Category Archives: Caliphate

Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, US Foreign Policy

The Return of Qassem Suleimani: about Petraeus…………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

“When Islamic State militants retreated from the embattled town of Jurf al-Sakher last week, the Iraqi military was quick to flaunt a rare victory against the extremist group, with state television showing tanks and Humvees parading through the town and soldiers touring government buildings that had been occupied by the militants since August. However, photos soon emerged on independent Iraqi news websites revealing a more discreet presence — the powerful Iranian general Qassem Suleymani, whose name has become synonymous with the handful of victories attributed to Iraqi ground forces. Local commanders said Lebanon’s powerful Shiite Hezbollah group was also on the front lines. Shiite militias have played a key role in driving the Islamic State out of the so-called Baghdad Belt of Sunni villages ringing the capital…………..”

Qassem Suleimani has become like a mysterious military celebrity of the current Middle East wars. According to foreign media reports. He is hard to pin down, except for an occasional sneaked photograph and many rumors in Arab and Western media.

He treads in places where David Petraeus and his various men used to tread, some of them still do. Petraeus was more ‘official’ in his task and in his travels. Suleimani is not: he has been reported in various Middle East cities, from Baghdad to Damascus to Cairo and Beirut. If all that is true, then no doubt he has also been to a few other cities as well, (possibly incognito?). Excluding Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and maybe Riyadh, of course.

Petraeus was the man of the last decade. Suleimani seems like the man of both the last and current decades. Petraeus had to fly thousands of miles in order to be able to tread on those unstable sands. He had to fly all the miles back to DC and Langley to get away from the field (which he did not really). Suleimani and his mullahs live in the neighborhood: he can, and probably does, walk across borders to retrace the footsteps of Petraeus. Much shorter and easier than a march from Hanoi to Saigon.
Does that tell us something? I sure hope so, now more than ever, given the U.S. election results. More on that later………..

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Islamic History, Russia, Syria

Commanders of ISIS: European Masters of Caliph Al-Baghdadi?………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

On an unusual surreal day early last summer a man I had never heard of before climbed a podium in Mosul, Iraq. He was dressed in presumably 7th century Arab attire, accurate enough to make Hollywood proud. In hindsight, he may have been playing a role selected for him. He declared the recreation of the Islamic Caliphate (meaning the state run by the heirs and followers of the Prophet Mohammed). He declared himself the new Caliph; to wit, public ruler and religious leader of Muslims- non-Wahhabis need not apply.

Then this character Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi (reportedly né Ibrahim Awwad Al Samarrai) disappeared from view. No more public pronouncements, no appearances. Gradually we have been getting reports, photos, and videos of others, of less swarthy men with red and blond beards dominating the Wahhabis in Syria and Iraq. Chechens (Shishan, or Shishani in Arabic), from Russian Chechnya, have been reported to be in Syria and Iraq for a couple of years. Now they seem to have been flooding the place, if some media reports are accurate. The most famous media face is that of Omar Al-Shishani: his real name is reported to be Batirashvili, which means he originally hails from Georgia (I think any name ending in –Shvili is Georgian, just like one Dzhugashvili who became known as Stalin). They are alleged to be the mainstay of the street fighting, the sharpshooters of city and town warfare. They also presumably have women there, as sharpshooters and as, er, companions and entertainers of the Jihadis when they are not blowing up Iraqi civilians or taking Syrians as hostages and slaves.

That probably explains the extreme bloodiness of their treatment of the captives. That is a typically European practice as we know from the history of the past two centuries. From Germany to Russia (including Chechnya) to the Balkans. The Chechnya rebellion was typically praised in the West, until the inevitable happened, just as it has happened in Syria. The inevitable is that the Wahhabi outsiders with a lot of money and a hateful message, both imported, took over the Chechen rebellion, just as they did the initial Syrian uprising. The Chechens took up chopping heads and hands and stoning quickly in their Caucasus homeland, with the zeal of the converted. Now they are in our region, likely the new European masters of the Caliphate.

One should not exaggerate: there are no doubt Arab commanders as well. We know some of the names, noms de guerre, many others are not known. This reliance on foreign military prowess has normally happened in Islamic history in the declining years of previous Caliphates and Sultanates. It was a practice from Baghdad to Cairo to Istanbul. Often the imported ‘help’, usually imported former slaves, ended up in effective command.

But there are also other ‘Europeans’ involved. This new brief Caliphate, like other Islamic Caliphates before it has fallen to reliance on the imported help. Reliance on the particular Europeans with the bloodiest recent memories and lessons of massacres and mass killings and genocide.

Is this just a repeat blast from past Islamic history? Is this Al Baghdadi (al Samarrai) a hapless figurehead for the real strongmen of the Islamic State?………….

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Jihadis, Syria, Turkey

No Turkish Delight in Syria: the Dilemma Beyond Kobani……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

The Song of Istanbul, or——–> Turkish Delight

“Just a few kilometers away from the Turkish border, the war is raging. In the Kurdish city of Kobani, US jets bomb Islamic State positions while the town’s last defenders, equipped with more grit than guns, fight the jihadists on the ground. As the Turkish army impassively watches the deadly battle from its side of the boundary with Syria, it has opened its own mini-front on the outskirts of Suruç, a Turkish border city…………. The scene is prosaic and absurd…… Now that the city is being threatened with destruction by Islamic State Ankara is doing nothing to prevent it, and thus putting the future of Turkish-Kurdish reconciliation in danger — and domestic peace along with it……………”

In our native region we are obsessed with history, especially older history that spans the old Islamic Empire and goes beyond that to the Persian and Egyptian and other civilizations. Maybe it is so because the present is so dismal when compared to the distant past. Thus many Arabs have joked in recent years about a return of another not-too-distant era, a new Ottoman-less Empire with Caliph Erdogan as its leader.
Turkey probably did as much as anybody else to enable the ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front and other terrorist groups, to help them rise and thrive. Turkish help was essential for them to take hold of the Syrian uprising of 2011. It is true that the basic elements, the money, the weapons, and much of the volunteers came from among foreign Wahhabis, from the Persian Gulf to North Africa to Europe. But all these elements could not be of any use unless they reached Syria (and Iraq). Even Senator John McCain could not have snuck into Syria illegally without Turkish cooperation. Thus the role of Turkey in the past three years.

The Erdogan government believed some of the Gulf Arab and Western propaganda about an imminent early fall of the Al Assad regime in 2011. It gambled on that outcome and lost, and it has dug in deeper since. Now it seems that when the dust settles it may lose more than its expansionist Islamist face.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Rainbow Opposition: Reactions to Regional Turmoil and ISIS………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

Saudi Arabia has several different kinds, actually strains, of opposition to the Al Saud rule and policies. It is a diverse rainbow of opposing opposition groups. There are three main strains:

  • There are relatively liberal human rights advocates among the educated city folks, but they are mostly heavily monitored and repressed. These are focused on the domestic issues of freedom and corruption and advocating for a civic society. Often they are thrown in prison on trumped up charges, as many ACPRAHR leaders are.
  • There are the marginalized restive Shi’as in their native homeland of the Eastern Province who have been restless and in an uprising mood for years.
  • Then there is a more interesting but growing animal, the relatively recent Wahhabi opposition. A Wahhabi opposition to a Wahhabi theocratic monarchy. Needless to say, these latter are groups that were born of the domestic and foreign efforts of the Saudi system itself.

This last one is a bit odd, since the Salafis, like the rest of the Saudi political and religious establishment, believe in obeying the Wahhabi ruler no matter what. In that they rely on an old Hadith, or a quote that alleges to quote the Prophet Mohammed about obedience to a ‘Muslim’ ruler. By their doctrine they can justify it only by insisting that a particular ruler is “not Muslim”, which these days means “not Wahhabi enough”. Of course they believe that anyone who i not a Wahhabi/Salafi is not a Muslim: that is how they justify blowing up Iraqi and Syrian civilians and beheading them and enslaving their women as sex concubines.

Needless to say much of this last Wahhabi opposition supports the more extremist groups like Al-Qaeda, AQAP, and especially the Caliphate of ISIS and Al-Nusra Front and their ilk in recent years. They focus exclusively on aiding these Jihadist groups from Yemen to Syria and Iraq and beyond. Yet like some other tribal/Salafi opposition movements on the Persian Gulf these latter are violently against the continuing Bahrain protests and are happy to have the Al Saud help crush them. These groups are also very active on the Internet social media. Some of their top “activists” have followers in the millions. They seem to have three main complaints:

  1.  the Al Saud are not following the true Salafi line of Islam. That is the only way a Salafi can justify disobedience;
  2. the Al Saud are too nice to the local Shi’as (as well as to those in Iran and Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen);
  3. the Al Saud are plotting with all of the above as well as with Al Assad of Syria against the true faithful of the ISIS Caliphate and Al Qaeda. Occasionally they throw in Israel and the United States, probably just to cover all their bases. This line in support of ISIS is also taken by other such Gulf groups, including much of the Kuwait opposition which also, oddly, rejects any local criticism of the Al Saud even as they blast the local ruling family.

These are Wahhabi ‘activists’ on the social media, although I believe the more prominent ones are doing it from the safety of Western capitals. None of them, as far as I know, has offered to relocate in Raqqa (Syria) or Mosul (Iraq). Mostly the more prominent among them comment openly under their own names. One of the most popular of them goes under the nom de plume of Mujtahidd (various meanings in Arabic: hard working, originator of ideas, interpreter of Shari’a, etc). He is not shy to comment freely, but is too ‘shy’ to write under his own name, which some might think makes him a bit less “hammam” than he claims to be in his brief Twitter bio. But he claims to have access to insider information deep within the Saudi power structure, sort of like those Hollywood gossip columnists of a bygone pre-Internet era.

Good news for the Al Saud: these various ‘opposition’ groups seem like young children, playing around each other rather than with each other. Studiously avoiding crossing paths. Ideological, tribal, and sectarian factors keep them separate and that keeps the Al Saud happy. This division of the opposition is certain to continue. 
Cheers
MHG

[email protected]

Caliphate, Iraq, Muslims, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Wahhabi

Draining the Swamp: from the Gulf to Pakistan and Iraq and Europe………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

“As an Ahmadi leader in his locality, Kahloun knew he was a target for hired assassins in the bustling but lawless metropolis of Karachi. General insecurity in Pakistan is multiplied manifold if you are, like Kahloun, an Ahmadi – a sect of Islam that many orthodox Muslims abhor as heretic. “I never thought they would target my family,” says Kahloun, 57, a successful businessman who left everything behind, obtained political asylum and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and daughter. In 1974, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s parliament declared Ahmadis as non-Muslim (similarly pressured, the newly independent Bangladesh refused). A decade later, a military dictator made it a criminal offence for them to “pretend” to be Muslims…………”

The influence of Wahhabi oil money and Wahhabi ideology and overseas teachings is now worldwide. This phenomenon is widespread, having seeped like Persian Gulf crude petroleum, like petro-money, across the globe. There is so much hatred where none existed before. There is active intolerance, violent discrimination and mass sectarian murder in Pakistan and Indonesia. There is now religious and sectarian discrimination in Malaysia, in once-tolerant Egypt and North Africa. In Iraq, thousands of civilians are killed on the street because of the suspicion they might be of the wrong sect or faith. In the Wahhabi-ized ‘liberated’ parts of Syria and Iraq, women and girls of other faiths and sects are captured, used, sold, and bought as sex slaves. In Western cities, they collect money, distribute money, enlist volunteers, inject them with hatred and send them back to our region to kill, maim, and enslave.

The Wahhabis carry their hatred with them into exile, creating new forms of discrimination and potential violence deep inside European cities. Against their hosts and against people of other faiths and sects, including Muslims.

We all know who is fighting and murdering in Syria and Iraq and Yemen and North Africa and other places. We also know who has the funds to finance them. It takes many millions to run a Caliphate, much more than the revenues from a few oil wells they control in Syria. Many of the Jihadi volunteers come from the West, fueled by Persian Gulf money and the Wahhabi ideology of hate from the cradle of sectarianism. Perhaps helped along by alienation in European society: but it must take a lot of alienation to mow down, mass murder, innocent civilians.

That ideology, most of the killers, and the money that sustains it mostly come from the absolute tribal princes and potentates. The same princes and potentates on whom the West is now pretending to rely for salvation in Syria and Iraq. The ones Mr. Obama “is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with“.

Is it any wonder few have faith in the outcome of this war? Is it any wonder most Arabs who cannot express themselves in the vast controlled Saudi and Emirati and Qatari media are skeptical?

After the 9/11 attacks, George W Bush liked to speak of ‘draining the swamp‘. He was focusing on the wrong swamps: Taliban-controlled Wahhabi Afghanistan and secular Baathist Iraq. He may have misunderstood or was ill-advised. The genesis, the true swamp from whence Al-Qaeda launched its terrorism was not in Afghanistan or Iraq: it was, and still is, within the realm of some of his allies.
The bloody trails from the killing fields of Syria and Iraq and other places lead in that direction.

Cheers
MHG

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, GCC, Iraq, Jihadis, Syria

Final Iteration of the Free Syrian Army: End of a Wahhabi Shill in Syria……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

“For most of the three years of the Syrian conflict, the U.S. ground game hinged on rebel militias that are loosely affiliated under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA. Their problems were no secret: a lack of cohesion, uneven fighting skills and frequent battlefield coordination with the al Qaida loyalists of the Nusra Front. This time, Allen said, the United States and its allies will work to strengthen the political opposition and make sure it’s tied to “a credible field force” that will have undergone an intense vetting process. “It’s not going to happen immediately,” Allen said……………..”

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) was from the beginning mainly a creation of foreign Arabs. Almost like the various iterations of the Syrian National Coalition (or Council) that hung around the luxury hotels of Istanbul and Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Keeping close to the sources of money, close to the royal forces of absolute counter-revolution and intolerance in the Arab world.

I called it in 2011 the Free Syrian Salafi Army, knowing were the support and the money and eventually the flow of men was coming from. As the Syrian conflict continued, it became clearer what the FSA was, in spite of royal Arab media on the Persian Gulf raising it to the level o a “liberation” army. They celebrated every colonel and sergeant and corporal who “defected” and hung around the Turkish border.

Yet the FSA became a shill for the true goal of the Wahhabis, and that became clearer with every passing month. It was the others that dominated the field with the FSA doing the cheerleading and excusing. The Jabhat Al-Nusra (I called them from the very beginning Jabhat Al-Qaeda) and the Ahrar Al-Sham, and all the Abu Al-WTF, and Jaish Al-Salafi and Ansar Al McCain, among others. FSA was ineffectual in the field. It became more like a Public Relations arm of the Salafis, defending acts of beheading and desecration and kidnappings of civilians.

Of course, the frustrated Saudis tried a ‘reset’ in Syria in 2013, when they attempted  to create their very own Army of Islam in Syria, along the (humorless) Jordanian border. Probably something like the old Ikhwan Wahhabi militias of their father Sultan King Andulaziz Ibn Saud. But it is hard to imagine any Islamist ‘zealots’ anywhere fighting for the glory of the Al Saud princes and princelings, even if they were well-paid. Predictably it did not get anywhere, so they reportedly focused again on a Jordanian (hence also by necessity also humorless) option.

This is apparently the last and final iteration of the FSA. I am doubtful that this new American ‘reset’ can be as effective as needed against ISIS, especially if the Saudis and Emiratis and Qataris are part of the game, the ‘ground’ game. It is like resorting to “a bit of the hair of the dog that bit you” but much less reliable. They will screw it up again, as only they know how to do, speaking militarily.

Logically, strategically, but probably not politically, the best allies to encircle and defeat the Caliphate of ISIS are the Iraqis and the Syrians. I mean the official armed forces. Do I here a collective gasp from Washington to Riyadh?

Imagine, General Whatishisname, formerly of West Point and Army War College, calling up former enemy Brigadier Qassem Suleimani of Al Quds Brigade and discussing campaign strategy in Iraq and Syria! Suleimani, assuming his pious masters are amenable, will also do as his American counterparts will do. He will grimace and take the call.

Enough to give any potentate in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi a royal tribal kleptocratic infarct. Enough to give many in the newly-to-be-elected U.S Congress some lobbyist-financed and inspired palpitations.

It is unlikely to happen, but the sheer amusement of thinking about it……………

Cheers
MHG

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Islamic History, Jihadis, Sex, Trafficking, Women

Women of ISIS: Religion and Slavery and the Onus of Islamic History……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

“Women in Syria and Iraq are at high risk for sexual enslavement by ISIS. ISIS is capturing, abusing, raping, trading, and selling women in areas it controls. America is politically polarized and citizens are divided on the U.S. policy on ISIS. Some think the U.S. should be doing more to combat the organization. They think America should use its full strength to ward off possible terrorist attacks on home soil. Others worry that air strikes will incur too many civilian deaths and collateral damage. They believe America should be more cautious about declaring war on another country in the Middle East………”

Classic slavery in the Middle East and North Africa lasted well after Europe and the Americas ended it. Slavery was ‘officially’ ended in Saudi Arabia only in the 1960s. In Mauritania, an Arab League member, there have been sporadic reports that slavery still exists.

Reports of Wahhabi Jihadis enslaving women and using them for sex and other labor are not exactly new. This Jihadi inclination has been more publicized in recent years, starting with developments in Iraq and Africa. These are a new wilder breed and they make their Al-Qaeda predecessors seem tame and absolutely family-oriented in comparison. (Maybe a case of “the devil you know“, etc).

Trafficking in women by these groups inside Iraq has been reported for years. Now, with full-blown wars raging in both Iraq and Syria and their territorial gains, they have the expanded access and the excuse to replenish their supply of females. The victims come mainly from among the religious minorities and non-Sunnis, but probably not exclusively so.
Others, including many in the West, also traffic in women as sex objects. But this new breed of Wahhabis are not subtle about it and they take it to historic extremes. They have a certain historical flair for the subject. They simplify the matter by throwing the onus on ancient history, blaming their ancient predecessors, their Salaf, for it.

They claim, and correctly, that early Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula took women as war booty after battles and often they sold them or used them as slaves and concubines. They also converted and married them in a few famous cases. But that was during the early ‘tribal stage’ of the expansion of Islam, when the battles were with and among the rival Arab tribes. A few of the battles were also against the Jewish tribes and clans of Madina and other parts of Hijaz in western Arabia. These latter battles also yielded slaves, concubines, and at least one famous very good wife.

Slavery existed from long before the three monotheistic religions appeared and continued long afterwards. It was an important part of the economy of the Roman Empire: the wealth and the income, the GNP. None of the major faiths of the Middle East, Judaism or Christianity or Islam, banned slavery. This is the basis of the alibi that the Caliphate of ISIS uses in taking female war captives and distributing them among its fighters to ‘use’ or sell or trade. It revives slavery because it existed under Islam and anything that existed under early Islam is considered kosher and mandatory by the Salafis.

That is why the Salafis are widely reputed in the Middle East to prefer toothpicks (miswak) to toothpaste (I am not being flippant here, it is common to profile them so in our Gulf region). You see, early Muslims did not have access to Crest or Colgate…………

Cheers
MHG

[email protected]

Caliphate, Elections, U.S. Politics

Caliph Abu Al-Baghdadi and Dukakis and a Foxy Zombie in Kentucky……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

Election time in the United States has become silly time. The discourse in recent years has focused on the candidates distorting and trying to trap each other. In trying to do so, they show what they truly think of their constituents: that the voters are too stupid for clean debate.

U.S. media Tuesday was full of excerpts and reports and soundbites and video clips of a senate race debate in Kentucky (hmm, a race in Kentucky, get it?). I watched some excerpts on Morning Joe and another news program. Alison Grimes, the challenger to Senator McConnell was asked several times who she voted for in the last presidential election. It was a silly, meaningless, gotcha question since everybody ‘knows’ who she voted for. She is a Clinton Democrat who almost certainly voted for Obama, if that matters. The moderator was trying to trap her into an embarrassing answer (embarrassing by Kentucky standards), or maybe he wanted his Bernard Shaw and Dukakis moment of glory. Very likely both.

Anyway, the lady candidate almost squirmed, hemming and hawing, and avoided a direct answer. She rightly pointed out that the country has secret ballots for a reason, but nobody was paying attention. McConnell looked waxen but also poised to strike, almost like a ‘foxy zombie‘, if there is such a thing.

Which made me think of ersatz Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi Al Samarrai. I mean they were talking about the elected president of the United States, not the Caliph of ISIS. From the debate and the media reaction later on, you’d think she may have voted for the silly but murderous gang-banging Wahhabi Caliph of Mosul and Al Raqqa. Or maybe Satan himself.

Silly season for nearly another month, but then it will continue for two more years. Oy vey, as we say in the Middle East………..
Cheers
MHG

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Syria

3. Neighbors of ISIS: Turks, Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese, Others……

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

Ref. my last posts on American and Arab stances on Syria, Iraq, and the Caliphate. Some comments on what other regional countries might think:

  • The Iranian hardliners. I use a favorite Western classification/cliche since there are Iranians who are a match for the hardliners who run the U.S. Congress. Especially Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many parliamentarians who often blame America. Occasionally they also throw in Britain and Israel as deal sweeteners, just to cover all the bases, so to speak. (Dr. Rouhani and Mr. Zarif are doing their best to remain less belligerent, for now).
  • The Turks also blame Obama and their NATO allies for not entering the fray in Syria early on. The Turks of course refuse to enter the fray themselves preferring to allow/enable others be they Jihadists or Western powers to fight it out.
  • Others rightly blame the Turks for opening their borders for the past three years to all and any foreign Wahhabi Jihadis who sought to enter Syria (and Iraq). The Turks allowed not only Jihadi terrorists but also their weapons and money and the pious women groupies who service them to cross their borders into Syria.
  • The Syrians and Iranians and others also blame the Arab Salafis and some Arab regimes for the mayhem in Syria and Iraq. They point out that terrorist attacks have been going on in Iraq for ten years. That almost all the money, most of the weapons, and many of the Jihadi terrorists were sent over by these Arab worthies.
  • The Lebanese, as usual, blame each other. Hezbollah blames the right-wing pro-Saudi March 14 bloc for quickly taking sides in Syria and facilitating the flow of men and weapons in 2011. The other side blames Hezbollah for entering the Syrian war on the side of the regime in 2013. They are probably both right, as only the Lebanese can be. You figure that one out.
  • The North Africans are not so officially involved in either country. But their Islamists do send Jihadi volunteers and women to, er, help the Wahhabi terrorists of Al-Nusra and ISIS and Ahrar Al Sham and assorted other cutthroats who seek to liberate Syria and Iraq for Wahhabi ideology. Mainly Libyan men and Tunisian women, which seems like about the right mix. I am sure the Jihadis would not want it the other way around.

Cheers
MHG

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Syria

2. ISIS Blame Game: Arabs and Israelis……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2

Reference my last post on the American blame game for the Caliphate of ISIS (it almost does not sound so ridiculous saying it now: Caliphate of ISIS). Arabs diverge somewhat about the blame for Iraq and Syria. The blame for the Caliphate of ISIS is put squarely on everyone else:

  • The Arabs outside Iraq, even those on the Gulf, still blame the American invasion of Iraq. Some of them even blame the Desert Storm campaign of 1990-91. Most of these same Arabs tend to forget that the invasion of 2003 and the earlier campaign were launched from their own territory, not from San Diego or Tehran. That they were all active participants, from Abu Dhabi to Cairo.
  • The oil princes and potentates who meddle the most in Iraqi affairs quietly blame America. Loudly, from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi to Doha, they blame Iraqis and other outsiders like Iran. Cheekily, they also blame the sectarianism that they themselves have unleashed inside Iraq and across the region.
  • Mr. Netanyahu has largely stayed out of this conflict in Iraq and Syria. Why muddy the waters when your enemies are at each other’s throats? Largely out, but not completely out, no doubt. But he probably blames Iran for it all, prescribing a permanent blockade of that country as the best way to solve all world problems, from Iraq and ISIS to Ebola to global warming.
  • Many Arab princes and potentates agree with Netanyahu, but most other Arab who are not princes and potentates violently disagree with him.
  • The Qataris still blame Hezbollah and Iran and maybe Russia, but they are also angry at fellow Arabs who side with opposing Islamist factions. They seem to have lost the overt battle over which Jihadist group will dominate the armed Syrian opposition.
  • The Emiratis (of UAE) feel like they have spent tens of billions (possibly hundreds) on Western weapons, and that they should at least go on record as having used them. So, they sent one woman and probably a couple of mercenaries to bomb some silos in Syria. The woman pilot’s family and tribe typically disowned her once they got the glad news.
  • The Saudis blame everybody else except their own policies, their ideology, and their money and Jihadi volunteers. They also sent a couple of pilot princes to bomb some silos in Syria as a well-publicized contribution to the war against their ISIS progeny. No report yet if any woman was involved for media PR coverage.
  • One funny Manama source reported to me that Bahrain offered to volunteer to send its foreign minister. She believes he was so relieved that the offer was rejected.
  • Stay tuned……….

Cheers
MHG

[email protected]