Category Archives: U.S. Foreign Policy

Economics, OPEC, Petroleum, Sanctions, U.S. Foreign Policy

Remember When the Oil Weapon Was Blackmail and Evil?……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“Now time has abruptly run out. The Arabs, who control nearly 60% of the world’s proven deposits, are slowing down the flow. Through this strategy of squeeze, they hope to pressure the industrial nations into forcing Israel to make peace on terms favorable to the Arabs. Moreover, they are steadily intensifying their oil shakedown. Originally they planned to reduce production by at least 5% each month. Later they embargoed all oil shipments to the U.S. and The Netherlands, in punishment for their support of Israel. Last week, showing new unity and clout, ten Arab countries announced that production for November will be slashed a minimum of 25% below the September total of 20.5 million bbl. per day. Though there has been promising progress toward a lasting settlement in the Middle East, the Arabs vow that they will continue their cutbacks and embargoes until Israel withdraws behind its 1967 borders………….”

That was during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. The Arabs, at least the regimes and media, still claim that war was won. Initially the first round of the “Ramadan War” was won, but the military tide had turned decisively before the ceasefire that was engineered by the Nixon administration. But official celebrations and/or commemorations are held in Egypt every year on this occasion, sometime twice a year: once in October and again during the Islamic Hijri month of Ramadan (usually the two don’t coincide, although they did in 1973).
That Arab oil embargo of 1973 was widely denounced as blackmail and evil in Europe and North America. Looking back, the Arabs got a bum rap on that one: it is not the act of blackmail itself, but who does it that makes the difference. Something must have happened since then. Now it is the Western powers that impose oil and gas embargoes: against Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq (in the past) and others who do not comply. Countries that break any Western embargo or blockade are punished, and embargoed themselves. And it is not blackmail anymore: it is cool now. It is considered as part of a wise clever strategy to “shake down” other countries, just as the Arabs were perceived as “shaking down” the West in 1973. The only difference is that the Western powers have the upper hand now, economically speaking. The shoe is on the other foot. Speaking of change………..
Not all blackmails, or shakedowns, are equal.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, GCC, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen

Can the US Save Saudi and UAE Nuts in Yemen and Syria?………..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“The United States condemns ongoing hostile and aggressive actions against the Yemeni government and political targets and calls for all parties to implement all aspects of the Peace and National Partnership agreement, in particular the turning over of all medium and heavy weapons to the State…….We commend and support President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s efforts as he leads Yemen in implementing the Peace and National Partnership Agreement that builds on the GCC Initiative and National Dialogue Conference Outcomes…… The United States remains firmly committed to supporting President Hadi and all Yemenis in this endeavor and to our enduring partnership with the Yemeni government to counter the shared threat from al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula…………”

Imagine this impossible and unlikely alternative statement: “The United States condemns ongoing hostile and aggressive actions against the Syrian government and political targets……….”

But then again, there is an issue of serious electoral legitimacy here, Arab style. And there is the issue of keeping the focus on AQAP terrorists. General President Hadi (I wouldn’t add Al Zombie this time) won his GCC-arranged election by 99.8% of the vote, beating fellow Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi who could only eke out 97+% of the scant Egyptian vote. They both beat Herr Doctor Bashar Al Assad, who received barely 88%, a resounding defeat by the standards of Arab leaders, be they dynastic or military or both. Still, none of them could match the victory margin of Kim Jong-Un or of some of the kings that litter our region.

Of course more blood, much more blood, has been shed in the international butchery that we now call the Syrian civil war. Which may explain the lower margin of, er, ‘victory’ in Damascus.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Caliphate, Jihadis, Petroleum, Syria, Turkey, U.S. Foreign Policy

ISIS Oil: About the Erdogan Trail………….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“U.S.-led coalition warplanes bombed oil installations and other facilities in territory controlled by Islamic State militants in eastern Syria on Friday, taking aim for a second consecutive day at a key source of financing that has swelled the extremist group’s coffers, activists said. The strikes hit two oil areas in Deir el-Zour province a day after the United States and its Arab allies pummeled a dozen makeshift oil producing facilities in the same area near Syria’s border with Iraq. The raids aim to cripple one of the militants’ primary sources of cash — black market oil sales that the U.S. says generate up to $2 million a day…………”

It is well to hit the oil wells they have occupied in Syria (and Iraq). But there is a cheaper more efficient way to throttle their oil revenues: a bomb-less way. How do they sell the oil? To whom do they sell the oil? More important: by which route is that oil shipped?

That last question, the route, is the gorilla in the war room. Dealing with it requires some neighborly cooperation from one particular country.There is no sea outlet for the oil since the terrorists don’t control any ports or even any coastal regions. Their only route seems to be through NATO member Turkey. Across the border into Turkey and into the markets. Get Mr. Erdogan to shut the ISIS oil route, if he can. Get him to be less vague, less vague and tentative, about his ties to the Jihadis in Syria (and by extension in Iraq). 

Unless there is another route I am not aware of through which the Caliphate petroleum is shipped.

Then there is that other money route, the one we know that leads “north” into Syria and Iraq.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Caliphate, Iraq, Jihad, Turkey, U.S. Foreign Policy

Turkey and the Caliphate of IS: You Scratch my Back and……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“Turkey, however, did not join the 10 Arab countries that signed on to help build a coalition against IS at a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this past week, and has made it clear that it will not partake in military operations against IS. It is willing to provide humanitarian aid, and will in all likelihood offer clandestine support to U.S. efforts. The primary reason the Turks give for their reticence was their concern for the fate of 49 Turkish diplomatic and security personnel who were seized by IS when the group overran the Iraqi city of Mosul; they were released this past weekend. The hostage crisis was emblematic of all that has gone wrong for Turkey in Syria…………..”

Turkey bet on the Syrian rebels early on. In those heady early days of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, when they looked and sounded and smelled like an Arab Spring. Early on, the Turks started voicing support for the Syrian protests, then for the armed Syrian rebels. No doubt partly because they knew that a large portion of the protesters were Sunni fundamentalists of the kind Mr. Erdogan can be comfortable dealing with.

That was just before the nascent Syrian uprising was hijacked by Persian Gulf Wahhabi princes and their Salafi allies. Before it was bought with vast amounts of petroleum money flowing north from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and other places. Before it was quickly changed into a blatantly sectarian movement of hundreds of rival groups and gangs of Jihadis, quasi-Jihadis, and kidnappers fighting Assad and each other.
The Turkish government opened its borders to everyone who was heading into Syria to fight the Assad regime. Foreign volunteers from the Gulf, North Africa, and Europe flowed into Syria from the Turkish borders. As did weapons and money. If this Caliphate is selling Syrian (or Iraqi) oil, as some reports claim, then their only route for that would be through Turkey, with the cooperation of the authorities.
Meanwhile, the sources of volunteers and money for the Jihad were secure in their palaces in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. They were far away from the Syrian borders and hence felt shrapnel from the Syrian crisis, which they had converted into a sectarian civil war, would not touch them. They wanted to manage the Syrian war and shape its outcome to serve their interests even as starry eyed Western pundits waxed poetic about the war for democracy and freedom in Syria. Which is also what the Turks aimed for: to manage the Syrian war.

The Turks have been scratching the Jihadist backs for three years. Now ISIS have released the Turkish hostages from Mosul. No beheadings there, but then the Turkish hostages probably were all of the right religion and sect. Not surprising that the Turks are staying away from this new NATO campaign against the Caliphate, to the extent of refusing to “cooperate” with the air campaign.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, GCC, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy

Mr. Obama’s New Syrian Alibi: a Pig With Lipstick………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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Mr. Obama has now got his Arab alibi. He has got the Arab, actually GCC, cosmetics he thinks he needs to expand the war into Syria:

  • The rulers of tiny Bahrain, which need foreign mercenaries and Saudi troops to keep their own rebellious people at bay and repressed, are allegedly bombing the Hollywood Caliphate of ISIS.
  • The United Arab Emirates, a country so full of foreign military bases it looks like Persian Gulf Swiss cheese, is also doing likewise. No news yet if their Blackwater-modeled mercenary army of Colombians and Australians and other foreigners will be involved.
  • Ditto for the rulers of Qatar, who don’t have enough troops to fill two World Cup stadiums in 2022. Let alone wage war on anybody.
  • Apparently Saudi Arabia is also involved, somehow although it is not clear how and in what capacity are the oily slippery princes involved.

So, Mr. Obama has got his “Arab” alibi, his GCC fig leaf, although we all know the ‘real’ war will be American, with some French huffing and puffing. But at what price this GCC alibi? He must have promised a deeper American involvement in Syria, well beyond attacking the Wahhabi Jihadist cutthroats of ISIS. He must have promised something beyond ISIS and Al Qaeda: something like a repeat of NATO’s Libyan adventure in 2011. The results of which we are now enjoying from Tripoli to Benghazi. The temptation and the push by the Wahhabi camp for Mr. Obama to get deeper into the Syrian “civil war” will be strong.

Yes, there is something about cosmetics nagging at the back of my mind. I recall what Mr. Obama famously said during the 2008 campaign for president. Something about “a pig with lipstick is still a pig“. Even if we call it a coalition.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Economics, Finance, Iran, Sanctions, U.S. Foreign Policy, Yemen

A Western Addiction to Sanctions? SWIFT-ing the Houthis of Yemen………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it…….” Newton’s First Law of Motion (one version)

“Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday accused the United States of being “obsessed” with sanctions against his country, on the eve of new bilateral talks on a nuclear deal……….”

Apparently imposing these financial sanctions (actually blockades) can become addictive. Anyone who does not know any better, and that probably includes me, might think that the Obama administration has become addicted to inflicting sanctions on other nations and entities and corporations and whatever and whoever catches its fancy in the wrong way. The U.S. Congress is an even more avid imposer of these sanctions, it leads the way: its hawkish threats scare and force the administration to be “proactive” in these matters.

Governments and despots (only a few of them) and peoples and groups and parties and unions and gangs and possibly bad musicians, probably even alumni associations are targeted. From East Asia through Russia and Iran and Lebanon and Syria and Africa and into the threatening little superpower of Cuba, after passing through the mighty empire of Venezuela. Even as the Iran+P5+1 talks were resuming this summer, some evil genius somewhere in Washington was churning out new plans for tightening the screws on the Iranians. Just to keep the mullahs on their toes, or maybe just to let the hotheads in Congress and Knesset know that they have nothing to worry about.

Yesterday, reports came out that the US (and possibly other Western powers) are considering imposing sanctions against the Houthis of Yemen. The Houthis? They are one of the many tribal/political/ethnic/religious factions that dot the Yemeni landscape. But they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or any other Wahhabi terrorist groups: in fact they are their enemies. They have no goals beyond their own region of Yemen, so what would they be sanctioned for? Sanctioned for daring to protest against their fundamentalist military government and marching on the capital Sana’a. I would have thought the Western powers had their hands full trying to drone the Saudi-Yemeni Al-Qaeda (AQAP) out of existence (often taking a passel of innocent Yemeni civilians along as collateral damage). Or maybe someone in Washington got a persuasive call from someone with a golden telephone in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi.

Anyway, it is not clear how financial sanctions can affect the Houthis of the rugged territory of northern Yemen. As I recall from my past days of extensive travel, the economies of some remote regions are not very monetized, unlike Washington DC (not so many lobbyists with a lot of money hanging around Sanaa or Ouagadougou). These fellows are not known to fly to Las Vegas or Nice or even Dubai, or to own foreign property. Unlike the petroleum princes and potentates, they do not even frequent the diversion-filled joints of Beirut or Cairo or Bangkok. Unlike the Saudi princes, they never fly into the sin-filled cities of Morocco. So, they don’t have as much need for access to foreign exchange, be it dollars or euros or riyals.

Personally, sometimes I think they impose some of the sanctions jut because they can. The mechanisms and the people are in place, so there is some bureaucratic inertia involved, unless acted upon by an external force, as Isaac Newton taught us so long ago. There are no other world currencies that compete with the dollar, and no institution that can compete with SWIFT. SWIFTing a country or an organization is easy. But the Houthis?

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Caliphate, Iraq, Piss-Up in a Brewery, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Myth of Arab Forces in Iraq and Syria: Organizing a Piss-Up in a Brewery………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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There has been a lot of talk lately about non-American boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Some of the senators during the Armed Forces Committee hearings earlier today, as well as on the media, have been mentioning “Arab forces” that would augment Iraqi forces and Syrian Wahhabi opposition forces.

I got some news for these senators and pundits. If the Iraqi people objected to extended American military presence in their country beyond 2011, do you really believe they would welcome suspected outside Arab forces? This is the age of sectarianism, initially packaged and promoted by several Arab regimes (and I don’t men Iraq and Syria here) as a divide-and-rule strategy. Wahhabi forces from sparsely-populated Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar and possibly politically Wahhabi-ized forces from Egypt? Given their history in Iraq and the grief they have caused the people over there with their export of terrorists and weapons and money? Not to mention these regimes’ historical disrespect for the Shi’a (Shi’ite) holy shrines. (Wahhabis have raided Karbala and Najaf in past centuries with the aim of destroying the shrines).

I got some more news for the same senators and pundits. The same objections apply to Syria. Can you imagine the Saudi army and the UAE and Qatari hired-mercenary armies facing the Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies (and possibly other violent allies)? Not to mention facing their own hardened fellow Wahhabi Jihadis who have moved to the dark side with ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Besides, my rule of thumb of war is against it: you can’t expect them to face these battle-toughened forces if they can’t even organize, militarily, a proverbial “piss-up in a brewery“. And we know these princes and potentates can’t organize that proverbial “piss up in a brewery“. Speaking militarily for now.

This myth of Arab forces inside Iraq and Syria needs to be put to rest. The whole idea is not even DOA: it is dead from before its ill-advised inception.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadists, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Weapons deals

Mulling ISIS Supply Routes and Friedman’s Arab Taxis on a Pacific Northwest Trail………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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I though I’d write a Friedman-esque (as in Thomas not Milton) post today. I am not starting it upon arrival at some Arab airport and a ride into town in a taxi driven by Abdu (in Cairo) or Abed (in Beirut) or Abul-Abed (in Amman). Funny, when Friedman goes to Beijing, the inscrutable Chinese taxi drivers (Abu Wong, et al) never share their local wisdom with him. Only Arabs do: blab and share their apparent wisdom with Western journalists.

No, I was thinking about that yesterday, Saturday. As we biked the twenty mile round trip along the Sammamish River Trail, past a couple of vintners joints and at least one hbrewery, towards the Burke-Gilman Trail. On an unusually cloudless warm morning of the Pacific Northwest. Here goes: 

I saw a retired general (USMC) state that ISIS controls the upper rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) and roads from Syria to resupply their forces in Iraq. Which made me wonder, as I pedaled along that peaceful bike trail:

  • Where do ISIS get these supplies and volunteers from Syria (as the general said)?  Why is Syria their main supply route into Iraq? And from where and how do these weapons and the money and volunteers flow into Syria then into Iraq? And how would increasing the supply of weapons to the useless Syrian opposition groups affect the flow of weapons to the ISIS Caliphate? Should we ask Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Jordan about this? They certainly don’t flow from Cyprus (no, Israel is also an unlikely source).
  • From which Syrian (FSA, Ansar-Al-WTF, etc, etc) “relatively moderate” opposition groups and gangs did ISIS purchase some of these Western hostages (journalists and aid workers) that were so horribly beheaded on camera? And they were no doubt purchased from some of the other would-be liberators of Syria.

Before I had finished, er, mulling this last question, it was time for us to hydrate and turn around. Sort of like what happens when Thomas Friedman’s Arab taxi, driven by Abdu (in Cairo) or Abed (in Beirut) or Abul-Abed (in Amman), or Abu-Wong (in Beijing) drives up to the hotel entrance. Before he finishes sharing his strategic and cultural gems with us.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab League, Caliphate, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

ISIS and the Arabs: a Standing Joke of a League…….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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Back to my last post about President Obama’s ISIS speech:
One or two of the experts, in their post-speech comments, lamely suggested the Arab League, a useless gathering of mostly dictators and absolute tribal kings with little moral standing. It is now dominated by the same princes and potentates who spawned and nurtured groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS and their ilk.

Among many ordinary Arabs, the only standing the Arab League bureaucracy has is as a standing joke. A place to bury aging senior Arab (especially Egyptian) bureaucrats before they die. Only Western, specifically American politicians and pundits would suggest the Arab League as a mover and shaker, and with a straight face. But that is probably only because it can be useful to them as a fig leaf.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea of an Arab League can eventually be a good one, nay a necessary one. But that can be only after all member states hold free and unfettered elections. You figure out the timetable.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Hobson’s Choice in Syria: Bad, Badder, or Baddest?…….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15           DennyCreek2

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“HOBSON’S CHOICE:
1. an apparently free choice when there is no real alternative
2. the necessity of accepting one of two or more equally objectionable alternatives.………”                                                                                                     Merriam Webster

“The jihadi group surging through Iraq and Syria is using large captured US-made weapons and has access to anti-tank rockets supplied by Saudi Arabia to a moderate rebel group, according to a report published on Monday. The study by the London-based Conflict Armament Research consultancy found that Islamic State (Isis) militants had access to large numbers of US weapons, which they were shifting to key battlefields……..The report was compiled from a list of weapons captured from Isis by Kurdish militias over a 10-day period in July. Of most interest was the capture of two M-79 rockets that were identical to a batch of such weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia to rebels………”

So this report seems to corroborate what we have all been saying for some time: it is almost impossible to keep weapons from being transferred among Syrian Jihadis. There is an active Syrian market for them and they get taken and sold and gifted between the hundreds of Jihadi groups and gangs that seek to liberate Syria for the Saudi and Qatari princes and take it back to their distorted vision of the seventh century (AD). ISIS and Al Nusra and all the other “Jabhats” and “Ansars” and myriad groupies get enough money from their well-known sources to be able to ‘buy’ whatever weapons they want from other Syrian ‘freedom fighters’, including the Free Syrian Salafi Army.

The fact is that within Syria there are no real non-Jihadi rebels anymore. This has been the case since late 2011, after the Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf region mobilized their vast financial, media, and volunteer resources and deployed them, armed with a strong dose of deep sectarian hatred, to commandeer a nascent uprising in Syria. Just a few years after deploying the same murderous resources to massacre Iraqi civilians in their towns and cities.

Within Syria the choice among rebels is between the following: (a) plain bad Wahhabis, (b) badder Wahhabis, and (c) the baddest Wahhabis. The crucial battles with Syrian regime forces in the past year or two saw all these various tiers of Wahhabi Jihadist groups join forces. Join forces and share weapons before the baddest of them, ISIS, started to push the others to the margins, to the periphery of history. Building up new mildly Wahhabi groups inside the Humorless Kingdom of Jordan and sending them into Syria to keep the civil war going will not do the trick either. The Jordanian Front is not likely to fare better than the Turkish front has done.

Or maybe the plain bad Wahhabis are the only palatable Hobson option available for the Western powers. They can appoint French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, co-liberator of Libya, as NATO high commissioner for Syria, to keep them from going badder and baddest. It did not work in Libya, but it might in Syria: hope springs eternal when supported with tribal petro-money.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum