Category Archives: Caliphate

Al-Qaeda, Caliphate, Iraq, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, Uncategorized, US Foreign Policy

Caliphate: Islamo-Baathism and Al Rishawi’s Wardrobe Malfunction……….

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Caliphate of ISIS seems to be a coalition of at least two strange bedfellows:

One is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, the AQI that was once led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Mes’ab Al Zarqawi. Zarqawi plagued Iraq for a few years with acts that were gruesome even by the standards of Iraq’s bloody history. He hailed from Zarqa, another humorless town in Jordan, hence his Jihadi nom de guerre (they usually add the hometown or home country of the cutthroat as a last name). Al Zarqa in Jordan was proud of her native son, even as he terrorized Iraqi peasants and townsfolk, especially Shi’as whom he publicly called a snake (coincidentally the late Saudi King Abdullah had urged the U.S. to cut the head of the snake by attacking or invading Iran, according to Wikileaks documents).

Zarqawi was a celebrity in his hometown, and he was eulogized extensively in that grim town after the Americans delivered his just deserts in 2006. But hero-worshipping Zarqawi had suddenly started being frowned upon in Jordan after the Jihadis blew up several hotels and killed a bunch of people in Amman. One of the terrorists survived because she had a wardrobe malfunction, literally, and her explosives didn’t detonate (Sajida Al Rishawai who was executed in Jordan last week).

The other major component of this Caliphate, inside Iraq, consists of former Baathists. These are generals and colonels and lower military men who deserted Baghdad when the Americans attacked in 2003 and vanished for safety (long before Paul Bremer officially disbanded the old Iraqi army, that army had disbanded itself and deserted without fighting for Baghdad or any other town). These also include security men, experts at interrogation, terror, and torture. It is probably these Baathists who are the major link to the tribes of Al Anbar and to former rank and file men of the old armed forces. Iraqi Sunnis, even the tribal types of the border regions, traditionally are not of the Wahhabi Al-Qaeda type mindset, most of them are/were rather secular (by Muslim standards). Could it be a marriage of convenience? It could, but for how long? It certainly will not survive the loss/fall of Mosul, whenever that happens.

Then there are the foreigners and their women be they Arabs or Europeans. Their case is obvious: it takes dedicated Wahhabism or dedicated birdbrains or both to buy the stuff these people spread over the various media.

Then there are the outsiders, the enablers and financiers of the campaign of terror. These hail mainly from Arab states, especially the Gulf states, and the Islamist rulers of Turkey and its military, who have for years allowed all foreign Jihadis to cross the border into Syria. An apparent silent alliance of Turkish officials and the Caliphate. Even as some fools in the U.S. Senate and Congress agonize over whether Turkey will be willing to actively join a coalition against the Caliphate of terror. Not realizing that Turkey, like some Arabs, has been in this war for a few years. On the other side.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, GCC, Jihadis, Jordan, UAE

The World Turned Upside Down: UAE as an Occupation Power in Jordan……..

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is known as the home of military bases for several foreign countries, as well as at least one international mercenary force. With a native population that hovers around 1 million, it is an unlikely candidate to establish military bases abroad. Yet such are the vagaries of this Wahhabi age of ISIS (ISIL, DAESH, WTF) that the reports tell us the Emirates will now have an air base in the humorless kingdom of Jordan. That is reportedly considered one way to insure safer bombing runs over the Caliphate of ISIS. Safer for the pilots.

Jordan, for its part does not have military bases abroad, per se. Why ‘per se‘? That is because the Humorless Kingdom of Jordan is an active supplier of armed mercenaries, interrogators, and torturers to some of the Gulf states. It has that kind of armed presence especially in Bahrain but also the UAE.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, Jordan, War

The Manly Official “Mission Accomplished” Photo of Jordan’s King……….

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Jordanian King Abdullah has had a meteoric rise across American media this past week, after his air raids and especially his “Mission Accomplished” photographic poses like this one below:

JordanKing
New Marvel Comics Hero, and he ain’t even American……

He doesn’t look nearly as goofy as George W Bush did in his famous pose. My source in Amman tells me all the females in the humorless Kingdom of Jordan (ages 12-80) are swooning over this very manly photo of the monarch. As are most anchorwomen (and a few anchormen) in American media. She claims she is not, maybe the only female in Amman who is not, but I’m not buying it.
Do you suppose the king is angling for a movie
role?

Marvel Comics to Recruit the Heroic Homeric King of Jordan………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, Jihadis, Jordan, Media

Marvel Comics to Recruit the Heroic Homeric King of Jordan………

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“He’s ex-special forces and he cuts a mean figure in his combats, but now the internet is turning Jordan’s King Abdullah II into a warrior-king – a story only very loosely based on the facts. King Abdullah promised a swift reaction to the killing of a pilot by Islamic State – Jordan bombed IS positions and executed two Iraqi prisoners. The news cycle also highlighted the king’s hands-on military background, and one of the most-shared images is a photo (shown above) posted on the official Royal Hashemite Court Facebook page. It has attracted about 5,000 likes – but is actually an old photo that was posted on the the royal court’s official Instagram account eight months ago………..”

American mainstream media always go over the top, overshoot the target at the beginning when they initially focus on a foreign leader. He is either all evil (Putin, Chavez, Castro in past years) or all goodness (Netanyahu, Netanyahu, Netanyahu, King of Jordan). They quickly rush into bestowing accolades or declaring virtual war on foreign leaders.

King Abdullah of Jordan has been raised this week to mythic levels by both the U.S. media and by some humorless Jordanian social media fans, possibly freelancers. Suddenly the cable channels are waxing poetic about this Homeric king, how he ordered quick retaliation, how he led the air raids on ISIS (actually a stupid thing for an authoritarian king to do, but he is too smart to do it). How he tipped the wing of his jet over the tribal home of the murdered pilot Al Kassasbeh.

Even Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t get such accolades nor raised to such mythic levels, not even inside the house of his most avid groupies, the U.S. Congress. Well, I take that last sentence back……
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Caliphate, Culture, Jihadis, Sex, Terrorism

Fires of the ISIS: New Uniforms in a Salafi Red Light District…….

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So why did Daesh or ISIS change their uniforms? During their brave taunting of the lone Jordanian captive and his burning, they seemed to be dressed like an army. Their uniforms almost looked like American or other armies in a desert environment.
Still, they kept their faces covered. Which means they don’t want their faces to be seen:

  • It is probably not out of modesty, only their women and sex slaves are supposed to do that. Unless they have their own fatwa that men should also cover their faces.
  • It can’t be fear of being recognized, since they are supposedly eager to die and go to wherever they seem to think they will be going.
  • They can’t be saving it all for the anticipated post-mortem renewable houri virgins. They are reported to have a robust local market for sex slaves that puts to shame a certain district of Amsterdam and certain streets of Paris and certain ‘ranches’ in Nevada.

FYI: I did not watch the ‘burning’ video and have no interest in watching any of their videos. Just saw some still pictures on TV news.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Afghanistan, Caliphate, Libya, Syria

Washington’s Liberation Theology: Charlie Wilson’s Wars………

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Saw Senator John McCain on TV when I woke up this morning. He was making the rounds of cable networks. He was asked as expected about ISIS (ISIL, DAESH). He answered with the same old mantra of the past three or four years: “No Fly Zone, Free Syrian Army“.

Except the old Free Syrian Army that he and the Arab princes had been pushing in Syria is no more. It has been completely Wahhabi-ized, as ‘we’ warned of so long ago. The ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels, the wine-sippers, have left their five-star hotels along the Turkish border and departed for Paris, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and other venues. As ‘we’ predicted two years ago, it is now ISIS, DAESH, Al-Nusra, Ahrar Al-Sham, WTF, etc.
It is amazing how they go back to the same playbook that created this mess to start with. The playbook of Afghanistan in the 1980s: Western weapons and Wahhabi oil money used in tandem to liberate a Muslim country from its present and hand it over to the joys of Wahhabism:

  • We saw it in Afghanistan after 1989, when the Mujahideen took over ‘liberated’ Kabul and set to destroy it, before handing it over to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to finish the job. But that was okay, we got a good Hollywood film out of Charlie Wilson’s War.
  • We saw it again in Libya, when NATO used a loophole in a UN resolution to bomb the country and hand it over to the current warring Wahhabi terrorist groups who now dominate it and are in the process of destroying it. Afghanistan Redux on the Shores of Tripoli.
  • They pushed for a repeat in Syria, and Obama and Hillary Clinton made the right political noises about the longevity of Bashar Al Assad.
  • Meanwhile John McCain and his sidekicks started their own war on the Syrian-Turkish border, with a lot of help from Turkish fundamentalists and repressive Arab oil princes eager to explore the delights of a democratic Syria where free speech would reign.

Can you repeat the same mistakes and expect better results? Miracles do happen.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Caliphate, Jihadis, Jordan, Muslims, Terrorism

Daesh or ISIS after the Fire: How the West Should Win?………

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It is the moment of truth for the United States…….

  • Forget this silly select incomplete coalition that basically caters to the whims and desires of some repressive Arab allies.
  • Forget self-serving sectarian Arab allies who keep on urging more wars and their strategies that serve their own goals.
  • Forget the Turks whose Islamist government has done so much to enable the ISIS Caliphate and other Jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq. Remember the Erdogan Trail?
  • Forget doddering John McCain and his pals in the Senate who seem to live in the bygone era of jingoistic gunboat diplomacy and colonialism.
  • Forget about the various Jihadis, overt and covert, who claim to want to liberate Syria for their own image of freedom and justice and the American way of life.
  • It is time to realize that there is no viable alternative to a shift on Syria. Forget the nonsense about Sunni Crescent or Shi’a Crescent. The real threat now is the Wahhabi Crescent stretching across Iraq and Syria, and beyond that to its financiers and supporters across the Middle East and Europe.
  • Do a reset if you will. Redraw this coalition to make it wider and more effective and not based on the whims of impotent allied regimes that effectively created ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
    Cheers
    Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Syria

Iranian Boots Now Officially ‘On the Ground’ in Iraq and Syria……..

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“Iran’s Supreme Leader has permitted a limited group of Iranian youth to fight along with “Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese brothers,” according to Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari. Jafari, while addressing a ceremony in Tehran last Friday, mentioned discussions he had with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, saying that “despite the number of youth who are permitted to join the fighting (outside Iran), no one else should leave the country” for resistance abroad, the Iranian Mashregh news agency reported……………”

Everybody has known for some time that there are Iranian advisers, and maybe some combatants, serving in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and other armed groups. We have all seen ‘leaked’ photos of the enigmatic Brig. Suleimani in Iraq. Everybody has also known that there are Arab, American, and European fighters and advisers on both sides in Iraq and Syria. Some of the latter are official with the regulation boots, others who are mainly on the Jihadi side are free-lancers. This new report about Ayatollah Khamenei makes things ‘official’ now. Especially in view of the potential casualties which are impossible to hide in a Muslim society where a death and its rites are a very public matter.

Officially the wars in Syria and Iraq are now part of a multi-layered wider war: a sectarian war within a regional war within a global war. Which they have been for some years now, but unofficially. Now which box should be opened first? Which layer should be peeled first to reach the heart of the matter and solve it?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Al-Qaeda, Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Sectarian

Iraqi Alibi: One American Sectarian View of the ISIS Rampage……..

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“The Hezbollah-ization of Iraq’s military and security forces has been overseen by the IRGC-QF, another U.S.-designated terrorist entity, which is headed by Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, a man personally sanctioned by the Treasury Department for his role in propping up Bashar al Assad’s mass murderous regime in Syria. In Iraq and Syria the enemy of our enemy is not our friend, he is our enemy, too………. Another one of Suleimani’s major proxies, the Badr Corps, is headed by Hadi al-Amiri, who happens to be Iraq’s former minister of transport, in which capacity he was accused by the U.S. government of helping to fly Iranian weapons and personnel into Syria……………….”

The title of this article reads like a concocted alibi for expected failure against ISIS in Iraq. And we’ve all had the apparently mistaken belief that ISIS sprang from Al-Qaeda which sprang from Saudi money and Wahhabi ideology and volunteers! Now we have beens set straight: the Iranian mullahs are behind ISIS. Disguised as Wahhabi Jihadis.

Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t dabble much in Muslim sectarianism, otherwise I would have suspected him of being behind this article. The best of Saudi royal media couldn’t have written anything more sectarian than this piece. It almost reads as if written by a Hariri pro-Saudi (Lebanon’s March 14) journalist for NOW Lebanon, or by some American neoconservative hawk from one of their many well-funded think tanks. Making the case for yet another Western war in our region (hence the netanyahu angle)………..

This is not to deny some of the basic facts in the article. The Iraqi militias are nasty ombres. The Iranian are active and scheming in Iraq, as is almost everybody else that I can think of outside Monaco. I am not sure about the Hezbollah angle: this sounds like a “Lebanese” partisan insertion. Don’t they say that “all is fair in war and love“? Everybody seems to believe that, even if they profess not to.

But then the Iranians, and some others in the neighborhood, have been stung from Iraq in the past, invaded and attacked with WMD. The Western powers, some of whom supplied the WMD or its ingredients to the Baathists, did not seem to object to either at the time………..
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Caliphate, Iraq, Media, Syria, Terrorism

Seeking the Caliphate: Advice to Wayward Journalists and Concubines…….

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Kenji Goto of Japan was beheaded today, as seemed inevitable if the ISIS Caliphate did not receive the freed Sajida Al Rishawi. It is becoming gradually, and painfully, obvious that two types of travelers, fellow travelers, now head into harm’s way at their own risk. They should know the potential consequences by now. These two are:

  • Foreign journalists who seek information or a scoop or glory in harm’s way. They should know by now that these Wahhabi cutthroats go by identity and have no respect for non-combatants. A foreign journalist is the same to them as a foreign soldier. Just stop doing it, and if you do go in, be ready to bear the consequences. If I go there I fully expect to get beheaded, why shouldn’t these foreign journalists expect the same? Just don’t do it.
  • Foreign women who seek their glory in warming the beds of the cutthroats. They should by now know the consequences: if you get in, you are in for the long haul.
  • If you want to report on human tragedy there are many other places that need world attention more than Iraq and Syria. Go to North Africa, or the Sahel, or Yemen, or Pakistan: seek your resurrection and glory elsewhere. Just stay the hell out of Syria and Iraq. Ditto if you are a European woman who wants to shack up with Jihadists. 

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter