He should not be reappointed for two reasons: (1) because as leader he has failed to keep all Iraqis peaceful and prosperous, (2) a new term would be like clinging to power, almost what all Arab leaders do for too long. If he should go, that would be to set a precedent for rotation of leadership. A good democratic thing to do.

As for Mr. Allawi, Saudi Arabia’s man in Iraq, his name is not even under consideration anymore, which is very realistic indeed.

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mhg

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Video:
A Holiday Song

Al-Qaeda has come of age: it  has been restructured into the discount superstore of terrorism now. It has morphed over the past few years into what became clear during 2013: the Walmart of Terrorism. It has become leaner and not ‘top heavy’ anymore. It has opened new branches across the Muslim world, most of them also closer to its ‘customers’ and prospective customers: just like Sam Walton’s baby. The loss of the charismatic Osama Bin Laden and emergence of the clunky and boring Al Zawahri has not necessarily been bad for it.

The Wahhabi terrorist organization has extended its influence from Pakistan through northwestern Iraq through Syria as well as parts of Lebanon. The move into Lebanon was thanks to the funding and encouragement of the Saudi proxies among the warlords of the Hariri March 14 movement.
Al-Qaeda is deeply embedded now inside Yemen, close to its Saudi birthplace and source of volunteers and money. Deep enough that American drones based in Saudi Arabia have so far failed to dislodge it. It has also extended its influence into liberated Libya (as Republicans like to squawk: Benghazi, Benghazi!), Tunisia (still trying to remain free but also often reported the home of Jihad sex and all that نكاح الجهاد), southern Algeria, Mali and other Sahel countries. A version of it is also active in Nigeria and other West African states. Its Wahhabi ideology is also alive and well in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Which all means that the Wahhabi groups and its franchises have managed to maintain and ‘protect’ their Persian Gulf sources of money and funding. It is always about the money in this day and age. No doubt indicating a huge failure (and a defeat) for the erstwhile ‘war on terror’.

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mhg

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“French President Francois Hollande will meet former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Syrian opposition leader Ahmed Jarba in Saudi Arabia, where he arrived Sunday, said a member of his entourage. The meeting with Hariri, a fierce critic of the Syrian regime, comes amid heightening tensions in Lebanon after the assassination of his close aide, former Finance Minister Mohammad Shatah, in a car bomb on Friday in Beirut……… Hollande called for the respect of “constitutional deadlines” in Lebanon, starting with “holding presidential elections in May 2014…………..”

Expect the “socialist” president of France to spend more time in Saudi Arabia. Certainly much more than the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy did. The latter reportedly couldn’t stand visiting the princes, although he went through the motions (as in “close your eyes and think of France!“).

Francois Hollande, France’s right-wing socialist president, is already getting some financial payback from the Saudi princes. He is getting paid back for his earlier attempt to block the nuclear deal with Iran and his support for the right-wing Saudi proxies of Hariri and his allies in Lebanon and the Jihadis in Syria. The Saudi ruling family has announced a US$ 3 billion weapons aid for Lebanese army, to be supplied by France.

Any day now the socialist Hollande could announce publicly that the Wahhabi theocratic system of absolute tribal one-family rule represents the best principles of the French Revolution. That it enshrines the common values that join the socialists of France and the quasi-feudal princes of the Arabian Peninsula. Hollande would urge the rival factions in Lebanon and Syria to unite, join under the banner of socialist Wahhabism, under the Saudi leadership of Hariri and Jarba. He may announce that the long-defunct French revolutionary guillotine was a direct tribal descendant of the Saudi executioner’s sword, still actively chopping subversive and occult heads and hands every Friday afternoon in Saudi public squares.

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mhg

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I have not posted about the recent GCC summit of kings and rulers and potentates that was held in Kuwait. Not much ‘there’ there as someone said so many years ago about a particular place across the Bay in California. The rulers and potentates of the GCC held their annual summit conference in December. Not as much headline news this time as usual:

• The Saudi princes and their Bahrain boot-lickers probably wanted to talk about, push for, the idea of ‘unity’ (they have already decided to drop the past talk about a Gulf GCC ‘confederation’). Oman, as I expected, sensibly would have none of it. Nor would many of the others, but all the rest apparently have decided to kill the idea in ‘studies’ and ‘consultations’. More polite and diplomatic that way. Which shows that there is some wisdom among the leaders once you get out of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

• They also agreed to some joint military leadership structure, which I expect will be no better than the current lousy Peninsula Shield. The recent experience in Yemen showed that the Saudis can’t organize a ‘piss-up in a brewery‘, from a military point of view. Some would argue that the U.S. Navy may be a cheaper, less harmful, and more effective alternative as a shield against
  external trouble, if there is any, real or imagined. More ominously for the peoples of the Gulf, they also agreed on some unified ‘police force’, which usually means unified repression of dissent. This evokes the role of Saudi Arabia in the repression of the Bahrain uprising.
• They also blasted Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad and his regime. They might have added, with a straight face, that the Syrian people deserve the same freedoms and democracy as the peoples of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain enjoy.

• They completely ignored the old Saudi invitation of 2011 to Jordan and Morocco to join the GCC. Hence deserving a futile but still appropriate: WTF?

• My secret source also reported, claimed from her hiding spot on the wall of the conference hall, that the summiteers spent the final session in good cheer, singing a medley of Auld Lang Syne, Kumbaya, and L’Internationale. One of the many eager Lebanese columnists who write for the Saudi newspapers owned by the princes (Asharq Alawsat or Al-Hayat) tearfully wrote about the significance of the fact that many of the summiteers and their retainers have trim goatees, just like Lenin. WTF that might mean.

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mhg

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“On his eighth trip to fight with the rebels in Syria, in August, Abu Khattab saw something that troubled him: two dead children, their blood-soaked bodies sprawled on the street of a rural village near the Mediterranean coast. He knew right away that his fellow rebels had killed them. Abu Khattab, a 43-year-old Saudi hospital administrator who was pursuing jihad on his holiday breaks, went to demand answers from his local commander, a notoriously brutal man named Abu Ayman al-Iraqi. The commander brushed him off, saying his men had killed the children “because they were not Muslims,” Abu Khattab recalled recently during an interview here. It was only then that Abu Khattab began to believe that the jihad in Syria — where he had traveled in violation of an official Saudi ban — was not fully in accord with God’s will. But by the time he returned to Riyadh, where he now volunteers in a program to discourage others from going, his government had overcome its own scruples to become the main backer of the Syrian rebels, including many hard-line Islamists who often fight alongside militants loyal to Al Qaeda……………..”

The Saudis are going all out to win Syria for their brand of Wahhabi democracy. They have come out of the closet openly in support of Al Qaeda affiliates, based on the old Arab tribal saying that: “Me and My Brother Against My Cousin, Me and My Cousin Against the Outsider” (The Saudi princes have now refined that saying by adding the following: “……… Me and the Outsider against the Zionists, Me and the Israelis against the Shi’as”). Not that they have not supported Al Qaeda before: the terrorist group is Saudi born, bred, and breast-fed at the teat of Saudi and Gulf petro-money.

The Saudis have been seeking surrogates to fight for their goals in Syria (and in Lebanon and Iraq and Iran). At one point or another they had thought the Americans were on the verge of attacking Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. But the Obama administration seems to have dodged that bullet. Now they seem to believe the French, those habitual and opportunistic invaders of West Africa, could help them. They also seem to be under the illusion that the Lebanese Army can hand Lebanon over to the Wahhabi cause. Hence the announced $3 billion of weapons to be supplied by France to Lebanon with Saudi money. Some generals and warlords are licking their chops waiting for the kickback money: it is really a bribe to the leaders of the army and some Lebanese potentates. They are as amenable to Saudi money as (almost) anybody else in Lebanon, but the majority of the soldiers are not. Once the army gets involved in domestic conflicts, the soldiers will dissolve back onto their respective religions and sects and militias: and hereditary warlords. That is Lebanese politics for you.

Cheers

mhg

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