Category Archives: US Foreign Policy

Caliphate, Jihadists, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Speculative Chemical Assertion about Syria: Prelude to a Bombing Campaign?……..

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“Syria May Have Hidden Chemical Arms, U.S. Says. Ambassador Samantha Power asserted that Syria might not have handed over all its chemical arms supplies for destruction, and that they could fall into the hands of militants………..”

I suspect that Ambassador Power was not trained as a lawyer. The ambassador “asserted” that Syria “might” have hidden chemical weapons, and that they “could” fall into Jihadist hands. Dunno what exactly to make of this rather “speculative assertion” at the fluid court of the United Nations. That the Syrian government’s behavior raised “skepticism” (FYI: most Middle East governments’ behavior on any issue should always raise skepticism, be they Arab, Israeli, Iranian, Turkish, or Sumerian).

Could this be part of a spin, a prelude to start the bombing campaign over Syria? Will it be a bombing campaign targeting only the Wahhabi terrorist groups of ISIS and A-Nusra? Or will it, as no doubt some of the Arab princes and potentates hope, expand to target the Syrian armed forces and their facilities? Will there be a loophole in Mr. Obama’s coming “Syrian” speech that could open the door for a “Libyan” style expansion of the expected American and NATO mission over the Caliphate of Mosul and Al-Raqqa?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Egypt, Humor, Israel, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Sectarian, US Foreign Policy

New Tri-Partite Coalition: a Jewish Democracy, an Arab Military Dictatorship, an Arab Tribal Monarchy………

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“A “joint high command” of Arab states is advising the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how to press home his ground operation in Gaza, the Debka Net Weeky, a publication of a website close to Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad has confirmed. The website said that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are in “constant communication” running daily conferences and sometimes more, according to the website’s sources. That communication is done over secure telephone lines, but such is the political sensitivity of their close co-operation that for really important messages human couriers are used. A special Israeli plane is parked permanently at Cairo’s military airport, ready to lift off whenever top-secret messages between the Egyptian president and the Israeli Prime Minister need to be delivered by hand. The flight takes less than 90 minutes. King Abdullah’s point man in this daily dialogue is the man he dismissed as intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, but who has now been re-hired as the King’s special adviser on the Islamic State in Iraq. Bandar maintains “direct contacts” with the Mossad chief Tamir Pardo….…………”

I would call it a coalition of convenience, not an alliance. It is like “the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, but I will not specify which one of these is which: it is probably a toss-up. It is really a coalition, if that is what it is, of two parties: Israel and the Saudi regime. Egypt has already made its peace with Israel and is doing its share in blockading Gaza and its Hamas rulers, and it has no regional influence left beyond that. Egypt under Al Sisi is now part of the Al Saud sphere of influence as far as other Middle East issues are concerned. Besides, Egypt is not directly involved with the main target of this coalition: Iran and her ruling mullahs.

This is quite a mix of an eclectic coalition of regimes, just look at its members: 

  • One militarized Jewish democracy (it is a democracy so far, if we set aside the West Bank’s future, and not only by Arab or Middle East standards),
  • One harsh Arab military dictatorship led by a Generalisimo Field Marshal but pretending to be a democracy,
  • One absolute tribal Wahhabi theocratic monarchy that has no pretensions of democracy or constitutional law whatsoever (its constitution is however the princes and their palace clerics interpret the law).

What brought them and holds them together? A mix of factors: (1) a desire to maintain the status quo and keep absolute family rule (Saudi Arabia and allies), (2) a desire to keep the military in absolute power and the old oligarchy in place while pretending otherwise (Egypt), (3) a desire to divide the Arabs and other neighbors and to weaken her main regional rival (that would be Iran in the case of Israel).

There is one other factor that sounds ridiculous but some Arab regimes pretend, for political reasons, to take it seriously: a professed media-driven fear of the spread of Shi’ism. This indicates a lot of religious insecurity within the sects of Islam. Saudi and other Gulf sectarian propaganda often warn of this threat of the ‘spread of Shi’ism’. Recently so have otherwise apparently calm but apparently Wahhabi-ized Egyptian clerics from within and without Al-Azhar. But I doubt the Jews of Israel worry much about this nonsense as much as their paranoid neighbors, perhaps excluding some remnant zealots in the settlements and around Jerusalem.

However, it would be fun if there was a true Shi’a threat of conversion in all three countries. Imagine a common threat to convert all Sunnis of Egypt, all Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, and the toughest nut of all would be to convert all Jews of Israel (and hence of the Diaspora from New York to San Fernando valley).

Just think: they wouldn’t have to wait for the Second Coming and the Rapture to convert, although it would be to the wrong faith. That should give all Christian Zionists in the American Red-blooded States massive group infarct.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Blockade of Iran, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Sanctions, US Foreign Policy

Human Shield Theory, Axis of Evil Theory, and other Propaganda Tools………

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Yesterday I watched former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on CNN dutifully repeating the usual claim that Hamas is using Gaza civilians as human shield. She was giving the usual bi-partisan spiel, or spin, about the newest Gaza war. But then that is the exact opposite of the spin or spiel we get from Hamas and its supporters.

Usually whatever Mr. Netnayahu claims is initially accepted, before the other side starts its own PR machine. It is taken for granted to be true in most media here, unless otherwise claimed or proven. Apparently Hamas has learned this lesson, a fact that caused a frustrated Netanyahu to grumble recently about “telegenically dead Palestinians“.

I am not sure about the claim that Hamas is deliberately placing rocket launchers amid civilian areas. I doubt it. But it is telling that nobody, not even Arabs, believe that Israel is using its civilians as human shield. That tells me something about certain national perceptions.

So, we are to believe that Palestinians don’t love their own people, their children, and use them as human shield, and that Israelis love their people and don’t use them as human shield.

But hasn’t this same ‘human shield’ story been used against other countries as well? Or the similar idea that some regime, Cuba or Iran, is impoverishing its own people, holding them as human shield, because it invites a Western economic blockade by not succumbing to the will of Western powers? The idea that the countries of an Axis of Evil would use their people as cheap fodder while the Axis of Goodness would not. Some might say that the numbers of war veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq and then neglected by their own countries would refute that.

This “human shield” charge is largely based on Western notions that other peoples do not care for their citizens as much, that human life is cheaper in Palestine than it is, say, on the streets of Chicago on a Saturday night, or in Compton (Calif), or in parts of the Bronx or in Detroit on any night. Which is obviously untrue.

During WWII, the Germans could have claimed that Churchill was using civilians as human shields. And vice versa. And while we are talking old wars and human shields, think of Stalingrad and London under the Blitz.

Stay tuned…………
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Europe, European Union, NATO, Russia, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, WTF

The Angry Euro-Centric International Community: Torn Between Ukraine and Gaza…….

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Headline today in the Huffington Post: “Global” anger at Russia grows……..

Odd: I look around the globe, the media in several languages, and I don’t see worldwide intense anger. There is sympathy and a desire to uncover the culprit(s), but no anger. I see some regional real anger and some regional pretend anger, and I see mostly some politics mixed with anger, and it is focused on a particular part of the globe. In recent years, it seems that the world has gone back to the old Euro-centric order, just as it did during the eighteenth and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Apparently when the angry “international community” or “the world” is mentioned the acronyms that matter are NATO and EU. Forget about UNO and BRICS and PIGS and TRICKS and SCO and WTF and the rest.

No wonder the angry “international community” is never angry when third world airlines are shot down, especially when shot down by NATO missiles (Iran Air 655, Libyan Air).

I guess “global” here means the West: “European Union” or “North American”. The Rest Of the World, almost 85% of it,  are just that, ROW, and not part of the “global community”, since we don’t see much if any of the same “outrage” across Asia (outside Malaysia) or Africa or Latin America, or the Middle East. The same applies to “The International Community” that we often see in Western headlines. The Int’l Community is often angry at someone or the other (Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Freedonia, etc). The “Int’l Community” is never ever angry at the European Union or the USA or Canada. And why should they?

Now speaking of “global” outrage, and speaking of Gaza……….

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Barack Obama, Israel, Muslims, US Foreign Policy

Mr. Obama’s Ramadan Iftar Political Rally for Israel………

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“During his address (at the Iftar dinner) , U.S. President Barack Obama said, “No country can accept rockets fired indiscriminately at citizens,” Obama said. “And so we’ve been very clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas.”………”We knew it was all bad when we saw this tweet surface a few minutes into the iftar by none other than Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer,” one website, The Thrival Room, wrote. Meanwhile, scholar Tariq Ramadan published a statement describing this year’s dinner as “political instrumentalisation of (voluntarily) trapped Muslim leaders listening to President Obama justify the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians, declaring Israel has the right to defend itself. One wonders what is the relationship between the Iftar celebration and Israel?………”

There was no reason at all to politicize this Ramadan Iftar by focusing on Israel or its Gaza targets. No reason to make it into an almost ‘Israeli’ political rally. But Mr. Obama’s advisers are creatures of habit. Maybe it was force of habit: every time a US politician sees a bunch of Muslim faces he claims that he thinks of a ‘threatened’ Israel. But the Saudi ambassador Mr. Adle Al-Jubair, was there resplendent in his native attire, and he is hardly a threat: he is the envoy of the Likud’s best Arab ally. On the other hand, some of the Muslims attending are also reported to have complained about surveillance of their communities. Funny, I don’t feel ‘surveilled’, but maybe that is the point.

Even the Israeli daily Haaretz has more sense than the groupies and advisers at the White House who put Mr. Obama in this silly position of using an Islamic occasion to justify the Netanyahu war tactics.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Anti-Semitism, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, US Foreign Policy

Human Rights and GCC Bureaucrats: Bahrain Rulers and Mr. Malinowski and Mr. Hood………

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter “The US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has been slammed by GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif Al-Zayani, for his interference in Bahrain’s internal affairs. Al-Zayani voiced his “dismay” over the attitude of Tom Malinowski, who met with only one segment of political society during his official tour of duty to Bahrain this week. “This kind of interference in the GCC’s domestic affairs is a violation of diplomatic norms and the principles of good neighborliness,” said Al-Zayani in a statement. GCC officials said that safeguarding Bahrainis’ rights is the responsibility of its leaders…………”

This Al-Zayani chap said: “safeguarding Bahrainis’ rights is the responsibility of its leaders.” This is like saying that safeguarding the chickens in the coop is the responsibility of the fox. That safeguarding the wounded man is the responsibility of the hungry vultures flying circles over him. The top bureaucrat of the GCC, who is a Bahraini nominee with the right tribal and sectarian credentials, is dutifully angry with Mr. Malinowski. The regime in Bahrain is angry with Mr. Malinowski, as are the Saudi princes and the whole Wahhabi establishment. So he was invited to leave the captive island country in the Gulf. Last time they were angry publicly with a U.S. official, it was an embassy official who talked about ‘human rights’ a couple of years ago. Ludovic Hood was harassed and attacked publicly by regime minions and propagandists for having “Jewish roots” and a “Jewish wife”. Mr. Hood was also charged by regime minions with the standard charge used by the Al Khalifa family against all dissidents: being a supporter of Hezbollah and an enemy of their version of Motherhood and Apple Pie and the Despotic Way of Life.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, US Foreign Policy

Bahrain: the Usual Arab Tale of Corruption, Repression, and Sectarianism………

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“Black and yellow concrete barricades block the roads entering this wealthy Sunni enclave, where foreign-born Sunni soldiers in armored personnel carriers guard the mansions of the ruling family and the business elite. Beyond the enclave are impoverished villages of Shiites, about 70 percent of Bahrain’s more than 650,000 citizens, where the police skirmish nightly with young men wielding rocks and, increasingly, improvised weapons like homemade guns that use fire extinguishers to shoot rebar.…………. Pearl Square, where demonstrators staged a weekslong sit-in three years ago, has now been turned into a permanent military camp, its namesake statue demolished, in a grim memorial of the day in March 2011 when vehicles and troops from the neighboring Sunni monarchies rolled across the causeway from Saudi Arabia to crush the Shiite-dominated movement for democracy……………”

The turmoil in Bahrain is not just about discrimination and what many locals consider a form of apartheid: all that could be taken care of by an elected parliament, something that Bahrain does not have. Another major motivator is unchallenged corruption by the Al Khalifa ruling clan and their tribal and business partners. Bahrain is a small island country that had an oil boom before the other Gulf countries, even before Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But the oil resources of Bahrain are limited and there is now less for the ruling oligarchs to control and abuse. A real estate boom tied to the finance and tourism industries made many of the potntates and their cronies rich. But that has slowed down in recent years, forcing the Saudis to encourage a move by some GCC and Arab institutions to Manama.

Now there is intense competition as the rulers use more of their limited resources to import thousands of foreign mercenaries from places like Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, and others to augment the Saudi forces dealing with the continued uprising (now in its fourth year). The fact that the U.S. Fifth Fleet continues to be stationed in Manama is now widely taken as an implicit approval by Washington of the repression: a Saudi military base and an American naval base in the same restless neighborhood may inevitably lead to certain conclusions. There are now signs that some fringe elements of the opposition may be meeting regime violence with their own low-level sporadic violence.
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Iraq, Jihadis, Saudi Arabia, Syria, US Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

John Kerry of Arabia: Levantine Illusions of a Good Man………


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“The top US diplomat, who landed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah in the afternoon, also met Saudi King Abdullah a day after hosting urgent talks in Paris with the Saudi, Jordanian and UAE foreign ministers on the widening crisis in Iraq and Syria. King Abdullah has consistently called for greater US military support for the Syrian rebels, whom the Sunni Gulf kingdom has long backed. Following several signals in recent weeks by US President Barack Obama’s administration, the White House said Thursday it intends to “ramp up US support to the moderate Syrian opposition”……….. Ahmad Jarba, leader of the Syrian National Coalition, welcomed the huge US boost to his forces, battling to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “The situation is very grave and there are sectarian leaders ruling the country so we have to have greater efforts on the part of the US and regional powers to address the situation in Iraq,” Jarba said. Kerry said “the moderate opposition in Syria… has the ability to be a very important player in pushing back against (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) ISIL’s presence… not just in Syria, but also in Iraq“………….”

Secretary Kerry’s statement about the role of the Syrian opposition in solving the Iraq crisis makes little sense here. It is like the advice about taking “a bit of the hair of the dog that bit you“. He is bent on going the old route he was warned off for the past year or two. He seems to have just bought some more of the Saudi snake oil about arming and further empowering the Syrian opposition militias.

The Wahhabi opposition in Syria got their start, their money and their ‘seed weapons’, from the same countries Mr. Kerry has been visiting this past week. The sources were on the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Much of the weapons that got the Jihadists their “booty” in land and property and hostages and death is American and European. Weapons supplied by these same governments to the “Syrian opposition” seeking to “liberate” Syria: in one case for the tender mercies of the Wahhabi doctrine, in the other case for the dubious rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Arming and funding the Syrian militias will not increase the chances of peace in either Syria or Iraq. It is an invitation, nay a recipe, to keep the Syrian civil war going and to increase the sectarian unrest inside Iraq.

Mr. Jarba is reported to be heading to the door: apparently he will soon be out of the Syrian National Coalition, according to media reports. Either he saw the futility of his position or he is being booted by the Saudi princes who will now have to appoint another man of their choosing to lead the “liberation” of Syria for the Wahhabi cause. Moreover, there are Arab reports that the “general” who heads the allegedly Free Syrian Salafi Army, the man appointed and anointed as the Napoleon of the Syrian-Turkish border, will be officially sacked.

Cheers

mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Jihadis, Sectarian, Syria, US Foreign Policy

No Pasaran! Political Holding Pattern over Iraq and Syria……

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Events are moving fast in this new combined war for Iraq and Syria. The Syrian theater has cooled down somewhat, relatively speaking, with the regime and its allies regaining the momentum. Now the Iraqi theater of this Wahhabi-inspired sectarian civil war is heating up. The Jihadists of ISIS, and now probably al-Nusra Front as well, have moved the front deep into Iraq, in alliance with the remnant Iraqi Baathists who never reconciled to the new electoral system. Things are moving fast now, as this summary shows:

  • Earlier there was a Wahhabi split in Syria: ISIS Split from AL Qaeda after giving Al Zawahri the middle finger. But that may not last (logically it should not).
  • Al Nusra Front was declared months ago the sole ‘legal’ and authorized halal and kosher al-Qaeda franchise in Syria. Remember only a year or two ago when the ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition and Persian Gulf Wahhabis swore al-Nusra was a moderate democratic liberal movement?
  • ISIS sweeps the Syria-Iraq border, creating facts on the ground, for now.
  • ISIS along with Wahhabi and Baathist allies sweep northern Iraq, creating new fronts with Iraq’s Shi’a heartland and with the Kurdish region.
  • American warplanes reported flying over Iraq again, apparently in a political holding pattern as Mr. Kerry sniffs up and around the Gulf princes and potentates. The Saudi princes no doubt will make a pitch for their own allies inside Iraq.
  • Just to further complicate things, and lest they be forgotten by the world, the Israelis decide to bomb inside Syria again. They seem to have some kind of UN mandate to bomb inside any Arab borders with impunity, and why not since everybody else in the world seems to reserve the right to bomb inside any Arab border.
  • Syrian warplanes are reported to be bombing inside Iraq now. And who would have thunk it only a few months ago when Mr. Assad was on his way to foreign exile as prognosticated by Saudi and hence American media and leaders.
  • Wahhabi terrorists seek to spread the sectarian war by speeding up their activities inside the cities of Lebanon, with several bombings this past week.
  • There are reports that the Wahhabi split may have been fixed by events on the Syrian-Iraqi border, that ISIS and al-Nusra may be re-uniting again.
  • Regardless, I can fatwa now that this ISIS business will not last. As the Spaniards facing the Fascist onslaught said seven decades ago: No Pasaran! And this time it will be true, they shall not pass, unlike the case of the unfortunate Spaniards who were betrayed by the European democracies.

Stay tuned for more…………

Cheers
mhg

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Iraq, Jihadis, Sectarian, Terrorism, Uncategorized, US Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

War for Iraq: the Middle East as a Jealous Mistress……..

  

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter When it comes to American world attention the Middle East is a jealous wife. Or maybe just a high-maintenance mistress. Ukraine and Crimea barely had a few short weeks of attention before our region reasserted its place in the sun, in the limelight of misery and hatred and blood. Its supremacy as ‘the trouble spot’ of the world:

  • Pivot to Asia? Maybe so, but you would never know it from the headlines and media coverage. Hillary Clinton came close but fell way short of the Middle East in American media coverage this past week. But that was mainly because she has yet another book out explaining her positions over the past six years.
  • Benyamin Netanyahu? Who is he: we rarely saw his name this past week in U.S. media, and what little we saw was due to the disappearance of three young Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank (the shooting of several Palestinian Arabs got very little coverage: dead Arab youths are of no interest to the West).
  • Snowden and NSA and all that? No doubt the beat goes on on that one, but all is now kosher with Merkel and the Germans.
  • Obamacare, ACA, Benghazi, and Snowden? Maybe in 2016.
  • Pervasive Chinese cyber espionage? Don’t be so rude.

Iraq: the one country the American people, and many American pundits (but not the damaged war veterans), had thought they had left behind, has reared its head again. It was weird, like going back in history. Like going back to Vietnam after 1975. As if D-Day had left some loose ends that needed to be retied a couple of years later. Suddenly Iraq has become a major American concern again. 

Wahhabi Jihadists of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Levant), a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL or WTF and allies had blitzkrieged the Sunni parts of western Iraq, beginning with Mosul and through to Tikrit. Apparently they did it in cahoots with remnant Baathists: to the barely-concealed cheers of the former victims of the Baathists on the Gulf. Blitzkrieg is supposed to be un-Islamic, a heathen style of war only reserved for non-Muslims. Only Germans and Israelis are supposed to wage such heathen war. But the Salafi terrorists, flush with money from the Persian Gulf princes and oligarchs and volunteers from Arab and Western countries, went on a rampage. They took several Sunni towns and performed the obligatory mass killings, lining up thousands of Shi’a (and likely some Sunni) soldiers and employees of the Iraqi state, having them dig up their own mass graves, and mowing them down with very un-Islamic machine guns. In the best tradition of the German Nazi SS and their auxiliaries of World War II. 
We don’t know anymore of what else is happening now in Mosul and other places where the terrorists have taken over. There has been direct media silence for a few days since the early Wahhabi surge (not a pun). There is no first-hand media presence. Which might mean the new ghazis, the conquerors are taking the next logical step: ‘cleaning house, ethnically or otherwise’.
Cheers
mhg