Tag Archives: Syria

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Iraq, Jihadists, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Weapons deals

Mulling ISIS Supply Routes and Friedman’s Arab Taxis on a Pacific Northwest Trail………

September 14, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

One

I though I’d write a Friedman-esque (as in Thomas not Milton) post today. I am not starting it upon arrival at some Arab airport and a ride into town in a taxi driven by Abdu (in Cairo) or Abed (in Beirut) or Abul-Abed (in Amman). Funny, when Friedman goes to Beijing, the inscrutable Chinese taxi drivers (Abu Wong, et al) never share their local wisdom with him. Only Arabs do: blab and share their apparent wisdom with Western journalists.

No, I was thinking about that yesterday, Saturday. As we biked the twenty mile round trip along the Sammamish River Trail, past a couple of vintners joints and at least one hbrewery, towards the Burke-Gilman Trail. On an unusually cloudless warm morning of the Pacific Northwest. Here goes:

I saw a retired general (USMC) state that ISIS controls the upper rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) and roads from Syria to resupply their forces in Iraq. Which made me wonder, as I pedaled along that peaceful bike trail:

Where do ISIS get these supplies and volunteers from Syria (as the general said)? Why is Syria their main supply route into Iraq? And from where and how do these weapons and the money and volunteers flow into Syria then into Iraq? And how would increasing the supply of weapons to the useless Syrian opposition groups affect the flow of weapons to the ISIS Caliphate? Should we ask Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Jordan about this? They certainly don’t flow from Cyprus (no, Israel is also an unlikely source).

From which Syrian (FSA, Ansar-Al-WTF, etc, etc) “relatively moderate” opposition groups and gangs did ISIS purchase some of these Western hostages (journalists and aid workers) that were so horribly beheaded on camera? And they were no doubt purchased from some of the other would-be liberators of Syria.

Before I had finished, er, mulling this last question, it was time for us to hydrate and turn around. Sort of like what happens when Thomas Friedman’s Arab taxi, driven by Abdu (in Cairo) or Abed (in Beirut) or Abul-Abed (in Amman), or Abu-Wong (in Beijing) drives up to the hotel entrance. Before he finishes sharing his strategic and cultural gems with us.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Al-Qaeda, Caliphate, Iran, Iraq, Jihadis, Syria, US Foreign Policy

John Kerry’s Folly? Only Creators and Enablers of Al-Qaeda and ISIS can Attend Paris Meeting……….

September 12, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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“US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday his country was opposed to Iran’s participation at an international conference in Paris on Monday on Iraq, which is grappling with an offensive by Islamist militants. “No one has called me and asked me with respect to the presence of Iran, but I think under the circumstances at this moment in time… it would not be appropriate given the many other issues… with respect to their engagement in Syria and elsewhere,” Kerry told a press conference in Istanbul…………”

Mr. Kerry claimed that: “No one has called me and asked me with respect to the presence of Iran“. No one? Not a single European? If you can believe that, then I have a bridge that spans the Atlantic Ocean for sale at a discount (it crosses from Nigeria westward). Interested?
Of course he can rely on a technicality here: no one “called” him on the phone, but only because they were with him at the meetings.
Mr. Kerry also said it is not “appropriate” for Iran to attend the Paris meeting on ISIS. Yet it is quite appropriate for those who have created, financed, and sent volunteers to Al-Qaeda and ISIS to attend the meetings. And it is appropriate for Turkey, which for three years has had its borders open for any Jihadist who wanted to enter Syria (and hence Iraq). It is also appropriate for the Europeans who have probably sent thousands of killers to join ISIS.

The same was true of the Jeddah meeting this week: only countries that are suspected of enabling and financing and manning ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and Iraq were allowed to attend (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, a gaggle of other Arab states). Some reports mentioned that French officials had stated they were thinking of inviting Iran. Other reports also noted the Saudi princes and their sidekicks strongly opposed Iranian participation.

In any case, refusing participation, or input, from the two most important regional countries with respect to ISIS/ISIl is foolhardy. It is like tying one hand behind your back before a fight. It also might piss the hell out of the Iranians who just might, just might decide not to fully cooperate. After all, they did cooperate in the Afghanistan operation after 9/11 and were rewarded by the “Axis of Evil” nonsense. Ditto for the millions of Syrians who might not like Mr. Al Assad but are not looking forward to the joys of a Saudi-style Wahhabi government.

All this could doom the efforts of the new coalition even before it begins.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab League, Caliphate, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

ISIS and the Arabs: a Standing Joke of a League…….

September 11, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Back to my last post about President Obama’s ISIS speech:
One or two of the experts, in their post-speech comments, lamely suggested the Arab League, a useless gathering of mostly dictators and absolute tribal kings with little moral standing. It is now dominated by the same princes and potentates who spawned and nurtured groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS and their ilk.

Among many ordinary Arabs, the only standing the Arab League bureaucracy has is as a standing joke. A place to bury aging senior Arab (especially Egyptian) bureaucrats before they die. Only Western, specifically American politicians and pundits would suggest the Arab League as a mover and shaker, and with a straight face. But that is probably only because it can be useful to them as a fig leaf.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea of an Arab League can eventually be a good one, nay a necessary one. But that can be only after all member states hold free and unfettered elections. You figure out the timetable.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Barack Obama, Caliphate, Wahhabi

Obama’s Slow ISIS War: an Obligatory Coalition of the Usual Suspects……..

September 11, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

I watched Mr. Obama’s speech on dealing with the Islamic State of ISIS (he calls it ISIL). I thought he was smart enough to leave the details vague, no “mission accomplished” and no details of any incursion into Syria. He even seemed to push forward into the future any possibility of arming the fractured disintegrating border groups that call themselves the Free Syrian Salafi Army. He promised some help for ‘some’ of them, probably to preempt the usual expected heckling noises from Senators McCain and Graham. And to keep the Arab princes and potentates content. He also mentioned the obligatory international ‘coalition’ of the usual suspects.

What was shocking to me was the number of American pundits and opinion-ators, including some generals and former officials who should know better, who suggested that foreign “Sunni Arab” forces be used in Iraq and Syria. But Iraq and Syria are already full of armed foreign “Wahhabi Arabs” and “Wahhabi Europeans” seeking to liberate them from all non-Wahhabis for the Caliphate. These liberators either came from or were armed or financed by the elites of the same “Arab forces” these experts now want to send into Iraq and Syria. Not one of them bothered to suggest seeking approval of the Iraqi and Syrian peoples or governments. We should not overlook that these two governments, with all their shortcomings, are at least as representative as the Saudi and Qatari governments. At least.

Arab forces? What Arab forces? A couple of experts mentioned specifically Saudi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) forces. WTF? The UAE apparently does not have enough citizens (barely 10% of the population) to police its own streets, let alone face the fierce Jihadi terrorists. The Saudis are reportedly periodically negotiating with Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Egypt for military and security help if and when needed.
And why would Iraq and Syria allow these tribal ruling families to send more of their mercenary forces inside their countries? Even as their Wahhabi ideology and money and weapons and volunteers are wreaking havoc in both countries with kidnappings and bombings and massacres. And why would these same Arab rulers send their hapless troops to be sitting ducks, picked off by all sides of these conflicts?
Which confirmed to me that Mr. Obama is smarter than most leaders of his own party and the opposition party. Which makes sense, otherwise he would not be speaking to them from the other side of the television cameras and microphones.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Caliphate, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Hobson’s Choice in Syria: Bad, Badder, or Baddest?…….

September 9, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“HOBSON’S CHOICE:
1. an apparently free choice when there is no real alternative
2. the necessity of accepting one of two or more equally objectionable alternatives.………” Merriam Webster

“The jihadi group surging through Iraq and Syria is using large captured US-made weapons and has access to anti-tank rockets supplied by Saudi Arabia to a moderate rebel group, according to a report published on Monday. The study by the London-based Conflict Armament Research consultancy found that Islamic State (Isis) militants had access to large numbers of US weapons, which they were shifting to key battlefields……..The report was compiled from a list of weapons captured from Isis by Kurdish militias over a 10-day period in July. Of most interest was the capture of two M-79 rockets that were identical to a batch of such weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia to rebels………”

So this report seems to corroborate what we have all been saying for some time: it is almost impossible to keep weapons from being transferred among Syrian Jihadis. There is an active Syrian market for them and they get taken and sold and gifted between the hundreds of Jihadi groups and gangs that seek to liberate Syria for the Saudi and Qatari princes and take it back to their distorted vision of the seventh century (AD). ISIS and Al Nusra and all the other “Jabhats” and “Ansars” and myriad groupies get enough money from their well-known sources to be able to ‘buy’ whatever weapons they want from other Syrian ‘freedom fighters’, including the Free Syrian Salafi Army.

The fact is that within Syria there are no real non-Jihadi rebels anymore. This has been the case since late 2011, after the Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf region mobilized their vast financial, media, and volunteer resources and deployed them, armed with a strong dose of deep sectarian hatred, to commandeer a nascent uprising in Syria. Just a few years after deploying the same murderous resources to massacre Iraqi civilians in their towns and cities.

Within Syria the choice among rebels is between the following: (a) plain bad Wahhabis, (b) badder Wahhabis, and (c) the baddest Wahhabis. The crucial battles with Syrian regime forces in the past year or two saw all these various tiers of Wahhabi Jihadist groups join forces. Join forces and share weapons before the baddest of them, ISIS, started to push the others to the margins, to the periphery of history. Building up new mildly Wahhabi groups inside the Humorless Kingdom of Jordan and sending them into Syria to keep the civil war going will not do the trick either. The Jordanian Front is not likely to fare better than the Turkish front has done.

Or maybe the plain bad Wahhabis are the only palatable Hobson option available for the Western powers. They can appoint French pop-philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, co-liberator of Libya, as NATO high commissioner for Syria, to keep them from going badder and baddest. It did not work in Libya, but it might in Syria: hope springs eternal when supported with tribal petro-money.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Al-Qaeda, Caliphate, GCC, Iraq, Jihadis, Syria

Tribal Sectarian Roots of the ISIS Caliphate……..

September 6, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“The rise of ISIS is a stark reminder of Bush and Obama’s failure to help create a modern democratic state in Iraq. But to be fair, other elements were responsible for the new nightmare that has descended upon innocent Iraqis……… The key to the existence of ISIS lies not inside the CIA in Langley, Virginia, as some conspiracy theorists have proposed, but rather in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have long feared the “rise” of Shia Islam in the region. They are the ones who have been financing their Sunni brethren within ISIS………..”

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Hezbollah, Iraq, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Wall Street Journal Continues its Own Middle East Wars……

September 6, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Well, this is a little scary. U.S. intelligence intercepted messages from Iran to militants in Iraq ordering attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad if America strikes Syria. U.S officials say they’re preparing for Iran’s fast boats in the Persian Gulf, and military resources, including Marines, have been moved to the area. The message came from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani and instructed Shiite groups to respond with force if the U.S. strikes Syria………..”

I didn’t know a U.S. attack ‘on Syria’ was in the cards these days. Unless the Wall Street Journal writer knows something no one else does.

Could he mean extending the current bombing attack against the Wahhabi Caliphate of ISIS into Syria? But then why would Iran retaliate in the Persian Gulf and why would Hezbollah retaliate in Beirut for any attack on the ISIS den of terrorists? Especially if the target of the Syrian campaign is NOT to alter the military balance in the Syrian civil war and tilt it toward the strategic goals of the Wahhabi oil princes. Provided Syria approves of any operations over its territory.

An attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut by Hezbollah? That would be a stupid thing for them to do these days, and they know it. Only some media types and propagandists would think of it as probable. No doubt Hezbollah planners are more intelligent than many Wall Street Journal opinion-ators who write this kind of nonsense. They read as if written by some Likud or AIPAC functionaries.

More likely any attack on the U.S. embassy anywhere and not just in Beirut, if it ever happens, would come from Wahhabi terrorists nurtured for years by allied oil princes and by money from elements of Lebanon’s right-wing blocs.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Caliphate, Jihadists, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Speculative Chemical Assertion about Syria: Prelude to a Bombing Campaign?……..

September 5, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Syria May Have Hidden Chemical Arms, U.S. Says. Ambassador Samantha Power asserted that Syria might not have handed over all its chemical arms supplies for destruction, and that they could fall into the hands of militants………..”

I suspect that Ambassador Power was not trained as a lawyer. The ambassador “asserted” that Syria “might” have hidden chemical weapons, and that they “could” fall into Jihadist hands. Dunno what exactly to make of this rather “speculative assertion” at the fluid court of the United Nations. That the Syrian government’s behavior raised “skepticism” (FYI: most Middle East governments’ behavior on any issue should always raise skepticism, be they Arab, Israeli, Iranian, Turkish, or Sumerian).

Could this be part of a spin, a prelude to start the bombing campaign over Syria? Will it be a bombing campaign targeting only the Wahhabi terrorist groups of ISIS and A-Nusra? Or will it, as no doubt some of the Arab princes and potentates hope, expand to target the Syrian armed forces and their facilities? Will there be a loophole in Mr. Obama’s coming “Syrian” speech that could open the door for a “Libyan” style expansion of the expected American and NATO mission over the Caliphate of Mosul and Al-Raqqa?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Gulag, Caliphate, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria

A View of Iraq and Syria from an Arabian Gulag: Earthly Rewards to Paradise…….

August 28, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“In Syria, where the Saudis are a leading backer of rebel groups including the secular Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front, which includes less militant Sunni fighters, Riyadh still has some options to influence the outcome of the war. But in Iraq, its most populous neighbor, with which it shares an 850 kilometer (530 mile) frontier, Saudi Arabia has few tested friends or established links with Sunni groups, and knows that the majority Shi’ites will continue to dominate power……….”

So these authors wrote their report for Reuters, mainly with local interviews from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. They quote some Iraqi ‘analyst‘ who works from Abu Dhabi and is, as they claim, “close to the Saudi Interior Ministry“. They don’t clarify how “close” this analyst is to the Saudi Ministry of Interior, and in what “capacity“. But we know that the Ministry of Interior does not do foreign policy. We also know what it does do: arrests, interrogations, prisons, public floggings, executions by public beheading with occasional crucifixions, religious police, immigration, travel bans, internal exile, external exile, among other things. In effect they run a vast Arabian Gulag.

Odd this assertion: Iraq and Syria are represented as serious problems for Saudi Arabia. But how did Iraq and Syria get to this stage? How did they get to represent serious problems to the region? Yes, you got that one right: because the Wahhabis started sending their intolerant ideology, their killers, their weapons, and their oil money, first to Iraq and then to Syria.

They started on Iraq early on, somewhere around the year 2005. In Syria they waited until the misnamed so-called Arab Spring reached Homs (or was it Der’a) and then the Wahhabi and Salafi and Ikhwan machine went into full gear to try and take it over. With a little help from the Turkish leaders who thought they could open their country to Jihadi traffic into Syria and remain untouched.

They created the monster that now threatens them and that the Iraqis and Syrians have to deal with. If Iraq and Syria ‘pose’ problems for the princes, they are problems of their own creation. They and some other potentates in Qatar and other emirates and their Salafi money-gathering machine. And their misguided underemployed frustrated young volunteers looking towards the joys of captive women as they await the promised unlimited virginal rewards of Paradise.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Revolutions, Jordan, Syria

Humorless Jordan Sponsors a New Humorless Front in the Syrian War……

August 21, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Assafir from Lebanon reports that the Syrian Army has struck the Al Nusra Front and other Wahhabi brigades east of Damascus. The daily sees this as a warning signal by Damascus in view of increased talk of rebels opening a new southern front against the regime. This long-promised southern front of the Wahhabi rebels is based in Jordan, where the flow of Arab (Saudi, possibly other) money and Western training has been reported for about a year now. King Abdul of the humorless Kingdom of Jordan continues to steadfastly deny any involvement in the Syrian civil war or that his country hosts any terrorist Wahhabi militias targeting Syria. As far as I can see, his nose isn’t getting any longer, nor are his pants on fire, not yet.

Apparently the Qatari foreign minister has recently returned from Tahran empty-handed as far as the Syrian war is concerned. The little Wahhabi emirate, like its bigger Wahhabi Saudi sister, supports Arab and foreign Jihadists who seek to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad and replace him with a theocracy.

Arabia Deserta: MENA Focus