Category Archives: Weapons deals

Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Britain, Corruption, Mercenaries, Weapons deals

Gulf Arms Race: the Best Armed Foreign Mercenaries, it is the Commission, Stupid!………

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

“At the Defence Security and Equipment International arms fair in London’s Excel Centre, there is no shortage of options for dishing out bad days, weeks, months and whole lifetimes. The Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, addressed the delegates yesterday morning, extending a warm welcome to the various invitees, among them military procurement officers from Angola, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The 65 national delegations asked to buy weapons in London include 14 regimes defined as “authoritarian” by human rights groups, who have highlighted the use of British arms in suppressing opposition movements in the Middle East……….. Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest buyer of British weapons and also the largest importer of arms globally. Saudi contracts earned the UK about £300m last year, according to arms trade analysts the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute……………”

So, all this means that the citizen of the UAE and Saudi Arabia is the best armed citizen anywhere in the whole wide world. Funny, they don’t look it: I suppose I should correct and say that the UAE foreign mercenary is the best armed foreign mercenary anywhere in the world.
According to SIPRI, it now looks like Saudi Arabia is the biggest arms importer in the world. The United Arab Emirates was the biggest Arab arms importer and the second largest arms importer in the world for several years, but no more. The UAE has less than one million citizens (plus a few million temporary foreign laborers) while Saudi Arabia probably has some 15 million citizens (plus millions of temporary foreign laborers). Now the potentates in Abu Dhabi will try harder to surpass the potentates in Riyadh. They certainly can afford it more than Riyadh can. That also means that some Saudi prince(s) will collect billions in commissions (called bribes in impolite and crude company, but I won’t stoop to that), much more than their Emirati (Abu Dhabi) potentates who will collect less in arms commissions (also called bribes in impolite and crude company, but I won’t stoop to that either).
Now we will have a race: the UAE potentates will seek to regain their position in weapons imports and, not incidentally, in the size of commissions their potentates receive. These fat bribes commissions are paid by the oh-so-generous Western arms exporters, who will then add the cost to the export price. Almost like money laundering: well, it is a way to launder the public money of these Gulf states back to the potentates with the help of the exporting companies. Remember the British BAE Systems and the scandal of the US $2 billion weapons deal bribe to Prince Bandar Bin Sultan (allegedly)? That was the investigation by the Serious Frauds office (SFO) that Tony Blair killed. It was called the al-Yamama deal. A lot of laundering there, more than the proverbial but real Chinese laundry in my neighborhood.

Maybe there are good honest reasons for amassing and storing all these weapons in desert warehouses. Maybe it is the fear of the scowling Iranian mullahs across the Gulf, maybe it is some mistrust of the resolve of the Western allies whose fleets fill my Gulf. In at least two cases it is the fear of the people, which explains the foreign mercenaries. Yet somehow I can’t shake off this nagging feeling that “It is the commissions, stupid!”
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Culture, Mercenaries, UAE, Weapons deals, WTF

UAE: Politics, Devilish Violent Crimes, Generals and Potentates with Missiles……..

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF

The following were recent headlines of the “Courts” page of a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates:


  • “Man says devil made him molest girl”
  • “
    Boys accused of raping man”

  • “Fake officer kidnapped, raped woman, court told”

  • “Army clerk forged signature of Chief of Armed Forces, court told”

  • “Student claims cousin raped her”

  • “Former footballer appeals against conviction in Dh5.5m citizenship scam”  

  • “Man threatened to drink woman’s blood, court told. She says he was trying to force his way into her apartment”

  • “Woman charged with illicit sex says partner was husband”

These are all ‘exotic’ crimes by any standard I can think of. This is what happens when there are no real politics to keep them busy, as in the UAE. The next most exciting thing apparently is violent sex and murder and robbery. Which reminds me: there is even less politics in Saudi Arabia, and I wonder what their police reports are like.

As for that army clerk who forged a general’s signature: I hope he has no access to all those fancy missiles the Abu Dhabi has been buying from around the world. The UAE is the second largest importer of weapons in the whole wide world and aims to be the first largest importer of weapons in the whole wide world. The import-deprived Iranian IRGC generals probably drool every time they read about all these advanced Western goodies landing in the warehouses of Abu Dhabi (I assume the mullahs also drool, just like all clergy including the Catholics). Now we don’t want some dipshit army clerk to start a missile war across the Gulf, do we? Only dipshit generals and potentates should be able to start a missile war.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Economics, Iran, Iraq, nuclear wepoans, Sanctions, US Foreign Policy, Weapons deals

On Iraq Sanctions, Iran Sanctions, Cuba Sanctions, Smart Sanctions, Asinine Sanctions, ………….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF
“Economic sanctions rarely hurt a disfavored regime or its powerful supporters, at least in the short run. They hurt those at the bottom of the ladder. This is a point that we Westerners, with our addiction to the imposition of sanctions to punish bad behavior, should take more seriously than we do………..  This has always been the problem with the West’s sanction addiction. Sanctions nip at those whose lives are already marginal…….. Dictators everywhere try to control the economy, to funnel resources to their friends……… In the case of Iran, the sanctions are manifestly failing, unless their point was to force the government to redistribute the wealth. The regime is proceeding with its nuclear weapons development, and may even be picking up the pace. Western experts differ on how close the regime is to completing its research. The head of Israeli military intelligence recently estimated that Iran may have the capacity to build at least one nuclear explosive device by next year. Things may change. The Iranian regime may give up its nuclear dreams, making the world that much safer, and, incidentally, handing the Obama administration a much-needed foreign-policy victory. But no matter the result in Iran, let us remember, the next time we debate the imposition of sanctions on a rogue state, exactly whom we are really punishing…………”

It is highly unlikely that the ruling Iranian mullahs (or any replacement regime) will suddenly give up their nuclear program anytime soon.
As for the forces behind economic sanctions: they are more complex than the writer notes. The famous sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime in Iraq did not harm the dictatorship or its elites: it hurt the ordinary people. But these were broad wartime sanctions, not as selective or nuanced as what Iran “supposedly” faces currently. Then there are so-called smart sanctions that are as almost dumb as other sanctions, but maybe not as dumb as asinine sanctions. One reasonable definition of asinine sanctions is that they are the kind that neoconservatives usually prefer. A good example of asinine sanctions are those no one believes in but they are kept in place out of political fear or expediency, like the sanctions against Cuba. In fact, the American sanctions against Cuba are some of the most asinine in history.
Take the sanctions against Iran: they are only partly driven by IAEA requirements, but their depth and scope also reflect the influence of domestic American political pressure groups. These groups include the Israeli lobby (AIPAC, etc), as well as defense hawks on the right (and some on the left). These sanctions are also partly driven by a regional rivalry for domination between the United States (directly and/or through its proxy allies) and Iran. In summary, the scope of the sanctions is the result of domestic American politics as much as Iranian “infractions”. Then there is the ego of some regional allies that the U.S. administration needs to massage, in this case the Israelis, the Saudis and possibly the UAE potentates (there is oil and huge contracts at stake). Then there is the need of some in both Israel and the USA to inflate the Iranian threat and its urgency in order to divert attention away from the urgent need to resolve the issue of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Among other things………
(Personally, I believe the only “smart” sanctions are those that target weapons and individuals, not institutions. Targeting large institutions almost always tends to harm many ordinary people).

Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

Iran, Israel, nuclear Iran, nuclear wepoans, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Weapons deals

Nuclear Theocratic Powers of the Middle East and Beyond…….

   Rattlesnake Ridge   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   

 
      BFF
“Particularly worrisome in the Saudi case is the potential departure from the Gold Standard established by the UAE 123 agreement. If, as has been suggested, the Saudi agreement is concluded without an accompanying commitment to abjure reprocessing and enrichment technologies, there could be profound consequences for the administration’s nonproliferation objectives and for the long-term stability of the Middle East. Although Saudi Arabia has not previously been judged to be a proliferation threat, as it “lacks the technological expertise, industrial base, and disciplined commitment required to develop an indigenous weapons capacity,” recent developments may have altered this assessment. The alacrity with which the United States dispensed of its long-standing support for the regime of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak no doubt gave pause to the House of Saud, which continues – 30 years later – to be troubled by American abandonment of the Shah on the eve of the Iranian revolution. Nor is Saudi threat perception likely to be relieved by the regional meddling of its frequent ideological competitor. This is to say nothing of the Kingdom’s concerns regarding Iranian weaponization. Indeed, Saudi Arabia appears increasingly unnerved by the trajectory of the Iranian program, a trend that can be seen in the country’s shifting characterizations of its own nuclear ambitions. ……..”

  • There are fears that Saudi Arabia may try and shift any nuclear program toward military use. In fact that is exactly what Prince Turki al-Faisal warned about last month. There is now this fear, but the difference is that the Saudis will need American (and maybe other) help in any nuclear plan they have.

  • There are, there have been, fears of the Iranian nuclear program. These fears are based on possibilities that the Iranian may be trying to either build nuclear weapons or, more likely, reach the point ehre they can build nuclear weapons.

  • Then there is Israel. Everyone knows that Israel has many nuclear warheads, although no one can prove it. Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), hence it is not under any Western pressure to allow international (IAEA) inspection.
  • Pakistan has several nuclear weapons, and it is not an NPT signatory either. Pakistan was created as a quasi-theocratic state: it was carved up as an Islamic state from parts of India. The country has been veering toward fundamentalism and back over its history. It may be closer now than at any other time.


What do all these West and South Asian countries have in common? No, not the geographic proximity. They are all either declared theocracies, undeclared theocracies, quasi-theocracies, or threatened theocracies. They are all within one of these categories I noted above. Scary, no? (The United States is not a theocracy, although the Tea Party and other elements would like it to be and try to push it that way).
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]

GCC, Persian-American Gulf, UAE, Weapons deals

Shaikhs and Bins: the Rapidly Evolving UAE Police State……..

     
Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

 

 
      My BFF
The United Arab Emirates has been cracking down on any whiff of dissent. This week, the regime took over the Teachers Union and appointed its own agents on the board because they had advocated for democracy. They have not yet been charged of being Iranian agents but stay tuned. A week or two earlier they dissolved the independent human rights organization for the same reason. Several advocates of free speech and democracy have been arrested and are still in prison. Some of the latter have been charged with insulting the ruler of Abu Dhabi (president of UAE) Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan and his crown prince Shaikh Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nahayan and the ruler of Dubai Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum. I am not sure how they insulted these tribal absolute shaikhs, maybe they stuck their tongues out at their ubiquitous pictures.
The al-Nahayan, rulers of Abu Dhabi who run the whole UAE (the other shaikhs are just for show), are apparently worried about unrest. This is odd for two reasons:

Why are they worried I: The overwhelming majority of the UAE are temporary imported foreign workers and housemaids who are rotated every few years and have no interest in the internal politics of the country. They probably form around 85% of the population. Maybe the al-Nahayan can imiose masters of Apartheid the al-Khalifa in Bahrain and naturalize these millions of Asians to offset the politically demanding natives.

Why are they worried II: The UAE is the second biggest importer of weapons in the whole wide wonderful world. They are a bigger importer than Israel and Saudi Arabia. They are buying weapons faster than they can rust in their desert warehouses: they are clearly striving to become the first biggest importer of weapons in the whole wide world. Since they obviously have no intention of invading either Saudi Arabia or Iran, and they seem to think they can always buy Oman, the only reason for these weapons is to keep their people under control. I mean their native people since the Asian housemaids who form a majority of the people are not likely to start a revolution. So with all these weapons in the desert warehouses, what is there to worry about?

I still think their best bet is to find an Iranian connection, create one if they must. If the hapless al-Khalifa could do it in Bahrain and sell it to Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton, the al-Nahayan should be able to do even better if only because they have more money. Or maybe they can blame it on the devil.
More on this later.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Middle East, Weapons deals

Is the UAE Falling Behind in its Armaments Goal?………….

        

                        Summer

 

   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter  
This CIA entry gives spending on defense programs for the most recent year available as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP); the GDP is calculated on an exchange rate basis, i.e., not in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).
The UAE has been the second biggest importer of weapons since 2005. This means the al-Nahayan had the world “silver medal”. In the region, the UAE has been the first biggest importer of weapons, i.e. the gold medal. Not sure what they have been doing with all the hardware, since they don’t have enough citizens for all these arms (some 80-85% of the population is composed of Asian laborers and housemaids who are not eligible for military service).
Now there is a new shocker for the UAE, something they did not know: in terms of total defense spending as a percent of GDP they are way down the list. They are number 40! Well below lowly Oman and rival Qatar and the even lowlier Bahrain!
Now the rulers of Abu Dhabi have three choices to catch up: (1) Speed up the purchase of weapons, and that is okay, it means more bribes commissions for the potentates. (2) Induct many thousands of expatriate workers into the armed forces which would push up military spending at the expense of civilian spending. (3) Find a way to reduce the GDP! I leave that last one to them to figure it out.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]