Category Archives: Iraq

Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Iraq, Jordan, Syria

Jordanian Jihadis: the Children of Zarqawi………

      

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“Here in the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who gained infamy for his bloody reign as the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq during the early years of the American occupation there, the increasingly sectarian war in Syria has ignited militants, inspiring the largest jihadist mobilization the city has ever seen. Jordanian analysts and Islamists estimate that 800 to 1,200 Jordanians have gone to fight in Syria, more than double the number who fought in Afghanistan or Iraq. Though the fighters come from across the country, fully one-third hail from here, the most from any single area. Most fighters disappear without telling their families, only to resurface across the border with the Nusra Front, Syria’s Qaeda affiliate, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a Qaeda splinter group. …………..”

Yes I recall Al Zarqawi and his brief reign of terrorism in Iraq. He and his imported foreign Arab Salafis. He was a proud son of some typical humorless hole of a town in Jordan, as long as he was busy killing and beheading the ‘right’ people in Iraq. But then the Salafi terrorists got too ambitious, and struck inside Jordan. When they attacked a hotel in Amman and created many victims of the ‘wrong’ kind, it suddenly dawned that he was a terrorist. All this hobnobbing with Jihadis will come back to bite the King of Jordan right where it counts, just as it is now biting the current rulers of Turkey.
Cheers
mhg

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Human Right, Iraq, Islam, Women

Human Trafficking: Iraqi Parliament about to Legalize Islamist Pedophilia………

      

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“Iraq’s Council of Ministers should withdraw a new draft Personal Status Law and ensure that Iraq’s legal framework protects women and girls in line with its international obligations. The pending legislation would restrict women’s rights in matters of inheritance and parental and other rights after divorce, make it easier for men to take multiple wives, and allow girls to be married from age nine. The draft law, called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, is based on the principles of the Jaafari school of Shia religious jurisprudence, founded by Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia imam. Approved by the Council of Ministers on February 25, 2014, it must now be approved by the parliament to become law……………….”


This will be a crime against humanity because it will legalize and enable many multiple crimes of pedophilia in Iraq. Child marriage is a barbaric practice and a crime against humanity and it robs the victims of their childhood. It is an act of human trafficking, since the ‘bride’ is too young and has no power of decision and is effectively sold by her male guardian. Some Muslim states are hesitant, nay are afraid to enact laws against child brides, because of something that allegedly happened about 15 centuries ago. But that was then, this is now.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Iraq, Islam, Media, Muslims, Saudi Arabia

Canned Media and Self-Appointed Leaders of World Muslims, Rome in Najaf……..

      

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“The visit was initially designed to mend fences with the Saudis, who claim leadership of the Sunni Arab world and, like other Gulf states, are upset about the thaw between Washington and Shiite Iran. The president hopes to smooth relations with one of America’s oldest allies in the Middle East and to better explain his Iran diplomacy to Riyadh and its neighbors. But now there are many new and – surprisingly, for the ultraconservative region – even young power players in the Gulf. And enmities between the kingdoms, emirates and sheikdoms are bubbling to the surface while their once fairly cohesive regional alliance, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is unraveling………… ut, as a Western diplomat who often visits Riyadh and other Gulf capitals told me, the Saudis, like the Qataris, consider Assad an Iranian puppet and Iran remains their chief enemy…………….”

Interesting how Western media, especially U.S. media, have bought into this Saudi propaganda bit about them being leaders of the Sunni world. Often they claim they are the leaders of the whole world Sunnis, not just Arab Sunnis. And like the mindless zombies the ‘canned’ media often tend to be, they insist on repeating it. They get this legend from the vast Saudi media and from some other Gulf media that cater to them. Ask any Sunni Arab from Amman through Cairo and Tunisia to Morocco if they consider the Al Saud princes their leaders. You would get a big laugh, at best; maybe something worse. What they are is the absolute unchallenged ruling family of the world’s Wahhabis (and Salafis).

FYI: Similarly, Saudi media often also hints (occasionally openly claims) that Shi’as give allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran. Which is a deliberate untruth: he
is not the leader of world Shi’as, in either a religious or especially in a political sense. Not that he claims to be (well, not openly anyway). Almost certainly the religious authority is someone in Najaf, Iraq rather than in Iran. Rome is in Najaf not in Tehran or Qom.



As for Mr. Obama’s coming visit to Riyadh, I have already posted on it once before when I mentioned the 1912 Olympics, King of Sweden, and American Gold Medal winner Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was born in Prague (Oklahoma not Czech), and became a versatile athlete. He famously told the King of Sweden who hung the gold medals around his neck and praised him as the greatest athlete in the world: “Thanks, King“. Very likely what he said was: “Gee, thanks King“.
Arab Revolutions, Hezbollah, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria

New Sectarian Kids in Town: From Iraq Through Syria and Lebanon………

      

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“The newest inhabitants of the world’s biggest cemetery were killed not here in Iraq but in Syria, where they fought under the green flag of the Middle East’s most potent new Shia Islamic political force, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous). The militia has been busy readying for the afterlife, buying up more than 2,500 square metres of burial plots and erecting shrines for its fallen. And in Baghdad, nearly 100 miles north, the group has been more occupied with the here and now, imposing its influence on Iraq’s fractured political scene and steadily asserting its will throughout the city’s Shia heartland suburbs. Since the American military left Iraq in December 2011, and within two months of the first national election since then, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq has quietly emerged as one of the most powerful players in the country’s political and public life. Through a mix of strategic diplomacy, aggressive military operations and intimidation – signature methods of its main patron, the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani – the group is now increasingly calling the shots in two countries………………..”

This sounds ominous, this fundamentalist group’s entry complicates thing (religious militias always complicate things they touch, adding one more point of contention). Yet something like it has been predicted for almost three years. Once the Syrian uprising, which had legitimate demands in 2011, became a mainly sectarian enterprise as a Saudi-Qatari proxy war. 

All this might be one factor behind the ratcheting up of Salafi terrorist attacks in Iraq and their recent expansion into Lebanon. It is partly an attempt by their patrons and financiers to try and reset things in both countries and see if something works in either country. A Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad has always been treated in some Arab capitals, especially among the potentates of the Persian Gulf and their Salafi allies, as a ‘loss of Iraq’. As if that country has changed its skin and become something else. It takes a lot of petro-money to run a sustained terrorist enterprise of kind that has been murdering Iraqis. That might explain why a frustrated prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki openly accused both Saudi Arabia and Qatar of fomenting and supporting terrorism. 



The other angle is to try and get Hezbollah to pull its forces of Syria. Presumably the idea is that Lebanese deaths from terrorism will create popular pressures on Hezbollah to pull out. The ideal goal is to shift the allegiance of most Lebanese Shi’as away and toward ‘other’ politicians. But that is now as likely as pigs being declared halal and kosher and starting to fly. Those ‘other’ politicians are either discredited remnants (feloul) of past Shi’a feudal lords of the South or some known flunkies (a few politicians and clerics) in the pay of the Al Saud princes.

Of course all this can shift again if only Hassan Nasrallah takes down the picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that is probably hanging in his office and replaces it with a picture of the Saudi king.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism

Iraq and Saudi and Qatar: One Man’s Terrorist as another Man’s Proxy………

      

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“Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of seeking to destabilise his country by supporting insurgent groups and providing them with financial support. In an interview with French television channel France24, Mr Maliki said the two countries had effectively declared war on Iraq. “They are attacking Iraq through Syria, and in a direct way,” he said. Mr Maliki also accused Saudi Arabia of supporting global “terrorism”……………”

Such open sharp attack on the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar is uncharacteristic of Nouri Al Maliki. For years he has been silent as the two Wahhabi ruling dynasties heaped charges against him, mainly calling him a stooge of the Iranian mullahs. (Oddly, it was not the Iranians who initially paved the way to power for Al Maliki). His outburst is partly exasperation at the recent sharp escalation in acts of terrorism against civilians inside Iraq. Committed by uninvited Arab visitors to Iraq. Some Gulf states have been involved in Iraq for years, some of the more sectarian businessmen and clerics and zealots among Iraq’s neighbors started causing mischief right after the 2003 fall of the Baathist regime. Many of the Arab Jihadist terrorists that plague Iraq came from among the Salafis of the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia (Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi, being the most notorious and most humorless of them all, naturally came from Jordan). Saudi money and tribal contacts in Western Iraq have no doubt influenced matters inside Iraq. Qatari potentates have the money to spend, or burn if need be, inside Iraq. They can afford, if they choose, to burn money in order to burn Iraq.


Of course it is not all that simple. Al Maliki may also be thinking of the coming elections later this spring. It is a good time to appeal to his political base and try to get them agitated for the elections. Al Maliki probably wants another term as prime minister. (All Arab leaders always want to rule forever, that is the most common characteristic of the region: must be something in the water). 
It would be best for Iraq if someone else is picked by the next parliament. Keeping the same man as head of government is not a good way to cleanse the Baathist legacy of dictatorship. even if the man comes to power through an electoral system.
Of curse I know of one man who would be worse for Iraq than Mr. Al Maliki. That would be Ayad Allawi, whose chance of getting the job is next to zero percent. Fortunately my old fatwa of the last Iraqi elections in 2009 still holds. I believe I said that Allawi has as much chance of becoming prime minister of Iraq as I have of becoming prime minister of Israel (I now amend that by adding Saudi Arabia since only the king can be prime minister, no matter how old he is). Mr. Allawi also has as much chance of becoming the PM of Iraq as h has of becoming the PM of Saudi Arabia (where he is the only Shi’a that is considered kosher and halal in Riyadh).

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Iraq, Sectarian

Iraq: the Old Saddam, a New Saddam, Al Maliki, and Allawi………

      

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“Although the army has surrounded the city in the past few days, they have not entered it. The protesters gathered on the square agree that if the soldiers were to enter the city, they would be lynched. “The people of Fallujah have no faith in the army.” Saddam’s flag, with the three stars of the Baath Party, has become a symbol of resistance to the central government in Baghdad. “Maliki is the new Saddam!” Sheikh Khaled Hamood al-Jumaili looked fierce and bitter as he said these words, his hatred for the prime minister in Baghdad shining through. “The weaker he and his government become on the domestic front, the stronger they have to appear on the outside,” he continued…………………..”

“The plush accommodation halls on the outskirts of this southern Iraqi city, normally reserved for visiting Shiite pilgrims, now teem with displaced Sunnis fleeing violence in the western province of Anbar. There and elsewhere, sectarian tensions are brewing as Iraq spirals into the worst cycle of violence it has experienced in years. But here, in one of the holiest cities for Shiite Muslims, Sunni children play on brightly painted swings as families gather in the waning winter light beside clipped magnolia-lined lawns. The scenes are an effort by Shiite religious authorities to portray a picture of harmony as sectarian violence grows. Al-Qaeda’s local franchise, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is building strength in Anbar amid a Sunni-majority population that is growing increasingly disillusioned with the Shiite-led federal government…………..”

So the people who supported the old genuine Saddam and raise his flag are now accusing Al Maliki of being a “new Saddam”. Maybe he is, maybe not: but that charge may actually be an improvement, it sounds like the promising seed of a compromise.

Iraq is being divided by sectarian (and
hence political) tensions, some of it created by Iraqi politicians,
including the ruling parties in power now. But a lot of it is also
imported from the neighboring countries that keep inciting sectarian
tensions as well as sending terrorist volunteers and money into Iraq. There are many people in Al Anbar who only need a motive to rise against the foreign Wahhabi Salafis who terrorize Iraqis of all sects. They did that once before. One problem with Iraq is that the politics are now almost totally sectarian (and ethnic), with a few tokens of inter-sect alliances. Allawi is a Shi’a (sort of) head of a Sunni bloc, Al Maliki’s bloc has a few Sunni allies; but tokenism is not enough to cleanse violent sectarianism.

Al Maliki and Allawi are not helping. Al Maliki seems intent on remaining in power, while Allawi is not trusted by most Iraqis. It would be healthy if both of them would vanish from the political scene. Maybe they both can go back into exile: Al Maliki can go back to Syria and Iran while Allawi goes back to Yemen and London and Amman (or even Riyadh, where he is popular in the palaces). Things may start to get better, especially if the neighboring regimes would stop meddling in Iraq.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Iran, Iraq, Syria, US Foreign Policy, WMD

From Iraq to Syria to Iran: the Quest for a Smoking Gun or a Mushroom Cloud or a Slam Dunk or……..

      

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“A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed. A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government…………..”

Could this be a case of déjà vu all over again (Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc)?Could we be revisiting the same story again this year or next in Iran? You betcha it could and we could.

It is true that this does not prove anyone’s innocence or guilt in the Sarin gas attacks. Yet the suspicion of the whole Sarin claim was there from the outset, at least as far as I am concerned. Even some UN WMD official suggested earlier that the rebels may have used Sarin, but then she went silent. The story and video clips were broadcast initially in Saudi semi-official Alarabiya network, in both cases of reported gas use. Western media picked it up quickly and it became “the story” of the time. The U.S. Congress took it from there.
 

I have expressed doubt from the beginning, and not only because I automatically suspect almost anything that is publicized by Saudi media (I do, I also suspect many things that are published in official Iranian media). Several things did not smell right, were neither halal nor kosher, including the timing: these claims (and revelations) always cam right after the Syrian opposition had suffered big military defeats or were about to be ejected from strategic positions (Qusayr, etc). It also did not make sense to use WMD to kill a few dozen civilians, when bombing and bullets had done the same grizzly “job” in the past without an international outcry and outrage. But all this is not new: I and others have pointed this out during the past year.

No wonder the Obama administration for long insisted on only saying that “Sarin was used in Syria“, without specifying the regime or the opposition as the user. That lasted until it came under pressure from congressional microphone-macho type (of both parties) and the Saudi princes and potentates.
This new report is not conclusive, yet neither were the other reports, apparently. But the long quest continues: for the Smoking Gun, the Mushroom Cloud, the Slam Dunk, the Lost Ark………


Cheers
mhg

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Britain, Iraq, Tony Blair

Bygone Wars: Washington Protecting Tony Blair’s Nuts, For Now……

      

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“Washington is playing the lead role in delaying the publication of the long-awaited report into how Britain went to war with Iraq, The Independent has learnt. Although the Cabinet Office has been under fire for stalling the progress of the four-year Iraq Inquiry by Sir John Chilcot, senior diplomatic sources in the US and Whitehall indicated that it is officials in the White House and the US Department of State who have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre- and post-war communications between George W Bush and Tony Blair……………… Without permission from the US government, David Cameron faces the politically embarrassing situation of having to block evidence, on Washington’s orders, from being included in the report of an expensive and lengthy British inquiry..………”
Mr. Obama, in other words, is trying to save Tony (the Poodle) Blair’s nuts for now (for the war that I supported). But not for long.

Cheers
mhg

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Donkeys and Asses, Iran, Iraq, Jackasses

Iraq Anniversary and Iran and the Jackasses of America……………

         

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Music: The Wonky Donkey Song

Since I seem to be covering donkeys and asses and jackasses extensively these days:
Some anchorwoman on CNN asked this morning: “What did we learn from the Iraq war?” My tweeted response was “To get ready to try and do the same in Iran”.
I was not referring just to the jackasses (and plain asses) in the United States Senate and Congress, nor only to those American officials repeating the discredited but self-serving stupid political mantra that “all options are on the table”. The U.S. media is being played beautifully by the Neo-Warmongers, so that it is almost at the same position it was ten years ago.
Cheers
mhg

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Iraq, Syria, WMD

Syria and Iraq: On Chemical Weapons and Cluster Bombs and Their Use when Necessary…………

         

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“Syria accuses rebels of using chemical weapons. Residents of an area that has been reportedly targetted with chemical weapons in Syria were said to be showing symptoms including breathing difficulties in an incident that could cross US “red lines” on intervention in the conflict. Britain said on Tuesday it was aware of media reports about a chemical weapons attack in Syria, adding that the use or proliferation of chemical weapons there would demand a serious response from the international community. Syria’s regime accused rebel fighters of firing a chemical weapon at a town…………………”

Cute. First the FSA gangs repeatedly accused the Assad regime of using chemical weapon, that was a few weeks ago. Even some schmuck at the American embassy in Turkey got into the act and confirmed that false report, as I recall. Now the regime is returning the favor and accuses the FSA gangs of using chemicals. I never believed either side on this, the politically motivated British response notwithstanding.
Nobody has used chemical weapons in the Middle East since the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein used them against Iraqi Kurds and against Iranian forces in the war. Nobody “important” objected at that time”: it was deemed necessary and maybe even democratic (small D). Now, as for cluster bombs, the next best thing…………
Cheers
mhg

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