#IslamicSocietiesReview : Start Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Start Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom

    Sunday, February 21, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia is no state at all. It's an unstable business so corrupt to resemble a criminal organization and the U.S. should get ready for the day after.

For half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism, Washington stubbornly dubs its ally “moderate.” So tight is the trust that U.S. special operators dip into Saudi petrodollars as a counterterrorism slush fund without a second thought. In a sea of chaos, goes the refrain, the kingdom is one state that’s stable.
But is it?

In fact, Saudi Arabia is no state at all. There are two ways to describe it: as a political enterprise with a clever but ultimately unsustainable business model, or so corrupt as to resemble in its functioning a vertically and horizontally integrated criminal organization. Either way, it can’t last. It’s past time U.S. decision-makers began planning for the collapse of the Saudi kingdom.

In recent conversations with military and other government personnel, we were startled at how startled they seemed at this prospect. Here’s the analysis they should be working through.

Understood one way, the Saudi king is CEO of a family business that converts oil into payoffs that buy political loyalty. They take two forms: cash handouts or commercial concessions for the increasingly numerous scions of the royal clan, and a modicum of public goods and employment opportunities for commoners. The coercive “stick” is supplied by brutal internal security services lavishly equipped with American equipment.

source: Defense One

Saudi Arabia is no state at all: Preparing for its Collapse

Saudi Arabia is no state at all: Preparing for its Collapse

    Thursday, February 18, 2016   No comments

The Saudi ruling elite is operating something like a sophisticated criminal enterprise
For half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism, Washington stubbornly dubs its ally “moderate.” So tight is the trust that U.S. special operators dip into Saudi petrodollars as a counterterrorism slush fund without a second thought. In a sea of chaos, goes the refrain, the kingdom is one state that’s stable.

But is it?

In fact, Saudi Arabia is no state at all. There are two ways to describe it: as a political enterprise with a clever but ultimately unsustainable business model, or as an entity so corrupt as to resemble a vertically and horizontally integrated criminal organization. Either way, it can’t last. It’s past time U.S. decision-makers began planning for the collapse of the Saudi kingdom... read more, see

source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/saudi-arabia-collapse/463212/

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bombing

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bombing

    Thursday, February 18, 2016   No comments

As it has done in the past, whenever terrorists attack civilians inside Turkey, the Turkish government used the Ankara bombing to launch fresh strikes against Kurds. It has done so in the past even after instances when ISIL (Daesh) has carried out (and took credit for) the attacks. This time, too, AKP leaders were quick to blame the Kurds of Syria. Even before the investigation concluded, the Turkish government accused "Syrians" to justify its campaign against Kurds in Iraq and Syria. This practice could undercut support for their cause since the Turkish government could be perceived as leveraging terrorism for geopolitical aims. Turkey's reluctance to fight ISIL and shut down the flow of fighters and weapons into Syria adds to the volatility of the region and will add risks to Turkey's security.
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Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bomb, vows response in Syria and Iraq

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed 28 people in the capital Ankara, and he vowed retaliation in both Syria and Iraq.

A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey's armed forces' headquarters, parliament and government buildings in the administrative heart of Ankara late on Wednesday.

Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the United States in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.  Source

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Turkey sends 2000 rebels with heavy weapons into Syria

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Turkey sends 2000 rebels with heavy weapons into Syria

    Thursday, February 18, 2016   No comments

At least 2,000 Syrian rebel fighters have re-entered the country from Turkey over the last week to reinforce insurgents fending off an assault by Syrian Kurdish militias, rebel sources said on Thursday.

The rebel fighters, with weapons and vehicles, have been covertly escorted across the border by Turkish forces over several nights before heading into the embattled rebel stronghold of Azaz, the sources said.

"We have been allowed to move everything from light weapons to heavy equipment mortars and missiles and our tanks," Abu Issa, a commander in the Levant Front, the rebel group that runs the border crossing of Bab al-Salam, told Reuters, giving his alias and talking on condition of anonymity.

"There is tight security on the four-hour drive from one border crossing to the other," he added, saying rebels being transported excluded the hardline Jabhat al-Nusra Front fighters and other jihadist groups.

A Turkish security source confirmed fighters had crossed the border but put the numbers at 400-500 and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across the war torn-country, also said hundreds had crossed.

On Sunday, the Syrian government had said Turkish forces were among 100 gunmen who had entered Syria accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents. The route across Turkey has become the only path for rebels to their north Aleppo enclave after recent Syrian army advances closed the main route into rebel territory. source

#ISR: World War 3 is now taking place in Syria, Turkey pushes for direct confrontation between nuclear powers--and that won't happen

#ISR: World War 3 is now taking place in Syria, Turkey pushes for direct confrontation between nuclear powers--and that won't happen

    Wednesday, February 17, 2016   No comments

The siege of Aleppo is a humanitarian catastrophe on a dramatic scale -- and a victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has seized on the Syrian civil war to expose an impotent West and show his own geopolitical muscle.

Aleppo has been a horrific place for some time now and few thought that it could get much worse. But things can always get worse -- that's the lesson currently being learned by those who have stayed behind in an effort to outlast this brutal conflict. People who have become used to dead bodies in the streets, hunger and living a life that can end at any moment.

"For the last two weeks, we've been living a nightmare that is worse than everything that has come before," says Hamza, a young doctor in an Aleppo hospital. At the beginning, in 2011, he was treating light wounds, stemming from tear gas or beatings from police batons. When the regime began dropping barrel bombs in 2012, the injuries got worse. But now, with the beginning of the Russian airstrikes, the doctors are facing an emergency. Every two or three hours, warplanes attack the city, aiming at everything that hasn't yet been destroyed, including apartment buildings, schools and clinics. Often, they use cluster bombs, which have been banned internationally.

They used to get around 10 serious injuries per day, but that number has now risen to 50, says Hamza, adding that most of their time is spent sorting body parts so they can turn them over to family members for burial. Russian missiles, he says, tear everyone apart who is within 35 meters of the impact.

"On one day, we had 22 dead civilians. The day before that, it was 20 injured children. A seven-year-old died and an eight-year-old lost his left leg." The Russians attacked in the morning, he says, as the children were on their way to school. "We are going to need years of therapy in order to be able to cope with all this."

There are seven doctors still working in the hospital. "Since the Russians began bombing the city, even more doctors have fled," Hamza says. There are only about 30 medical professionals left in all of Aleppo, he adds. His hospital too is under fire and Hamza's voice can be heard trembling over the phone. The regime, he says, has targeted the hospital five times in the past several years, but always missed. "The Russian bombardment, though, is very accurate." One recent bomb, he says, just barely missed them.

A Nightmare Worse than Sarajevo 
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source

#ISR: Weaponry delivered to Syria's FSA by the U.S.-led coalition have fallen into the hands of Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra

#ISR: Weaponry delivered to Syria's FSA by the U.S.-led coalition have fallen into the hands of Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra

    Wednesday, February 17, 2016   No comments

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the recognized armed opposition group against the Bashar al-Assad in Syria, has ceased its resistance in Aleppo, Syria’s second biggest city, withdrawing its 14,000 militia from the city, a ranking Turkish security source told the Hürriyet Daily News on Nov. 17.

“Its leader Jamal Marouf has fled to Turkey,” confirmed the source, who asked not to be named. “He is currently being hosted and protected by the Turkish state.”

The source did not give an exact date of the escape but said it was within the last two weeks, that is, the first half of November. The source declined to give Marouf’s whereabouts in Turkey.

As a result, the FSA has lost control over the Bab al-Hawa border gate (opposite from Turkey’s Cilvegözü in Reyhanlı), which is now being held by a weak coalition of smaller groups led by Ahrar al-Sham.

The source said some of the weaponry delivered to the FSA by the U.S.-led coalition in its fight against both Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria might have fallen into the hands of Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra, the Syria branch of al-Qaeda.

....

The news about the FSA evacuation came as claims in the Western media intensified about a rapprochement between al-Nusra and ISIL, which is denied by Turkish government sources.

One source talking on the condition of anonymity gave details about talks between al-Nusra and ISIL last week – information that was not possible to corroborate based on another source. According to field reports in Ankara, Abu Mohammad al-Gulani of al-Nusra has asked the leader of another Jihadist group (Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar - Army of Emigrants and Supporters) in Syria, Salahaddin al-Shishani (The Chechen), to intermediate for a cease-fire between his organization and ISIL. source

#ISR: Chemical weapons had been used by ISIL (#daesh) fighters

#ISR: Chemical weapons had been used by ISIL (#daesh) fighters

    Monday, February 15, 2016   No comments

Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a diplomat said, based on tests by the global chemical weapons watchdog.

A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that laboratory tests had come back positive for the sulfur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.

The OPCW will not identify who used the chemical agent. But the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the findings have not yet been released, said the result confirmed that chemical weapons had been used by Islamic State fighters.

The samples were taken after the soldiers became ill during fighting against Islamic State militants southwest of Erbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

The OPCW already concluded in October that mustard gas was used last year in neighboring Syria. Islamic State has declared a "caliphate" in territory it controls in both Iraq and Syria and does not recognize the frontier.

Experts believe that the sulfur mustard either originated from an undeclared Syrian chemical stockpile, or that militants have gained the basic know how to develop and conduct a crude chemical attack with rockets or mortars. source

Turkey at odds with Russia and now the US on Syria: Turkey strikes Syrian airport when it fell under the control of US supported rebels, but did not bomb it when it was under the control of al-Nusra

Turkey at odds with Russia and now the US on Syria: Turkey strikes Syrian airport when it fell under the control of US supported rebels, but did not bomb it when it was under the control of al-Nusra

    Sunday, February 14, 2016   No comments

Kurdish leader: Turkey strikes Syrian airport when it fell under the control of US supported rebels, but did not bomb it when it was under the control of al-Nusra. Do they want the Nusra Front to stay there, or for the regime to come and occupy it?

Turkey's faulty foreign policy choices in Syria since the beginning of the conflict, including supporting Sunnis in the sectarian strife, working for the removal of the Syrian regime from power, undermining the Syrian Kurds and downing a Russian jet, have dragged the country to such a point that today, it is at odds with not only Russia but its close ally the US as well.

After trying to impose its policies on other actors in the region for some time, it seems that Ankara will have no word in the future of Syria ahead of the Geneva peace talks, which have been postponed to Feb. 25.

After downing a Russian jet at the Syrian border over an airspace violation on Nov. 24 of last year, a first for NATO in 50 years, Turkish-Russian relations have been significantly derailed. Russia has demanded an apology and compensation for the damages, but Turkey has refused, saying that it will not apologize for defending its airspace.

Following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's remarks calling on the US to choose between its ally Turkey and “the terrorists in Kobani,” a reference to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey strongly opposes due to its links to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Ankara is now not on good terms with the US.

Sunday's Zaman has learned that US Ambassador to Turkey John Bass has asked Turkish officials not to publicly bring up the differences between the US and Turkey concerning the PYD. Bass said the US position on the PYD is clear and will not change. The US sees the PYD as one of the leading forces on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and despite the fact that the PKK is classified as a terrorist organization under US law, the PYD is not considered terrorist. In spite of their differences on Syria, the US and Turkey had previously mostly managed to maintain a balance in their relationship.

Ignoring the remarks of Ambassador Bass, Erdoğan has challenged the US position on the PYD, and following Erdoğan's remarks US officials in Washington have expressed their position in a stronger tone, underscoring that their support for the PYD will continue. US Department State Spokesperson John Kirby said last week that even close friends do not have to agree on everything, while stressing that Turkey and the US are still close allies.

full article...

Kerry says Russia should stop targeting "legitimate opposition" in Syria

Kerry says Russia should stop targeting "legitimate opposition" in Syria

    Saturday, February 13, 2016   No comments

Who decides "which group is a "legitimate opposition"? The answer to that question may hold the key to ending the bloody conflict in Syria. 

The U.S. and its Gulf allies and Turkey say that there are "moderate" opposition groups in Syria, but they refuse to identify them by name. Russia has asked, since 2015, who is Syria’s legitimate opposition? That question goes unanswered. But it is certain is that none of those governments who claim that there is a "legitimate opposition", do not and will not tolerate any armed groups to be operating within their countries' borders. In fact, Turkey is bombing a U.S.-vetted moderate, legitimate opposition group, the Kurdish Popular Protection Units, in Syria. 

Major powers could help stop the cycle of violence in Syria by defining terrorism, identifying terrorist groups by name, and push for an end to the fighting. Instead, each actor is protecting its interests by continuing to support armed groups, yet claim at the same time that there is no military solution to the Syrian crisis.

Russia must stop targeting Syria's legitimate opposition as part of an air campaign in support of the Assad regime before a truce can be implemented next week, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday.

"To date, the vast majority of Russia's attacks have been against legitimate opposition groups," Kerry said at the Munich Security Conference. "To adhere to the agreement it made, Russia's targeting must change."

Source

The rulers of Saudi Arabia insist that they will remove #Assad by any means necessary

The rulers of Saudi Arabia insist that they will remove #Assad by any means necessary

    Friday, February 12, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia is arguing one point of view in one country and negating it by arguing against the same logic in another.
The Saudi minister of foreign affairs justified his regime's bombardment of Yemen by arguing the following point:

"Our intervention in Yemen came in response to a request from the Yemeni government to prevent its collapse... to reinstall the legitimate government that was removed by militias supported by Iran and Hezbollah."

Contrast that logic to the logic used by Russia and Iran to justify their intervention in Syria:

"The legitimate Syrian government requested Russia's assistance to combat terrorist groups supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey."

The problem with the Saudi point of view is that it arbitrarily defines one government legitimate and another illegitimate. The rulers of the Wahhabi kingdom think that regimes like that of Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Mansur Hadi are legitimate. But they declared the Syrian government illegitimate the day the peaceful protest broke out in 2011. 

This logic that is conveniently applied to one country and not another proves that powerful governments are using civilians for geopolitical aims.  The Saudi rulers refuse to define "terrorism" and identify "terrorist" groups because they fear that they will be exposed as sponsors and supporters of many groups that would qualify as terrorists. There is no question that the rulers of Saudi Arabia are using sectarian fighters to achieve one goal: overthrow the Syrian government. To that end, they don't care if overthrowing Assad's government will result in more instability and more deaths.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that foreign governments have supplied Syrian fighters with new weapons:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's foreign enemies have sent rebels new supplies of ground-to-ground missiles to confront a Russian-backed offensive by the government near Aleppo, stepping up support in response to the attack, two rebel commanders said.

The commanders told Reuters the missiles with a range of 20 km (12 miles) had been provided in "excellent quantities" in response to the attack that has cut rebel supply lines from the Turkish border to opposition-held parts of the city of Aleppo.

Facing one of the biggest defeats of the five-year-long war, rebels have been complaining that foreign states such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have let them down by not providing them with more powerful weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles.

"It is excellent additional fire power for us," said one of the commanders, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. The second rebel commander said the missiles were being used to hit army positions beyond the front line. "They give the factions longer reach," he said.
 Source