Tag Archives: GCC

Arab Revolutions, GCC, Yemen

Battle for Yemen: Houthis vs. Muslim Brotherhood……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“In a harbinger of things to come, a UNICEF employee told me that the only way he could get supplies to Saada was by partnering with the Islah Charitable Society (ICS), a local aid agency tied to Yemen’s largest Islamist party. He complained that ICS was padding the books and inflating the numbers of people who had been displaced to gain resources for its wider evangelical work…… It was in ways like this that the Saleh regime manipulated the “sectarian” politics of Northern Yemen, seeking to ensure that the two groups were too distracted by each other to turn their attention elsewhere……….So, why think of this as sectarian war? The Houthi’s march on Sanaa in September cannot be easily glossed as “sectarian” just because they are Zaydi Shiites, and most (though not all) Islahis are Sunnis…………”

So the Islah are as corrupt as anyone else in power in Yemen, which makes sense. Islah means “reform” in Arabic, clearly a misnomer now. Very Orwellian use of language in this case, as in most cases in Arab politics.

The Houthis were the rustic country folks who did not have the slick region-wide organization like the Muslim Brotherhood (or the Persian Gulf Salafis) to support them. They could not have taken Sanaa so easily if the ret of Yemenis were not fed up with the Islah corruption and the impotent president General Ab Rabu Hadi Al Zombie, the former vice president of Mr. Saleh, who was given the job by the princes and potentates of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and Doha. Of course the Yemeni scene is more complicated than that: AQAP and the Southern (Aden) independence movement complicate the mix.

These Gulf worthies and princes are now screaming their old tried and true tactic: they are crying “sectarian”. But then, nobody is as responsible as these same potentates for the current rabid sectarianism in our region.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Qaeda, Caliphate, Syria, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Obama’s Curious Syrian Blind Date with Assorted Cutthroats……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“Obama runs the risk of mission creep in Syria……. However, the key test will be for the US president. Having committed his forces to the fight, he needs to reflect on the lessons of past unsuccessful campaigns. Two-thirds of Americans support the US attack on Isis. But to retain that support, he must set clear goals and avoid the curse of mission creep………..”

That is normal, this mission creep: it goes with war, all wars. Going to war is not like giving a birthday party, as I tweeted yesterday. Much more unpredictable. It is almost like going out on a blind date: you can never be sure how things will turn out. That is why they called them ‘blind’.

In this case Mr. Obama is going on a double (nay multiple) blind date, along with a gaggle of princes and potentates. Whom he had to pressure and coerce to forcefully side against their wayward fellow Wahhabis of ISIS and Al Nusra and other assorted international cutthroats.

Just don’t get blindsided.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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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

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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]

Arab Revolutions, GCC, North Korea, Yemen

Yemeni Elections and Swiss Cheese from North Korea……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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Speaking of Houthis and Yemen (my last post): In 2012 General Hadi won the presidential election arranged and supervised by the freely-elected Saudi princes and UAE Emirati rulers. He won by 99.8% of the vote: my Sana’a source reports that the other 0.2% voted for Minnie Mouse (she seemed serious). She also claims Kim Jong-Un called Hadi immediately after the election results came out to ask how he did it, speaking technically not politically. He reportedly offered to send Hadi a huge box of his favorite snack: Swiss Emmental cheese in exchange.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Economics, GCC, Iran, Iraq, US Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Power of Economic Assumption: How to Defeat ISIS with Gulf Princes and Iranian Mullahs……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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“Iran’s supreme leader said on Monday he had personally rejected an offer from the United States for talks to fight Islamic State, an apparent blow to Washington’s efforts to build a military coalition to fight militants in both Iraq and Syria. World powers meeting in Paris on Monday gave public backing to military action to fight Islamic State fighters in Iraq. France sent jets on a reconnaissance mission to Iraq, a step towards becoming the first ally to join the U.S.-led air campaign there. But Iran, the principal ally of Islamic State’s main foes in both Iraq and Syria, was not invited to the Paris meeting…………..”

Mr. Kerry said only last weekend that having Iran attend the Paris meeting on confronting the murderous Caliphate of ISIS was “inappropriate”. Iranian officials were reported in the media as wanting to attend, and the French seemed amenable. Mr. Kerry vetoed Iranian attendance in Paris last week mainly because two of the main sources and financers of ISIS and other Wahhabi terrorist groups, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, reportedly objected and exercised their monetary veto.

Now Mr. Kerry wants to have Iran participate in the deliberations, but “unofficially”. He wants them to be part of the anti-Caliphate dialog, but not in the open, just behind the scenes. That is mainly because he tested the Arab waters in Paris and realized that the current Middle East equivalent of Rhett Butler was also needed for this new version of GWTW. To use a crude and possibly immoral but nevertheless succinct example: he is sort of like seeking the Saudi princes and Emirati shaikhs as legal (but polygamous) wives and courting the Iranian mullahs only as potential mistresses. As usual it will be American resources and pilots (and others) bearing the brunt, not Europeans who are the nearest target of the terrorists. Maybe with some Arab monetary support. Maybe.

So, what to do? This is the easy part: as I learned in economics, we use the power of ‘assumptions’. We make assumptions that fit our conditions and our needs: in this case we make assumptions about the Syrian opposition groups. Many in the U.S. administrations are already making certain correct assumptions. The mythical moderate Syrian opposition, those that live on the Turkish border or in Rive Gauche apartments and Persian Gulf five-star hotels. They, with the cooperation of the absolute Wahhabi tribal princes, can do the job and bring democracy and cultural tolerance to a once-very-tolerant Syria. Or, we can start by assuming that for now.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right, Sectarian

Bahrain Uprising: the War on the Al Khawaja Family……….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15                   DennyCreek2

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“Police detained Bahraini human rights campaigner Maryam al-Khawaja after her arrival in the Gulf country on Saturday, her mother said. Al-Khawaja has dual Bahraini and Danish citizenship. Her mother, Khadija al-Musawi, told The Associated Press that her daughter was refused entry after presenting her Danish passport and a Bahraini identification card, and at one point was surrounded by police. The activist has said she wanted to visit her jailed father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is on hunger strike to protest his detention. Lawyer Mohammed al-Jishi told the AP that prosecutors plan to press charges against al-Khawaja that include insulting the king and police……………”

How can anybody ever ‘insult’ that particular king and police? Is that even possible in this days and age and in that venue?

The father, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, has been under arrest almost since the beginning of the Bahrain uprising in 2011. He is reported to have undergone torture.  Another daughter was released just recently from prison but faces other charges from the ruling family. She will probably spend more time in prison. This one, Maryam, has been outside Bahrain, traveling for the cause of her country. Most Arab countries like Egypt have banned her from entering their territory, in deference to the Saudi princes and/or local Salafis. Oddly, such is the poisonous sectarian atmosphere encouraged by the Al Saud and other Wahhabi propaganda that some Arabs who have revolted against their own regimes are also against the Bahrain uprising.

She remained outside prison by remaining outside the occupied country. Now she is back home and in prison, arrested upon arrival at the airport, allegedly pending an investigation. She will probably start spending more time in prison as well. At some point the whole family will probably be in a regime prison at the same time.

The Bahrain ruling family is moving fast toward Saudi-ization of its court and legal systems. The room for dissent and criticism is narrowing by the week. As the late Egyptian poet Ahmad Fuad Negm reportedly opined once: “The poor Bahraini. He gets arrested by Pakistani or Jordanian policemen, he is tormented by Syrian or Jordanian interrogators, and he is tried and sentenced by an Egyptian judge. He, the accused native is the only Bahraini in the courtroom“. Or something to that effect.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Politics, GCC, Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

The Internal Wars of the GCC: from Al Bassous to Qatar and Egypt……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15                   DennyCreek2

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The foreign ministers of the Gulf GCC members met in Jeddah Saturday, reportedly to follow up on an ‘ultimatum’ given to Qatar. The ultimatum was from the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (also Bahrain, but now only as an appendix of the Saudis).

The ultimatum itself is an interesting, and should be shocking, piece of undiplomatic diplomacy and meddling in the sovereign affairs of an allegedly independent sovereign country. The GCC right-wing group (Saudi, UAE, Bahrain) had reportedly warned, nay threatened, Qatar to basically adopt their Saudi-imposed foreign policy in regional and inter-Arab affairs, or else. At stake is continued Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its continued criticism of Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi regime in Egypt, mainly through the Aljazeera network. As well as Qatari refusal to push Hamas in Gaza under the bus.

The Qatari-Saudi rift goes back to long before the Arab uprisings and the Egyptian military coup of 2013 and the Syrian civil war and Hamas control of Gaza. During the 1990s, Saudi intelligence orchestrated an attempted coup in Qatar, with the goal of overthrowing the last Emir Hamad. The coup attempt, in which certain tribal elements from the border region were also implicated, failed. As a result, a large group of senior Saudi intelligence and security officers were arrested in Doha and imprisoned for years. They were released during the last decade and send back home to Riyadh.

Anyway, some GCC ministers claimed after the Jeddah meeting that ‘the issues’ are on their way to being resolved. In fact all ‘issues’ are usually on their way to being resolved, and not only because GCC functionaries and top bureaucrats habitually claim that they are. Famously, the pre-Islamic tribal Al Bassous War was also resolved after some forty years, and that one was over a camel and a cantankerous woman who owned it. Even the Israeli-Palestinian ‘issue’ may be resolved some day: it has only been, what, about 75 years or so?

If’n you ask me, if’n you do, and I am aware that you haven’t yet, I would say it is highly unlikely that the Qataris will succumb to the demands of the Saudi princes and their Abu Dhabi and Bahraini sidekicks. There have been several bilateral meetings between Saudi and Qatari leaders in recent months. A bilateral summit meeting between King and Emir was held in Saudi Arabia last July, and apparently it failed to resolve the issues. It is unlikely then that a bunch of GCC bureaucrats can solve what King and Emir could not solve.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Elections, Arab Politics, Bahrain, Egypt, Elections, GCC, U.S. Foreign Policy

Arab Nursery Rhyme Transition to Democracy: Mary Mary Quite Contrary…….

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15  DennyCreek Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

KuwaitCox2 
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.

“Deputy spokesperson of the United States State Department Marie Harf said in a press briefing on Monday that Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is leading the country’s democratic transition, despite recent criticism by the US of Egypt’s human rights record and the US holding some of its aid to Egypt pending democratic reform……….”

Also sprach U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf. But in fairness what else can the lady say?
Transitioning to democracy is a gentrified term to use now for Arab dictatorships and absolute tribal family rule. Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi is transitioning Egypt to democracy, hence he is still part of an axis of goodness, almost certified by Good Housekeeping. In the process he has overthrown a freely-elected president, the man who promoted him to defense minister, and thrown him in prison with a dozen or so trumped up charges. In the process his security forces and his soldiers have massacred a few thousand civilian protesters, the largest such massacre in modern Egyptian history. In the process his security have arrested and thrown in prison tens of thousands of people who disagree with him. In the process he has got himself “elected” against a hapless tool, with more than 97% of the vote (in a very low turnout election). In the process his courts have sentenced almost two thousand protesters to death, and the toll keeps rising.

By the same standards we can also argue that the Al Saud absolute tribal princes are transitioning the Arabian Peninsula toward democracy. We can also say that the vile absolute tribal rulers of Bahrain are transitioning the captive island of imported mercenaries and teargas toward democracy. We could have said the same about Mu’ammar Gaddafi and we can say it abut Bashar Al Assad. Etc , etc, etc………
Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, they will still be transitioning their peoples toward democracy. With a lot of help from their soldiers and their security agents, and in some cases with their imported mercenaries.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Cinema, Iraq, Syria, Terrorism, Wahhabi

The Hollywood Caliphate of ISIS: Illusions of Sectarian Harmony in Iraq……..

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15                   DennyCreek2

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Masked terrorists attacked and killed worshipers in a (Sunni) mosque in Iraq last week. This reminded people of the brief but ugly sectarian civil war in 2006-08. The sectarian war that has resumed now with the mass killings of many non-Wahhabis by the terrorists of ISIS in Al-Anbar and other provinces. Even the Mubarak-appointed shaikh of Al-Azhar in Cairo, who did not bat an eyelash when ISIS were killing so many others, protested this “sectarian” attack.

My own guess is that the attack probably was not “sectarian” but that it was intended to provoke more sectarian hatred. That the perpetrators were almost certainly not “Shi’a” militias, but Wahhabi Salafis seeking to further muddy the waters. The rule of thumb in these terror incidents is to look for whoever benefits from them politically, and that should be obvious in this case.

The same arguments that were so publicized to explain the political and security troubles in Iraq in recent years will be used again after Haider Al-Abadi forms his government. If he is allowed to form his government. In fact the “sectarian” argument will be used again by former Baathists and their foreign Arab backers before he forms his government; I’d say starting next week. Ultra sectarians using the “sectarian” argument against others. Western governments frustrated with the whole Arab sectarian war will grasp this argument as the cause and root of all their troubles in Iraq. They will press Al Abadi to compromise by handing over ‘meaningful’ portfolios to the former Baathists. He, like Al Maliki, like any other Iraqi leader with the same sense and the same insecurities, will refuse to hand over the Defense or Security portfolios to former Baathists. Back to square one.

The root cause of Iraq’s current troubles is two-folded. It is a combination of domestic sectarian mistrust and foreign Arab meddling. The domestic Iraqi issue may take care of itself if outsiders would stop meddling and feeding the sectarian insecurities. Some of the Arab neighbors of Iraq, the Saudi princes and and Qatari and Emirati potentates who financed Wahhabi terrorism in Iraq long before they opened the Syrian front, have not accepted the regime change that was brought by the Western invasion of 2003. Their intolerant ideology, money, and volunteers are what gave birth to ISIS and its absurd Hollywood-style Caliphate.

Cheer

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum