Category Archives: Arab Revolutions

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Hobson’s Choice in Syria: Bad, Badder, or Baddest?…….

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“HOBSON’S CHOICE:
1. an apparently free choice when there is no real alternative
2. the necessity of accepting one of two or more equally objectionable alternatives.………”                                                                                                     Merriam Webster

“The jihadi group surging through Iraq and Syria is using large captured US-made weapons and has access to anti-tank rockets supplied by Saudi Arabia to a moderate rebel group, according to a report published on Monday. The study by the London-based Conflict Armament Research consultancy found that Islamic State (Isis) militants had access to large numbers of US weapons, which they were shifting to key battlefields……..The report was compiled from a list of weapons captured from Isis by Kurdish militias over a 10-day period in July. Of most interest was the capture of two M-79 rockets that were identical to a batch of such weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia to rebels………”

So this report seems to corroborate what we have all been saying for some time: it is almost impossible to keep weapons from being transferred among Syrian Jihadis. There is an active Syrian market for them and they get taken and sold and gifted between the hundreds of Jihadi groups and gangs that seek to liberate Syria for the Saudi and Qatari princes and take it back to their distorted vision of the seventh century (AD). ISIS and Al Nusra and all the other “Jabhats” and “Ansars” and myriad groupies get enough money from their well-known sources to be able to ‘buy’ whatever weapons they want from other Syrian ‘freedom fighters’, including the Free Syrian Salafi Army.

The fact is that within Syria there are no real non-Jihadi rebels anymore. This has been the case since late 2011, after the Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf region mobilized their vast financial, media, and volunteer resources and deployed them, armed with a strong dose of deep sectarian hatred, to commandeer a nascent uprising in Syria. Just a few years after deploying the same murderous resources to massacre Iraqi civilians in their towns and cities.

Within Syria the choice among rebels is between the following: (a) plain bad Wahhabis, (b) badder Wahhabis, and (c) the baddest Wahhabis. The crucial battles with Syrian regime forces in the past year or two saw all these various tiers of Wahhabi Jihadist groups join forces. Join forces and share weapons before the baddest of them, ISIS, started to push the others to the margins, to the periphery of history. Building up new mildly Wahhabi groups inside the Humorless Kingdom of Jordan and sending them into Syria to keep the civil war going will not do the trick either. The Jordanian Front is not likely to fare better than the Turkish front has done.

Or maybe the plain bad Wahhabis are the only palatable Hobson option available for the Western powers. They can appoint French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, co-liberator of Libya, as NATO high commissioner for Syria, to keep them from going badder and baddest. It did not work in Libya, but it might in Syria: hope springs eternal when supported with tribal petro-money.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Jihad, POTUS, US Foreign Policy

Mr. Obama’s ISIS Speech: Ottomanesque Caliph Al Samarrai to Request Equal Time……..

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President Obama is expected to go on television (and other media) Wednesday to explain his strategy for dealing with the Wahhabi Islamic State of ISIS (he calls it ISIL). He will explain what he has in mind (most of it) to the American people, to the world, and to the terrorist Jihadis of ISIS. Including one Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi who has appointed himself the Caliph (follower or heir of the Prophet) of the Islamic State. In its more modern incarnation, any Caliphate would not be anything like the those of the early one: Abu Bakr (the First), Omar (the First), Othman, or Ali. He would probably be more like something between one of the mad early Ottoman sultans and Kim Jong-Un (there goes my never-planned trip to Pyongyang down the drain). He has also decided to attach Al Husseini Al Quraishi to his nom de guerre, but don’t let it fool you: his real name is Ibrahim Al Samarrai.
This Al Samarrai dude (a k a Abu Bakr the Second) has his own plans for later this week. My incredible ISIS source claims that the Caliph plans to respond to Mr. Obama within hours at most. She claims he will demand equal time from the major networks in order to refute Mr. Obama’s speech point by point. Sort of like Republicans do every time and every Saturday. She swears the Hollywood-ish Caliph will not insist on responding to all Obama’s Saturday radio (and video) addresses, claiming he has better things to do.

In the unlikely event that the networks refuse his request, he plans to file a complaint with the FCC and whatever other appropriate authorities he might think of.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right, Sectarian

Bahrain Uprising: the War on the Al Khawaja Family……….

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“Police detained Bahraini human rights campaigner Maryam al-Khawaja after her arrival in the Gulf country on Saturday, her mother said. Al-Khawaja has dual Bahraini and Danish citizenship. Her mother, Khadija al-Musawi, told The Associated Press that her daughter was refused entry after presenting her Danish passport and a Bahraini identification card, and at one point was surrounded by police. The activist has said she wanted to visit her jailed father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is on hunger strike to protest his detention. Lawyer Mohammed al-Jishi told the AP that prosecutors plan to press charges against al-Khawaja that include insulting the king and police……………”

How can anybody ever ‘insult’ that particular king and police? Is that even possible in this days and age and in that venue?

The father, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, has been under arrest almost since the beginning of the Bahrain uprising in 2011. He is reported to have undergone torture.  Another daughter was released just recently from prison but faces other charges from the ruling family. She will probably spend more time in prison. This one, Maryam, has been outside Bahrain, traveling for the cause of her country. Most Arab countries like Egypt have banned her from entering their territory, in deference to the Saudi princes and/or local Salafis. Oddly, such is the poisonous sectarian atmosphere encouraged by the Al Saud and other Wahhabi propaganda that some Arabs who have revolted against their own regimes are also against the Bahrain uprising.

She remained outside prison by remaining outside the occupied country. Now she is back home and in prison, arrested upon arrival at the airport, allegedly pending an investigation. She will probably start spending more time in prison as well. At some point the whole family will probably be in a regime prison at the same time.

The Bahrain ruling family is moving fast toward Saudi-ization of its court and legal systems. The room for dissent and criticism is narrowing by the week. As the late Egyptian poet Ahmad Fuad Negm reportedly opined once: “The poor Bahraini. He gets arrested by Pakistani or Jordanian policemen, he is tormented by Syrian or Jordanian interrogators, and he is tried and sentenced by an Egyptian judge. He, the accused native is the only Bahraini in the courtroom“. Or something to that effect.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Gulag, Caliphate, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria

A View of Iraq and Syria from an Arabian Gulag: Earthly Rewards to Paradise…….

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“In Syria, where the Saudis are a leading backer of rebel groups including the secular Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front, which includes less militant Sunni fighters, Riyadh still has some options to influence the outcome of the war. But in Iraq, its most populous neighbor, with which it shares an 850 kilometer (530 mile) frontier, Saudi Arabia has few tested friends or established links with Sunni groups, and knows that the majority Shi’ites will continue to dominate power……….”

So these authors wrote their report for Reuters, mainly with local interviews from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. They quote some Iraqi ‘analyst‘ who works from Abu Dhabi and is, as they claim, “close to the Saudi Interior Ministry“. They don’t clarify how “close” this analyst is to the Saudi Ministry of Interior, and in what “capacity“. But we know that the Ministry of Interior does not do foreign policy. We also know what it does do: arrests, interrogations, prisons, public floggings, executions by public beheading with occasional crucifixions, religious police, immigration, travel bans, internal exile, external exile, among other things. In effect they run a vast Arabian Gulag.

Odd this assertion: Iraq and Syria are represented as serious problems for Saudi Arabia. But how did Iraq and Syria get to this stage? How did they get to represent serious problems to the region? Yes, you got that one right: because the Wahhabis started sending their intolerant ideology, their killers, their weapons, and their oil money, first to Iraq and then to Syria.

They started on Iraq early on, somewhere around the year 2005. In Syria they waited until the misnamed so-called Arab Spring reached Homs (or was it Der’a) and then the Wahhabi and Salafi and Ikhwan machine went into full gear to try and take it over. With a little help from the Turkish leaders who thought they could open their country to Jihadi traffic into Syria and remain untouched.

They created the monster that now threatens them and that the Iraqis and Syrians have to deal with. If Iraq and Syria ‘pose’ problems for the princes, they are problems of their own creation. They and some other potentates in Qatar and other emirates and their Salafi money-gathering machine. And their misguided underemployed frustrated young volunteers looking towards the joys of captive women as they await the promised unlimited virginal rewards of Paradise.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Islam and Elections, Libya, MENA, North Africa, UAE

UAE Pivoting: Brothers Karamazov to the Shores of Tripoli……..

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“From the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli
We fight our country’s battles
In the air, on land, and sea………” USMC Hymn

“Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were responsible for carrying out two series of air strikes in the past week on armed Islamist factions in Tripoli, Libya, US officials said on Monday. The officials said the two Arab countries used aircraft based in Egypt. Earlier the New York Times reported that the two US allies acted without consulting Washington………..”

If you have a choice between believing Egyptian (and UAE) officials and American officials, whom would you believe? I’d take my chances with U.S. officials, since they are subject to public and media scrutiny (er, ahem, not that they would lie even if they could get away with it). Besides, Egyptian officials are notorious serial liars, possibly the lying-est in the history of the Middle East.

But the United Arab Emirates flexing military muscle in the MENA region (with help from their little man in Egypt)? The private fiefdom of the Bin Zayed Al Nahayan brothers? As someone who is rude and crude (which I am not) would exclaim: the UnitedFuckingEmirates? The funny country that is 87% composed of imported temporary foreigner laborers and reportedly relies on a Blackwater-advised foreign mercenary force of Colombians and White South Africans and Australians and others to keep order? That is a shocker.

The Al Nahayan brothers are pivoting from the Persian Gulf toward North Africa now. They helped mess up Bahrain by joining the Al Saud invasion to crush the popular uprising and prevent the liberation of Bahrain in 2011. They joined up with French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and John McCain and NATO bombers to help liberate Libya in the same year. They helped muddy the waters in Syria in 2011 and convert a popular uprising into a Wahhabi-financed and armed Jihadi terrorist campaign. There are some reports of a sisterly role for the brothers in the rise of ISIS and its Caliphate in Iraq and Syria and back to Iraq.
What Mr. Vladimir Putin should worry about now is if the brothers decide to pivot to the Ukraine and maybe seek to liberate the Crimea. Mr. Obama may have to worry about the brothers Al Nahayan pivoting toward the far east, thus complicating his own efforts at pivoting toward the arms of his Chinese business partners and Kim-Jong Un.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Iraq, Jihadis

The Wahhabi Caliphate and Saddam Hussein………

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“Jihadists targeting minorities are “worse than Saddam”, a Kurdish commander says, standing near a sand barrier at a front line in north Iraq, the militants’ black flag fluttering in the distance…………..”

This is true: of course these Wahhabi cutthroats are worse than Saddam. Saddam was methodical: he targeted anyone who opposed his rule, but he did not care about their religion. He did not seek to convert anyone to whatever faith he believed in (if any). His beef with his opponents was political, not religious.
Ironically, many current officers of ISIS (ISIL? WTF?) reportedly served under Saddam in the military and security services. Outgoing prime minister Al Maliki even hinted that some of his own officers who had been formerly with the Baathist army has helped the fall of Mosul by abandoning their units. But then Al Maliki may have been trying to exonerate his government from the mess.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Jordan, Syria

Humorless Jordan Sponsors a New Humorless Front in the Syrian War……

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Assafir from Lebanon reports that the Syrian Army has struck the Al Nusra Front and other Wahhabi brigades east of Damascus. The daily sees this as a warning signal by Damascus in view of increased talk of rebels opening a new southern front against the regime. This long-promised southern front of the Wahhabi rebels is based in Jordan, where the flow of Arab (Saudi, possibly other) money and Western training has been reported for about a year now. King Abdul of the humorless Kingdom of Jordan continues to steadfastly deny any involvement in the Syrian civil war or that his country hosts any terrorist Wahhabi militias targeting Syria. As far as I can see, his nose isn’t getting any longer, nor are his pants on fire, not yet.

Apparently the Qatari foreign minister has recently returned from Tahran empty-handed as far as the Syrian war is concerned. The little Wahhabi emirate, like its bigger Wahhabi Saudi sister, supports Arab and foreign Jihadists who seek to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad and replace him with a theocracy.

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Funny Courts, Media

Judiciary Thuggery in Egypt’s Courts: Dumb and Dumber instead of Best and Brightest……

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“A judge released his reasoning for harsh sentences issued last month against three journalists for Al Jazeera’s English-language channel, saying they had been brought together “by the devil” to destabilize Egypt  ………. The judge, Mohammed Nagi Shehata, convicted and sentenced the three — Peter Greste, an Australian; Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian of Egyptian descent; and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian — to seven years over charges linked to aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Mr. Morsi was a leader. The judge said that Al Jazeera worked “in the service of a banned terrorist organization,” referring to the Brotherhood……………..”

What this Egyptian ‘judge’ said was a variation of the old saying that the “devil made them do it“.

Under Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi, Egyptian courts, like Egyptian state-controlled media, have reached new laws. Judges pass sentences couched in vulgar language that even bloggers like myself shy away from (well, mostly: e all like to have some fun, but we are not all judges). Only a few weeks ago two Egyptian kangaroo courts sentenced more than one thousand people to death for being Muslim Brotherhood supporters. A political massacre.

There are reportedly some 30 thousand to 40 thousand others under arrest for their politics and awaiting trial by these same regime courts. It is a throwback to the age of Nazi Germany and Baathist Iraq, among other places.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right

The Writing on the Wall in Bahrain: End of the Peaceful Phase of the Uprising?……….

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“Bahrain’s Justice Ministry filed a lawsuit Sunday to suspend the activities of the country’s main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq for three months. The move by the government comes after top Al-Wefaq figures met with a U.S. State Department official without a Bahraini government representative present earlier this month. This angered the Gulf country’s leadership, who ordered U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski to immediately leave Bahrain. The lawsuit, though, makes no mention of the meeting. Instead, Bahrain’s official news agency reported that the ministry is taking Al-Wefaq to court for violating regulations of transparency in their general meetings. The Ministry of Justice said it filed the lawsuit after Al-Wefaq broke the law……………”

This lawsuit is just a formality, the courts usually do whatever the regime wants them to do. The laws, those that are enforced in Bahrain, are enforced by imported mercenaries from foreign places like Jordan and Pakistan and Syria, and the courts are manned by imported Arab judges, mainly Egyptians. We can say the same about the many laws that are broken by the regime. But this case can go either way, depending on what the ruling Al Khalifa family want.

If this happens, as seems now likely, it probably will mark an important watershed in the ongoing struggle of the people of Bahrain against the repression and corruption of the ruling Al Khalifa family. So far the protests of the past three and a half years have been peaceful; all the violence has come from the regime’s security forces, its imported foreign mercenaries, and Saudi forces.

Al-Wefaq, whatever you think of its ideology and leadership, is the largest opposition movement; in fact the largest political bloc. There are other opposition groups, not all of them Shi’a, but all have been decimated. They are all being hunted, with the exception of Wahhabi-ized Sunni Islamist groups who are now closely allied with the ruling family and its tribal allies.

So what other avenue will be left for the people of Bahrain to demand their legitimate rights, to regain the old democratic constitution that the rulers have distorted and altered and then distorted the alteration again? The ruling family seems intent on gradually adopting an absolute tribal Saudi model of governance, and it has Saudi forces in its capital to enforce it. That means not only continued corruption and the apartheid policy, but also dwindling freedom of speech and possibly religious freedom.

Given where this is going, what alternative will the people have? You figure this one out, but it looks like the writing is on the wall…………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Azhar, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, History, Islam, Islamic History, UAE, Uncategorized, Wahhabi

Grand Ayatollah of Al Azhar Gets His Just Reward on the Gulf………

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Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reports that His Excellency the ‘Great Imam’ shaikh of Al-Azhar went to Dubai last week by private plane. He was to receive the Dubai Holy Quran International Prize (WTF that be). He is reported to have received the award as “Islamic Personality of the Year” as a reward for his efforts in the service of Islam (WTF they be). It does not say if he is rewarded for siding with the military coup that overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood presidency of Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, nor if he was awarded for siding with Hosni Mubarak during the uprising of 2011. As I noted in a recent post here, he was bound to win the prize.

This is news to most people, the fact that now Shaikh Dr. Al Tayeb calls himself the “Great Imam”, or is it the “Grand Imam”? Apparently the Al Azhar bureaucracy and its hierarchy are now copying some of the Shi’a (Shi’ite if you prefer) titles like Grand Ayatollah, etc. It is now not too fat-fetched that Dr. Shaikh Al Tayeb will pop out some day with the title “Grand Ayatollah” of Al Azhar, possibly earned from one of them ubiquitous online for-profit theology colleges.

Now what would their Wahhabi allies and financiers in Riyadh think of all this? A Grand Ayatollah leading Al Azhar, just as its original creators of the Fatimid Dynasty had intended? Thus undoing the military coup of Salah El Din Al Ayyoubi (Saladin) who overthrew his Fatimids bosses and benefactors long before Al Sisi overthrew his Morsi boss and benefactor. Saladin did atone for it later by liberating Jerusalem from the European barbarians. No wonder there are complaints, warnings, and fears about the spread of Shi’ism in Egypt. No wonder the military regime and its Salafi and Wahhabi-Liberal allies ban Bahrain activists and Iranian tourists from coming to Egypt. It can be risky. Look, even the recently Wahhabi-ized Al Azhar shaikhs are adopting Shi’a titles now. Soon they might start allowing Shi’a mosques and Husseiniyyas all over Cairo. Who knows, some day we might see Al Sisi playing Shimr, or maybe even Al-Hurr, in a re-enactment a Shi’a passion play about the Battle of Karbala.

And our princes and pals on the Persian-American Gulf had thought their man Al Sisi had come to power and was generously rewarded in order to stop all that.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]