Category Archives: Syria

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadis, Salafi, Syria

Caliph in the Wind: Norma Jeane Baker Al Baghdadi………….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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I noticed the birthday of Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi is approaching in early August. The Salafis pretend they don’t cotton up much to birthdays for ordinary mortals. But the Caliph is not deemed a mortal. He is more like a celebrity, a hairy Norma Jeane Baker. A real inner and outer beast compared to a real inner and outer beauty. Not exactly a candle in the wind, but one air raid away from wherever it is he will go for good. He won’t expect a tribute by Elton John, but here goes anyway:——>  Candle in the Wind………..

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Syria, Wahhabi, Yemen

New Wahhabi International: Al Qaeda as the New Great Hope of Jihadis in Syria……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Al-Qaeda affiliates are significantly expanding their footholds in Syria and Yemen, using the chaos of civil wars to acquire territory and increase their influence, according to analysts, residents and intelligence officials. The gains have helped the terror group’s affiliates become major players in the countries and have complicated efforts to resolve the conflicts. Al-Qaeda offshoots could also be gaining sanctuaries to eventually plan attacks against the United States and Europe, analysts say. In Syria, al-Qaeda’s wing, Jabhat al-Nusra, plays a leading role in a new rebel coalition that has captured key areas in the northwestern part of the country. In Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has seized parts of the country’s largest province, territory that includes military bases, an airfield and ports. “Al-Qaeda is becoming more deeply entrenched in Syria, and it is gaining significant momentum in Yemen…………..”

A known Salafi activist on the Persian Gulf tweeted the other day, wishing, urging Al Nusra Front to break its allegiance to Al Qaeda. For years that same Salafi activist was urging Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to make their peace with his Saudi masters, the princes and their Muftis. Other Gulf Salafis who openly supported Al Qaeda and its affiliates, especially AQI and ISIS among other terrorist groups, have shifted away from the latter. At least in the open, but it could be just the usual Salafi taqiyya, feigning and faking.

Al Nusra is not as successful as the Caliphate of ISIS, but Al Nusra has one important advantage for the opportunistic Salafis. It is now being supported by their patrons, the Wahhabi princes and potentates of Saudi Arabia and Qatar (and non-Arab Turkey). It is being armed and financed by all of them. The Salafis, especially in the Persian Gulf countries listen to the dictates of these neighboring potentates, their patrons. Besides, it is the American support and weapons that they covet, which explains the phony claim of leader of Jaish Al-Islam (Army of Islam) a couple of weeks ago that he is now almost a Jeffersonian democrat.

It is as if a new global International, a Wahhabi International emerging, taking its signals and orders from the clerics and moneybags of Riyadh and Doha. Just like the Communist International of yesteryear (Comintern), the Wahhabi one is now divided. At least two major rival branches, possibly more if Al Nusra can be bribed to split from Al Qaeda. Not to mention other affiliated groups of Salafi cutthroats: AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), the Shabab, Boko Haram, the Bel-Mukhtar Group of Northwest Africa, etc, etc.

There have been reports in recent months that the Saudis are trying to affect a shift in loyalties. Saudi warplanes raining cluster bombs on Yemen tend to attack Houthi and Yemeni army forces in areas where they fight AQAP. That they do not attack gatherings of AQAP terrorists. American drones are still allegedly attacking AQAP. As usual, the Saudis believe they can in the end buy and regain the loyalty of AQAP and possibly the Southern Independence movement around Aden.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Salafi, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy

Salafi Taqiyya: Syrian Jihadist Claims Jeffersonian Ideals, Seek American Weapons……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“War is deception………..” Hadith

“From the pulpit at a mosque in the besieged Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syrian rebel leader Zahran Alloush denounced democracy last December as a corrupt system and left no doubt that he seeks an Islamic state to succeed the government of President Bashar Assad. But in his first interview with U.S. news media, Alloush was the model of pragmatism. Gone were his previous calls to expel members of the ruling Alawite sect from Damascus. In the interview he called them “part of the Syrian people” and said that only those with blood on their hands should be held accountable………………”

He is head of Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) one component of the Islamic Front, currently the last best Jihadi hope of the Syrian opposition and its Persian Gulf supporters and financiers. The whole bunch of them are now led by Al Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda branch in Syria. Al Nusra does the real fighting and dominates among the alleged ‘moderates’ in Syria. Nusra and its allies already get American and other Western advanced weapons through Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Almost certainly with U.S. consent, otherwise there would be some noise from Washington about supplying third parties. There isn’t any noise from washington.
It is telling that some prominent Salafis in the Persian Gulf region, strong advocates and enablers of Al Qaeda and even ISIS, are now suggesting, politely, that maybe Nusra Front should repudiate its ties to Al Qaeda, at least in the open. They are being pragmatic: “War is deception”.

They have discovered the secret to getting more American weapons and support. I have often written that the Salafis, especially the Gulf variety, can be pragmatic, to the extent that some of them would “throw their own mothers under the bus” if needed for the cause. Egyptian Salafis famously did that in a breathtaking fashion: they shifted allegiance from Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherhood before quickly supporting the military coup and Al Sisi. That does not mean they have given up on the goals of Al Qaeda or the Caliphate of ISIS. It is the true but fake Salafi Taqiyya: hiding your true colors in order to achieve your goals.
    

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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Salafi, Sex, Slavery, Syria, Turkey

Love Song of ISIS: Salafi Meets Tunisian Chick, Invites her to Raqqa………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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“The honeymoon was a brief moment for love, away from the front lines of Syria’s war. In the capital of Daesh’s self-proclaimed “caliphate,” Syrian fighter Abu Bilal Al Homsi was united with his Tunisian bride for the first time after months chatting online. They married, then passed the days dining on grilled meats in Raqqa’s restaurants, strolling along the Euphrates River and eating ice cream. It was all made possible by the marriage bonus he received from Daesh: $1,500 (Dh5,509) for him and his wife to get started on a new home, a family — and a honeymoon……………..”

How Salafi-romantic “they married, then passed the days dining on grilled meats in Raqqa“. How Wahhabi-chic, almost as good as the last week’s Paris second (or third) honeymoon of young Saudi Prince Whatishisface.

No doubt she made it across the Turkish border into Syria. That is Mr. Erdogan’s gift to the Wahhabi Jihadis and their Arab and European brides and their concubines. In effect he is the one who “gives the bride away”, no dowry required. It has been Erdogan’s gift to all those who seek to join the Jihad in Syria, probably including John McCain. At least this Salafi made her into an ‘honest’ woman, as they say. Others get sold on the slave market and are traded frequently. Either one: marital bliss or blissful concubinage with a North African or a European chick is no doubt one attraction of this new jihad for many starved and frustrated Wahhabi youth, especially those that don’t come out of the West.
Whatever happened to Hayat Boumedienne………..

    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, US Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Caliphate of Erdogan: How Turkey and her Wahhabi Arab Allies Screwed up Syria…………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“To make sense of this unlikely alliance between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, let’s travel back in time to 2011. Amidst the turmoil of the Arab Uprisings, Erdoğan was counting on the overthrow of the dictatorships of al-Assad, Qaddafi, Mubarak and others, fondly imagining that Muslim Brotherhood parties would then come to power across the Middle East. This was the “Islamic order” of which Erdoğan and his colleagues dreamed, an order which was to be led by Turkey. In an apparent homage to the Ottoman sultans’ tradition of performing their prayers in a newly-conquered capital, Erdoğan declared that he would soon be praying in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. However, Erdoğan has been unable to make good on this promise. Erdoğan’s Syrian venture — the most ambitious such undertaking in the entire 90-year history of the Turkish Republic — has also proved to be the undoing of Turkey’s foreign policy. Intent on overthrowing al-Assad from the very beginning, Erdoğan is one of those responsible for the devastation in Syria today, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States. A March 24, 2013 report in the New York Times stated that 120 cargo flights from Qatar and Saudi Arabia had carried military supplies to Turkey destined for the rebels in Syria. This weaponry was then delivered to the rebels in trucks alleged to belong to Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT).………..”

I have often posted, as have others, that nobody is as responsible for the bloody mess in Syria as Mr. Erdogan of Turkey and his Arab Wahhabi allies (the Al Saud princes, Al Thani of Qatar, and other Persian Gulf Islamists). Together these anti-democratic forces, with some misguided Western cooperation, managed to turn what started as a legitimate demand for Syrian democracy into a nightmare. One more Arab uprising became a Wahhabi Salafi terrorist campaign out of control, fed by petro-money, petro-weapons, and petro-volunteers. The Saudis and Qataris count on being far away from any spillover in their on police states on the Gulf, with no common borders with the inferno that is Syria. Turkey does not: their miscalculation is next door.
Just as the Pakistani ISI helped create the Afghan Taliban and now have to put up with terrorism in Pakistan, the Turks now will face spillover terrorism across their borders. They have the aspiring Kurds and they have millions of Alevis who strongly oppose Erdogan’s Syria adventure. The latter no doubt felt more secure under a secular regime in Ankara than under the Caliphate of Erdogan, ensconced in his new billion dollar royal palace.
    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen

Nusra Front: Are the Princes Bringing Al Qaeda Back in From the Cold?………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

Speaking of my last post on Middle East media control and its influence on Western policies. Perhaps the biggest success of the Saudi-Qatari massive media has been in Syria. They have done the unforeseen: they have managed to smooth out the transition to open support of Al Qaeda in Syria without much audible American complaint. I mean Al Nusra Front is a true-blue terrorist cutthroat group, it is the legitimate chosen local franchise of Al Qaeda, the same Al Qaeda which attacked the United States in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Port of Aden (Yemen). Now the Saudi-Qatari axis, plus the Turks, are supporting and supplying the Jihadi groups in Syria with American weapons, and what else is new? With the alleged exception of the Caliphate of ISIS: but ISIS has been supplied and armed and enabled by the same suspects for several years.

When this topic was publicized in the media last February, there was some thinking that they will try to reset the favorite Syrian group of Arab quasi-liberals and Wahhabi-liberals- the Free Syrian salafi Army- the FSA. But now it is clear that they are trying to rehabilitate the Al Nusra Front of Al Qaeda and its allies. Which indicates that it is true: it is the same old trick tried in Iraq and Syria.  It isn’t easy to teach an old dog new tricks. You can’t teach an old Wahhabi (Saudi and Qatari) or Muslim Brotherhood (Turkish), both old dogs, new tricks.

That may also be going on for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula-AQAP. Saudi air strikes in Yemen have reportedly left the AQAP territory and operations deliberately intact. I have posted on this possibility of bringing Al Qaeda in from the cold some years ago, once the Jihadi violence in Iraq escalated. Is this following the age-old rephrase of the idea that “Me and My Fellow Wahhabi Against the Houthi“? And where does that leave the major indispensable Western ally?


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Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Media, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen

Unequal Media Wars, Proxy Wars in the Middle East……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

The Saudi Wahhabi opposition (Mujtahidd and others who support ISIS) recently claimed that the new defense minister Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince to the crown prince, has ‘purchased’ a hundred thousand Twitter accounts, possibly other social media as well. That he plans to hire many security workers to man them and use them. It claims he plans to use them to build up himself in the media. That is not new, some of the top potentates, as well as the most vociferous fundamentalists now ‘own’ millions of followers. 

Anyway, right now the media wars for the West are being won by the Arab princes. Hands down. When it comes to media control and public opinion, billions of dollars make a big difference, especially in influencing Western opinion (but not so much non-Gulf Arab opinion). That is why the Saudi and Qatari potentates have spent billions acquiring existing major traditional Arab media outlets and establishing new ones. From Asharq Alawsat (owned by King Salman) to Al-Hayat (owned by prince Khaled Bin Sultan) to Alarabiya (Saudi royal in-law) to Al-Jazeera and Al-Quds Al-Arabi (Qatari royals) to Middle East Online (UAE) to Al-Arab (owned by Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal but searching for a home outside the Gulf after being ejected from Bahrain), to LBC, among others. And many others.

Now major Western outlets and news agencies often grab anything headlined by Saudi and Qatari networks and magnify them as ‘truths’. By the time they are bounced around the globe and return to where they started from, they ‘are’ quoted as ‘the truth’. A neat trick. It is like the claim that in Yemen, ‘loyalists’ to deposed president Hadi Al Zombie (actually mostly Southern Independence and AQAP) are fighting the Houthi-Saleh alliance on his behalf. Or the myth that Yemen’s war is a proxy war between saudi Arabia and Iran: except that it is the Saudis who are directly bombing Yemen (no proxies there) with Western munitions including cluster bombs. There are no proxies there now, unless the rented Sudanese and Senegalese and Egyptian troops land in Yemen. But then some clever reader might ask: and who are the Saudis acting as proxies for?

Initially the Houthis were not Iranian proxies or allies either: they had their own agenda. Colonel Saleh certainly is not: he was a close Saudi ally for years, even though he is a Zaidi, (or Shi’a) as Western media keep mentioning. But now the Houthis have moved closer to the Iranians for practical reasons, so they are Iranian-backed, but it is still farfetched to call them proxies or stooges.

Yet references to the legend of ‘proxy’ wars in Yemen and Syria continue in the media………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Jihadis, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey

Al Qaeda Front of Syria Returns to its Wahhabi Roots, No LOL……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15 KuwaitCox2

“Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and its allies seized the last major government-held city in Idlib province on Saturday, in a blow that could expose the regime’s coastal heartland to rebel attack. The capture of Jisr al-Shughur in the northwestern province comes nearly a month after the same coalition of opposition forces, known as the “Army of Conquest,” overran the provincial capital. The city’s fall opens up a strategic assault route for the rebels to neighbouring Latakia province on the Mediterranean coast, a bastion of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, analysts said……… The jihadists hailed victory on their official Twitter account, claiming that “The mujahideen have entered the city centre. The city has been liberated,” Al-Nusra said…………….”

Al Nusra Front has refused to severe its ties with Al Qaeda, but that has not prevented America’s closest Middle East allies from throwing their lot with it. There have been credible reports over the past few weeks that the Saudis, Qataris, and Turkish potentates have given up on the other Syrian opposition groups. They have decided, at least for now, to support the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria as the only group that can give the Assad regime (and its Iranian and Lebanese allies) a hard time. They apparently hope that a refurbished Al Nusra Front, although still an Al Qaeda franchise, could eventually become acceptable to the United States.
My guess is that almost anything would be acceptable to Republican hawks in the Senate (McCain et al) if it appears to have a chance to challenge the Syrians and their allies, so long as it is not called ISIS (for now). Especially if it comes flush with cash to dispense to lobbyists and current and former politicians (the example of the rehabilitation of the Iranian Mujahideen Khalq, MEK, is one example).
That Turkish-Saudi-Qatari coordination (the Wahhabi tripartite) might explain the relative success of the terrorist group. It partly explains the concentration of its operations in areas with easy access to the Turkish Caliphate of Erdogan. Turkey, with its open border policy, has been as responsible as the saudi and Qatari princes and potentates for the growth of the Jihadis in Syria.
Interesting that I mused here about the possibility of the Wahhabi potentates bringing the Al Qaeda back from the cold. They seem to be well on their way, but don’t expect Al Zawahri to hold meetings with Congressional leaders anytime soon (and forget the LOL).
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter [email protected]

Al-Qaeda, GCC, Jihadis, Saudi Arabia, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy

Jabhat Al Qaeda of Syria: Are Saudis and Turks Selling it to America?……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Al Mukalla was not the only victory of an al-Qaeda affiliate in recent weeks. In northern Syria, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, led an attack force of between 4,000 and 5,000 jihadis to capture the provincial capital of Idlib whose Syrian army garrison was overwhelmed. Saudi sources revealed that Saudi Arabia and Turkey had both given their backing to Jabhat al-Nusra and other extreme jihadis in seizing Idlib. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states seem intent on rebranding Jabhat al-Nusra and its clones as wholly different from Islamic State (Isis) and therefore acceptable as a potential ally. Al-Nusra may not publicly revel in its own atrocities as does Isis, but otherwise it differs little from it in ideology and tactics. Created by Isis in 2012, it split from the parent movement and fought a bloody inter-rebel civil war against it in early 2014, but today there are worrying signs of cooperation. According to accounts from the Syrian opposition, it was al-Nusra that allowed Isis fighters to take over in recent days most of Yarmouk Palestinian camp a few miles from the centre of Damascus……………..”

A few years when Jabhat Al Nusra emerged, I called it, quite seriously and correctly, Jabhat Al Qaeda of Syria. Knowing its roots and its ideology and its sources of men and money. “Moderate” Syrian opposition leaders across the Turkish border were furious: claiming it was a patriotic militia fighting for freedom. As were few American travelling senators. But all I had to do was read how Wahhabis and Salafis on the Persian Gulf reacted to its emergence. A no brainer, as they say.
It didn’t take long for the Nusra Front to shed its mask, even before the old man in the cave of Al Qaeda designated it the only legitimate subsidiary in Syria.

Now it appears the Saudi princes and ruling Turkish fundamentalists, the Wahhabis and the Ottomans, are trying to rehabilitate it in American eyes. Apparently they have finally given up on the useless dysfunctional Free Syria (Salfi) Army. And on the other entities they have tried to form in Turkey and in Jordan. No doubt some patriotic senators in the U.S. will jump at the chance, all memories of September 11 fading. The “enemy” now is someone else, someone Al Qaeda also opposes.
Some media are now speculating that Turkey and Saudi Arabia will launch an invasion of Syria in order to “liberate” it. That would come after the Saudis finish destroying Yemen with their unlimited supply of bombs thrown from a safe distance of 40 thousand feet.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Caliphate, Iraq, North Africa, Sectarian, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy

The War for MENA: Militias, Bombers, Cargo Cultists, and International Brigades……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15
KuwaitCox2

“Unthinkable just a decade ago, the main government forces leading the battle are Shiite fighters—the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) that are under the control of militia leaders. These forces’ main partners are Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has called the situation “the most overt conduct of Iranian support” since the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) began…………… The White House seems to view growing Iranian involvement in the war as a reality that cannot be wished away, which is probably true, but also as a step forward in U.S.-Iranian relations, which is arguably naive. Events on the ground in eastern Iraq suggest a different way of looking at the issue. If anything, the battle for Tikrit has shown that there is a whole side of the war from which the international community has been deliberately excluded. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have been carving out a zone of influence in eastern Iraq…………”

His title asks: “What to Do With Iraq’s Shia Popular Mobilization Units?”
Everyone, people of every faith and every sect are involved in this war: Wahhabi, Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Jewish, possibly even Buddhist and Zoroastrian and Cargo Cultist. There are the Sunni and Wahhabi and Shi’a warplanes, which bomb targets in Syria and Iraq. There are also Christian, Jewish, and no doubt a few atheist bombers as well among them. I am not sure what the Caliph’s true faith is.

Those warplanes from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and possibly others? They are not flown by Shi’as: these are excluded from flying warplanes or doing sensitive military and security jobs. Not to mention that everybody on the other side, on the dark side, is Wahhabi, from the ISIS terrorists to their financiers to their female slaves and concubines.

This is not a sectarian war for the Levant anymore. It is now a sectarian world war that has gone beyond the Levant. It is a Middle East and North Africa war. A MENA War that goes beyond what the West usually calls a Sunni-Shi’a war: it is Wahhabi terrorists against everyone else, be they Sunnis or Shi’as. It now stretches from Iraq and Syria through Egypt and Libya, all the way deeper into North Africa. With the possibility of other outlying fronts in remote areas of Asia and Africa. It has attracted the misguided faithful from all over the world. So, both sides, nay all sides, in ‘this war’, have their powerful “International Brigades“.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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