The Upheaval in Yemen is Threatening the US-Backed Old Kleptocratic Order — Gulf Dictators Attack to 'Restore Democracy'

For the past three years, the US-Saudi process of transition has been nothing but a cynical rearguard action to retrench the old order, in which the majority of Yemen’s 24 million population are shut out from democratic control of the country’s politics and economics. The old kleptocratic order would thereby persist in its disenfranchisement of the Yemeni population while serving the geopolitical interests of Washington and its client Arab monarchies—Finian Cunningham

Yemenis burn a replica of a fighter jet draped with an American flag.

By Finian Cunningham
The crisis in Yemen is the latest manifestation of the old order desperately trying to cling on to a dwindling power base. That old order has been backed by the United States and its allies among the Persian Gulf Arab dictatorships as a bulwark against a popular uprising that could lead to democratization in the poorest Middle Eastern country. If such an outcome were to succeed, the repercussions for the autocratic Gulf monarchies would be deeply destabilizing. Saudi Arabia, which shares a southern border with Yemen, is the primary concern for this spreading «instability».

That is why the House of Saud is now issuing all sorts of grave warnings of "foreign interferenc" and blaming Iran for «aggression». Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal this week said that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is ready to send in a military force to «protect Yemen’s sovereignty». The GCC comprises the six monarchical states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. All are stalwart American client regimes.

Meanwhile, Washington is urging Yemeni rival factions to «return to the United Nations-mediated peace talks». Samantha Power, the US representative on the UN Security Council, said: "To preserve Yemen's security, stability and unity, all parties must refrain from any further unilateral and offensive military actions."

UN envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, amid warnings of all-out civil war, said this week that imminent talks were scheduled to take place in the Qatari capital, Doha. Al Jazeera reported that "any agreement reached would be signed in [Saudi capital] Riyadh".

The venues of Doha and Riyadh are hardly neutral places to conduct peace talks. The rebels in Yemen, led by the northern Houthi movement, have accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with the US, of repeatedly interfering in the country’s strife to support the old order and to offset any democratic change. Seen from this point of view, the UN-mediated talks are thus being capped with a veto wielded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. That would explain why Washington is so keen to push the talks, knowing that they will not produce anything substantive in terms of democratic progress in Yemen.

Indeed, Samantha Power has taken to discredit the Houthi movement by alleging that it is responsible for all the recent violence in the country. Power told the UN Security Council this week that the Houthi rebels have "consistently undermined Yemen’s transition". Amazingly, or perhaps not, she did not make mention of Saudi-backed extremists who last week killed more than 130 people in two mosque bombings in the capital, Sanaa. Ironically, it is the US and Saudi Arabia and their unswerving support in sustaining the old regime that is undermining «transition» to a more democratic and peaceful polity in Yemen.

The old regime in Yemen is headed up by Mansour Hadi, who is openly backed by the US and Saudi Arabia. For nearly 30 years he served as the vice president under the strong-arm dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was also backed to the hilt by Washington and Riyadh.

Saleh was notorious for his kleptocracy, siphoning of huge wealth for his family and entourage from Yemen’s modest oil industry. His son was made commander of the Republican Guard and was being groomed for succession until the Arab region’s popular protests in 2011 threatened to upset the family-run apple cart. Despite a brutal crackdown against largely peaceful protests, in which hundreds were gunned down on the streets of the capital, the American and Saudi sponsors of Saleh managed to stave off his overthrow by spinning out "talks" and eventually coming up with a "deal" that afforded the dictator and his ruling clique lifetime immunity from prosecution. As part of that US-Saudi-brokered "compromise", Saleh’s long-time deputy, Mansour Hadi, was made president in February 2012 after a non-contested "election". His presidency was only supposed to be a transitional position until the advent of full elections and the reconstitution of a representative parliament.

For the past three years, the US-Saudi process of transition has been nothing but a cynical rearguard action to retrench the old order, in which the majority of Yemen’s 24 million population are shut out from democratic control of the country’s politics and economics. The old kleptocratic order would thereby persist in its disenfranchisement of the Yemeni population while serving the geopolitical interests of Washington and its client Arab monarchies. Prime among those interests is the deterrence of democratic change in the region, as American political analyst Noam Chomsky has consistently argued.

The northern-based Houthis are adherents to a Shia sect of Islam. They have received political support from Shia Iran, but Saudi claims of Iranian fifth columnists are wildly overblown. Also, in the Houthis’ recent push for democratic change in Yemen their political vision has been notably inclusive of all religions and tribes. The Houthis, also known as Ansarullah, have spearheaded the ouster of the old regime simply because they have felt the most grievances of exclusion under the old Western, Saudi-backed order.

Last September, Houthi frustration over continual delay in the promised political transition boiled over when they took over the capital Sanaa by force of arms. One of its leaders Mohammed Abdulsalam said then: "This is a strategic victory for all Yemenis. But it is only the beginning of a long campaign to defeat corruption endemic in Yemen’s governing system. Today is the beginning of an age different from the past as the voice of all of the nation is being heard".

The Houthi movement can therefore be rightly seen as much more than just a narrow Shia sect, and one that seems to be genuinely agitating for a more democratic, inclusive Yemen.

When the Western-Saudi puppet president Hadi was forced last September to speed up the overdue transition, it is notable that Saudi Arabia began issuing dire warnings of Yemen’s collapse and Iranian foreign aggression, as it has once again cited this week. Meantime, Riyadh began to step up its support for Al Qaeda-linked groups in Yemen, who embarked on a campaign of car bombings and shootings in the capital and other towns loyal to the pro-democracy movement. Warnings of chaos had a self-fulfilling quality because of covert Saudi sponsoring of chaos. One month after the Houthis took over Sanaa in September last year, a car bomb claimed by Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (which is linked to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) killed more than 50. Last week, saw another atrocity when two Shia mosques were bombed by the same group, killing more than 130. In between those atrocities there have been numerous other massacres carried out by the Al Qaeda-linked extremists, mainly directed at the Houthi community.

The systemic link between Saudi rulers and Islamist terror groups is not a matter of contention. It has been well documented elsewhere, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and Syria. So too are the links between US and NATO allies and the same terror groups who function as proxies for regime change or pretexts for foreign military intervention. There are contradictions, of course, such as Saudi Arabia (and Qatar) claiming to be allies in the US-led so-called war on terrorism against Al Qaeda. Washington and Riyadh claim to be waging a counterinsurgency campaign in Yemen against Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, which the US has targeted with its aerial drones for the past decade.

Western powers, including the US, Britain, France and Germany, followed moves by the Persian Gulf monarchies to shut down embassies in Yemen earlier this year. This had the effect of heightening tensions and destabilising the country. The rush to evacuate Yemen had the unmistakable air of a forced abandonment to contrive a state of emergency, which would undermine the Houthi push for political transition. This puts Samantha Power’s recent accusations against the Houthis in a more enlightening context.

Now the deposed puppet-president Mansour Hadi has set up a base in the southern port city of Aden – the old British colonial «Protectorate». Hadi and his clique are calling for foreign military intervention from the Saudi-led GCC states to "restore order" – a phrase that reveals more than intended. It is patent that the Aden remnant is speaking according to a US-Saudi script aimed at giving a legal fig leaf for justifying foreign interference, whose real intent is to roll back a popular uprising.

In this Yemeni development there is an unerring analogy with the Bahrain pro-democracy movement. In mid-March 2011 when a Bahraini popular uprising was threatening to overthrow the kleptocratic regime of the Al Khalifa monarchy, the Saudis led a GCC military force into the Gulf island-state to crush that pro-democracy movement. Again, as with Yemen, the Saudis invented the pretext of Iranian aggression as a political cover for its actions. The Americans and the British, too, went fully along with the Saudi ruse in Bahrain to crush a democratic opening and to shore up the old order.

The old order of autocratic, despotic rule in the Arab region is sacrosanct, as far as Washington and its petrodollar allies are concerned. Democracy, or even the mere possibility of democracy, cannot be tolerated. For that would threaten the fascist order that underpins American global hegemony. Yemen is now entering dangerous political territory. It is threatening the Washington-ordained order, not just in the country, but in the entire oil-rich region. A US-backed Saudi-led military intervention to «restore order» is therefore on the way. That could take the form of an overt invasion, as in Bahrain, or a ramped-up covert terror campaign to drown the country in blood.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture

Dead Men Walking!: Arab Leaders Allied With the US in Fight against ISIS Are Marked Men Among the Jihadists

Head Choppers Ball: Arab leaders allied with the US in Fight against ISIS -
Many of their governments chop off heads and oppress women, just like ISIS

By Playthell G. Benjamin
Much is being made of the fact that the leading Sunni Arab nations have joined a US led coalition formed to fight and destroy the ISIL Caliphate that has seized control of large portions of the territory of Iraq and Syria. Under the leadership of Caliph Ibrahim – aka Abubakari al Baghdadi – they have instituted Sharia Law in the conquered territory, which is larger than Massachusetts and devised a system for raising revenues by selling oil and ancient treasures on the black market.

They are estimated to have a treasury of a two billion dollars, and are prepared to defend the boundaries of the Caliphate with state of the art American weaponry seized from a fleeing Iraqi army. This is no hit and run affair that is typical of terrorist groups, the leaders of ISIL regard themselves as pioneers, holy warriors establishing a 21st century Caliphate based on Caliphates of the middle ages, when Islamic civilization was the marvel of the world.

Caliph Ibrahim may be a madman but he is no light-weight; he holds an undergraduate degree in history and a doctorate in Sharia Law. He is also a poet. Before the US invaded Iraq he was an Islamic scholar and Imam; after the invasion he became a part of the Sunni resistance movement and was captured by US forces. He was released after four years of imprisonment and turned over to the Iraqi government, who later released him. But during his incarceration he met seasoned al Qaeda militants and was tutored in the techniques of terror. Thus by the time of his release he had become such a committed holy warrior an American Army officer remembers him smirking and saying :”See you guys in New York.” I bet they wish they had capped him now! As the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq was devastated, al Baghdadi rose up the ranks and eventually became the most powerful commander of the Iraqi insurgency.

[...]

Since it is their avowed intention to put all of the present leaders of Muslim countries to the blade, preferably lopping off their heads in public executions, it is no wonder that they have flocked to Barack’s banner in his campaign against ISIL. They are literally trying to keep from losing their heads. But they are all as skittish as cats on a hot tin roof, because by joining forces with the number one enemy of the Muslim world – given the history of US policy in the region this is an easy case to make – they risk revolts in their own countries. This fear causes them to adopt more and more repressive policies in an attempt to ferret out any trace of radical Islam in the populace, which in turn drives more youths to radicalism…it becomes a symbiotic relationship. Hence they have joined the US led coalition as an act of self-preservation.

Read More

Joe Biden Apologizes For ISIS Confession: Said ISIS Was Supported by Turkey, Qatar and United Arab Emirates In Attempt To Topple Syria

Strategically, Vice President Biden was keen to leave out the main culprits: The United States and Saudi Arabia.

Biden Completes Middle East 'Apology Tour'


By David Jackson,
Vice President Biden is wrapping up a series of apologies to Middle East allies in the wake of his comments saying they have backed extremist groups in Syria.

After calls in recent days to the leaders of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, Biden is now reaching out to the rulers of Saudi Arabia, The New York Times reports.

During a question-and-answer session last week at Harvard, Biden said one of the problems the U.S. has in the Middle East is that some of its allies have helped arm and fund al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria.

The comments — and the criticism — came as the U.S. recruits Arab allies for military action against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The White House acknowledged Biden's apologetic calls to allies, and also defended him.

Read More

The Empire Reaps the Jihadist Whirlwind: The West's Islamic Fundamentalist Surrogates Have Turned On Their Masters

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the purported leader of ISIS or he Islamic State.

For more than three decades, the U.S. has deployed Islamic fundamentalist surrogates to fight its imperial wars in Muslim lands. Now, the world’s most successful jihadists have turned on their former masters – and will soon go after the Gulf oil states. “The Caliphate has taken the ideology to its logical and ghastly conclusion, and dares to challenge the legitimacy of its former funders, staunch allies of the ‘Crusader’.”




By Glen Ford, BAR

“The problem is, the Pentagon’s proxies are evaporating.”

The rise of the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria has flipped the script on U.S. proxy war policies in the region, and may ultimately bring down the royal oil states whose survival is indispensable to American hegemony in the world. At the foot soldier level, the imperial proxy strategy has already collapsed with the disintegration of the (always ephemeral) “moderate” armed opposition to the Syrian government and the defection to the Caliphate of formerly U.S.-financed Sunni fighters in Iraq.

The $500 million President Obama has requested for Syria has been rendered moot by the Caliphate’s stunning political and military victories; no amount of money can create an army out of phantoms. The most active Syrian insurgents have flocked to the self-proclaimed Islamic State formerly known as ISIS, whose leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, served notice on Washington: “You should know, you defender of the cross, that getting others to fight on your behalf will not do for you in Syria as it will not do for you in Iraq.”

The U.S. corporate media were more interested in the rest of al-Baghdadi’s message, in which he warned Washington that “soon enough, you will be in direct confrontation – forced to do so, God willing. And the sons of Islam have prepared themselves for this day. So wait, and we will be waiting, too.” For most self-obsessed Americans, this was received as a threat to attack “the Homeland.” However, downtown Manhattan is not on the Caliphate leader’s map. Al-Baghdadi meant that the American strategy of financing Muslim muppets to fight imperialism’s wars is kaput, and that the Pentagon will soon have to do its own dirty work, dressed in “Crusader” uniform.

Accordingly, the U.S. is sending additional hundreds of “non-combat” troops to northern Iraq – as if Marines and Special Forces are anything but combat soldiers – to join the 1,000 or so American military and “security” personnel already there, by official count. Contrary to what many Americans on the Left believe, U.S. planners are not itching to send large American units to Arab lands (the Kurds are not Arabs), since their presence is counter-productive in the extreme. The problem is, the Pentagon’s proxies are evaporating, in flight, or – in the case of Arab Iraq – growing even more dependent on Iran and (who would have predicted it?) Russia, which is assisting in reconstituting the Iraqi air force.

“Downtown Manhattan is not on the Caliphate leader’s map.”

Some leftists in the U.S. even imagine that Washington has achieved some kind of victory with the imminent departure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the veteran American stooge. But, Maliki’s ouster was also backed by Iran, Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani (who mobilized millions demanding an end to the U.S. occupation), Muqtada al-Sadr (whose militia fought two wars against the occupation), and even much of Maliki’s own Dawa Party. Only the Kurds remain in Washington’s (and Israel’s) pocket – and this matter of convenience, too, may pass as the neighborhood changes all around Kurdistan.

By that, I mean the larger neighborhood, encompassing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates, Turkey and Jordan. The Caliphate’s al-Baghdadi had a message for them, his erstwhile financiers, back in late June: “The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organizations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority and the arrival of its troops to their areas.” Thousands of the Islamic State’s fighters – and, just as importantly, its fundamentalist Wahhabist worldview – are indigenous to the Arabian peninsula. That’s why journalist Patrick Cockburn, in his new book, excerpted in Counterpunch, concluded that, “For America, Britain and the Western powers, the rise of Isis and the Caliphate is the ultimate disaster....”

The Caliphate’s victories resonate far beyond the Sunni Arab population of Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia’s political legitimacy is based on its role as protector of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina – and the Old Time Religion. But its royal family, like the rest of the hereditary potentates of the region, is debauched and infinitely corrupted by wealth. The Saudis (and, in no less lethal form, the Qataris) export jihad against Shia and secularists while hoping to control it at home. The Caliphate has taken the ideology to its logical and ghastly conclusion, and dares to challenge the legitimacy of its former funders, staunch allies of the “Crusader.”

Cockburn puts it this way:

“The resurgence of al-Qa’ida-type groups is not a threat confined to Syria, Iraq, and their near neighbors. What is happening in these countries, combined with the increasing dominance of intolerant and exclusive Wahhabite beliefs within the worldwide Sunni community, means that all 1.6 billion Muslims, almost a quarter of the world’s people, will be increasingly affected. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that non-Muslim populations, including many in the West, will be untouched by the conflict. Today’s resurgent jihadism, which has shifted the political terrain in Iraq and Syria, is already having far-reaching effects on global politics with dire consequences for us all.”

“All 1.6 billion Muslims, almost a quarter of the world’s people, will be increasingly affected.”

The consequences are, of course, most dire to those Muslims (including but not limited to Shia) labeled heretics by the takfiris of the expanding Caliphate, and for all religious minorities and secular forces within their reach. But, the Salafist chickens are coming back home to roost on the peninsula – which is why the Saudis are, at this late date, frantically attempting to put the jihadist genie back in the bottle. As Cockburn writes, “Fearful of what they’ve helped create, the Saudis are now veering in the other direction, arresting jihadi volunteers rather than turning a blind eye as they go to Syria and Iraq, but it may be too late.”

It is certainly too late for the U.S. to salvage a critical element of its foreign policy in the Muslim world: war by proxy. It has been a long and bloody ride since the late Seventies, when the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan invented the global jihadist network almost from scratch, to give the Soviets a black eye in Afghanistan. The Islamists provided the foot soldiers for America’s own imperial jihad in Muslim lands.

In 2011, it was jihadists to the rescue after popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt threw the imperial pack into panic. The U.S. and its NATO allies mounted a monstrous assault on Libya – a kind of Shock and Awe – providing air cover for a jihadist army largely financed by Arab oil royals. When regime change was accomplished, Libyan fighters joined their Salafist comrades in the rampage in Syria, already underway.

Today, with Libya in utter chaos, and Assad’s government still standing in Syria, the Caliphate has declared independence from its western and royal godmothers – as we at BAR predicted three years ago.

Imperialism has let loose a plague upon the world, that will – sooner, rather than later – consume the kings, emirs and sultans the U.S. depends on to keep the empire’s oil safe. The pace of imperial decline just got quicker.

_______________________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Repor

Oil Kingdoms Quarrel : Qatar's Backing of Muslim Brotherhood Prompts Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain To Yank Envoys From Qatar

Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammed
al-Attiyah arrives to attend the 130th meeting of
the Foreign Ministers of the Gulf Cooperation
Council in Riyadh on March 4, 2014.

(Fayez Nureldine/AFP/File)

Gulf tensions bared as three states recall Qatar envoys (via AFP)

Three Gulf monarchies recalled their ambassadors from Doha Wednesday in an unprecedented escalation in tension with fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member Qatar, accused of backing the widely banned Muslim Brotherhood. Regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia…