Category Archives: Caliphate

Caliphate, Hezbollah, Iraq, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Wall Street Journal Continues its Own Middle East Wars……

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“Well, this is a little scary. U.S. intelligence intercepted messages from Iran to militants in Iraq ordering attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad if America strikes Syria. U.S officials say they’re preparing for Iran’s fast boats in the Persian Gulf, and military resources, including Marines, have been moved to the area. The message came from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani and instructed Shiite groups to respond with force if the U.S. strikes Syria………..”

I didn’t know a U.S. attack ‘on Syria’ was in the cards these days. Unless the Wall Street Journal writer knows something no one else does.

Could he mean extending the current bombing attack against the Wahhabi Caliphate of ISIS into Syria? But then why would Iran retaliate in the Persian Gulf and why would Hezbollah retaliate in Beirut for any attack on the ISIS den of terrorists? Especially if the target of the Syrian campaign is NOT to alter the military balance in the Syrian civil war and tilt it toward the strategic goals of the Wahhabi oil princes. Provided Syria approves of any operations over its territory.

An attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut by Hezbollah? That would be a stupid thing for them to do these days, and they know it. Only some media types and propagandists would think of it as probable. No doubt Hezbollah planners are more intelligent than many Wall Street Journal opinion-ators who write this kind of nonsense. They read as if written by some Likud or AIPAC functionaries.

More likely any attack on the U.S. embassy anywhere and not just in Beirut, if it ever happens, would come from Wahhabi terrorists nurtured for years by allied oil princes and by money from elements of Lebanon’s right-wing blocs.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Jihadists, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Speculative Chemical Assertion about Syria: Prelude to a Bombing Campaign?……..

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“Syria May Have Hidden Chemical Arms, U.S. Says. Ambassador Samantha Power asserted that Syria might not have handed over all its chemical arms supplies for destruction, and that they could fall into the hands of militants………..”

I suspect that Ambassador Power was not trained as a lawyer. The ambassador “asserted” that Syria “might” have hidden chemical weapons, and that they “could” fall into Jihadist hands. Dunno what exactly to make of this rather “speculative assertion” at the fluid court of the United Nations. That the Syrian government’s behavior raised “skepticism” (FYI: most Middle East governments’ behavior on any issue should always raise skepticism, be they Arab, Israeli, Iranian, Turkish, or Sumerian).

Could this be part of a spin, a prelude to start the bombing campaign over Syria? Will it be a bombing campaign targeting only the Wahhabi terrorist groups of ISIS and A-Nusra? Or will it, as no doubt some of the Arab princes and potentates hope, expand to target the Syrian armed forces and their facilities? Will there be a loophole in Mr. Obama’s coming “Syrian” speech that could open the door for a “Libyan” style expansion of the expected American and NATO mission over the Caliphate of Mosul and Al-Raqqa?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadis, Syria, Terrorism

The Murder of Steven Sotloff: What is in a Name…..

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“Steven Sotloff, the kidnapped journalist beheaded by Islamic State, was a dual Israeli-US citizen who had managed to hide his second nationality from his militant Islamist captors even while reportedly managing to fast during the Yom Kippur religious festival………..”

Clearly ISIS did not know of his dual US-Israeli citizenship (also confirmed in the Israeli daily Haaretz). They would have publicized it if they had known and they would have trumpeted the capture of a ‘Mossad agent’. What is surprising is that they apparently did not know of his Jewish faith. Salafi terrorists would not let that pass without at least acknowledging it (or worse). Right now it is a toss-up which makes a better target for the knife from the ISIS viewpoint: a Jew or a Shi’a or a Yazidi. Any of these identities could earn its owner a killing, possibly a beheading. Daniel Pearl was slaughtered by Al-Qaeda in Pakistan at least partly because he did not hide his Jewish identity.

Clearly this first Caliph of the new Hollywood Caliphate of Mosul needs to build up his secret services quickly. He has got enough former Baathist henchmen allied to him to start.

If this Guardian report is correct in claiming that Sotloff in captivity managed to observe Jewish occasions like Yum Kippur, then it was a sort of victory over his killers. You can also bet that they will now be researching the ethnic and religious background of every one of their captives. Such information is anyway important to the tribal and sectarian-minded Wahhabis of ISIS, even if they hail from London and Marseille and Chechnya.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Iraq, Islamic History, Jordan, Syria, Uncategorized, Wahhabi

Economics of Jihadist Sex: Caliph of Mosul as a Family Man……..

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The Caliph of ISIS and Mosul, Mr. Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, prefers that to his name of birth (reportedly the very ordinary Ibrahim Al Samarrai). Actually his Caliphness has now added two new names to his known nom de guerre: al Husseini and al Quraishi, thus claiming that he is a descendant of the Prophet and a member of his extinct tribe of Quraish. (How about some DNA tests?)

His predecessor the mirthless Jordanian Abu Mos’ab Al Zarqawi bin Humorless (also a fake name) was offed by the American forces in Iraq before he could ascend the Caliphate. Maybe he just did not think of it: too stupid or not so ambitious, or maybe he did not get the humor of it all.

There is a report that the leader of the “Islamic State”, the Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi is now encouraging his followers to marry if they are not married and to remarry if they are already married. That is, if they are not satisfied with the ‘freebees’ they have reportedly been getting from non-Wahhabi female war captives and female groupies who have flocked from North Africa and Europe to, er, satisfy the Jihadists trying to find a shortcut to Paradise.

I have been told by my special reporter on Wahhabi affairs that he Jihadists, especially those from the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa normally prefer ‘female company’ from Europe or even America. That might explain the increase in online Internet and social media advertisement for Jihadista ‘sisters’ to come to Syria and Iraq and serve their faith in the only way women are allowed by the Caliph to serve.

Anyway, this Caliph is now offering to pay the wedding costs of his fighters: a house (probably taken from a Shi’a or a Kurd or a Yazidi or a Christian), furniture, in addition to US$1200 in cash (yep: real heathen kaffir American greenbacks). He is also offering an increase in their wages of $100 per wife plus $50 per child. It would be interesting to see the study that led to these specific figures. After all: captured war booty, the concubines, might be cheaper in more than one way.

All that might explain the sudden spike in online trafficking and enticements to Arab and Western women to “go to the Caliphate, young woman, while it lasts“. Older women need not apply.
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

Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, History, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Uncategorized, Wahhabi

Faith of MENA: Return of the Ikhwan under a Chubby Caliph……..

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KuwaitCox2 “Wahhab was forced to flee from Medina, and in a more rural inland area – in the Nejd- he was adopted by the Saud family. With a combination of camel riding warrior power and Wahhabi religious zeal, the Saud regime spread across Arabia. In 1802 an army of 12,000 Wahhabi warriors attacked the Shia in the city of Karbala, slaying 4,000 of the city’s inhabitants and smashing Shia holy sites. In 1803 they attacked Mecca and, aware of the slaughter in Kabala, the Meccans opened their town to Saud rule. Against images, the Wahhabi warriors smashed opulent graves, and they forbade smoking. After taking power in Medina they smashed grave-sites again, including the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed. In 1813, the Ottoman sultan sent expeditions against Wahhabism. The defeated head of the Saud family was taken in a cage to Istanbul and beheaded……….”

Ikhwan is an Arabic word that means “brothers”. Ikhwan is now used in Arabic to refer to the Muslim Brotherhood. For many decades, the term Ikhwan when used in Egypt referred exclusively to the Muslim Brotherhood. Outside Egypt also the term was used in recent decades, at least since the 1950s, to refer to the Muslim Brotherhood. The other older original “Ikhwan” are dead. Or are they?

The original ‘Ikhwan’ were quite different. They did not grow in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of old Cairo. They sprouted in the Arabian desert of what is now called Saudi Arabia. They were the zealous Wahhabi militias allied to King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. They helped him conquer his homeland of Nejd, then conquer Al-Ahsaa (Eastern Arabia), Hijaz (Mecca and Madinah), and large chunks of northern Yemen. They also made a stab at conquering Kuwait which was under British protection, hence a no-no.

Eventually things fell apart for them. Ibn Saud was getting used to mingling with “civilized” Westerners, like the British who provided him with financial aid for some time. He realized, or was told, that the Wahabi zealots, his Ikhwan, his brothers, were outdated. They had served their purpose in helping him expand his Nejdi emirate to include most of the Arabian Peninsula. It was time to make deals with the British and eventually with the Americans. The Ikhwan’s usefulness had ended, and it was time for them to disappear.

Fast forward to the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The ideology of ISIS is similar to the Saudi Ikhwan, in spite of such modern trappings as the Omega watch on the fat wrist of the funny chubby Caliph and the Hello-Kitty pink box shown in the media. Like other Salafis and zealous Wahhabis of our time, they are not averse to using modern technology, especially means of transportation and tools of communication. They are still into blowing up and destroying monuments of Islam and other faiths, but they have learned to appreciate the joys of You-Tube and network news.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Cinema, Iraq, Syria, Terrorism, Wahhabi

The Hollywood Caliphate of ISIS: Illusions of Sectarian Harmony in Iraq……..

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Masked terrorists attacked and killed worshipers in a (Sunni) mosque in Iraq last week. This reminded people of the brief but ugly sectarian civil war in 2006-08. The sectarian war that has resumed now with the mass killings of many non-Wahhabis by the terrorists of ISIS in Al-Anbar and other provinces. Even the Mubarak-appointed shaikh of Al-Azhar in Cairo, who did not bat an eyelash when ISIS were killing so many others, protested this “sectarian” attack.

My own guess is that the attack probably was not “sectarian” but that it was intended to provoke more sectarian hatred. That the perpetrators were almost certainly not “Shi’a” militias, but Wahhabi Salafis seeking to further muddy the waters. The rule of thumb in these terror incidents is to look for whoever benefits from them politically, and that should be obvious in this case.

The same arguments that were so publicized to explain the political and security troubles in Iraq in recent years will be used again after Haider Al-Abadi forms his government. If he is allowed to form his government. In fact the “sectarian” argument will be used again by former Baathists and their foreign Arab backers before he forms his government; I’d say starting next week. Ultra sectarians using the “sectarian” argument against others. Western governments frustrated with the whole Arab sectarian war will grasp this argument as the cause and root of all their troubles in Iraq. They will press Al Abadi to compromise by handing over ‘meaningful’ portfolios to the former Baathists. He, like Al Maliki, like any other Iraqi leader with the same sense and the same insecurities, will refuse to hand over the Defense or Security portfolios to former Baathists. Back to square one.

The root cause of Iraq’s current troubles is two-folded. It is a combination of domestic sectarian mistrust and foreign Arab meddling. The domestic Iraqi issue may take care of itself if outsiders would stop meddling and feeding the sectarian insecurities. Some of the Arab neighbors of Iraq, the Saudi princes and and Qatari and Emirati potentates who financed Wahhabi terrorism in Iraq long before they opened the Syrian front, have not accepted the regime change that was brought by the Western invasion of 2003. Their intolerant ideology, money, and volunteers are what gave birth to ISIS and its absurd Hollywood-style Caliphate.

Cheer

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum