Category Archives: War

Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, MENA, Middle East, War, Weapons deals

IDEX and MAGA in MENA: How Arab Regimes Buy More Weapons to Kill Other Arabs……

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Arab kids in IDEX candy store…

“The world’s largest military fair is wrapping up in the United Arab Emirates. The IDEX exhibition attracts mainly African, Arab and Asian officials who are shopping for weapons. For defence companies at the fair, it’s a highly lucrative market. Never since the end of the Cold War have countries spent so much on defence, with deals worth a total of 100 billion dollars signed worldwide last year. Our correspondents report from Abu Dhabi…….”

They call it IDEX (the International Defense Exhibition), but much of it is not defensive. It is a new form of Newspeak. Most of those Arabs who buy the weapons have not been attacked by anyone in recent history, at least not in a quarter century. Those few who have been directly attacked were attacked by other Arab regimes (let’s leave Israel out of the equation here: these weapons are aimed at other Muslim/Arab states). Many of the rich Arab buyers are actively involved in wars in other poorer Arab countries. Some of these oligarchies are also stockpiling weapons to help repress their own people’s aspirations. Western weapons bought by Arabs from foreign “friends” to kill other Arabs.

Sometimes the local potentates get “commissions” from weapons deals (an important consideration). In some cases the weapons purchases are used to exert political influence on the exporting Western governments (British governments have been easy targets for such blackmail, and occasionally the French as well).

As Donald Trump would say or tweet (but he won’t in this case): Sad! So Sad! …….While he runs to the bank.

According to SIPRI data:
Saudi Arabia ‘s share was second largest world weapons importer: 7% of total international arms imports in 2011-2015 (compared to 2.1% in 2006-2010). The United Arab Emirates (UAE) share was fourth largest weapons importer: 4.6% in 2011-2015 (compared to 3.9% in 2006-2010). Each imported more than much bigger countries. But then one of these two Arab states (Saudi Arabia) has been engaged in indirect wars in Syria and Iraq and both are engaged directly in Yemen (active air and land war against local Yemeni forces). Saudis were the largest importers of total American arms exports (9.7% in 2011-2015), while the UAE were the second largest (9.1%).

Some of these Arab-bought weapons find their way into the killing fields of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Possibly other places as well. In an era when revenues are declining and poverty expands even in petroleum-producing countries. Helping Make Arabia Great Again.

Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum

 

Donald Trump, Iran, Israel, JCPOA, nuclear Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Politics, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, War, War on Iran

A Banana Republic? USA as Portrayed by Some Americans and One Israeli Hustler…….

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“President-elect Donald Trump will be a good friend to Israel and hopefully the two countries can work together to dismantle the international nuclear agreement with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview Sunday. While the two countries are close allies, relations were sometimes tense between Netanyahu and President Barack Obama because of their vastly different world views on the Iran deal and other issues………”

There is something eerily Banana Republic-ish about the way the USA is being portrayed in the media these days. As portrayed by US media, some US politicians, and also by foreign hustlers like Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel.

American media and many among the political classes talk of Russians influencing the 2016 presidential election. Hacking the DNC and RNC and somehow influencing the election results (no explanation yet as to how hacking leads to influencing). A lengthy investigation is pending.

Enter Benyamin Netanyahu, the super-opportunistic right-wing prime minister of Israel. He is publicly and loudly offering to “help” the president-elect Donald trump handle the cancellation of the Iran Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,or JCPOA). An agreement signed on by Iran and the Rest of the World, including the UN and European Union. Mr. Netanyahu knows a thing or two about breaking treaties and agreements (you can ask Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy, and many other world leaders and international bureaucrats about that).

Thus Netanyahu is setting the stage for what he has wanted for years now: to get America embroiled in another endless Muslim war. A war of choice that is not related to American homeland defense. Yet another of what some critics have been calling stupid wars in Muslim lands.

To complicate matters, reports have announced yesterday (Sunday) an agreement between Iran and Boeing to purchase jetliners for US$ 16.7 billion. Unless Sheldon Adelson and John Bolton can replace the Iranian order with their own. No matter, the US Congress of both houses and both parties is beholden, and often forgets national interests when it comes to campaign money……….
Cheers

M Haider Ghuloum

Arab Media, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, War, Yemen

The War in Yemen: Exactly Whose Side is Allah On?…..

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Saudi media, like most Arab and Middle East and Muslim states media, is controlled or severely-monitored by the state. Like most Middle East media, the reporting on the news reflects the state’s official policy. This is also true for Iran and especially for Turkey and to a much lesser extent for Israel.

The war in Yemen has not been going well for the Saudi side. The Houthi militias and their army allies have been stubborn in resisting the attempted well-armed and well-financed foreign assault. Moreover, the ISIS and AQAP terrorist groups have grown stronger in South Yemen, the main sector of operations for Saudis, Emiratis, and their hired African allies like Sudan and others (in addition to logistical and intelligence, air-fueling, and the siege help by the USA and Britain).

The Yemenis are also taking the war seriously into southern Saudi territory, areas some Yemenis still remember were their own land before the Saudis annexed them. It is almost like a war between the Yemenis and most of the rest of the world, and the lightly-armed and besieged Yemenis are winning so far.

More recently the attacking coalition has been losing some expensive aircraft. Apparently God, Allah, or Yahweh has decided to join the Houthi-Salih alliance for now. According to Saudi and UAE media, all their warplane and helicopter losses have been due to “bad weather”. Occasionally “technical issues” are mentioned. This scape-goating has not escaped the notice of some Yemeni commentators on social media. Since bad weather, like good weather, is the work of God, I lean toward concluding that God is moving against the Salafi-Wahabi-Muslim Brotherhood coalition fighting in Yemen. To further complicate matters, Arab media report that the UAE has its own plans for South Yemen, possibly as an independent-again entity but dependent on Abu Dhabi for financial support.

So that is where it stands. You’d think Allah would side with the good pious Salafis, Wahhabis, and MB against an alliance that is dominated by Zaidi quasi-Shi’as with alleged ties to Persian Magi heretics. But apparently not this time, not yet. I personally suspect that HE is remaining neutral in this Yemeni folly.

(Which also brings up another point embarrassing to many Salafis: how come Allah always allows the Israeli Jews to easily win all their wars against the Arabs (except for one in Lebanon)? True, they are a People of the Book, HIS earliest clients, but to the Salafis they are still accursed heathens and, as their more rabid Salafi shaikhs always claim at the mosques, “descendants of pigs and monkeys”).

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Politics, CIA, Iraq, Mercenaries, U.S. Foreign Policy, War

Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi: Death of a Convenient Western Alibi……..

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Ahmed Chalabi died this week. His death has allowed the Western media to re-iterate, and almost certainly exaggerate again, his singular role in pushing the American-British, Bush-Blair, 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We are to believe that one man, an Iraqi exile with possible unsavory connections, fooled the huge American intelligence community (remember when CIA chief George Tenet said finding WMD in Iraq was a Slam Dunk). He also supposedly fooled the less-massive British intelligence machine: MI6 and James Bond and George Smiley and the rest of the possible characters.
Gone are Donald Rumsfeld’s snarky comments about Old and New Europe. Gone are Dick Cheney’s claim of fictional meetings between Saddam Hussein agents with Al-Qaeda operatives in Czecho-Slovakia. Gone are the silly allegations of “mushroom cloud” and “smoking gun”. Gone are the allegations of Yellow Cake from Niger and the outing of uncooperative CIA agents.

Gone are the huge no-bid contracts for well-connected U.S companies and Persian Gulf contractors. Gone is any talk about millionaire American private military and building contractors who made their fortunes in the Iraq war, on the backs of dead and crippled American boys and girls and Iraqi victims. Gone is the talk about a billion-dollar Baghdad embassy that was used as a cash cow for corrupt Americans and their Gulf partners.

Chalabi was one exaggerator, perhaps one liar among many in the early years of this century. Not all of them were Arabs. Chalabi’s death seems convenient for many in the West.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Egypt, GCC, Saudi Arabia, War, Yemen

Arab Despots Finally Find Someone They Think They Can Defeat, Poorer Arabs……..

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The princes of the Persian Gulf countries must have spent almost a trillion dollars on weapons and related services in the past decade or so. Many princes and potentates and their families have accumulated huge fortunes from commissions and kickbacks (never called bribes in polite mixed company) on these arms deals. I and others have often commented that these weapons are imported and left to rust in the desert, unless they can be used for repression and crowd control.

Now the princes and potentates are setting out to prove me and others wrong. They have finally found someone they think they can beat on or so they think. So they are carpet bombing the major cities of the poorest Arab country outside Africa, Yemen. As long as they stick to aerial bombing they are doing fine from their point of view, killing Yemenis and destroying Yemen.

They may, they should, hesitate to actually enter the land of Yemen: they have tried it before and got whipped, both the Saudis and their Egyptian sidekicks. Still, they may decide to end this curse of Yemen by using imported mercenary armies as cannon fodder, or Houthi-fodder. Pakistanis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans, and perhaps Bengalis. People the princes deem expendable.

They are crowing, these entitled princes, in their media that they are achieving a great victory, from a distance. As they kill and destroy their neighbors. Soon it will be time for the pop corn as the real battle is joined on land.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, U.S. Foreign Policy, War, Yemen

A Unified Arab Army of Pakistanis, Sudanese, Egyptians, and Americans………

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There was excitement in Sharm El Shaikh, the former Israeli resort that Egypt inherited (actually regained) after the Camp David accords. The Arab absolute kings, presidents for life, kitchen-hardened field marshals, and other assorted despots gathered to bless the new violent assault on Yemen.

One could probably hear some of their minds whirring, the mental cash registers ringing, calculating: how much money can we get out of these absolute tribal rulers of these statelets or half-states as Al Sisi and his advisers called them, called us, on tape.
Quite a coalition of the eagerly willing for a price in saudi and Emirati and Qatari money:

  • Sudan whose dictator is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide, mass murder, and other violations.
  • Somalia which has no government except on paper.
  • Military junta-ruled Egypt, in an economic bind and willing to convert to any faith, including Wahhabism, for a price.
  • Perennial mercenary nuclear state of Pakistan, always happy and willing to supply mercenaries, soldiers, and interrogators to several Persian Gulf states for a price.
  • Humorless Jordan, a favorite source of mercenaries: interrogators, torturers, and other assorted crowd control specialists.
  • Others, including Qatar and the UAE (Emirates) whose economies rely on the almost 90% of their populations that are temporary expatriate laborers.

Quite a coalition of the willing to pay and the eager to be paid. Then there is the Obama administration, of the early perhaps premature Nobel Peace Prize, which everybody in the Middle East either suspects or knows planned the short-term strategy for the ongoing savage bombing of Yemen. Unless they think the Egyptians and Saudis and Qataris can organize and choreograph such a campaign. Which nobody in their right mind believes.

A unified Arab force indeed………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Caliphate, Jordan, War

The Manly Official “Mission Accomplished” Photo of Jordan’s King……….

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Jordanian King Abdullah has had a meteoric rise across American media this past week, after his air raids and especially his “Mission Accomplished” photographic poses like this one below:

JordanKing
New Marvel Comics Hero, and he ain’t even American……

He doesn’t look nearly as goofy as George W Bush did in his famous pose. My source in Amman tells me all the females in the humorless Kingdom of Jordan (ages 12-80) are swooning over this very manly photo of the monarch. As are most anchorwomen (and a few anchormen) in American media. She claims she is not, maybe the only female in Amman who is not, but I’m not buying it.
Do you suppose the king is angling for a movie
role?

Marvel Comics to Recruit the Heroic Homeric King of Jordan………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

Cinema, Iraq, War

An American Sniper in the Mirror……….

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Saw the film American Sniper last Sunday. A powerful film, as many Clint Eastwood films tend to be. No matter what you think of the underlying politics, no matter what your stance on the Iraq war.

Most of the Arabs in the film were not really Arabs, they spoke with thick accents and certainly ignored the distinct Iraqi dialect. There were also some small mistakes in the location of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Baghdad. At one point they seemed to consider Sadr City as a possible hotbed for Al Qaeda, which is absurd given that its residents are overwhelmingly Shi’a, who are the main targets of AQI terrorists.

I had no problem with the portrayal of the AQI terrorists as bloodthirsty killers, including the gruesome “killing with a drill” part. They were and they are.

Oh, and like Exodus: Gods and Kings, it will not be seen in most Arab or Muslim countries, if in any.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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History, War, WWII

Power and Glory: from D-Day to another Qadisiyya………

      

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For the United States no war in modern history has been as necessary as WWII. No battle was as necessary as the reverse Norman conquest, the storming of the beaches of Normandie:

  • The USA and Britain had a day of glory and sacrifice, also a day of basically taking care of a necessary grim business on D-Day in the 20th century………

  • Before that the Russians (Soviets) had their own days of glory in Stalingrad (and Leningrad, and a few other places)………

  • So what, big deal. In the same century the Arabs had their own glorious battle in the Qadisiyyat Saddam قادسية صدّام and its continuing aftermath…….
  • I forgot the Ghazwat New York and all the little ghazwas of blowing up civilians in Iraq and Pakistan and Syria and other places……….
  • Then there is the very common Ghazwa of Tear Gas and the even more common Ghazwa of Political Prisons. These battles are well known in the Arab world, from Bahrain through Riyadh to Cairo and other places.

Cheers

mhg

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History, War

Power and Glory: from D-Day to another Qadisiyya………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

For the United States no war in modern history has been as necessary as WWII. No battle was as necessary as the reverse Norman conquest, the storming of the beaches of Normandie:

  • The USA and Britain had a day of glory and sacrifice, also a day of basically taking care of a necessary grim business on D-Day in the 20th century………
  • Before that the Russians (Soviets) had their own days of glory in Stalingrad (and Leningrad, and a few other places)………
  • So what, big deal. In the same century the Arabs had their own glorious battle in the Qadisiyyat Saddam قادسية صدّام and its continuing aftermath…….
  • I forgot the Ghazwat New York and all the little ghazwas of blowing up civilians in Iraq and Pakistan and Syria and other places……….
  • Then there is the very common Ghazwa of Tear Gas and the even more common Ghazwa of Political Prisons. These battles are well known in the Arab world, from Bahrain through Riyadh to Cairo and other places.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]