Monthly Archives: February 2015

Cyber Security, cyber war, Espionage

NSA and GCHQ: Das Leben der Anderen……..

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“US and British intelligence agencies illegally hacked into a major manufacturer of Sim cards to steal codes and facilitate eavesdropping on mobiles, a US news website says. The Intercept website said that the information came from former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The company allegedly targeted – Gemalto – says it is taking the allegations “very seriously”. It operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. The Intercept says that “the great Sim heist“…………”

Das Leben der Anderen, the lives of others……….
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadists, Kurds, Terrorism

Divided They Stand: North to Kirkuk, North to Mosul……..

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“And hostilities with Shia Arabs are growing increasingly dangerous. Even though ISIS, the so-called Islamic State, is practically on the city’s doorstep, Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, has opposed arming the city’s Arab and Turkmen population since Kurdish forces took control of the region from the Iraqi government last summer. The Kurdish advance came after ISIS took the city of Tikrit, which lies to the south between Kirkuk and Baghdad. In a recent interview with the London-based Arabic daily newspaper Al Hayat, Barzani said that “We will not allow any forces to enter Kirkuk,” in a message clearly directed at Iranian-backed Shia militias…………..”

The media makes it sound like a choice between Iranian-backed Shi’a militias and Wahhabi-backed Jihadists.
They always ignore the opportunistic former Baathists who have gone religious and are now part of this silly murderous Caliphate. The Baathist officers who would not defend Baghdad in 2003, changed into civilian attire and vanished as American forces closed in on Baghdad, long before Paul Bremer arrived in the city. Not a single shot fired to defend their capital. But they have Mosul, historically their most favorable city in Iraq, for now. That is where Uday and Qusay Saddam Hussein made their last stand in 2003. That is where the last of the Iraqi Baathists will probably make their stand.

American media are also reporting now that “certain Arab allies” have raised objections to possible details of the expected counter-attack to free Mosul from the ISIS Wahhabis now controlling it. These “certain Arab allies“, no doubt Saudi Arabia or its other sidekick on the Persian Gulf, have expressed concern that most the forces on the good side in the expected battle will be Shi’as (either Iraqi soldiers or militias). Odd, given that there is no practical way around Iraqi participation. Maybe the Saudis are willing to lend some of their own valiant forces for the battle? Or they could hire the usual Asian mercenaries.

Other ‘allies’ are also apparently doing their best to hamper any campaign to roll back the Jihadists, be that in Iraq or Syria. The Turks, whose government has an open door policy that allows Jihadists, their female groupies, and weapons to flow freely across the border into the war zone. The Turks are worried that not only the Kurds in Syria are being empowered but that the Assad regime is already gaining back territory as ISIS focuses on consolidating and holding its gains in the northern and border regions.
Such is the backdrop to the haggling going on before the expected battle for Mosul. As for Kirkuk, it is the one issue all other Iraqis (Shi’a, Sunni, Wahhabi, etc) and other Arabs agree on. But the Kurds have it now and I doubt they will give it up again. So, the battle for Kirkuk is over before it ever started……
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy

Saudis and Qataris and Turks to Teach Syrian Rebels the Basics of Democracy……..

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“The United States and Turkey have reached a tentative agreement to train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters and expect to sign the pact soon, U.S. and Turkish officials said on Tuesday with Ankara predicting a signing in days. U.S. officials have said they plan to train about 5,000 Syrian fighters a year for three years under the plan. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as Turkey, have publicly offered to host training sites…………”

If you liked the results of the earlier double Wahhabi (Qatari and Saudi) intervention in Syria, you’ll probably love this one. If you liked the results so far of the intervention by Saudi princes, Qatari potentates, and Turkish fundamentalists, then you’ll love this new development. If you liked Jabhat Al Nusra, Ahrar Al Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the other cutthroat groups that morphed from the various iterations of the Free Syrian salafi Army, you’ll probably love this new iteration. Now we learn that Doha and Riyadh, the two bastions of free speech and electoral democracy are offering to host the training camps of the moderate humanitarian Syrian rebels who fight alongside Jabhat Al Qaeda of Syria. They are sure to learn how to win a civil war and rule Syria, as soon as pigs learn to fly.
Know what I think? I think President Obama may not be buying it either. He is being pressed by the princes and bulldozed by Senate jingoists like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the same group that gave us the New Liberated Libya and the Caliphate of ISIS.
Read what a former advocate of the Syrian opposition, former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford thinks now of the Syrian rebels, read it here.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadists

Caliphate Salafi Justice: Between the Fire and the Sword…….

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“Islamic State (ISIL) militants have burned 45 people to death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, local police chief said Tuesday. According to Col. Qasim Obeidi, quoted by the BBC, some of those killed were security forces members……..”

The pattern seems to be emerging: Western hostages, Christians, Yazidis, and Shi’as are beheaded. Foreign or ‘enemy’ soldiers (like the Jordanian pilot and Iraqi security and soldiers) are burned alive. So the cutthroats of ISIS have most likely burned alive some 45 Iraqis recently.
The 45 Iraqis who were burned alive have not received much media coverage, yet, but that is probably because the king of Jordan did not done his “Mission Accomplished” uniform and hit the skies.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Arab Revolutions, History, Libya, NATO

Cross My Heart on Barbary Coast: the Fourth Western Liberation of Libya?……..

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Libya, or some version of it, used to be a Roman province way back when. It was liberated by Arab Muslims in the seventh century AD, along with Egypt and the rest of North Africa. Ever since, Europeans have been trying to get back in, not just into Libya, but also the rest of North Africa (the Arab Maghreb). Come to think of it, Europeans have been trying to get into any vacuum to the south of their continent. The Americans were also forced to get involved during the early years of the Republic, under John Adams and Jefferson. During the wilder days of Barbary Coast (not the one in San Francisco, the one in North Africa). Hence the U.S. Marines on the “Shores of Tripoli“.

1911: Italy invaded Libya with with a view to expanding her African “empire”, like the French and British. Benito Mussolini later became dictator of Italy. He had read somewhere that Libya used to be a Roman province. He escalated the fight against the natives in order to secure the occupation, killing many thousands. During WWII, the Germans also entered the place in support of their Italian allies against the British who were entrenched in Egypt.

1943: The Western Allies liberated Libya from the Axis forces in 1943. But they stayed on for a while until invited by Colonel Gaddafi to leave after 1969.

2011: The Western allies, NATO, in conjunction with French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and David Cameron and Gaddafi’s old pal Tony Blair and Joe Liberman, liberated Libya once again. They took it from Colonel Gaddafi and his family, handed it to the disparate militias and Jihadists who control so much of it now. Remember the Republican political battle cry of recent years “Benghazi, Benghazi“?

2015: NATO and Arab leaders are hankering to liberate Libya again. Especially now that it is being threatened by the ISIS Salafi cutthroats. Will Libya be liberated one more time by the West? Will that be the last time, absolutely the last liberation of Libya, cross my heart and hope to die?

(FYI: Arab leaders can’t liberate Libya or any other place, mainly because you’ve got to have something in order to give it to others).

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, History, Iran, Yemen

Quagmire: Will Saudis Invite Egyptians into Yemen? Will Iranians get Bogged Down?…….

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Yemen 1962: some military officers staged a coup d’etat against the royal family, the Imamate of Hameediddeen. The new Imam Badr sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. A civil war ensued in Yemen, with some Saudi-supported tribes rising against the new regime, and leftist Egypt under Nasser siding with the officers. Saudis and Jordanians supported the tribes. Egypt sent thousands of troops to Yemen to help the Republican regime. It was a quagmire for the Egyptians, a quagmire the Saudis made sure would make Nasser suffer. Nobody really won that long civil war, and in the end they reached a compromise. The Egyptians left Yemen, but they faced a more difficult and tougher enemy in June 1967.

Yemen 2009: The Saudis briefly forgot their own lesson from the 1960s. They intervened in North Yemen against the Houthis. The best Western weapons that money could buy were essentially defeated by lightly-armed Houthis.

Yemen 2015: during 2014 the Houthis swarmed from their northern stronghold and easily defeated the corrupt Yemeni establishment that was set up and supported by the Gulf GCC, with UN blessing. More recently they have sidelined the president Hadi Al Zombie and the parliament and established new institutions. Now the Gulf GCC are making some political noises. There have even been hints at intervention by GCC. That would be interesting: would they send their imported foreign mercenaries into Yemen? How big a defeat would the Houthis inflict on them? Would the Gulf potentates align with the secessionists (former Marxists) in South Yemen? Would they kiss and make up with their AQAP (Al Qaeda) kin against a common enemy?

Recently, Egyptian media and some Egyptian officials have also been making warning noises about Yemen, in conjunction with GCC complaints about the Houthis. Their worry about possible Iranian inroads is understandable. It is unlikely that the Egyptians are thinking of re-entering Yemen. If they do, it is unlikely that the results would be better than in the 1960s. The Iranians themselves would be making Egyptian-like mistakes if they actually get deeper into Yemen. It would be the first Iranian intervention in Yemen in fifteen centuries, and it would be a big mistake. Yemen has always made a nice quagmire for foreigners.

Regardless of media fear-mongering, nobody is going to close the Bab El-Mandab Strait of the Red Sea, anymore than anybody will close the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. So just leave Yemen for the Yemenis to fight over: it is much safer and cheaper that way. Everybody else, from Iranians to Saudis to Qataris to Egyptians, stay out.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Yemen

About Wild Houthis, AQAP in PDRY, and Forces Loyal to a Zombie……..

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Back to Yemen.
Some Western media have taken to reporting impossible things like: “Houthis are fighting militias loyal to president Abd Rabuh Hadi….”
FYI: they may be fighting the Houthis, but few people, if anyone, in Yemen are loyal to Mr. Hadi. He is not the kind of person that inspires loyalty of anyone outside his own family. Why else would the wily former strongman Ali Abdallah Salih pick him as his vice president? Why else would I occasionally call him Hadi Al Zombie (a lady suggested that last name once)?
Many in the southern provinces of Yemen would fight any authority in Sana’a, because they want to secede back into South Yemen (or maybe the original PDRY). And Al Qaeda (AQAP) Wahhabis are also spread in the south and they would fight the Houthi (heretics) any day. However, I do suspect that the Houthis may have bitten more than they can handle. They may have given their Wahhabi opponents an excuse to foment a sectarian war in Yemen. And they may be overextended by now, far away from their stronghold of S’ada in the north.

So, Abd Rabuh Hadi (Al Zombie) may be a nice guy, he probably is, but forget the nonsense about “forces loyal to Hadi“.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Al-Qaeda, Europe, Islamic History, Islamophobia, Jews, Terrorism

Cultures: Willful Arrogant Europeans, Insecure Islamists, Surviving Banu Quraydha……

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So a bunch of willful arrogant French journalists and other European cartoonists draw insulting childish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Probably knowing exactly what it would provoke, maybe with an eye toward circulation and/or publicity or some public accolades among their literati peers. Art of the kind they probably wouldn’t dare do of, say, the Queen of Denmark or Queen Elizabeth, or even Charles de Gaulle. The queen’s head on the body of a dog, for example. Such re the creative inspirations of the Euro-artistes.
They have the right to do it. And they have the right to assert that right by doing it. Even if les arabes don’t have the same right to wear the attire they want on the streets of Paris. Even knowing that les arabes on the fringes of their society would be up in arms. Responsibility is a personal choice.

Then there are the Islamists who could and should just shrug it off as one of the unpleasant facts of living in Europe, along with other distasteful things like free speech, wine, music, and casual sex. Hayat Boumedienne and her tiny bikini photos notwithstanding, of course. But some of them, a small minority, don’t shrug it off. So they kill a bunch of people they deem responsible.

But that is not the end of it. To go back fifteen centuries they need their illusory Khaybar or al-Khandaq. So they seek some Jews or Jewish targets, people who have nothing to do with the blasphemous cartoons, to hit. There is no need: Banu Qurayza (Bani Quraydha) are long gone from Madinah, beheaded and enslaved and expelled. Obviously those in Europe are not populating the settlements on the West Bank or bombing Gaza (but maybe now they will). Which means they are doing (with Jews) exactly as some of the European racists would do with them (with Arabs and Muslims): target them. Using them as convenient targets and scapegoats. But scapegoats for what?
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, US Foreign Policy, Yemen

One Yemen, Two Yemen, Three Yemen, Four……..

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Arabia Once Long Ago Felix. (Speaking of ‘felix’: I wonder if they had the qat or gat in those ancient days):

  • In the late 1960s the British gave up on their colony around Aden and Southern Arabia. They tried to leave behind some form of confederation of mini-states, a South Arabian Confederation which failed.
  • Marxist insurgents took over the whole lot and established the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (Marxist South Yemen). Meanwhile, the “Yemen”, i.e. somnolent North Yemen, remained unchanged: tribal and underdeveloped under the Republican regime as it was under the Hameededdeen Imamate.
  • Early 1990 or thereabouts, (Marxist) South Yemen was torn by factional disputes among its leaders, the former comrades in arms were divided and at each others’ throats. The Soviet Union was moving away from Middle East entanglements.
  • South Yemen leaders got the urge to merge with North Yemen, by then ruled by military dictator Ali Abdallah Salih. Possibly they thought they could outsmart the wily colonel and run the whole thing.
  • The colonel was wilier than the Marxists and he managed to sideline them, as colonels often do.
  • The union was a backward step in some ways for South Yemen. Especially on social issues and in women’s rights, where they had to conform to strict repressive North Yemeni standards.
  • A long story. By 1994 the southerners knew for sure that they had a raw deal, got the short end of the stick. They rebelled to regain their independence. They failed.
  • As Yemen fell apart to tribal and Al-Qaeda divisions, the Southerners saw another opportunity to regain independence. Meanwhile the GCC Gulf potentates and the UN managed to get Salih to resign and his deputy General Hadi to replace him. They claim Hadi was elected by an astounding but Arabic 99.8% of the “vote” (more than Sisi’s paltry 98% in Egypt or Assad’s embarrassing 88% in Syria). A weak leader, Hadi shared power with others, including the Islah (essentially the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood). Corruption continued unabated, and the Houthis were emboldened to march from their stronghold and take Sana’a. That is where it stands now.
  • Except that Al-Qaeda (AQAP) Wahhabis are entrenched now, mostly in formerly Marxist South Yemen. The Houthis and Islah (Muslim Brotherhood) and other Salafis in the North and secessionists and Al-Qaeda (AQAP) in the South. Throw in a couple of other tribal ‘issues’, just to further complicate matters and make things more interesting.

They are all fighting each other now. Can the USA solve that? Certainly not, not even a combination of John McCain and Lindsey Graham can do that. The American goal is probably more realistic: to keep AQAP off balance.

Which means no other outsider can solve Yemen either.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Culture, Islam, Israel, Malaysia, Religion

Allah is Coming, Allah is Coming: What is in a Word?………

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“Malaysia’s highest court on Monday dismissed an attempt by Christians for the right to use the word Allah, ending along legal battle that has escalated religious tensions in the country. The case, in which the Catholic church challenged a government ban on its use of the Arabic word to refer to God, came amid concern from minority religious groups who feel that their rights are under threat from rising Islamisation………..”

This is uncommon in Muslim countries, especially in Arab countries. Normally people of all faiths use the term ‘Allah’. In recent years Malaysia has been trying to out-Wahhabi the original Wahhabis, out-royal the king (no pun).

Allah is really a linguistic term. Just a term that denotes a deity or ‘the deity’. Arabs and other Muslims use Allah to denote God, Dieu, Yahweh, etc. Even Arab Christians use “Allah” for “God”: they would be surprised to know that they could get thrown out of a church in some God-fearing states here if they use the term.

It is just a language thing, not a specific first name. Arab Christians often yell “Ya Allah” just as Arab Muslims do when exasperated. Even Arab Jews used to do that, before the Jews in most Arab countries left or were pushed to leave. I suspect that maybe some Israelis might do that by now. Who knows, maybe some day they will adopt and claim it as their own term, just like falafel and hummus.
Politicians here who are ignorant and/or opportunistic (surprise!) use the term as a rallying cry to get votes.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter