Category Archives: GCC

Arab Politics, Blockade of Iran, GCC, Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy

The Urban Legend on Arab Reaction to the Lausanne Nuclear Deal………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

Western media, especially American media, are full of talk, analysis, anguish, and punditry about the regional impact of the Lausanne nuclear deal made by Iran and the six world powers. I am speaking about the alleged Arab reaction. It is all based on a vast media campaign, whispered leaks to select American columnists, and private complaints by highly-placed “Arab” officials to unnamed bureaucrats. This campaign has utilized the vast media owned by some Arab kings, princes, potentates and their fronts in some Arab capitals and in the West. Thus it has created an urban legend about “Arab” anger and disappointment about a deal that will lift the economic blockade from Iran.

It is obvious that the sources of this alleged “anger” come from some of the GCC states of the Gulf and not from most other Arab states. That is why President Obama has invited the GCC leaders exclusively to Camp David in order to calm their alleged fears. And no other Arab leaders.
Now the members of the GCC whose regimes have leaked or expressed their dissatisfaction are almost certainly only four members: Saudi Arabia (including Bahrain), Qatar, and the UAE. These four countries have, with a total population of about 30+ million represent maybe some 12% of the total Arabs. I am not even counting the fact that almost half the ‘total’ population are imported temporary expatriate laborers who couldn’t care less about the issue. Can we say that these princes and potentates speak for the Arab world? Can we say these entitlement “born” leaders speak for other countries that “elect” their leaders? Now what about the others: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, etc, etc?

So, forget the reports about “Arab” anger. It is mostly an urban legend created and encouraged by the dominating vast media of Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have created so many news outlets and gobbled up so many other Arab media.

So, show me the figures, the reliable polls……..
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Yemen

Arabian Peninsula: Is Decisive Storm Really a Desert Storm or a Stupid Storm?………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

In the Gulf GCC countries that are bombing Yemen, you get arrested and imprisoned if you publicly criticize this war being waged by air against the poorest Arab country outside Africa. The war is done in alliance with Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and at least two Western powers who supply the weapons and provide the logistics and intelligence. Pakistan and Malaysia are being coy, but it is almost certain the former ia supplying some personnel.
As I said, one goes to prison for publicly opposing this war that probably was imposed on the GCC by the Saudis. The doubters have been right so far. Decisive Storm has not been decisive yet, has not decided anything except to visit misery, death, injury, and homelessness on the people of Yemen. While the escaped former president, the weakling AbdRAbuh Hadi, and his ministers egg on the attackers from luxury accommodations in Saudi Arabia.

So far the war has not achieved any strategic success. Since it started a week ago, the Houthis and their military allies have completed their takeover of Aden and Bab El Mandab Strait on the Red Sea. Perhaps the idea is to weaken them enough with bombardment for an easy ground attack or to force them to accept Hadi. Neither is realistic. Hadi is out and for good. He was never popular inside Yemen. Any leader that invites a foreign attack on his country and people does not usually return to power, as per my last fatwa.

The whole concept of Decisive Storm is based on the Desert Storm campaign that freed Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991. Softening with bombardment, and then……….what? Can you imagine a Saudi and Egyptian expeditionary force slugging it in the rugged Yemeni landscape? And what would the other side do?
That is why I prefer to call it Stupid Storm. Unless they can prove otherwise……..

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Egypt, GCC, Saudi Arabia, War, Yemen

Arab Despots Finally Find Someone They Think They Can Defeat, Poorer Arabs……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

The princes of the Persian Gulf countries must have spent almost a trillion dollars on weapons and related services in the past decade or so. Many princes and potentates and their families have accumulated huge fortunes from commissions and kickbacks (never called bribes in polite mixed company) on these arms deals. I and others have often commented that these weapons are imported and left to rust in the desert, unless they can be used for repression and crowd control.

Now the princes and potentates are setting out to prove me and others wrong. They have finally found someone they think they can beat on or so they think. So they are carpet bombing the major cities of the poorest Arab country outside Africa, Yemen. As long as they stick to aerial bombing they are doing fine from their point of view, killing Yemenis and destroying Yemen.

They may, they should, hesitate to actually enter the land of Yemen: they have tried it before and got whipped, both the Saudis and their Egyptian sidekicks. Still, they may decide to end this curse of Yemen by using imported mercenary armies as cannon fodder, or Houthi-fodder. Pakistanis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans, and perhaps Bengalis. People the princes deem expendable.

They are crowing, these entitled princes, in their media that they are achieving a great victory, from a distance. As they kill and destroy their neighbors. Soon it will be time for the pop corn as the real battle is joined on land.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Kuwait, Yemen

GCC Opposition and Yemen and a Me-Too State………..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“All is fair in war, nothing is fair in love“   Unsaid Wahhabi saying

“War is Deception“   Hadith

The GCC opposition groups of the Gulf states, such as they are, have reacted in interesting ways to the war on Yemen:

  • The Saudis have different group that can fall under opposition or reformist categories. The extreme Wahhabi opposition, those who support Al Qaeda and ISIS, have the attitude that “better late than never”. They are strongly for the attack on Yemen, just as they pray for an Israeli or American or Vulcan attack on Iran (to them all is fair in war, if not in love). Others of the opposition who are not so-extreme-Wahhabi are apparently also for the attack. Or most of them like being silent.
  • The same seems to be the case with the Kuwaiti opposition, many of whose factions are under control or Salafi, Muslim Brotherhood, and reactionary tribal elements. Even the more quasi-liberal wing of it is Wahhabi-ized to the extent that they strongly hint at support for the attack on Yemen. They also try to deceptively and hypocritically fudge the issue, deliberately calling it the “Houthi war” rather than the “Yemen war“. Which falls within the Saudi narrative, which is how they look at almost all regional and international issues. They are also strongly against the Bahrain uprising. It is largely sectarian, but then the Shi’as are the same but on the other side. The Shi’as are mostly against this war on Yemen and the Houthis.
  • The UAE doesn’t have any opposition, as far as the Ruling Brothers can tell us. Nor does Qatar. As for Bahrain, well, it is the ultimate Me-TOO state. Whatever the Saudis do is fine by them.
  • Oman seems to be the sanest GCC country these days, and the most independent in decision-making. They would have nothing to do with this war on Yemen.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Fatwa, Fatwas, GCC, US Foreign Policy, Yemen

A Fatwa on Battered Yemen: Hadi’s Last Look at Sanaa……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

Yemen‘s weakling former president AbdRabuh Mansour Hadi was elected in a strange election where he had no opponent, arranged by the usual suspects: the absolute princes of the GCC with the accommodating international bureaucracy of the UN looking on. He “won” by an astounding but very typically Arab 99.8% of the vote in 2012: the other .02% of the voters were stoned on election day, or maybe they were the only sober ones. He proceeded to preside over a new/old regime that was as corrupt as any in modern Yemeni history. Lucky for Yemen his reign did not stray far from a couple of cities.
Still under pressure from the resurgent Houthis, he renewed for himself when his term expired in January, something the Arab despots understood and cheered. He was put under house arrest for a few weeks by the Houthis. As soon as the house arrest was eased he escaped, allegedly dressed as a fat woman, and headed for his native region around Aden. A rebellious city General Hadi had bombed and helped conquer for former absolute ruler Ali Abdallah Salih in 1994.
From Aden, he called on the Arab tribal princes, shaikhs and assorted self-styled kings and entitled family field marshals to bomb his country in order to restore him to power. Never mind that he never had much power. Never mind that his foreign allies had neglected Yemen for decades, keeping its people on the verge of starvation as they provided limited aid on political conditions.

From Aden a legend developed about Hadi’s whereabouts last week. He was on a rickety boat to Djibouti. He was on his way to Riyadh. He was living with BinAli and the ghost of Idi Amin in Jeddah. He was holed up somewhere with the slippery Waldo. In the end he did show up smiling and kissing the princes who are bombing his countrymen and countrywomen and country-children. A final shameless act by a stooge.

Whatever happens in this new savage war being waged on Yemen by rich oil princes and their hired Arab mercenaries, however it turns, Generalissimo Hadi has seen the last of Sanaa. He will not be the president of Yemen anymore.
This is my Fatwa, and it is at least as good and valid as any I have seen recently. A Fatwa that is backed by the history of Yemen in the past hundred years, if you bother to read that history carefully………..

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Caliphate, Culture, GCC, Jihadis, Persian Gulf, Wahhabi

Islamic State Goes Institutional and Cultural and Global…….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

The Islamic State (of Syria and Iraq for now) of Caliph Abu Bakr Al Samarrai reportedly has been forming the skeleton of a state. At least they were before the bombing campaign started. With reported coinage and taxes and schools and other trappings of a state. Yet they need to do more to look like a real state. Something other statelets, sorry, other ‘states’ (statelets or half-states is what Generalissimo Al Sisi called the sisterly states on the famous tapes). Here are a few more steps that might be taken: 

  • Solicit and permit local branches of elite or semi-elite Western universities and colleges. Perhaps a branch of the Sorbonne in Raqqa, an NYU in Mosul (while Mosul lasts). Sort of like they have in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and other Persian Gulf venues. These campuses would be for men only, of course. Modified Sorbonne or NYU, just like they have modified watered-down versions in other parts of the Gulf. They can add some new local curricula: the Teachings of Ibn Taimiyyah, the Teachings of Mohammad Ibn AbdulWahhab, (but of course not the music of Mohammed Abdelwahhab of Egypt).
  • Open up local branches of elite Western think tanks. That ought to make you look more serious than you really are. Brookings, Cato, Rand, etc. Just as they do in the UAE and Qatar: provided these branches do not criticize local politics (or lack thereof) and local culture (or lack thereof).
  • Take a bold leap and allow opening ersatz branches of famous world museums. They need it after the Caliphate has destroyed every local monument they could get their hands on in Iraq and Syria. Museums and galleries like the Louvre, Guggenheim, and Tate might be happy to expand into a new ‘market’. Just as some have done in the UAE and Qatar.
  • Start a new campaign, insisting that the Persian Gulf be renamed ‘Gulf of the Caliphate’, or Salafi Gulf. Spend a lot of oil money doctoring ancient historic maps of the region to show that should be the new name of the Gulf. Just as they do in the UAE and Qatar, for example.
  • Start seriously thinking of membership requirements for world bureaucracies: the Arab League, United Nations, IMF, World Bank, WTO, WTF, etc……….

But I think I am getting ahead of myself here…….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum     Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, GCC, Iraq, Mercenaries, US Foreign Policy

Fog of War: Iraqi Militias, American Militias, Mercenary Militias……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

Militias have suddenly retaken the center stage in media and in public official discussions of recent developments in Iraq. Apparently Shi’a ‘militias’ are now taking an important role in the Iraqi counteroffensive against the terrorists of the so-called Islamic State, ISIS.

There is no denying that some of the Iraqi Shi’a militias can be as nasty as the other armed factions in Iraq. The experience of the mini-civil-war of 2006-2008 showed that. But they are in no way comparable to the Wahhabi cutthroats of Al Qaeda or ISIS, regardless of the nonsensical stuff Gen. Petraeus said recently. Yet there is now a bigger storm of foreign criticism of Iraqis hiring or allowing ‘militias’ to fight government battles. This is especially true in the United States.

Yet hiring and/or using private militias is a worldwide phenomenon in this era of war-for-profit. Apparently there is no stigma on hiring private militias if the militias are Westerners and those who hire them are Western governments. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have been known and reported  to rely on private contractors (the Western equivalent of militias) in battle zones. We have read about the American millionaires that were made in Iraq. So, the complaints about Iraqis using militias when they have an army of 200 or 300 thousand sound hypocritical and hollow. The United States has a standing military of millions, yet there is increased dependence on contractors in military zones and even in protecting diplomats and high military officials (as reportedly happened in Iraq).

I shall not speak extensively here about those other hired foreign militias down the Persian Gulf. They are hired by the princes and potentates from humorless places like Jordan, often through the government and certainly with its approval, as well as from Pakistan and other distant lands. These are used to keep the people repressed in such places, and to conduct thorough and ‘enhanced interrogations’ of the restive ones among the native populations. So it can be irksome that princes and potentates who hire foreign mercenaries (essentially militias) to torment their own people complain about Iraqi militias.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen

Enemy of the Enemy of My Friend: Northern Yemen, Southern Yemen, Eastern Yemen, USA, USA………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

North Yemen, what used to be called Yemen throughout most of modern history is now largely under control of Houthis and their other allies. Largely but not totally, and it is a fluid situation, as it has been in Yemen for almost forever. The Arab princes and potentates of the Persian Gulf have cut off their aid, seriously harming the innocent people of Yemen in order to punish their new leaders: that is how all blockades and sanctions usually work. The Iranians are reported to be supplying foreign aid and possibly weapons to the Houthis, who dutifully raise Iranian-style anti-American banners even as they welcome American drones attacking their mortal Al Qaeda (and maybe soon ISIS) enemies.

South Yemen, what used to be called Southern Arabia (or the Arabian South) under the British and later the socialist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen after independence. Before it merged with (north) Yemen under Colonel Salih in early 1990. It is now more fragmented even than after the British withdrew from Aden. General President AbRabuh Hadi, a nominal southerner, allegedly rules in Aden, rules in parts of it anyway, with some other allies in the outskirts. He receives Western and GCC dignitaries and ambassadors, although it is not clear how many of these ambassadors actually hang around Aden after the media cameras are gone.

The Southern Independence Movement (Hirak) controls the hearts and minds in the South and they don’t welcome anyone who wants to bring them back under Sanaa control. It is a severe case of ‘buyer’s remorse’. Al Qaeda (AQAP) terrorists control large chunks of the south, including a few towns. The murderous Caliphate of ISIS (DAESH) is apparently also making some inroads, but nothing on a military scale yet.
There are also, like in the North Yemen, tribal undercurrents and conflicts in “both” parts now, actually in “all” parts of Yemen.

So, the free-for-all starts. So, whether you are an Arab, a Muslim, or otherwise: turn off your conscience, stifle your emotions, harden your heart, get some popcorn, and watch the bloody tragedy………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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European Union, GCC, Human Right, MENA, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

Potentates of the Gulf Unite! (Against Human Rights)………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recalled the UAE ambassador to Sweden in wake of comments the country’s foreign minister made about Saudi Arabia. In addition to recalling the ambassador, Sultan Rashid Al Kaitoob, the ministry also summoned the Swedish ambassador to the UAE, Jan Thesleff, and delivered a formal memorandum of protest over Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom’s remarks, state news agency Wam reported. Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, highlighted the “condemnation by the UAE of strong statements made by the Foreign Minister of Sweden to the Swedish Parliament against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its judicial system”. Dr Gargash stressed that these statements violate the principle of sovereignty……………..”

This show of outrage by the princes and potentates and their minions. Supposedly ‘sisterly or brotherly’ outrage as Gulf media and officials like to call it. This outrage would be funny if it were not outrageous. Coming from Persian Gulf potentates who meddle in Libya and Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and Bahrain and Egypt, among other places. Who paid billions to crush the Tahrir Uprising by the military and help repress Bahrain even as they claim to seek to liberate Syria and steer it towards the joys of Wahhabism.

So why would the Abu Dhabi potentates protest a diplomatic issue between two other countries? Maybe it is a case of “If the shoe fits, wear it“. In Arabic it would be “He who has a bump on his head will reach and touch it” (اللي على راسه بطحة يتحسسها).

Likely it has to do with a (non-mathematical) principle of transfer. They also do it, so maybe they expect the Swedish diplomats to mention them as well at some point. They feel entitled to certain consideration and accommodation, because they can threaten to block lucrative contracts (some may consider it a sort of blackmail). You never see the British or French governments talk about human rights in these countries. Why do you suppose that is so? Certainly it has nothing to do with principles: both these European governments leave their principles on the other side of the Mediterranean before they hit our shores. They always have.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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GCC, Iran, Persian Gulf, Piss-Up in a Brewery

More Gulf Military Exercises Near the Strait of Hormuz…….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

Some Arab media quote a UAE (Emirates) ‘prominent analyst’ that a number of GCC countries will hold naval military exercises in the Persian Gulf. The analyst mentioned something about the exercise being a message to a ‘threatening Iran’. But he also hinted that enhanced operational field coordination is an important goal. In other words, learning to organize the proverbial piss-up in a brewery, which is more essential for the success of any military operation than accumulating expensive hardware.

They report the exercises will be held in the area of the Strait of Hormuz and not far from three disputed islands that are held by Iran (Abu Moussa, and the Tunbs). It is not clear to me how close to Hormuz they will be held, if they will be held at all. Nor how reliable this ‘analyst’ who leaked the news is, although they report that he is ‘close’ to UAE policy-makers. No report if some of the participating countries that heavily use imported mercenaries (UAE, Bahrain) will bring along these foreign mercenaries to join the exercises.
This comes days after the Iranians held their own exercises near the area, where they targeted a replica of a U.S. naval warship (a flat top). A cute but snidely touch by the humorless mullahs, although the timing may not have been smart.

No doubt the region is getting weirder by the week. From the Gulf to Libya. Which possibly explains the state of this particular post of mine.

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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