Push by Saudi Clerics for an Islamic State in Al-Sham (Syria)

6 Comments

1. 

   Oui on January 4, 2013 at 11:06 am

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   Arab Islamist fighters eager to join Syria rebels

   REYHANLI, Turkey (Jordan Times/Reuters) July 31, 2012 — Abdullah Ben Shamar, a Saudi student, puts a small copy of the Koran among his few belongings packed neatly in a holdall as he prepares to set off with a Libyan friend across the hilly terrain separating southern Turkey from Syria.

   “It is our duty to go to the great Bilad Al Sham [Syria] and defend it against the Alawite tyrants massacring its people,” said Shamar, 22, a lightly bearded engineering major, who spoke to Reuters in Reyhanli, a Turkish town whose Arab inhabitants have historic links with Syria.

   He and his friend are part of a small but growing influx of militant Arab Islamists determined to join the 16-month-old rebellion against President Bashar Assad. Their presence will alarm those in the West who have warned against Al Qaeda style militancy in Syria, whose conflict has the potential to spread sectarian strife far beyond its borders.

   Ben Shamar and his Libyan friend Salloum say they are following the footsteps of their ancestors who fought in legions sent by the Prophet Mohammad at the dawn of Islam to liberate Greater Syria from those they regarded as Byzantine heathens.

   Syria’s 21st century heathens, they say, are Assad and his cohorts in the ruling elite from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has dominated the power structure of the Levantine country for the last five decades.

   Syria’s Islamist rebels join forces against Assad

   • Syria’s Secular and Islamist Rebels: Who Are the Saudis and the Qataris Arming?
   • Hezbollah: Takfiri extremists are the product of the US seeking to sow discord among Muslims
   • Sectarian strife in Pakistan, Salafi/takfiri terror groups responsible for murders
2. 

   Oui on January 5, 2013 at 7:00 am

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   Iran rethinks its staunch support for Assad regime

   ABU DHABI, UAE (National News) – Crucially, a new Sunni-dominated regime in Damascus could threaten Iran’s links with Hizbollah, Tehran’s Shiite ally in Lebanon, which gives the Islamic republic a cherished proxy presence on Israel’s northern border. Mr Al Assad’s removal could also tilt the regional balance of power in favour of Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main Gulf Arab rival which, along with Qatar, has been funding the Syrian revolutionaries.

   Iran accuses the predominantly Sunni and pro-western Arab Gulf states of arming “terrorist” Syrian opposition groups at the behest of the “warmongering” United States to break the “axis of resistance” linking Iran, Syria and Hizbollah against the “Zionist regime”.

   Keeping that axis intact is Iran’s main aim. Tehran also likely feels it is next up on the US’s regime change agenda if Mr Al Assad is toppled. His removal, moreover, would increase Iran’s isolation as it prepares for new negotiations over its nuclear programme with six world powers, led by the US.

   Hillary Clinton’s planned visit to Abu Dhabi‘s – Masdar City

   • Has the US Administration Decided to Get Rid of Jordan’s King Abdullah?
3. 

   Oui on January 5, 2013 at 10:04 am

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   Now the Pressure’s Building on Jordan by Salman Shaikh

   The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is, meanwhile, seeking to shore up Jordan with greater economic support, while also opening up the possibility of more integrated security partnerships with the well-trained Jordanian military and intelligence services. As part of this strategy, Saudi Arabia last year granted Jordan $1bn in aid. The possible expansion of the GCC to include Jordan and Morocco reflected the Gulf nations’ initial “security-first” approach to the Arab awakening. By expanding an organisation that groups monarchies in the Middle East, the GCC had hoped to ride out the wave of reform while maintaining the status quo in those countries.

   Yet change has become increasingly unavoidable. The GCC has had to facilitate the transfer of power away from Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, and it has come to take a stronger stance against the autocratic reign of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. It therefore appears to be increasingly unlikely that Jordan will be granted membership of the more activist GCC. Jordan is in any case more unstable than many key allies realise or are willing to acknowledge. Domestically, it has long faced internal threats that have so far not been allayed by “top-down” reforms whose eventual aim is to introduce a more representative political system.

   Jordan’s King Abdullah has in his 13-year reign appointed 10 cabinets, the latest last October to quell protests against the government of Marouf al-Bakhit, who was widely seen as part of the “old guard” and thus not serious about cracking down on corruption or interested in democratic reform. King Abdullah’s commitment to introducing a constitutional monarchy, even though in 2005 he claimed that Jordan would “absolutely” pursue that path, is widely doubted, and seen by many Jordanians as little more than a rhetorical promise. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index in 2010 rated Jordan 117th out of 167 nations, placing it firmly among those labelled as “authoritarian”.

   Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change

   • His Majesty King Hussein of Jordan – History
   • Qatar’s support for Islamists muddles its reputation as neutral broker in Mideast
4. 

   Oui on January 6, 2013 at 2:09 pm

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   Lately I have been bothered by sanctimonious writing on the Syrian conflict, calling jihadists and foreign fighters “revolutionaries” [sic]. This pompous joy over the economic growth in the Emirates [HR abuses] as one exponent – From Dubai UAE, a little good cheer for us all from a bright spot in the Middle East. In another article falling for GCC propaganda …

   UN: 60,000 have been Killed in Syrian Revolution (Video)

   The UN Human Rights Commission under Navi Pillai has had a team of researchers go through five different lists of casualties in Syria, and they concluded that at least 60,000 have died since the revolution began some 20 months ago. Some 500,000 Syrians have fled or been made refugees by the fighting, about 2 percent of the population (That would be like 6 million Americans driven from their homes).

   Perhaps looking through the neocon glasses of propaganda for a “good” cause is justified, there are some fundamental flaws in the report written by an American funded ngo. I looked through the details there are bloggers who read beyond the MSM headlines.

   Data Dive Reveals 15,000 New Victims of Syria War

   Benetech’s report (.pdf) dives into databases of the dead compiled by six Syrian organizations — several of them tied to the rebellion, such as the Syrian Revolution General Council — and one by the Assad government. The firm sifted through over 147,000 records to identify and exclude duplicated mortality accounts. Only the “unique” accounts of “identifiable victims” fall into Benetech’s count. If the records don’t show someone’s name, date and location of death, Benetech doesn’t count it. That data sift leads to a more precise picture of the Syrian civil war than the rougher estimates previously on offer. Between March 2011 and November 2012, Benetch tallied 59,648 “unique killings.” Over 76 percent of them are male, 7.5 percent are female, and records 16.4 percent of them “do not indicate the sex of the victim.”

   Benetech’s study suffers from selection bias, as its researchers concede up front. Nor does Benetech have a means of fact-checking what’s in each dataset, as brutal wars do not lend themselves to such analytic rigor, so an element of faith is unavoidable here.

   • Benetech sponsors Soros OSI and National Endowment for Democracy
   • Key source for Syrian death toll questions accuracy of recent UN-sponsored report
   • Carnacki’s diary in 2005 – Only genuine pre-war American and British whiskeys sold here
5. 

   Oui on January 7, 2013 at 3:08 pm

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   Secret BBC – Pakistan Double Cross on Terrorism – Full

    

   General Musharraf – self-exile in UAE

6. 

   Oui on January 10, 2013 at 2:06 pm

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   “The 1953 CIA-sponsored coup that put the Shah back in power in Iran, and the subsequent build-up of SAVAK, the Shah’s brutal internal security force, are certainly black marks in our Cold War history.”

   CIA and Mossad build the Persian SAVAK secret police
   Formed under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers (Mossad) in 1957, SAVAK developed into an effective secret agency. During the height of its power, SAVAK had virtually unlimited powers. It operated its own detention centers, like Evin Prison. In addition to domestic security the service’s tasks extended to the surveillance of Iranians abroad, notably in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, and especially students on government stipends. The agency also closely collaborated with the American CIA by sending their agents to an air force base in New York to share and discuss interrogation tactics.

   Irangate: The Israel Connection
   After the hostage crisis US Embassy in Tehran, CIA and Mossad intelligence was compromised. Nevertheless, Israel and the US worked together under the Reagan administration delivering military parts needed in the war against Iraq and the Kurds.

   A number of family members worked fot Aramco when the company had engineering staff in The Hague. Later it became fully owned by Saudi Arabia. Many Dutch employees were part of the joint Netherlands-Palestine committee. In the past decades a number of events shaped the role of the Saudi King and the relationship with the outside world. For the Brits and Yanks who helped run Aramco, one event will always be remembered. It was a terror strike inside Saudi Arabia on an International School targeting the children of the foreign workers employed by Aramco. Ever since, domestic terror worsened and turned outward toward the leading western countries.

   One remark I will always remember was made by a real American oil man, worked closely with Saudi colleagues for 25 years. He said with much regret: “If there comes a moment of trouble in Saudi Arabia I will have to fend for myself. I still don’t know if I could put my life in their hands. Saudi’s I consider a friend, I just don’t trust them completely.”

   The US and their Atlantic partners have failed miserably in foreign policy in the period of the Cold War. The US politicians have a vision of 2 years max, the next election. The Israelis and the Arabs live in biblical terms and set their vision for at least the next century. That is why old European colonial powers who have messed up in the 20th century can not communicate on equal terms with the vision of leaders in the Middle-East. The Obama administration has taken a laissez-fair position in the Arab Revolution. As I have written, due to the failure of the Iraq invasion and consequent upheaval in the Middle-East, new regional powers are filling the gap. As the Arab monarchs live by Islamic teaching and Sharia Law, the western world will experience minorities will be persecuted in the coming years.

   I would have strongly prefered to have build friendship with the Iranian people tha the new reality of Sunni jihadists running wild in North Africa and the Middle-East. Be assured, these have the backing of Sunni charities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries. Listen to the Saudi preachers …

   At the Jerusalem Post I read an opinion piece written by an American living in Israel. An interesting interview about his new book all about American politics and US-Israel relations.

   All these elements play a role why I believe Obama made the right choice with John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and John Brennen, his “dark side.”