Category Archives: Arab Politics

Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Jordan, Morocco, Uncategorized

GCC and Distant Kingdoms: from Promised Membership to Strategic Partnership to LOL……..

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The GCC leaders have apparently kissed (literally) and made out up. Qatar and its Saudi and Emirati (UAE) unbrotherly sisters have decided to sweep some of their serious foreign policy differences under the rug, for the time being.

On a less serious note: there are reports that the next GCC summit in December (Doha, Qatar) will discuss something they now call “strategic partnership” with the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco. Apparently the summit will finally be held in Qatar, as originally scheduled. That is the plan for now, until the Saudi princes and Abu Dhabi shaikhs decide otherwise in a new fit of tantrums against the brotherly Al Thani.

Remember when the Saudi king surprised everyone by inviting Jordan and Morocco to “join” the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 2011? That also surprised other GCC leaders who started wondering privately what the king had been smoking. But they went along with the idea anyway, perhaps knowing that, as I opined later, it was D.O.A. I opined succinctly at the time that “it ain’t gonna happen“, which almost certainly is what all the other potentates thought, although they would not express it so eloquently.

Later I wrote that they will find some limited alternative to membership for these two relatively faraway countries. And voila! But I will tell you there will be no real ‘strategic partnership’ as such either. There will be some mechanism to increase GCC aid to humorless Jordan and mellow Morocco, and perhaps some increased cooperation in “security” matters. Jordan already cooperates quite extensively in “security” and matters of repression, sending thousand of mercenaries and goons and “humorless interrogators” to Bahrain and the UAE.

As for Morocco, it is the last remaining Arab monarchy west of Jordan. It has become the favorite hangout (outside Europe) and hunting ground (you interpret that) for Saudi princes and other Gulf potentates. But it does not follow the Saudi and UAE absolute tribal family model: it has elections. Which may complicate any ‘partnership’ with these families.

So, what the summit will do is to authorize the GCC bureaucracy to ‘study’ this idea of a ‘strategic partnership’ that has been borrowed from the West. It does sound impressive and thoughtful, and that is probably about it in this case. Then they will form a committee of ‘experts’……………..
Then it might be just more LOL……….

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Qatar

The Most Recent GCC Drama Swept Under: Sugar and Spice and Dancing Goatees………

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It seems that the most recent Gulf GCC dust-up has been settled, for now. The Persian Gulf media, official and unofficial versions, are gushing orgasmic with all the talk of sweetness and sisterly states and brotherly love. Something they usually do publicly even as the knives are being sharpened. Enough to make me look around for a barf bag.

This means the absolute tribal ruling oligarchs of Saudi Arabia and the UAE (Bahrain’s rulers act as a Saudi appendage and don’t count) have reached a deal with the errant wayward Wahhabis of Qatar. Sugar was oozing through the grease at the little summit in Riyadh yesterday. The goatees were practically dancing, mainly for the benefit of the media and the saps watching it on television at home.

No doubt a temporary deal which, like previous temporary deals, will last as long as it is not seriously tested. We have seen this drama film before. Enforced hegemony and conformity never last, which means these most boring potentates of the GCC will have some more drama to share with us in the future. Get the popcorn ready,
And don’t forget a new bag……….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Caliphate, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria

The ISIS Plot? What about the ISIS Plot? ………..

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Speaking of ISIS and the blame for its resurgence last summer. Other Middle East media have claimed that the whole ISIS surge was engineered by the Americans in order to get their forces back into Iraq through the window, after being forced to leave through the door in 2011. This recent piece here is one example. All this was supposedly done with Saudi help among some Al Anbar tribes that sided with the terrorists. The alleged goal of the plot is to reduce Iranian (and Shi’a) influence in Baghdad and increase Saudi (and Wahhabi) influence in Iraq and Syria, to start with. Thus alter the strategic balance in the Eastern Mediterranean, something Israel and the Al Saud have failed to do after years of trying. Many more Arabs believe this theory than we hear or read about in the media.

I am not normally a conspiracy theory advocate, but I did dabble in the topic. I did speculate along these lines somewhere last summer. Either in a post or on Twitter, I forget. I noted the timing during a period of government change in Iraq. It sounds plausible although farfetched, given the polluted poisoned Washington air. Possible if not necessarily probable, but it is too simplistic: it assumes the other side will not counteract.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Qaeda, Arab Politics, GCC, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorist Lists, UAE, United Arab Emirates

UAE Declares Almost Everybody a Terrorist: from Yemen to Italia to Soumi………

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“The Muslim Brotherhood was designated a Terrorist Group by the United Arab Emirates Saturday, joining several other organizations that received the same designation from the UAE, including the U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or, CAIR. According to an Associated Press report, the terrorist designation bestowed by the UAE, puts added pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood by putting them in the same category of Islamic extremist groups as the Islamic State group, and even the Nusra Front which is an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria. Along with the Muslim Brotherhood, the United Arab Emirates tagged 83 other groups with the terrorist group label, such as Al-Islah, an Emirati group that many believe has connections with the Muslim Brotherhood, and whose members have been subject to prosecution in the Emirates federation………………”

The list is very long, and it includes some surprising groups like the American CAIR and Associazione Musulmani Italiani (Association of Italian Muslims). That last one immediately had me yell: WTF! Is that some kind of leftover (feloul) Fascist group? I am guessing it is either affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, or maybe for some reason the Al Nahayan Brothers don’t like it. Still, an Italian group? But that is okay: there are also on the list French and other groups that even the CIA has probably not heard of, like The Finnish Islamic Association (Suomen Islam-seurakunta) and the Muslim Association of Sweden (Sveriges muslimska forbund, SMF). 

I did not see Hezbollah of Lebanon on the list, although there are several alleged regional Hezbollah offshoots, real or imagined. Missing also on the terrorist list are the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Saudi Commission for the Propagation of Vice, the Communist Party of Belize, and dissident members of the Nabati Poets Society. No mention of the Mossad either. Or maybe they just listed every Muslim group they are not financing. But some of these groups are bona fide terrorist groups, literally cutthroats. Some, not all.

There are some ‘funny’ political inserts among these groups. The trick has been played more discreetly by the Saudis: to declare a bunch of people and groups as ‘terrorists’, and to include among them dissidents and reformists and other reactionaries. Hoping the Western powers will ‘bite’ and declare the same as ‘terrorists’. Notably British PM David Cameron, as well and uber-mercenary Tony Blair, have been pushing for the MB to be declared “terrorists” in the West. The reason? Follow the oil money………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Lebanon, Media

New Decency in the Middle East: the Potentates Acquire Friedman……….

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I think Thomas Friedman, the erstwhile liberal globalist columnist (that was many years ago), may have become a fully-owned subsidiary of the Al Nahayan Brothers or some other potentates.
In his most recent column, speaking of “decent places” where Friedman can stay at 7-star hotels and have access to the kleptocratic absolute tribal potentates who seek to liberate places like Syria and Libya and Yemen for freedom and democracy. Never mind that regime critics are imprisoned or sent into internal and external exile.

Surprisingly, Friedman also mentions Lebanon as a decent place. It may be, but I suspect he means his own “comfort zone” in the Wahhabi-ized regions that are owned by Hariri and the Saudis and the March 14 bloc. Definitely not the regions of Lebanon that defeated the Israeli IDF twice. These latter would be mainly in the two souths: South Lebanon and South Beirut. And we know who dominates these regions.
Odd, this time he never mentions the name of the taxi driver who drove him from the airport in the UAE, nor what they discussed. Let me think. The choices from his past visits are usually between: Abed in Lebanon, Abdu in Egypt, Abu El Abed in Ramallah, el Obud in the Gulf, Abu Dong (only in Beijing)………….

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Egypt, Espionage, Human Right

Takhabur: a Potent New Orwellian Arab Weapon……….

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Egyptian media can be some of the wildest in the Middle East, bar none, when it comes to toeing the official line. Remember when the once-venerable Al-Ahram, the big banana of Egyptian newspapers, doctored photos of world leader to put Hosni Mubarak at the front? They are doing even more now.

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; contacting; 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 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 it 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.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Qatar, Wahhabi

GCC Summit: Brotherly and Sisterly Problems Between Little and Big Wahhabis……..

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The Gulf GCC heads of state are supposed to hold their summit for this year next month in Doha, Qatar. No, the Saudis did not pick December for the annual meeting because of Christmas or Hannukah. They just happened to pick this cool month.

Anyway, this year’s meeting, if it is held, will be different. Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are not the main entree on the menu. The Big Wahhabi Brother (Saudi Arabia) is seriously angry at the Little Wahhabi Brother (Qatar). The two ruling families often support and finance rival Jihadis in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere where Jihadis roam. The Al Nahayan Brothers who own Abu Dhabi and rule the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are in the Saudi camp for now. The poorer Bahrain rulers usually follow the Saudi orders and do as they are told. Anyway, the two regimes would probably like to ex-communicate Qatar, unless they can force the Doha regime to change its foreign policies. I doubt they have any hope of instigating another palace coup attempt in Doha as the Saudis tried in the 1990s.

Odd, these princes and potentates can force the prime minister of Great Britain to seek an excuse to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, but they can’t force little Qatar to do the same. But then David Cameron is after their money and he’d do almost anything to get some of it. The Qatari rulers don’t need any more money, not from the Saudis and Emiratis.

The other two GCC members who are not parties to this dispute, Kuwait and Oman, have reportedly been trying to mediate and resolve this issue, but without success so far.

One promising fact is that Gulf media have not started to claim that Iranian Brigadier Qassem Suleimani of Quds Force is a regular visitor to Doha. Not yet. I recall how they started making fantastic claims and allegations about his secret visits to Cairo hotels just months before the military coup be Generalisimo Al Sisi against Morsi.

Will the GCC summit be held in Doha as scheduled? That depends on the mediations going on and on the caprice of the suddenly-insecure Saudi princes. A possible alternative is to go ahead with the non-summit but with lower rank representatives from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, Yemen

WTF? UN to Sanction Yemen Opposition Leaders, Charles and Hollande in Saada………

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“Lithuanian U.N. Ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite, chair of the council’s Yemen sanctions committee, said all 15 members had agreed to blacklist Saleh and Houthi rebel military leaders Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi and Abdullah Yahya al Hakim. The three men are now subject to a global travel ban and asset freeze. Saleh has denied seeking to destabilize Yemen and his party warned after a meeting on Thursday that any sanctions on the former president or “even waving such a threat would have negative consequences on the political process.”…….. The United States submitted a formal request to the Yemen sanctions committee a week ago for Saleh and the Houthi leaders to be the first people designated…………”

Years ago some politicians in the United States often warned of “world government” encroaching on national sovereignty. They were usually conservative Republicans who were terrified of a UN-type world regime that would interfere in domestic US affairs. Some of them opined that it was part of an international conspiracy to dominate the world. They were considered ‘the crazies‘ in mainstream US media in those days. Now some of them run the asylum show.

Isn’t this exactly what the UN and the USA are doing now in places like Yemen? And can the UN really force various opposed Yemeni factions to follow international dictate on internal matters? And why does the UN and world powers not try to solve other ‘domestic’ problems with sanctions, as in Egypt and Bahrain? 

I have posted here before that sanctioning the Houthis is a meaningless  gesture. Unless it is a prelude to a more muscular intervention against them. As far as I know the Houthis don’t own properties in Europe or New York; they don’t shop in Paris and London, and they don’t spend their vacations in Nice or Geneva. They certainly don’t purchase their weapons from the West; otherwise Mr. Cameron and Prince Chuck Al Windsor and M. Hollande would be as regular visitors to Saada as they are to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, GCC, Yemen

Is Al Sisi Being Pushed into Foreign Military Adventures?………

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“The Associated Press has learned that U.S. Arab allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are discussing the creation of a military pact against Islamic militants, with the possibility of a joint force to intervene around the Middle East. Four Egyptian military officials have confirmed the talks to The Associated Press. They say the alliance would be separate from the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The alliance, they said, could intervene in other extremist hot-spots: Libya, where militants have taken over several cities, and Yemen…………”

Confronting the terrorists of ISIS is one thing: that is facing a danger close to home, with clear intentions to violate many regional states. Going beyond that into the realm of intervention in other countries is a risky proposition. I doubt this group of governments can organize a serious military campaign against an ‘armed’ foe rather than against unarmed civilians.

The Gulf GCC princes and potentates may believe that Egypt can be a formidable military ally that can be used in trouble spots from Libya to Yemen and possibly the Persian Gulf. They are wrong.

On paper that may seem to be true. Egypt has a huge army and some of the best American and other weapons in the region. As does Saudi Arabia and the under-populated United Arab Emirates (where nearly 90% of the population are foreign laborers and expatriates). The military prowess is all on paper: it is an accountant’s military prowess.

The Egyptian military has not been able to reclaim full authority over parts of the Sinai Peninsula, where Islamist Jihadis and various outlaw and trafficker gangs hold sway. They had one experience in outside intervention, in Yemen in the 1960s, and did not perform well. That 1960s army was supposed to be motivated and patriotic. This current Egyptian army is top fat and in reality it serves an entrenched oligarchy that only its top officers can identify with. Its soldiers cannot identify with their political and economic masters and are unlikely to fight effectively on their orders against a tenacious and fierce enemy. Not if their own homeland is not threatened.

Generalisimo Al Sisi would do well not to allow his military be “rented” by the princes and potentates to fight their wars. He would only get stuck in a quagmire in Yemen, again, or in some other place. Yemen especially comes to mind, because this week Saudi royal media have been quoting Egyptian “experts” warning about the Houthis and the Bab El-Mandab Strait. Ironically, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have had miserable military experiences in Yemen in the past half century, the Saudis against the same Houthis a few years ago.

The Al-Nahayan brothers who rule the UAE have no military experience except maybe carrying Saudi baggage in Bahrain. But they also have some of the most expensive Western weapons and lethal toys that money can buy, and they may be deceived into thinking that is sufficient to wage real warfare against determined enemies.

They need bodies, reliable bodies that they think can wage war. Something like a huge army of mercenaries that is an efficient fighting machine. They may think they have found it in Egypt. I have no doubt that they are wrong.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Britain, Corruption, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

From the Gulf to London to Paris, Corruption Inc Rules……….

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“The problem is that Sir John failed to reach the conclusion that the Prime Minister, Prince Charles and their vociferous Middle Eastern allies wanted. They had hoped for confirmation that the Saudis had been correct in their assessment of the Brotherhood. Sir John Jenkins’s exculpation has caused grave affront to powerful interests, and has led to a long, vicious Whitehall battle that began over the summer, persisted throughout the autumn and shows no signs of ending. Publication of the Jenkins report as originally written would infuriate the Prime Minister’s Saudi allies – and not just them. The United Arab Emirates have long been agitating for the defenestration of the Brothers. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed has the Prime Minister’s personal telephone number, and does not hesitate to use it to voice the UAE’s anxiety that Britain is not taking a firm enough line. The former prime minister, Tony Blair, is another who has been agitating on behalf of the UAE against the Brotherhood………..”

The Saudi monarchy is hopelessly corrupt, that is a given, a fixed variable here. The British establishment of most stripes desperately wants to get its hands on some of the billions the Saudi (and Emirati) princes and potentates can spend on anything they want, another given. There you have the makings of a perfect marriage.
Funny that this article should mention BEA Systems and Tony (the Poodle) Blair. These two names and the word corruption seem to go together well. Have been for some years.

No need to rehash the French efforts to get their hands on some of the Saudi loot. I have posted on that a few times earlier.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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