Category Archives: Saudi Arabia

Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Sorcery, Yemen

Yemen War Awaits the Secret Shari’a Weapon……….

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انشودة المرتزقة:
بلاد العرب اوطاني ,    وكل العرب اخواني
من الشام لكولومبيا    و استراليا وجنوب افريقيا

Yemen is a problem the Saudis themselves have created. Yemen is already spilling over the border. An unmotivated army with the best Western weapons cannot seem to defeat the Houthi tribal guerrillas and the remnants of the Yemeni army. The army of the poorest Arab country outside Africa.

Not even after many months of indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities and the infrastructure. Not even with the help of hired and paid foreign mercenaries from South America and Australia and Africa, courtesy of the potentates of the United Arab Emirates. Not even with the dutiful help of the mighty Obama Administration in targeting and blockading and other logistics. They even have a couple of classic local Yemeni stooges pretending to run Yemen from hotels in Riyadh, presumably under the non-existent leadership of former president Generalissimo Hadi Al Zombie. General Hadi got a Kim-Jong-Un style 99.8% of the vote in elections organized by the Gulf princes (Bashar Al Assad got about 88% last year, Hassan Rouhani got less than 60%). Even as a 30-year old Saudi prince is trying to conduct a genocidal war against it, also from Riyadh.

The Saudis did not learn from their earlier 2009 attempt at military intervention in Yemen. That was a big failure. Now the new Yemen war is definitely spilling over into Saudi Arabia, into regions that were usurped and annexed from Yemen in the 1930s. The rugged Yemeni tribal guerrillas are not like the peaceful urban and village people of Bahrain of 2011. The Saudis and their allies and mercenaries have probably bitten more than they can chew this time. And they have strengthened AQAP and ISIS in Southern Arabia.

They should get out of the way and let the Yemenis settle their matters: unlike in Syria, there are no Iranian or Lebanese forces or militias in Yemen. Not yet. Foreign powers find it difficult to control the country. Resort to witchcraft and sorcery is banned by Saudi clerics, on the pain of death. So, they can only carpet bomb it and kill many of its innocent people.

Unless their hundreds of thousands of graduates of local Islamic Shari’a colleges and universities are working on a decisive secret weapon.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Jihadis, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

Mediocrity in Syria: the Turkish-Saudi Camel Gives Birth to a Mouse………

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تمخض الجمل فولد فأرا
“The camel went into labor and gave birth to a mouse” An excellent Arab saying.

The Saudi king and officials met this week with the new Caliph of Turkey, the Sultan Erdogan. They met in the Saudi capital Riyadh, and came up with a very unoriginal outcome. They called the outcome a “Strategic Cooperation Council”, not a good start. Not an original title at all, and hence not promising at all for the future of this arrangement. Most likely a product of the mediocre mind of Mr. Addle Al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister. As Arabs have wisely said for centuries: this camel went into labor and gave birth to a mouse. Unsatisfying to all.

The Saudis (and Qataris as well) face a couple of dilemmas, in Syria and Yemen. Syria is safely far away from their borders, so any mischief would not spill over the border. They may think they are “playing with the house chips“, in Las Vegas gambling parlance. If they win in Syria they would have struck a hard blow at their Iranian rivals; if they lose, well, nothing has changed since before 2011. They, their proxies, are not winning in Syria now. All the early predictions that Al Assad would be out of Damascus within weeks or months are coming back to haunt Western governments (and some Arab regimes). Even I started to believe and expect it in those late months of 2011.

But that prediction was mostly Arab propaganda created by Salafists and Wahhabis on the Persian Gulf and accepted by Western media as the truth. It was sold to the Obama administration by some Gulf princes and potentates and some Western “intellectuals” like Bernard-Henri Levy and and non-intellectuals John McCain and Joe Lieberman. They all, from Clinton to Cameron waited for the announcement of the scheduled departure of Assad and his cronies. It worked in Libya, or so they thought, so why not in Syria?

They have failed, but their money and weapons and Salafist volunteers also created and enabled the violent Caliphate of ISIS or DAESH. With active Turkish help and connivance. But like their other creation Al Qaeda, ISIS is also now threatening to bite them.

Erdogan will not solve the Saudi/Qatari dilemma in Syria. There are hints that it may be spilling over his own border.

He certainly will not solve their Yemeni problem, but that is a topic for another posting. Perhaps the next one.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Flatulence, Jihadis, Saudi Arabia, Shi'as, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Politics

Republican Debate: Going Silly over Syria and the New Communist Crescent………

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So, Republican candidates met two nights ago for a debate. It was completely focused on foreign policy, and almost all of it on ISIS (DAESH), Syria, Iraq, and Muslim refugees. Oddly they ignored the huge gorilla that has been roaming within the American room for many years:

  • In 1993, Wahhabi terrorists tried to blow up one of the World Trade Center Towers in New York.
  • Then they blew up the U.S. embassy in Tanzania, killing and wounding .
  • In the fall of 2000 the Wahhabi terrorists attacked the USS Cole in a Yemeni port, killing and wounding .
  • In Sept. 2001, the Wahhabi Mother of All Terror Attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon killed almost three thousand Americans.
  • Then came the attacks in Madrid, London, Bali, and Paris. Then the attacks in Kenya.
  • Then they attacked in West Africa, Libya, and Egypt (The Russian Airliner), and inside Russian cities.
  • Then the Wahhabi attacks on Shi’a mosques in Kuwait in 2015.
    And the suicide attacks across Iraq since 2003. And the sectarian attacks on non-Wahhabi worshipers in Pakistan.
  • And the beheadings and burnings and mass killings of people of other faith in Syria and Iraq, those who are Shi’as, Alawites, Yazidis, Christians, etc.
  • And the attacks in Boston and San Bernardino (2015).
  • All driven by Wahhabi ideology and by Wahhabi volunteers and Gulf Salafi money.

So the Republicans met in Las Vegas and talked about what?
How better to ally the USA with the repressive tribal Wahhabi powers that theorized for and (still) finance and arm and man the terrorist groups. And the Turkish Caliph Erdogan who opened his borders to allow the Jihadists and their weapons to get into Syria.  A couple of them bandied about something called “a Shi’a Crescent” that the silly humorless King of Jordan and the Wahhabi media have publicized, just to divert attention. You’d think Joe Stalin was back and eyeing the Middle East. The famously one-dimensional Senator Graham tried to out-Wahhabi the real true-blue Saudi and Qatari Wahhabis by demanding a re-invasion of Iraq.

Oh, and several of the Republican military service-evaders also promised to shoot down Russian planes over Syria, whether the Syrian people want them to shoot Russian planes over ‘their’ country or not. Whether the UN sanctions it or not.

A couple of them were more sensible, but the trend was toward showing ersatz muscularity and toughness overseas. At least over a Las Vegas microphone.

One saving grace: unlike the GOP debates of 2012, they did not all publicly and verbally kiss the posterior of Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. In fact none of them did, except in denouncing the ‘international’ nuclear deal.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Mercenaries, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen

Yemen: a Genocidal War of Clashing Foreign Mercenaries…….

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Some Gulf states have hit on a new ingenious technique to compete with more powerful neighbors like Iran, Turkey, and Israel. They have sought to expand their sphere of influence through a combination of financial inducements and the hiring of foreign mercenaries to act like national armies. All of it allegedly hush-hush, but not enough hush-hush on the Gulf. State secrets on the Persian Gulf last about as long as they would in a cathouse (a k a a brothel for the, er, uninitiated). But that is okay: everybody is involved in Arab civil wars these days, from Russians to Americans and Iranians and Turks and Lebanese and Chechens and Euros. Among others.

The United Arab Emirates, UAE, with a small native population of nearly a million have been actively hiring foreign mercenaries. They have been especially hiring Colombian fighters, so many officers at high pay, creating a shortage in the Colombian military. Some reports have also come out of Mexicans. As early as the Arab Uprisings of 2011, Abu Dhabi formed a mercenary brigade organized by former Blackwater executives, and composed of Latin Americans, Australians and white South Africans, among others.

The Saudi population is about one third temporary foreign laborers (housemaids, drivers, etc). The native population is not interested in fighting a foreign war or any war, except for the many who volunteer with terrorist Wahhabi groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.  So the princes have sought a different kind of mercenary force. They have bought off the dictator of Sudan, the convicted war criminal General Omar Al Bashir. He has rented off thousands of his forces to the Saudis in their war on Yemen. There is the possibility of Mauritanian and other African mercenaries, including Djibouti (both members of the Arab League). Jordanian mercenaries are almost certainly involved as well, as they almost always are in these cases (in Bahrain, as one example). Pakistan, which has about 35+ million Shi’as, has declined for its army to be hired off, and Egypt has been stonewalling.

The deposed Yemeni regime of General Hadi (Al Zombie) has been allied with the corrupt Islah (mainly Muslim Brotherhood) group. Now the Saudis are moving closer to the MB with whom they had good relations in past decades that had soured, while the UAE rulers see the MB as Enemy Number One. Hence a divergence of opinion and policy among allies in the quagmire that is Yemen.

Both countries have been bombing Yemeni cities for months, essentially committing genocide, with logistical and targeting help from the United States government and possibly other Western powers. Reports indicate that the UAE is moving away from the Saudis, especially in Yemen which lies almost between the two countries. The Abu Dhabi potentates are reportedly sending their own mercenaries to southern Yemen. They are also inviting former South Yemen (PDRY) Marxist leaders to the UAE for consultation. Since the Emirati sheikhs are unlikely to have gone Marxist, I assume they are making some other deal.

So, the real war is not between just two Yemeni sides. It is between the Saudis and Emiratis and Qataris and Colombians and Americans and Mexicans and Sudanese and Jordanians and Al Qaeda (AQAP) and ISIS and Hirak secessionists and aging Aden Marxists. Meanwhile the genocidal air war by the bought and hired Arab and African alliance is pushing Yemen back about sixty or so years.

Stay tuned………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Media, censorship, GCC, Media, Saudi Arabia

Saudis Tighten Grip on Middle East Media: from Newspapers to Satellite TV……….

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The editor of an Arab web newspaper reports on how the Saudis are tightening their grip on Middle East media. Oddly, he himself helped that by reportedly selling his previous newspaper to the Qataris. That came after years of reports that the paper was in fact financed by the Qatari potentates.

Saudi Arabia, like other Persian Gulf potentates, has tightened its grip on Arab media over the past decade. The Gulf princes and potentates have bought previously independent publications like Asharq Alawsat and Al-Hayat and Al-Quds Al-Arabi and various Lebanese and satellite TV channels. They also own Alarabiya and AlJazeera networks. Among many others. The Qataris and the Emirati potentates (Middle East Online) also own their own share of Arab media.

Yet independent anti-Saudi networks have persisted and continue to provide some alternatives to the Wahhabi narrative. They find vast Arab audiences who do not cotton up to official or controlled semi-official media. Now the Saudis have the hit upon the practice of forcing Arab satellites to ban channels they do not own or like. One such satellite, ArabSat, is located in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has recently forced ArabSat to bloc unfriendly Arab networks from using it to broadcast. The kingdom owns about 40% of the capital of the ArabSat. These blocked channels have originated from various Middle East countries. Yet in this day and age it is impossible to completely bloc undesirable networks. The Internet is a great equalizer for now.

What will be next? Arab royal control and restrictions on international Social Media like Twitter and Facebook? Highly unlikely since they can buy a company but they can’t buy the American ingenuity that creates the likes of these social media. And they can’t keep their client accounts. They can try to establish their own social media, but the Iranian mullahs once threatened the same until they realized the futility of it.

Stay tuned………….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Caliphate, Migrant labor, Misogyny, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi

The “Other” Islamic State: Stoned Women of Arabia………

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“In the coming days, a Sri Lankan woman is to be led to an outdoor pit in Saudi Arabia. Her arms and hands will be tightly bound, her body buried up to her breasts. Saudi men will then surround her and begin to hurl rocks at her head to kill her slowly. A married housemaid, she was convicted of adultery, while the man, a bachelor, also a vulnerable Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given 100 lashes……… It is a measure of how violent Saudi Arabia’s capital punishment laws are that beheadings can at times seem compassionate. Decapitation, after all, is nothing compared to lapidation. Beheading is quick; stoning, slow. It’s death by torture.………”

Executing women, almost all of them foreign laborers, is quite common. Many Sri Lankan housemaids have been beheaded, others reportedly await the sword. Occasionally a few are stoned to death, usually for adultery, but their male partner in the ‘sin’ always gets off easy: lashes, prison, deportation. There is no doubt that some Westerners also manage to screw around in the Wahhabi Kingdom Without Magic, but one never hears or reads about one being executed.

Several Asian countries, including Indonesia, have periodically banned their poor from working in Saudi Arabia in the past, but these bans don ‘t last. The poverty is too rampant and the temptation of money is too strong. While the wages paid these housemaids equal a pittance by Western and even by Saudi standards, they are a lot by some South and Southeast Asian standards. So, the executions continue, fed by a system that forces confessions through beating, coercion, and language barriers (hence deception).

It must, however be mentioned that some American “Red States” have also executed convicts through methods that can be classified as torture. Especially the use of certain drugs that take a long time to kill. That is why many European countries ban the export of certain drugs to the United States. The Death Penalty should be ended from the last country in North America, the last developed country, that still practices it.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, GCC, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen

A Dummy’s Guide to Managing Arab Turmoil: from Iraq to Libya and Syria and Yemen………

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A few Arab governments, and their controlled media, spent several years criticizing the way the United States handled Iraq. The Saudi and Qatari potentates especially seemed to think they could have done better.
They dabbled in Iraq, but got their real chance, both of them and others, in places like Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen.

  • In Libya they talked the Western powers through NATO into bombing the installations controlled by the Gaddafi regime. The West essentially won the civil war in Libya for “the opposition”. People like Senator McCain, Hillary Clinton and French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy thumbed their chests (and breasts) and declared a victory in Libya for democracy and tolerance. Allegedly with some Arab help, no doubt token help. It turns out the Libyan opposition was not what they thought it was. Libya is now divided among tribal elements and Jihadist terrorists. It is suffering from Al Qaeda affiliates as well as ISIS (DAESH) branches.
  • These two Persian Gulf , er, “powers”, ruled by absolute tribal Wahhabi potentates, also thought they could do better in Syria than the West did in Iraq. Of course they had a strong hand in the failure of Western intervention in Iraq and the growth of Wahhabi terrorist enclaves in that country.
  • Having messed up Libya, the Saudis and Qataris started, along with Senator McCain and, yes, French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy to push for the Western powers to follow their same advise in Syria. From the spring of 2011 they flooded Syria with money, weapons, and Salafi Jihadists. With logistic and trafficking help from the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Caliph Erdogan of Turkey. That was when the non-sectarian original Syrian uprising ended and was replaced with sectarian Salafi Jihadist groups many of whom eventually joined ISIS or Al Nusra. Close to a quarter million Syrians from both sides have died, millions are roaming the shores of Europe seeking refuge. Meanwhile, the Arab potentates who started it all refuse to take in the refugees they helped create.
  • Now the current options for the West in Syria range between accepting Al Assad or one of his allies in power or allowing the intolerant sectarian Wahhabis to take over. There might be a quasi-Wahhabi option somewhere in between, but that may have been co-opted by the new Russian intervention.
  • In Yemen, the Gulf potentates allowed former vice president Generalissimo Abd Rabuh Hadi to win a rigged election with 99.8% of the vote in 2012. Not a very subtle form of democracy is it? Hadi allied himself with the corrupt quasi-Islamist Muslim Brotherhood-ish Islah (ironically Islah means Reform in Arabic). He lost out in Sanaa to an alliance of tribal Houthis and former dictator Ali A Saleh supporters in the army. He fled to Aden, but he was chased out to a hotel in that other bastion of Arab democracy and freedom, Riyadh. The war in Yemen became a struggle between the Houthi-army alliance and Southern secessionists and Al Qaeda. And American drones.
  • Now the Saudis have managed to hire, rent, and buy a bunch of Arab and impoverished African allies ranging from Jordan to Sudan and possibly Mauritania and others. There are unconfirmed reports that the UAE is also sending its mercenary army of hired Colombians to Aden. Yemen is now a war among various groups and proxies. The Saudis and their allies are bombing the country indiscriminately, as do some of their local enemies. Thousands have died, and many displaced in the second poorest Arab country after Somalia. Speaking of which, many Yemenis have fled to Somalia, which tells you how bad things are in that country.

Together, these princes and potentates can write a best-seller: A Dummy’s Guide to Managing Arab Turmoil………
So much for an ‘Arab solution‘. I had thought the idea of an ‘Arab solution’ for any regional problem was laid to rest in 1990/91. Apparently not yet, but no doubt soon enough.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Islam, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sectarian, Terrorism, Wahhabi

Terrorism Inc.: the Wahhabi Elephant in the Room……..

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It is not a Muslim war of terror, it is a war by one small sect, a Wahhabi war of terror against all others. It is no more Islamic than claiming that the Holocaust was a Christian act (actually it was, across most of bigoted Central and Eastern Europe, not just Germany and Austria).

  • This Friday news agencies reported that the West African branch of Wahhabism, the Boko Haram, has attacked a procession of Shi’a Muslims. The suicide bomber killed about 40 and wounded over 20. No doubt there were other onlookers, Muslim Sunnis and others, who were murdered by the Wahhabi bomber.
  • In Paris last week the Wahhabis attacked public places and killed about 129 men and women of various religion (some of none). That was the second major terrorist attack in Paris this year.
  • In Beirut, Lebanon they attacked a marketplace three weeks ago. in an area that is predominantly Shi’a but also houses Sunni Muslims and Christians and Syrian refugees and possibly a few Wahhabi sympathizers. They killed over 40 people and wounded over 200. Western media headlined that the area was a “Hezbollah stronghold”.
  • In Iraq, in Baghdad and other towns they have been killing civilians in market places, mosques, and other venues for a few years. Mostly Shi’as are targeted, but no doubt they killed and injured Sunni Muslims and people of other faiths. Almost every day.
  • In Kuwait last June, the Wahhabi terrorists blew up a Shi’a mosque and killed 27 people, and wounded others. That was the second Wahhabi sectarian terrorist act in the country this year.
  • In Pakistan, the Wahhabis have been waging an aggressive war of terror against Shi’a Muslims for a few years. And against some others as well.
  • Last night news broke out of a terrorist attack against a Shi’a Muslim mosque in Bangladesh. The perpetrators were almost certainly local Wahhabi converts, as the Islamic State of DAESH claimed responsibility. In impoverished BanglafuckingDesh of all places.

This ugly sect that sprouted and spawned in what is now Central Saudi Arabia erroneously claims to represent Islam. Wahhabism, the official faith of Saudi and Qatari potentates as well as ISIS (DAESH) and Al Qaeda cutthroats, has been efficient in spreading its seed, its poison around the world for several decades. Fueled by petroleum money and indoctrination and hatred of the “others”. Encouraged by Western governments that ignore the “swamp” for the sake of fat weapons deals and other contracts. It has gained and won and bought converts throughout the Persian Gulf region, through Egypt and North Africa. And South Asia and Europe. Meanwhile the West is ignoring the Wahhabi elephant in the room, a very rich elephant, and perhaps there is the rub.
Now the whole world is reaping the results.

What to do? Drain the real swamp, drain Wahhabism Inc. ……
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Culture, Saudi Arabia

What Is In a Name: Saudi Society from Alice to Nasser and Netanyahu and Toto………

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Saudi authorities have issued a new list of names that are banned, verboten, for new-born infants in the Wahhabi kingdom. The names include: Alice, Rama, Sandy, Abdul-Rasoul, Abdul-Nasser, Abd El-Nabi, Allen, Gabriel, Malika, Iman, Amir, Lauren, Yara, Malik (King), Benyamin. Among others.
I like this last one, Benyamin: they may want to forestall anyone naming their child after Bibi Netanyahu, who can be a potential hero to some Wahhabi potentates. That depends on whether Bibi joins the paid Saudi coalition currently bombing Yemen, or maybe he could take some more action to help the Wahhabi side in the Syrian war.

It is not clear why only these particular names were banned. Does it mean all those unlisted names are acceptable? Oddly, many eligible names are not listed. For example: Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Adolf(lol), Winston, and Pol Pot are not among the banned names. Nor is Woody Allen or Gertrude Stein or Khamenei. Nor is Whoopie (as in Goldberg) or Anais (as in Nin) or Toto (as in Kansas).

What about Kim Jong-Un? What about Sayed Qutub and Mohammed Morsi? What about Hamdan Qormut?

Better yet, how about Al Thani?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, U.S. Foreign Policy, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

Yemen: Hadi Escapes again, the Bought Coalition Shrinks in Stature…….

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Yemen is becoming more complicated, as civil-proxy wars are wont to become. Yemen is also being set back about a century, through destruction by native rivals and foreign Arab invaders. The Saudi-United Arab Emirates (UAE) bombers/invaders have acquired, bought or rented, a gaggle of questionable hungry allies (Sudan, Eritrea, humorless Jordan, among other Arab payees). The Western powers, especially the US and Britain, are also helping the attackers.  They are siding against the wild Houthis and the Yemeni army, the side that fights Al-Qaeda (AQAP) and the Islamic State. The Westerners don’t get paid directly, but they expect fat contracts from the Saudis and Emiratis for weapons and their services.

Now, in the service of the Saudi princes, the two Western powers are direct war allies of Sudan, whose dictator has been convicted by the ICC and is a wanted war criminal. The Sudanese soldiers under dictator Omar Al Bashir are probably among the least professional in the Arab world, and have a well-deserved reputation for raping and pillaging in their own country. And they are being used in the contested and divided city of Aden.

Now there are also some media reports of the UAE recruiting more Colombian mercenaries to send into the parts of Aden they are trying control. UAE, with a tiny citizen population of about one million who are unwilling to fight abroad, had started to hire a largely Colombian mercenary army after the Arab uprisings of 2011. Now some of these are reportedly poised to enter Yemen, if they re not there already.

To further complicate matters, or perhaps simplify them depending on your point of view, two new not-unexpected developments have occurred. Deposed former president Generalissimo Hadi Bin Zombie and his prime minister Bahah had managed to be flown into Aden by the Saudis. But the much-publicized return did not last. Soon both Bahah and Hadi fled Aden again to the safety of their Saudi hotels in Riyadh.

In the meantime, the Yemenis are countering the Saudi-UAE bombing and attempted invasion of their country in their own favorite way. They are making successful incursions into Saudi territory, often ejecting the inept Saudi garrisons and controlling towns and villages (that used to be part of Yemen some eighty years ago).
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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