“The Saudi authorities arrested a total of 33,353 “illegal expatriates” and deported 14,304 during the first week of the crackdown against migrants which began on November 4, according to the General Directorate of Prisons. In Riyadh, some 17,000 “illegal Ethiopians” have surrendered following the riot on Saturday in which two people died, police spokesman Nasser al-Qahtani said. The number arrested in connection with the riot has now risen to 1,199 – including 119 women and 11 children. In Makkah, about 500 “African illegals” were rounded up on Monday. They had gathered under a bridge with their families and were blocking roads – apparently in protest at delays in their repatriation after failing to regularise their status in the kingdom. There have been similar incidents elsewhere. On Saturday, about 300 Afghans gathered outside their consulate in Jeddah, protesting at delays in completing their deportation arrangements. Arab News says police took them to a detention centre by bus and were trying to “expedite travel procedures”. On Sunday, hundreds of stranded Filipinos, including women and children, assembled in Makkah, causing traffic jams. .…………If the border guards’ figure of 20,000 Yemeni deportations is correct, the nationwide figure of 14,000 deportations given by the General Directorate of Prisons must be wrong (and vice versa). Either way, the scale of the current upheaval in Saudi Arabia is extraordinary though it continues to get scant international coverage… …………”
The way they are rounding them up by the thousands, you’d think this is Arizona and not Saudi Arabia. Unless the Saudis have hired old Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
“Saudi Arabia is preparing to spend millions of dollars to arm and train thousands of Syrian militiamen in a new opposition force dubbed ‘Army of Islam’ to fight the national military, The Guardian daily reported Thursday. Citing Syrian, Arab and western sources, the UK newspaper said the intensifying Saudi effort is focused on Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam or JAI), created in late September by a union of 43 Syrian groups. According the article, the JAI will be trained with Pakistani help, and estimates of its likely strength range from 5,000 to more than 50,000. But diplomats and experts warned on Thursday that there are serious doubts about its prospects as well as fears of “blowback” by extremists returning from Syria…………”
The Saudis also demanded that all “other” countries, like Iran and Russia, stop meddling in Syrian affairs. The idea is for this new Wahhabi army to recreate the glory days of Afghanistan, starting with the 1980s. Financed by Saudi princes and Emirati potentates, armed by the Western powers, trained by Pakistan’s ruling military generals of the ISI. Does this remind you of anything, perhaps a Wahhabi blast from the past that created the Taliban and Al-Qaeda?
“Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi Sunday backed Saudi Arabia’s rejection of a seat on the UN Security Council, saying the diplomatic body had failed in its responsibility towards the Arab world. Arabi told reporters that Saudi Arabia was right to object to the Security Council’s management methods and the fact that it failed in its responsibility to secure international peace, “which it is not doing at all.” He said Arab states, including Palestine and Syria, were the worst affected by the Security Council’s weakness in the last six decades. His remarks come a day after Arab nations urged Saudi Arabia to reverse its decision to reject a seat on the 15-nation Security Council. Arab ambassadors to the UN said it was crucial for Saudi Arabia to represent the Arab and Muslim world on the council “at this important and historical stage, specifically for the Middle East region.”…………….”
Talk about chutzpah: the Egyptian secretary general of the useless, ineffective, Saudi-owned Arab League calls the UN a “failure”.
It is almost funny, almost, this stance by Nabil al-Arabi, the Arab League’s top ineffective bureaucrat, a man effectively in the pay of the Al Saud princes. He says the UN “had failed in its responsibility towards the Arab world”. As if the corrupt putrid Arab League of Absolute Kings, Princes, and other Despots and its bureaucracy are a glittering success. Truly a case of the kettle and the pot. Cheers
mhg
Al Shourouk daily from Cairo reports that the Egyptian regime has declared its full support of the surprise Saudi decision to refuse taking a seat on the United Nations Security Council. It is likely general Al Sisi called the Saudi King, or whoever speaks for him these days, and congratulated him for his rejection. My Cairo source reports that it is not true that Interim semi-President Mr. Adly Mansour Al Zombie has asked if he can take the abandoned Saudi seat on the UN Security Council.
As a reaction, the King of Jordan is said to have made the “right noises”, the nature of which have not been divulged. Not to be outdone, the government of Bahrain has declared a three day holiday in celebration of the Saudi rejection of the UN SC seat. Other Arab potentates are sending messages of congratulation to Riyadh. One Lebanese journalist who writes in Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat is getting ready to call this Saudi move the “true Arab Spring”. Another Arab journalist, J Al-Khazin, who write for Saudi daily Al-Hayat is comparing this rejection to Anwar Sadat’s audacious visit to Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, and in that spirit of support, I have decided to declare my support for Turkish leader Erdogan for calling the President of France and asking him to get tougher on Syria, or was it Mali……….
“Saudi Arabia on Friday rejected its freshly-acquired seat on the U.N. Security Council, saying the 15-member body is incapable of resolving world conflicts such as the Syrian civil war. The move came just hours after the kingdom was elected as one of the Council’s 10 nonpermanent members. In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, the Foreign Ministry said the Council has failed in its duties toward Syria. This, the ministry said, enabled Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime to perpetrate the killings of its people, including with chemical weapons, without facing any punishment. The kingdom, which has backed the Syrian rebels in their struggle to topple Assad, has in the past criticized the international community for failing to halt the civil war in Syria…………..”
This is a surprising and uncharacteristic public royal tantrum. Something has pissed off the Saudi princes. Or maybe now Prince Bandar has unbridled control over foreign policy. Earlier, they canceled their annual speech at the UN General Assembly meeting, not that anybody actually listens to it beside the flunkies. Now they refuse to take a seat at the Security Council. It could be the frustration from the setbacks to their allies and proxies in Syria and Lebanon. It certainly can’t be the Security Council’s failure to react to their own invasion and continuing repression of Bahrain. It could be the failure of Mr. Obama to wage war in Syria and possibly Iran (all options still being on the table and all that). It could be the prospect of resolving the Iranian nuclear “issue” peacefully. There is another possible angle here. A Security Council member will have to vote on issues, or abstain. Even abstention is a form of voting. Maybe the Saudis are going back to their old foreign policy mode of avoiding confrontation on sensitive issues. The Saudis want no part of the Security Council until it is reformed to their liking. Which reminds me of the League of Arab States (Arab League), apparently now under Saudi financial control and quite reformed, thank you very much………. And no, I would not be so crass as to suggest it is a form of royal PMS……….
Saudi Mufti Shaikh Al Al Al Shaikh has gone revolutionary, or so it seems. He has warned leaders of Islamic countries against imposing “restrictions” or insulting the “dignity” of their peoples. He urged leaders to build bridges with their peoples. He did not specify polygamy, taking many wives from many tribes, as a form of bridge-building either. He was apparently talking about something deeper.
Interesting, since in the past Shaikh Al has usually urged the people to obey and respect and love their leaders (except in Libya and Syria and Iraq and possibly Belize). The shaikh also called for some half-assed Islamic “union”, to be led by his princes, the very same princes the Caliph Omar, and two others, would have ordered publicly whipped for corruption on earth, and rightly so. If the Saudi case is an example, then he has no worry. The princes and their retainers rob and repress the people with the utmost respect. Those who object to being robbed and repressed are made to vanish with the utmost discretion, so discrete that you never ever hear a Western leader criticizing them, which is one way to show you’re being respectful.
“Two million Muslims have flooded into Saudi Arabia’s Mina Valley from Mecca for the start of the Hajj pilgrimage this week. Dressed in simple white garments and freed from their worldly possessions, they are following in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. But in Islam’s holiest city, there is increasingly little sign of the prophet’s legacy – or the frugal life he espoused. “The authorities are trying to destroy anything in Mecca that is associated with the prophet’s life,” says Irfan al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, who recently returned from a trip to the city. “They have already bulldozed the house of his wife, his grandson and his companion – and now they are coming for his birthplace. And for what? Yet more seven-star hotels.”…………..”
Notice that the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation is based in Britain, not in Hijaz. In Saudi Arabia, they would have some prince leading it: it would be like having a fox in the hen house. I have written earlier posts on this topic, how a combination, an alliance of royal greed and Wahhabi dogma has destroyed, is still destroying the priceless historical monuments of early Islam. It is downright criminal what the Al Saudi princes and their merchant allies and retainers are doing. Properties closest to the Kaaba are the priciest, and that is where monuments of early Islam were located. Ergo, these monuments were doomed once the Saudi princes set their eyes on that prime land, within walking distance to the Holy Mosques. Here are some links to my earlier posts on this:
“Hey! diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon…………” Mother Goose
Saudi media report that Servant of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz affirmed, in a statement read for him by Prince Khalid Al-Faisal of Mecca during a conference about human rights and Islamic Shari’a and International laws, that Saudi Arabia is a state based on Islamic Shari’a and is completely committed to international laws and agreements regarding Human Rights. There are some exceptions, but they are only about a million or two and only in small print. The prince did not, however, add that the cow jumped over the moon and the dish ran away with the spoon. Not in so many words, not yet.
“The video shows armed men in fatigues, at least one wearing the yellow arm band sported by the Lebanese Shiite movement, dragging several bloodied men out of a van and shooting them dead. The men speak in the Lebanese dialect of Arabic, and at the end of the video one man calls them over, saying: “One moment, one moment. We are doing our duty, not avenging ourselves.” The others call out: “For the sake of God, for the sake of God.” The one minute, 40 second video’s authenticity could not be confirmed, and it was unclear when or where it might have been shot. Hezbollah declined to comment on it. Al-Arabiya television said it may have been filmed during the battle for Qusayr, a strategic Syrian town near the Lebanese border that Syrian troops recaptured from rebels with the help of Hezbollah earlier this year……………. Lebanese media largely steered clear of the video, either because they were unable to confirm it or for fear of worsening tensions. But the video triggered outrage on Twitter…………”
Its authenticity could not be verified, but that is not new. There is almost no need: the real horror of Syria is that these videos can be genuine real true-blue videos. Both sides have proven they can do it, they have done that and worse. Anything is possible in Syria now, on both sides. Civil wars can get much uglier than most conventional wars, just read up on the Spanish and American civil wars and how prisoners were treated.
It is easy to trigger outrage on twitter, especially sectarian outrage. Maybe this is the second revenge of the semi-official Saudi network Alarabiya for the defeat at Qusayr. The first revenge was the gruesome video of chemical weapons victims, also initially released by Alarabiya to the world media. That one almost started a whole new regional war in the Middle East.
“Until a few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia was riding high. Its regional policies, based on countering revolutionary fervour and containing Iran, appeared to be bearing fruit. Egypt’s army ousted the Islamist president, to plaudits and generous funding from Riyadh; the Syrian opposition elected a new pro-Saudi leadership; and the US seemed poised to launch military strikes on the regime in Damascus that Saudi Arabia has tried to dislodge. But Riyadh’s satisfaction turned to dismay as a US and Russian deal to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons removed the need for military strikes; leading rebel factions turned against the leadership of the Syrian National Coalition; and relations between the US and Iran appear to be warming as the new president, Hassan Rouhani, pledged to negotiate over Tehran’s nuclear program………………..”
Clearly the princes are pissed (to put it succinctly) about a few things. Syria is just one of them, given that they finally got their own man, Ahmed Al-Jarba appointed as figurehead chief of the Syrian National Coalition (the real head is a Saudi prince). Sure enough, within weeks of his appointment, the rebel military groups that are inside Syria put up new obstacles against the exile “leaders”( the warlords put obstacles against everybody, including each other, especially each other). Then there is the new possibility of negotiations between the Iranians and the Americans, something that would make anyone jealous: after all if your steady date starts flirting with the scowling mullahs, look out! Even the Gulf Salafis who never cared for Americans except in evil malevolent ways are upset with this turn of event. The princes are pissed enough to cancel their annual speech at the UN General Assembly. Not that many would listen to the speech by the usual prince. The usual prince, Saud Al-Faisal, has been foreign minister of his family for about forty years, appointed by his uncle who took over after his father was assassinated. Forty years seems to be the charmer for Arab potentates in high potent positions, from Colonel Gaddafi to the decrepit prime minister of Bahrain. I think the (Christian) marriage liturgy applies to most Arab potentates, the one that says “………..Till death do us part”.
