Monthly Archives: November 2015

Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, GCC, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen

A Dummy’s Guide to Managing Arab Turmoil: from Iraq to Libya and Syria and Yemen………

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A few Arab governments, and their controlled media, spent several years criticizing the way the United States handled Iraq. The Saudi and Qatari potentates especially seemed to think they could have done better.
They dabbled in Iraq, but got their real chance, both of them and others, in places like Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen.

  • In Libya they talked the Western powers through NATO into bombing the installations controlled by the Gaddafi regime. The West essentially won the civil war in Libya for “the opposition”. People like Senator McCain, Hillary Clinton and French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy thumbed their chests (and breasts) and declared a victory in Libya for democracy and tolerance. Allegedly with some Arab help, no doubt token help. It turns out the Libyan opposition was not what they thought it was. Libya is now divided among tribal elements and Jihadist terrorists. It is suffering from Al Qaeda affiliates as well as ISIS (DAESH) branches.
  • These two Persian Gulf , er, “powers”, ruled by absolute tribal Wahhabi potentates, also thought they could do better in Syria than the West did in Iraq. Of course they had a strong hand in the failure of Western intervention in Iraq and the growth of Wahhabi terrorist enclaves in that country.
  • Having messed up Libya, the Saudis and Qataris started, along with Senator McCain and, yes, French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy to push for the Western powers to follow their same advise in Syria. From the spring of 2011 they flooded Syria with money, weapons, and Salafi Jihadists. With logistic and trafficking help from the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Caliph Erdogan of Turkey. That was when the non-sectarian original Syrian uprising ended and was replaced with sectarian Salafi Jihadist groups many of whom eventually joined ISIS or Al Nusra. Close to a quarter million Syrians from both sides have died, millions are roaming the shores of Europe seeking refuge. Meanwhile, the Arab potentates who started it all refuse to take in the refugees they helped create.
  • Now the current options for the West in Syria range between accepting Al Assad or one of his allies in power or allowing the intolerant sectarian Wahhabis to take over. There might be a quasi-Wahhabi option somewhere in between, but that may have been co-opted by the new Russian intervention.
  • In Yemen, the Gulf potentates allowed former vice president Generalissimo Abd Rabuh Hadi to win a rigged election with 99.8% of the vote in 2012. Not a very subtle form of democracy is it? Hadi allied himself with the corrupt quasi-Islamist Muslim Brotherhood-ish Islah (ironically Islah means Reform in Arabic). He lost out in Sanaa to an alliance of tribal Houthis and former dictator Ali A Saleh supporters in the army. He fled to Aden, but he was chased out to a hotel in that other bastion of Arab democracy and freedom, Riyadh. The war in Yemen became a struggle between the Houthi-army alliance and Southern secessionists and Al Qaeda. And American drones.
  • Now the Saudis have managed to hire, rent, and buy a bunch of Arab and impoverished African allies ranging from Jordan to Sudan and possibly Mauritania and others. There are unconfirmed reports that the UAE is also sending its mercenary army of hired Colombians to Aden. Yemen is now a war among various groups and proxies. The Saudis and their allies are bombing the country indiscriminately, as do some of their local enemies. Thousands have died, and many displaced in the second poorest Arab country after Somalia. Speaking of which, many Yemenis have fled to Somalia, which tells you how bad things are in that country.

Together, these princes and potentates can write a best-seller: A Dummy’s Guide to Managing Arab Turmoil………
So much for an ‘Arab solution‘. I had thought the idea of an ‘Arab solution’ for any regional problem was laid to rest in 1990/91. Apparently not yet, but no doubt soon enough.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Islam, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sectarian, Terrorism, Wahhabi

Terrorism Inc.: the Wahhabi Elephant in the Room……..

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It is not a Muslim war of terror, it is a war by one small sect, a Wahhabi war of terror against all others. It is no more Islamic than claiming that the Holocaust was a Christian act (actually it was, across most of bigoted Central and Eastern Europe, not just Germany and Austria).

  • This Friday news agencies reported that the West African branch of Wahhabism, the Boko Haram, has attacked a procession of Shi’a Muslims. The suicide bomber killed about 40 and wounded over 20. No doubt there were other onlookers, Muslim Sunnis and others, who were murdered by the Wahhabi bomber.
  • In Paris last week the Wahhabis attacked public places and killed about 129 men and women of various religion (some of none). That was the second major terrorist attack in Paris this year.
  • In Beirut, Lebanon they attacked a marketplace three weeks ago. in an area that is predominantly Shi’a but also houses Sunni Muslims and Christians and Syrian refugees and possibly a few Wahhabi sympathizers. They killed over 40 people and wounded over 200. Western media headlined that the area was a “Hezbollah stronghold”.
  • In Iraq, in Baghdad and other towns they have been killing civilians in market places, mosques, and other venues for a few years. Mostly Shi’as are targeted, but no doubt they killed and injured Sunni Muslims and people of other faiths. Almost every day.
  • In Kuwait last June, the Wahhabi terrorists blew up a Shi’a mosque and killed 27 people, and wounded others. That was the second Wahhabi sectarian terrorist act in the country this year.
  • In Pakistan, the Wahhabis have been waging an aggressive war of terror against Shi’a Muslims for a few years. And against some others as well.
  • Last night news broke out of a terrorist attack against a Shi’a Muslim mosque in Bangladesh. The perpetrators were almost certainly local Wahhabi converts, as the Islamic State of DAESH claimed responsibility. In impoverished BanglafuckingDesh of all places.

This ugly sect that sprouted and spawned in what is now Central Saudi Arabia erroneously claims to represent Islam. Wahhabism, the official faith of Saudi and Qatari potentates as well as ISIS (DAESH) and Al Qaeda cutthroats, has been efficient in spreading its seed, its poison around the world for several decades. Fueled by petroleum money and indoctrination and hatred of the “others”. Encouraged by Western governments that ignore the “swamp” for the sake of fat weapons deals and other contracts. It has gained and won and bought converts throughout the Persian Gulf region, through Egypt and North Africa. And South Asia and Europe. Meanwhile the West is ignoring the Wahhabi elephant in the room, a very rich elephant, and perhaps there is the rub.
Now the whole world is reaping the results.

What to do? Drain the real swamp, drain Wahhabism Inc. ……
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Iraq, Qatar, Syria

The Empire of Qatar to Invade Syria and Iraq: O’ Gulliver, O’ Lilliput……..

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“Qatar, a major supporter of rebels in Syria’s civil war, suggested it could intervene militarily following Russia’s intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad but said it still preferred a political solution to the crisis. The comments by Qatar’s foreign minister, made in a CNN interview on Wednesday, drew a swift reply from Assad’s government with a senior official warning that Damascus would respond harshly to such “direct aggression”……….”

Last month, as the Russian air campaign over the terrorist Islamic State of ISIS escalated the Qatari government threatened to intervene militarily. Yes, militarily. Now Qatar has a population of about 2 million, 90% of whom are temporary foreign laborers, mostly from from south Asian countries. Which means its citizens are about, what, a quarter of a million?
A few years ago, when the father of the current Emir ruled Qatar, some Qatari officials threatened military intervention in Iraq, if the domestic political power was not altered. At that time the citizen population of Qatar was almost certainly less than 200 thousand people.
It is true, Qatar has huge monetary reserves, and its ruling family and their tribal allies can and do buy the best Western weapons. But a statelet of a quarter of a million people intervening in Syria or Iraq? They’d need a nuclear arsenal, which their money can’t buy. It is best to stick to buying exclusive French and British hotels and real estate, and a few soccer clubs. And bribing international football/soccer FIFA officials.

An absolute tribal Wahhabi regime claiming to seek freedom for the Syrian people? Just leave Syria and Iraq to the grown-ups, will you?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Middle East, Nazism, Sykes-Picot, Syria, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, WWII

Adieu Sykes-Picot? World War ISIS, World War DAESH………..

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The 1930s saw a complex web of changing European alliances that kept shifting until 1941, when the division of the wartime antagonists took its final shape after the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
After the Nazi/Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War, at the sunset of the 1930s, the major Western powers of the time, Britain and France, signed a deal with the devil of the time, Nazi Germany.  That Munich Deal gave up a large chunk of Central Europe to the Nazis and set up the invasion of Poland. Stalin, even more suspicious of the West than they were of him, panicked and decided to make his own Soviet deal with the German devil. Hence the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of  the summer of 1939.
Thus World World Two evolved.

In Syria the alliances have also shifted over time. With the start of the 2011 spring protests, the absolute undemocratic Wahhabi Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf saw opportunities. As did influential Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood groups in these countries. They saw sectarian and strategic opportunities. As did some hawkish but perhaps gullible American politicians (McCain, Lieberman, Graham, Hillary Clinton, etc). They declared that the Assad regime is about to collapse and that they support the “Syrian opposition”. It was like the alliances of the war of 1939-1945: alliances of divergent interests among these mainly foreign groups. The common goal seemed to be to overthrow the Syrian regime, just as they did in Libya, and to bloody the noses of its allies among the dour Iranian mullahs. Then perhaps to fight among themselves over the remains of Syria.

Except that the Wahhabi elements, bolstered with Gulf money, weapons, and Salafi volunteers, soon took over much of the Syrian military opposition in-country. Their efforts were supported by the accommodation provided by the Turkish Islamist regime for Jihadists and weapons flowing through what I have called the Erdogan Trail. The local Iraqi-Syrian offshoot of Al Qaeda split from the original Wahhabi terror group and declared a Caliphate, an Islamic State stretching from west of Al Raqqa to east of Mosul. Other Al Qaeda affiliates and offshoots (Al Nusra, Ahrar Al Sham, Army of Islamic Conquest, a few other “Al”s, etc) took over what remained of the opposition assets and territory inside Syria.

The Western powers stuck to the simple narrative supplied by their Wahhabi allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar that there is a legitimate Syrian moderate opposition fighting on the ground to overthrow the Al Assad regime and establish ‘democracy’. That these Gulf autocratic kleptocrcies are seeking to establish democracy in Syria, something they deny heir own peoples. But facts on the ground in Syria, and bloody facts in places from Sinai to Paris to Baghdad to Kuwait and Libya and West Africa have proven otherwise. The Western powers are wisely moving away now from the sectarian Syrian narrative as provided by the Wahhabi princes and potentates.

Syria is a mess created by both its regime and the fractious sectarian opposition as well as by Arab and other foreign powers. It needs a solution supported by its people, but not the outcome sought by the neighboring autocrats. That would only replace Sykes-Picot with new sectarian statelets in parts of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. Even after the inevitable demise of this half-baked Caliphate of ISIS. It may already be too late to save the current shape of Syria and Iraq intact. Islamist Turkey, with its seething ethnic and sectarian divide might be next.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Caliphate, Europe, France, MENA, Terrorism

Wahhabi Terrorism in Paris: Bush-ification of Francois Hollande?……..

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Francois Hollande: We will fight, and it will be ruthless…………..

It is natural that France feels besieged. They have had at least two major Wahhabi terrorist attacks in the incomparably beautiful city of Paris this year. Real terrorist attacks, unlike those informant-provoked entrapment “plots” of some addled schmuck at a mosque as has happened in New York and a few other states.

M. Hollande has now asked for a three-month State of Emergency, which is sort of like “closing the barn after the horse, or is it the ass, has escaped”. Hopefully the French State of Emergency does not become permanent, Arab-style. M. Hollande has gone beyond anything an American leader would go to. He has requested a law that any French citizen involved in terrorism be deprived of his/her citizenship, even if born in France. Provided he/she has another citizenship: meaning that “true” French, those who are not of Arab or African origin, are not covered by the new law.

In that, M. Hollande the Socialist has gone well beyond, say, George W Bush. He has out-Bushed Bush. It is an emotional move, and almost certainly a political move for the next French elections. It is unlikely to have any impact on national security or on the fate of the cutthroats of the Caliphate of ISIS.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Cairo, Caliphate, Egypt, Jihadis

Egyptian Trauma: from Nile Pigs to Muslim Brothers to Armed Wahhabis of Sinai……….

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Six years ago, the Egyptian military and security forces, led by Hosni Mubarak, waged and won a vicious civil war against all 4-legged Egyptian pigs. Their goal was to eradicate the Nile swine because they thought pork caused the Swine Flu (H1N1) of 2009. And probably to give the Coptic Christians of Egypt another economic and moral black eye. I am not sure if they won that war completely: not one general was promoted to Field Marshal for it as far as I know.
Two years ago, Generalissimo (now self-promoted Field Marshal) Abdel Fattah Bin Rommel Al Sisi waged war and won against the elected Muslim Brotherhood ( MB ) regime in Cairo. During and after the military coup, several thousand civilian were killed, and tens of thousands were thrown in prison. Some simply vanished.

Why can’t these extremely well-armed security and military forces seem to win a war against the Wahhabi terrorists running amok in Sinai? Could it be because the latter, unlike the Nile pigs and the MB are well-armed, while the Muslim Brothers and the Pigs were largely unarmed? Could it be because the Sinai cutthroats fight back and many of them are more dedicated? Like the Israelis in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973? It could, it could.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Culture, Saudi Arabia

What Is In a Name: Saudi Society from Alice to Nasser and Netanyahu and Toto………

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Saudi authorities have issued a new list of names that are banned, verboten, for new-born infants in the Wahhabi kingdom. The names include: Alice, Rama, Sandy, Abdul-Rasoul, Abdul-Nasser, Abd El-Nabi, Allen, Gabriel, Malika, Iman, Amir, Lauren, Yara, Malik (King), Benyamin. Among others.
I like this last one, Benyamin: they may want to forestall anyone naming their child after Bibi Netanyahu, who can be a potential hero to some Wahhabi potentates. That depends on whether Bibi joins the paid Saudi coalition currently bombing Yemen, or maybe he could take some more action to help the Wahhabi side in the Syrian war.

It is not clear why only these particular names were banned. Does it mean all those unlisted names are acceptable? Oddly, many eligible names are not listed. For example: Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Adolf(lol), Winston, and Pol Pot are not among the banned names. Nor is Woody Allen or Gertrude Stein or Khamenei. Nor is Whoopie (as in Goldberg) or Anais (as in Nin) or Toto (as in Kansas).

What about Kim Jong-Un? What about Sayed Qutub and Mohammed Morsi? What about Hamdan Qormut?

Better yet, how about Al Thani?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, U.S. Foreign Policy, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

Yemen: Hadi Escapes again, the Bought Coalition Shrinks in Stature…….

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Yemen is becoming more complicated, as civil-proxy wars are wont to become. Yemen is also being set back about a century, through destruction by native rivals and foreign Arab invaders. The Saudi-United Arab Emirates (UAE) bombers/invaders have acquired, bought or rented, a gaggle of questionable hungry allies (Sudan, Eritrea, humorless Jordan, among other Arab payees). The Western powers, especially the US and Britain, are also helping the attackers.  They are siding against the wild Houthis and the Yemeni army, the side that fights Al-Qaeda (AQAP) and the Islamic State. The Westerners don’t get paid directly, but they expect fat contracts from the Saudis and Emiratis for weapons and their services.

Now, in the service of the Saudi princes, the two Western powers are direct war allies of Sudan, whose dictator has been convicted by the ICC and is a wanted war criminal. The Sudanese soldiers under dictator Omar Al Bashir are probably among the least professional in the Arab world, and have a well-deserved reputation for raping and pillaging in their own country. And they are being used in the contested and divided city of Aden.

Now there are also some media reports of the UAE recruiting more Colombian mercenaries to send into the parts of Aden they are trying control. UAE, with a tiny citizen population of about one million who are unwilling to fight abroad, had started to hire a largely Colombian mercenary army after the Arab uprisings of 2011. Now some of these are reportedly poised to enter Yemen, if they re not there already.

To further complicate matters, or perhaps simplify them depending on your point of view, two new not-unexpected developments have occurred. Deposed former president Generalissimo Hadi Bin Zombie and his prime minister Bahah had managed to be flown into Aden by the Saudis. But the much-publicized return did not last. Soon both Bahah and Hadi fled Aden again to the safety of their Saudi hotels in Riyadh.

In the meantime, the Yemenis are countering the Saudi-UAE bombing and attempted invasion of their country in their own favorite way. They are making successful incursions into Saudi territory, often ejecting the inept Saudi garrisons and controlling towns and villages (that used to be part of Yemen some eighty years ago).
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, CIA, Iraq, Mercenaries, U.S. Foreign Policy, War

Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi: Death of a Convenient Western Alibi……..

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Ahmed Chalabi died this week. His death has allowed the Western media to re-iterate, and almost certainly exaggerate again, his singular role in pushing the American-British, Bush-Blair, 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We are to believe that one man, an Iraqi exile with possible unsavory connections, fooled the huge American intelligence community (remember when CIA chief George Tenet said finding WMD in Iraq was a Slam Dunk). He also supposedly fooled the less-massive British intelligence machine: MI6 and James Bond and George Smiley and the rest of the possible characters.
Gone are Donald Rumsfeld’s snarky comments about Old and New Europe. Gone are Dick Cheney’s claim of fictional meetings between Saddam Hussein agents with Al-Qaeda operatives in Czecho-Slovakia. Gone are the silly allegations of “mushroom cloud” and “smoking gun”. Gone are the allegations of Yellow Cake from Niger and the outing of uncooperative CIA agents.

Gone are the huge no-bid contracts for well-connected U.S companies and Persian Gulf contractors. Gone is any talk about millionaire American private military and building contractors who made their fortunes in the Iraq war, on the backs of dead and crippled American boys and girls and Iraqi victims. Gone is the talk about a billion-dollar Baghdad embassy that was used as a cash cow for corrupt Americans and their Gulf partners.

Chalabi was one exaggerator, perhaps one liar among many in the early years of this century. Not all of them were Arabs. Chalabi’s death seems convenient for many in the West.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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