Tag Archives: Saudi

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Will Ramadan Save Embarrassment and Life in Southern Arabia?………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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Will the holy month of Ramadan save the Saudi cojones from the fire they started three months ago?

There is a consensus, even within the Arab world, that the intensive Saudi air war against Yemen has failed. Call it what you will: Decisive Storm, Renewed Hope, Faltering Storm (one of my own favorites) or Failed Storm (my most favoritest name for it) or Genocidal Storm. The Saudis and their African Mercenaries (Sudanese, Senegalese, Moroccans, possibly also Jordanians) have run out of real targets. They are now in the process of bombing old targets, and bombing historic buildings, shrines, and residential buildings. They are doing almost WWII-style bombing of cities, hoping to catch some Houthis or Yemeni Army fighters napping. Out of useful targets.
Out of targets but not out of bombs and missiles, courtesy of Western democracies (and petromoney). Yet they don’t want to send their land army into a losing battle. Nor can they get any regime, be it Arab or African or Asian, to send their armies into a ground war and a guerrilla quagmire.

But never fear. Ramadan is here, or at the gates. The advent of Ramadan has not stopped Muslims from waging war against each other in the past, but it might this year. This week, maybe the delegates meeting in Geneva will have the excuse of the holy month to call a long ceasefire. The Saudis should jump at the chance. If the runaway former president General Hadi Bin Zombie objects, they can disinvite him from his Riyadh Hotel. Let him stay in Geneva.

Ramadan Kareem
(I knew someone named Mohammed Kareem, but no relation of Ramadan).
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Dodo Bird of Yemen: Houthis and the Riyadh Hotel Managers………..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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“After 11 weeks of air strikes that have failed to change the balance of power in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is running out of options to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s exiled government to Sanaa. Despite the destruction of much of their heavy weaponry, the Houthi militia and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh control most of the country’s populated west and still daily attack Saudi territory with mortar fire or missiles. The possibility of a ground operation in support of the ragtag local groups still fighting the Houthis in Aden, Taiz, Marib and al-Dhala appears to have been discounted by the Saudis and their allies in an Arab coalition from early on. Riyadh may soon have to face an unpalatable choice: accept the de facto control of its foes over Sanaa and cut a deal, or keep fighting with the risk of Yemen sinking into total chaos, becoming a permanent threat to Saudi security…………”

General Hadi is ensconced with his ghost cabinet in a 5 or 6-star hotel in Riyadh. Issuing new appointments, promotions, and demotions via social media. As if anyone inside or outside Yemen takes him seriously. As if there actually are those “Hadi-supporters” that Western media keep mentioning anywhere in Yemen.  These claimed “Hadi-supporters” are in the same category as the Dodo bird (Raphus Cucullatus). I can imagine the Saudis cracking jokes in Riyadh about his government in exile.

I’ve got a suggestion for the Saudi hosts. Take former President General Hadi Bin Zombie (some Yemenis call him the runaway ex-president الرئيس السابق الهارب) and his ministers and drop them over Sanaa. By parachute of course. Let the bombed people of the capital decide their fate.
Or, more telling, drop them over Aden, the city from which they escaped again and left its people to their grim fate. Let us see how Aden would respond to these Riyadh hotel managers landing among them.
Or even better yet: just let them live unharmed in Sanaa or Aden (how about Saada?) and suffer the Saudi bombs and cluster bombs these miserable men had urged and invited on the people of Yemen. Should be enlightening.

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

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

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

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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Al-Qaeda, Arabian Peninsula, Bible, Jihadis, Osama Bin Laden, Saudi Arabia

Prodigal Sons of the Arabian Peninsula: Jihadis Coming Home………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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““‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)

“In the 13-minute-long recording, the speaker said Islamic State had ordered its followers everywhere to “kill enemies of Islam, especially Shi’ites”, according to SITE. “What then if they live with their disbelief in the Peninsula of Mohammad,” SITE quoted the speaker as saying, referring to the Arabian Peninsula, birthplace of Islam and where Saudi Arabia is located. “They are disbelievers and apostates, and their blood is permissible to be shed, and their money is permissible to be taken. It is a duty upon us to kill them … and even to purify the land from their filth,” he said…………”

The nom de guerre (nom de terrorisme) of the suicide bomber was Abu ‘Amer Al Najdi, indicating he came from the Najd region of Central Arabia. Home and birthplace and power center of the Wahhabi sect and the House of Saud.

These are not the old Al Qaeda, another Saudi prodigal son, many of whose members were forgiven, re-educated, and bribed with jobs and wives. A clever method: presumably a wife would dull the violent edge of fundamentalism by reducing their sexual frustration in the grim Wahhabi society. But that was/is the old Al Qaeda (or AQAP). ISIS or DAESH is a whole new animal, a mutation of the old Jihadism that is uncompromising, which is really the true Wahhabism.

This new prodigal son is coming home in a different fashion. Not hungry and starved and contrite like the Biblical one. This son is resurgent, seeking to destroy the Saudi father and supplant him. Returning to its birthplace and its geographical and ideological roots. Leaner and meaner than the Bin Laden-ites who were careful of committing violence in the Arabian Peninsula, their original home base.

They are opening a new home front for the Al Saud who are now multitasking, engaged in the destruction of Yemen and allying themselves with the old Al Qaeda (Al Nusra) in Syria, while also actively engaged in the politics and wars of Lebanon and western Iraq and the Gulf.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Blockade of Iran, Education, Iran, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia

Prince Turki as a Nuclear Flying Dutchman: Is he Aiming to Learn Persian?………..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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““Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, warned at a conference in South Korea last month. Under the emerging deal, instead of ending Iran’s nuclear program outright, Tehran might be allowed to keep up to 5,000 centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel for energy and medical purposes. Saudi Arabia’s leaders are fixated on containing Iranian power throughout the Middle East, whether real or perceived. The Saudis worry that, once economic sanctions are lifted under a nuclear deal, Iran would gain access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen funds and new oil revenue…………”

The Prince stated something that does not need to be stated, almost inane: “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,”
Iranians also speak Persian: does this mean the Al Saud plan to all learn the Persian language? Anyway, a sovereign country can do whatever it wants at home. Which is exactly what the ruling mullahs of Iran have been saying (or claiming, if you prefer).

As I and others have posted and wisely opined, there is more to it. The Saudi princes want to keep their financial near-monopoly in the Middle East, while starving their neighbors. They feel entitled to keep their potential rivals (mainly Iran and possibly also Iraq) economically weak, and they want the Western powers to help them do it. It is a legitimate power play for the very short term, but it doesn’t work beyond that. You can’t starve national interest and sovereignty and scientific knowledge out of a society.

Of course nobody is stopping the Saudis from developing their own peaceful nuclear program, so there is no need for this Flying Dutchman Prince Turki to perpetually circumnavigate the world screaming about it. The prince is now competing on this issue with his alleged ally Netanyahu, and he sounds as stale: an alliance of convenience between the ultimate anti-semites and the Israelis.
Just do it: you can print it on a new T-shirt. Pull down your universities and colleges, restructure than away from all the Salafi Shariah “stuff” and focus on science.

If not, they can always buy a program, they are good at buying wars and Western weapons and Jihadis for Syria and terrorists for Iraq. It is all apparently legitimate……..

Nuclear Inscrutable Iranians, PrinceTurki as a Nuclear Wandering Semite………     

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

Media Wars: Can Saudis and Qataris Buy the Hearts and Minds of the Arab World?……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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“As with its military operation in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is throwing a great deal of money and resources into media backing for the government of President Abd-Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. In short order, it has helped equip and launch two satellite TV channels supporting the exiled president, as well as an alternative version of Yemen’s official news agency. Meanwhile, TV channels sympathetic to the Huthi movement are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their broadcasts via satellite as the main regional operators suspend their transmissions…………… At the regional level, the two leading pan-Arab TV news channels – the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera – have put aside their differences over Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood and are both running a similar anti-Huthi, and sometimes anti-Iranian, line on Yemen, as is the Abu-Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia…………..”

The Yemenis can defeat, truly trounce, the Saudi forces and their hired allies in any battle. But they don’t have a chance in the media war, almost nobody in the region does. The potentates certainly have not held back on spending money on acquiring old Arab media and establishing new ones. Nobody in the Middle East has such unrestricted access to financial resources, and they have been buying.

Two undemocratic anti-democratic absolute tribal dynasties now dominate the Arab media, both old media and new media. The two Wahhabi regimes, the little one in Qatar and the bigger one in Riyadh are almost in control of much Arab media narrative. Their message is heavily sectarian, not always subtle, the best way to divert attention away from royal corruption and the natural human demands for freedom and self determination. The two Wahhabi financial powers seek to dominate the majority non-Wahhabi Sunni Arab minds while marginalizing and often demonizing Shi’a Arabs (and non-Arabs).

Can they win, nay buy, the hearts and minds in the vast Arab region that extends from Baghdad to Morocco? They can only influence some minds, but they can’t win,  nor buy, any hearts. Hearts cannot be bought. The princes and potentates can’t win any outside their own domain.
    

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

Plan B for Failed Storm: From Bay of Pigs to Bay of Goats……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

In 1961 the CIA financed, trained, and armed a bunch of Cuban exiles and launched them into Cuba. The goal was to overthrow the revolutionary socialist regime of Fidel Castro. Needless to say, the invasion of Bay of Pigs was a total failure and its failure also deterred other such future attempts. It was a Hail Mary try that apparently did not have the backing of Mary nor of Jesus, not on that day. It did not work.


Now Yemen in the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula is not in the same situation as Cuba in 1961. The Saudis and their rented Sudanese-Moroccan-Senegalese forces are directly bombing and shelling the cities and towns of Yemen. The country itself is fighting several civil wars among its various factions. The Houthis and army units are fighting the Southern Independence Movement as well as Al Qaeda- AQAP- and some tribal elements. The Houthis and the army are also trying to repel the Saudi air and artillery assault (which is supported by Western planning and logistical and intelligence support). Whoever wins, if anyone, will have to fight again against secession in South Yemen.

The air war, mainly one-sided and which has resulted in thousands of casualties, has failed during its first two months. The richest and best equipped force in the Arab world, supported by foreign mercenaries and the strongest world powers, has failed to defeat the poorest and weakest-armed Arab country. Now they are trying to insert the escaped former president Hadi (Bin Zombie) into their new strategy.

They are reported by Arab media as trying to form a Yemeni military force to the east near the Saudi border with Hadramout Province. This force is allegedly Yemeni but commanded by Saudis from across the border. They will try to pass it off as a force loyal to Hadi. That comes after an apparent earlier attempt to land Arab and Yemeni agents into Aden failed.
It is hard to imagine anyone in Yemen being loyal to Hadi, other than maybe his family, not without a price to be paid by the Saudis. Just try landing him down into Sanaa or Aden and the degree of loyalty to him becomes clear. A la Gaddafi in 2011.

Anyway this new Hadramout invasion has signs of desperation all over it, but it is a logical Plan B. It could be inspired by the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Saudis don’t cotton up to pigs, so we can’t call this attempt Bay of Pigs II. It is more appropriate to call it Bay of Goats.
Given that the consensus opinion is that pigs are somewhat smarter than goats, we probably know how this plan will fare.

    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Saudi Arabia, Sectarian, Terrorism

Target Qatif: ISIS Comes to the Saudi Home to Roost……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

I posted yesterday on ISIS (DAESH), its genesis, its creators, and its enablers. I specifically opined that:
“I have often posted, as have others, that nobody is as responsible for the bloody mess in Syria as Mr. Erdogan of Turkey and his Arab Wahhabi allies (the Al Saud princes, Al Thani of Qatar, and other Persian Gulf Islamists). Together these anti-democratic forces, with some misguided Western cooperation, managed to turn what started as a legitimate demand for Syrian democracy into a nightmare. One more Arab uprising became a Wahhabi Salafi terrorist campaign out of control, fed by petro-money, petro-weapons, and petro-volunteers. The Saudis and Qataris count on being far away from any spillover in their on police states on the Gulf, with no common borders with the inferno that is Syria. Turkey does not: their miscalculation is next door………….”

I take some of that back. The Saudis are not that far away from the domain of ISIS after all. Today a second terrorist bombing against Shi’a Friday (Sabbath) prayers was committed in Qatif, Saudi Arabia. More than twenty one have died so far, tens of others wounded. ISIS claimed responsibility: it looks like ISIS is coming back to the Saudi home to roost.

The incessant Saudi propaganda message that the attack on Yemen is an attack on the Shi’a enemy is bearing fruit at home. Not only is this stalemated war popular among the Wahhabi faithful, it has inspired them. For now, but the Saudi body bags are mounting along the border, a warning against any illusion of what kind of Saudi defeat a ground war will entail.


ISIS is returning home, hitting the softest Saudi target, its Shi’a minority in their mosque. Just as terrorist Jihadis, all graduates of the Wahhabi school of thought, have been doing in Iraq for a decade. ISIS would not dare hit the Wahhabi mosques: that is their bread and butter. That is where much of their money and most of their volunteers come from. That is the original Wahhabi home of ISIS or DAESH, as it is of Al Qaeda and Al Nusra and all the other global and regional terrorist groups………..

More of the Jihadi chickens are coming back home to roost………..

    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Arab Revolutions, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, US Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Caliphate of Erdogan: How Turkey and her Wahhabi Arab Allies Screwed up Syria…………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

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“To make sense of this unlikely alliance between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, let’s travel back in time to 2011. Amidst the turmoil of the Arab Uprisings, Erdoğan was counting on the overthrow of the dictatorships of al-Assad, Qaddafi, Mubarak and others, fondly imagining that Muslim Brotherhood parties would then come to power across the Middle East. This was the “Islamic order” of which Erdoğan and his colleagues dreamed, an order which was to be led by Turkey. In an apparent homage to the Ottoman sultans’ tradition of performing their prayers in a newly-conquered capital, Erdoğan declared that he would soon be praying in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. However, Erdoğan has been unable to make good on this promise. Erdoğan’s Syrian venture — the most ambitious such undertaking in the entire 90-year history of the Turkish Republic — has also proved to be the undoing of Turkey’s foreign policy. Intent on overthrowing al-Assad from the very beginning, Erdoğan is one of those responsible for the devastation in Syria today, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States. A March 24, 2013 report in the New York Times stated that 120 cargo flights from Qatar and Saudi Arabia had carried military supplies to Turkey destined for the rebels in Syria. This weaponry was then delivered to the rebels in trucks alleged to belong to Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT).………..”

I have often posted, as have others, that nobody is as responsible for the bloody mess in Syria as Mr. Erdogan of Turkey and his Arab Wahhabi allies (the Al Saud princes, Al Thani of Qatar, and other Persian Gulf Islamists). Together these anti-democratic forces, with some misguided Western cooperation, managed to turn what started as a legitimate demand for Syrian democracy into a nightmare. One more Arab uprising became a Wahhabi Salafi terrorist campaign out of control, fed by petro-money, petro-weapons, and petro-volunteers. The Saudis and Qataris count on being far away from any spillover in their on police states on the Gulf, with no common borders with the inferno that is Syria. Turkey does not: their miscalculation is next door.
Just as the Pakistani ISI helped create the Afghan Taliban and now have to put up with terrorism in Pakistan, the Turks now will face spillover terrorism across their borders. They have the aspiring Kurds and they have millions of Alevis who strongly oppose Erdogan’s Syria adventure. The latter no doubt felt more secure under a secular regime in Ankara than under the Caliphate of Erdogan, ensconced in his new billion dollar royal palace.
    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Britain, France, Weapons deals

Weapons Deals: Hollande and Cameron Grow Goatees……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

In my earlier post I opined that if they, the Saudi princes, can get rid of the moustache, then they might have a slew of kings and princes who are as hairless as Francois Hollande or David Cameron or even Angela Merkel. On the other hand, there may be no need: Hollande and Cameron would be glad to grow goatees in their feverish no-holds-barred quest for more weapons contracts.

    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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