Tag Archives: Houthi

Arabian Peninsula, Iran, IRGC, MENA, Persian Gulf, Yemen

Miracle of the IRGC: Shipping Weapons to Yemen through Western Media………

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“Using this new route, Iranian ships transfer equipment to smaller vessels at the top of the Gulf, where they face less scrutiny. The transhipments take place in Kuwaiti waters and in nearby international shipping lanes, the sources said. “Parts of missiles, launchers and drugs are smuggled into Yemen via Kuwaiti waters,” said a senior Iranian official. “The route sometimes is used for transferring cash as well.” The official added that “what is especially smuggled recently, or to be precise in the past six months, are parts of missiles that cannot be produced in Yemen”. Cash and drugs can be used to fund Houthi activities, the IRGC official said……..”

Apparently Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders, soon including Brig General Qassem Soleimani, are always dying to confess to Western media reporters. Amazing how these high ‘officials’ always confess to Western media, divulging the deepest operational secrets of their organizations and their countries.

From Hezbollah of Lebanon to the Iranian IRGC: all it takes is a Reuters or NY Times correspondent based in Beirut or Abu Dhabi, and they all spill the beans. On condition of anonymity of course, and how convenient is that.

But the important question here is: does anybody actually believe this nonsense, except for the already converted? I mean they should try to make it more plausible: shipping weapons from Iran to Yemen through Kuwait and Iraq (who are at the northernmost tip of the Persian Gulf, hundreds of miles away from Yemen)? Isn’t Saudi Arabia the closest border to Yemen?

Oh, and the “drug” angle is also a cute touch, often used in these cases against “the other side”, and it is always worth adding a bit more darkness. Maybe it is all true, but it is still cute…

Meanwhile, over ten thousand Yemenis have been killed, hundreds of thousands have been wounded. They did not get hit by these alleged simple missiles, smuggled through impossible routes. They got hit by more genocidal bombs, cluster of otherwise, imported by Arab princes from Britain and the United States.

Cheers
Mohammed 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

Al-Qaeda, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Sorcery, Yemen

Yemen War Awaits the Secret Shari’a Weapon……….

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انشودة المرتزقة:
بلاد العرب اوطاني ,    وكل العرب اخواني
من الشام لكولومبيا    و استراليا وجنوب افريقيا

Yemen is a problem the Saudis themselves have created. Yemen is already spilling over the border. An unmotivated army with the best Western weapons cannot seem to defeat the Houthi tribal guerrillas and the remnants of the Yemeni army. The army of the poorest Arab country outside Africa.

Not even after many months of indiscriminate bombing of towns and cities and the infrastructure. Not even with the help of hired and paid foreign mercenaries from South America and Australia and Africa, courtesy of the potentates of the United Arab Emirates. Not even with the dutiful help of the mighty Obama Administration in targeting and blockading and other logistics. They even have a couple of classic local Yemeni stooges pretending to run Yemen from hotels in Riyadh, presumably under the non-existent leadership of former president Generalissimo Hadi Al Zombie. General Hadi got a Kim-Jong-Un style 99.8% of the vote in elections organized by the Gulf princes (Bashar Al Assad got about 88% last year, Hassan Rouhani got less than 60%). Even as a 30-year old Saudi prince is trying to conduct a genocidal war against it, also from Riyadh.

The Saudis did not learn from their earlier 2009 attempt at military intervention in Yemen. That was a big failure. Now the new Yemen war is definitely spilling over into Saudi Arabia, into regions that were usurped and annexed from Yemen in the 1930s. The rugged Yemeni tribal guerrillas are not like the peaceful urban and village people of Bahrain of 2011. The Saudis and their allies and mercenaries have probably bitten more than they can chew this time. And they have strengthened AQAP and ISIS in Southern Arabia.

They should get out of the way and let the Yemenis settle their matters: unlike in Syria, there are no Iranian or Lebanese forces or militias in Yemen. Not yet. Foreign powers find it difficult to control the country. Resort to witchcraft and sorcery is banned by Saudi clerics, on the pain of death. So, they can only carpet bomb it and kill many of its innocent people.

Unless their hundreds of thousands of graduates of local Islamic Shari’a colleges and universities are working on a decisive secret weapon.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Fatwa, Yemen

Battle for Aden: the Fatwa Stands……..

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It looks like the alliance of Houthis-Saleh have been pushed back from certain regions around Aden. The Saudi alliance of cluster-bombers are claiming a victory. Former president General Hadi Bin Zombie and his hotel cabinet in Riyadh are also declaring a victory. Everybody is declaring a victory in Aden, except the Houthis. Everybody except those who may have been crucial in achieving that partial ‘victory’: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Southern Independence Movement (Hirak).
Western media are copying Saudi media and claiming a victory for ‘Hadi supporters’. Except that almost all Hadi supporters are not fighters: they are suited politicians and corrupt Islah potentates ensconced in hotels in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The people of Aden are no doubt against the Houthis and Saleh encroaching on their city, but they also remember that General Hadi was sent by Colonel Saleh in 1994 to shell Aden and force it into an unwanted marriage with Sanaa.
The battle of Aden apparently continues, but it is telling that the Hadi ghost cabinet is staying away in the safety of exile. One thing is certain as I predicted months ago. Actually it was almost a fatwa by your truly that Hadi will not return to rule in Sanaa. A serious and irrevocable fatwa, no matter who wins in Aden, no matter who wins in Sanaa.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Saudis and Yemenis Exchange Visits: Good and Bad News on the Ground War…………

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One strain of the Saudi opposition, including the anonymous Mujtahidd, has been complaining about the path of the war on Yemen. The Wahhabi opposition support the Yemeni war in general: like almost all Arab Salafis they see it as a sectarian struggle. But they acknowledge that the bombing campaign against Yemen is not going well, no surprise there. They put the blame, rightly, on the princes leading it.


Last week they were complaining about the new young defense minister and crown prince to the crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). They were critical of his taking a second princess wife and heading for a honeymoon in Paris while the country is at war.

This week they are complaining that the same prince MBS has left for a reported good time in the Maldives (islands in the Indian Ocean) while the war is not going well.

There is, however, some good news for those who want a more decisive war. For months some of the Saudi opposition and former president General Hadi Bin Zombie and his Riyadh hotel roommates have been urging a ground invasion of Yemen. Of course Hadi and his roommates had the chance to fight a ground war when they were in Aden, but they chose to escape to the safety and comfort of Riyadh. They left the war and the suffering to the Yemeni people. The good news is that during the second and third  honeymoons of Crown Crown Prince Mohammed the ground war has finally started.

Except the wrong side is waging the ground war, and it is going in the wrong direction for the Saudis. The Houthis and their Yemeni army allies have made bold incursions into Saudi territory and held military posts. Casualties were inflicted and weapons captured. Life in some southern towns and villages has been disrupted, some areas were forced to evacuate. 
Still, the Saudis don’t seem to know how to quit while they’re not ahead. Not yet…………


Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Operation Failed Storm: Frustrated Saudis Seek to Flatten Saada………..

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“Saudi-led forces warned civilians that Yemen’s Saada province would be a military target as of Friday evening, Saudi state television Al Ekhbariya reported. The leadership of the coalition asked all civilians to leave the province, a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, by 7 pm local time, the station said. Saudi Arabia said Thursday it would respond forcefully to cross-border Houthi attacks that started on Tuesday, and has targeted the province with air strikes since then………….”

The Saudi princes have declared all of Saada a target, all of the region a free-fire zone. They’ve asked the residents of the region to leave, go elsewhere, but not to Saudi Arabia. Expect missiles, bombs, and Western cluster munitions to carpet the region. That is the home region of the Houthis who seem to be giving the princes another bloody nose. A clear sign of deep frustration by the planners of Operation Failed Storm.

It looks like Yemenis are neither shocked nor awed with the most advanced most-expensive Western weapons thrown at them by the Saudis. Weeks into the bombing campaign, with the threat of a land invasion by hired African mercenaries (from Senegal, Sudan, and Egypt), the lightly-armed Houthis have had enough. They struck at Najran, a north Yemeni area occupied by Saudi Arabia during the last century. It shows how vulnerable the border region is that the Saudis were forced to close schools and airports in the area. Almost a replay o the 2009 war when the Saudis thought they had a cakewalk into Northern Yemen and were disappointed.

Now, in princely frustration, they are having a royal fit, they are seeking to flatten the Saada homeland of the pesky Houthis. They have said as much. The problem with such saturation bombing is that the  marginal effect declines as the bombing continues (we call it diminishing marginal return in economics) . It is the (North) Vietnam syndrome: the more they were bombed, the less likely they were to give up. It is unlikely the Houthis will travel to Riyadh any time soon to kiss and make up with their attackers.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Media, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen

Unequal Media Wars, Proxy Wars in the Middle East……….

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The Saudi Wahhabi opposition (Mujtahidd and others who support ISIS) recently claimed that the new defense minister Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince to the crown prince, has ‘purchased’ a hundred thousand Twitter accounts, possibly other social media as well. That he plans to hire many security workers to man them and use them. It claims he plans to use them to build up himself in the media. That is not new, some of the top potentates, as well as the most vociferous fundamentalists now ‘own’ millions of followers. 

Anyway, right now the media wars for the West are being won by the Arab princes. Hands down. When it comes to media control and public opinion, billions of dollars make a big difference, especially in influencing Western opinion (but not so much non-Gulf Arab opinion). That is why the Saudi and Qatari potentates have spent billions acquiring existing major traditional Arab media outlets and establishing new ones. From Asharq Alawsat (owned by King Salman) to Al-Hayat (owned by prince Khaled Bin Sultan) to Alarabiya (Saudi royal in-law) to Al-Jazeera and Al-Quds Al-Arabi (Qatari royals) to Middle East Online (UAE) to Al-Arab (owned by Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal but searching for a home outside the Gulf after being ejected from Bahrain), to LBC, among others. And many others.

Now major Western outlets and news agencies often grab anything headlined by Saudi and Qatari networks and magnify them as ‘truths’. By the time they are bounced around the globe and return to where they started from, they ‘are’ quoted as ‘the truth’. A neat trick. It is like the claim that in Yemen, ‘loyalists’ to deposed president Hadi Al Zombie (actually mostly Southern Independence and AQAP) are fighting the Houthi-Saleh alliance on his behalf. Or the myth that Yemen’s war is a proxy war between saudi Arabia and Iran: except that it is the Saudis who are directly bombing Yemen (no proxies there) with Western munitions including cluster bombs. There are no proxies there now, unless the rented Sudanese and Senegalese and Egyptian troops land in Yemen. But then some clever reader might ask: and who are the Saudis acting as proxies for?

Initially the Houthis were not Iranian proxies or allies either: they had their own agenda. Colonel Saleh certainly is not: he was a close Saudi ally for years, even though he is a Zaidi, (or Shi’a) as Western media keep mentioning. But now the Houthis have moved closer to the Iranians for practical reasons, so they are Iranian-backed, but it is still farfetched to call them proxies or stooges.

Yet references to the legend of ‘proxy’ wars in Yemen and Syria continue in the media………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Yemen

Hadi Bin Hameededdin of Yemen: I Shall Not Return……..

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When deposed former president Hadi won the “election” by an amazing 99.8% of the vote, something only Arab despots do. He beat Al Sisi (only 98%), Al Assad (a paltry 88%) and Rouhani (an embarrassing 51%). He even beat Saddam Hussein.

This year he escaped Sanaa for Aden, allegedly disguised in a hijab and abaya (in drag but no pumps), he forgot to announce: I Shall Return.
A few days later when predictably he could not inspire anyone in Aden and he escaped Aden for Djibouti then Riyadh, he also failed to declare: I Shall Return.
During his weeks in Riyadh exile Hadi has urged increased foreign bombing of his people and a foreign ground invasion of his country. From the safety of Riyadh. But maybe he began to see the writing on the wall. No wonder he still would not declare: I Shall Return.
In a few weeks, when the Zombie flees again to his inevitable permanent exile in Abu Dhabi or Cairo, he probably will finally remember to declare: I think I shall return, and I mean it.
He will not. Not after he has urged and cheered the bombs falling on his people and his country. Whatever the outcome of this war on Yemen, whoever wins if anyone does, he will not return as leader of Yemen, something he has never been anyway.

Al Badr of Hameededdin never returned either after 1962, even with all the Saudi resources and money and weapons that tried to get him back into Sanaa.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Yemen War: Rich Men’s Bombs, Poor Men’s Blood…..

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Some interesting points about this Rich Man-Poor Man alliance attacking Yemen these days:

  • Rich Men: As some on social media have noted, it is led by the richest anti-democratic ruling Arab oligarchies. With support and ‘unspecified but essential’ help from the Obama administration. It has hired some of the poorer Arab countries (Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Jordan, Morocco) and Muslim countries (Pakistan) to provide help, possibly cannon fodder if they are forced to engage in a ground war.
  • Poor Men: All this power, the most expensive weapons that petro-money can buy from the Western democracies, mobilized in this attack. To attack one of the poorest Arab countries, in fact the poorest Arab country outside Africa.
  • Command Center:The Houthis were quick to note that the war was declared in Washington, by the Saudi ambassador (who was ignored by most American media). They claim this means the war is managed by Americans. Otherwise, why not declare it publicly in Riyadh?
  • Land Issues: The Houthis, and other Yemenis, have started to discuss the ‘ northern regions’ which are under Saudi control.  Names like Assir, Najran, Jizan come to mind. Those were all regions of northern Yemen that were occupied and annexed by the Saudis in the 20th century. They now say that these regions should be “discussed”. Most of the populations of these regions are Zaidis, of the same sect as the Houthis.
  • Alliances: Still, it not not clear what the Houthi’s goals are either. It is true, they are now allied with their former enemy, wily dictator Al Abdallah Salih. But the Saudis and Qataris, great democrats that they are, are allied with the butcher of Sudan, a man wanted by the ICC. And the dictator of Egypt, who should be wanted by the ICC.

So, the plot thickens, as this bombing attack on Yemen drags on………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Kuwait, Yemen

GCC Opposition and Yemen and a Me-Too State………..

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“All is fair in war, nothing is fair in love“   Unsaid Wahhabi saying

“War is Deception“   Hadith

The GCC opposition groups of the Gulf states, such as they are, have reacted in interesting ways to the war on Yemen:

  • The Saudis have different group that can fall under opposition or reformist categories. The extreme Wahhabi opposition, those who support Al Qaeda and ISIS, have the attitude that “better late than never”. They are strongly for the attack on Yemen, just as they pray for an Israeli or American or Vulcan attack on Iran (to them all is fair in war, if not in love). Others of the opposition who are not so-extreme-Wahhabi are apparently also for the attack. Or most of them like being silent.
  • The same seems to be the case with the Kuwaiti opposition, many of whose factions are under control or Salafi, Muslim Brotherhood, and reactionary tribal elements. Even the more quasi-liberal wing of it is Wahhabi-ized to the extent that they strongly hint at support for the attack on Yemen. They also try to deceptively and hypocritically fudge the issue, deliberately calling it the “Houthi war” rather than the “Yemen war“. Which falls within the Saudi narrative, which is how they look at almost all regional and international issues. They are also strongly against the Bahrain uprising. It is largely sectarian, but then the Shi’as are the same but on the other side. The Shi’as are mostly against this war on Yemen and the Houthis.
  • The UAE doesn’t have any opposition, as far as the Ruling Brothers can tell us. Nor does Qatar. As for Bahrain, well, it is the ultimate Me-TOO state. Whatever the Saudis do is fine by them.
  • Oman seems to be the sanest GCC country these days, and the most independent in decision-making. They would have nothing to do with this war on Yemen.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
[email protected]