Persian Gulf & Middle East Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

What India can learn from Erdogan

The West propagated the spin that Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s democratically elected president, had only himself to blame for being overthrown in a military coup. There are many takers in India for this thesis, and it probably came handy for those who were unwilling to hold any penetrating search lights on what really happened in Egypt.

However, a point has come when it becomes unavoidable to call a spade a spade — as Turkey’s outspoken Prime Minister Recep Erdogan consistently did. Erdogan implied in his latest statement on Wednesday that Egypt’s military coup was possible only with covert western support, and it still remains the junta’s lifeline.
Our pundits need to learn from Erdogan that when a military junta opens fire and massacres over 1000 civilians and causes injury to over 10000 people, it is a bloodbath as horrendous as Holocaust — killing people for simply being unlike oneself in creed.
Would the junta in Cairo have done this without the supreme confidence that the Obama administration cannot afford to let it down so long as it loyally serves American regional strategies in the Middle East, especially by collaborating with israel’s security establishment?
So, what emerges in the final analysis is that it was not Morsi’s aversion to ‘inclusive’ democracy that provoked the Egyptian military, but the growing trend that the Brotherhood government was steering Egypt toward an independent foreign policy and cementing a regional axis with Turkey and Tunisia that held the potential to modulate the Arab Spring and promised to spearhead changes and challenge the medieval autocracies of the Middle East — and frustrate the US’ Middle East strategies.
India’s eloquent silence over the bloodbath in Egypt speaks volumes about the Faustian deals that our ruling elites have made with the petrodollar-rich oligarchies of the Persian Gulf — and the US regional strategies in the Middle East.
Paradoxically, the rise of Salafism that the Saudis are fostering in Egypt for the sake of putting down political islam is bound to come to haunt India, too, some day. But for our ruling elites, the charm of ‘green money’ is far too overpowering.

Click to expand...

THE ROVING EYE
Hi, I'm your new Axis of Evil
By Pepe Escobar

I have argued that what has just happened in Egypt is a bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by a military junta responsible for a coup that is not a coup, under the guise of an Egyptian "war on terror". Yet this newspeak gambit - which easily could have been written at the White House - is just part of the picture.

Amid a thick fog of spin and competing agendas, a startling fact stands out. A poll only 10 days ago by the Egyptian Center for Media Studies and Public Opinion had already shown that 69% were against the July 3 military coup orchestrated by the Pinochet-esque Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

So the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath cannot possibly be considered legitimate - unless for a privileged coterie of Mubarakists (the so-called fulool), a bunch of corrupt oligarchs and the military-controlled Egyptian "deep state".

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government led by Mohamed Morsi may have been utterly incompetent - trying to rewrite the Egyptian constitution; inciting hardcore fundamentalists; and bowing in debasement in front of the International Monetary Fund. But it should not be forgotten this was coupled with permanent, all-out sabotage by the "deep state".

It's true that Egypt was - and remains - on the brink of total economic collapse; the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath only followed a change in the signature on the checks, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia (and the United Arab Emirates). As Spengler has demonstrated on this site (see Islam's civil war moves to Egypt, Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013), Egypt will remain a banana republic without the bananas and dependent on foreigners to eat any. The economic disaster won't go away - not to mention the MB's cosmic resentment.

The winners, as it stands, are the House of Saud/Israel/ Pentagon axis. How did they pull it off?

When in doubt, call Bandar
In theory, Washington had been in (relative) control of both the MB and Sisi's Army. So on the surface this is a win-win situation. Essentially, Washington hawks are pro-Sisi's Army, while "liberal imperialists" are pro-MB; the perfect cover, because the MB is Islamic, indigenous, populist, economically neoliberal, it wants to work with the International Monetary Fund, and has not threatened Israel.

The MB was not exactly a problem for either Washington and Tel Aviv; after all ambitious ally Qatar was there as a go-between. Qatar's foreign policy, as everyone knows, boils down to cheerleading the MB everywhere.

So Morsi must have crossed a pretty serious red line. It could have been his call for Sunni Egyptians to join a jihad against the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria (although that's formally in tune with Barack Obama's "Assad must go" policy). Arguably, it was his push to install some sort of jihadi paradise from the Sinai all the way to Gaza. The Sinai, for all practical purposes, is run by Israel. So that points to a green light for the coup from both the Pentagon and Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv is totally at ease with Sisi's Army and the flush Saudi supporters of the military junta. The only thing that matters to Israel is that Sisi's Army will uphold the Camp David agreements. The MB, on the other hand, might entertain other ideas in the near future.

For the House of Saud, though, this was never a win-win situation. The MB in power in Egypt was anathema. In this fateful triangle - Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh - what remains to be established is who was been the most cunning in the wag the dog department.

That's where the Incredibly Disappearing Qatar act fits in. The rise and (sudden) fall of Qatar from the foreign policy limelight is strictly linked to the current leadership vacuum in the heart of the Pentagon's self-defined "arc of instability". Qatar was, at best, an extra in a blockbuster - considering the yo-yo drifts of the Obama administration and that Russia and China are just playing a waiting game.

Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, the emir who ended up deposing himself, clearly overreached not only in Syria but also in Iraq; he was financing not only MB outfits but also hardcore jihadis across the desert. There's no conclusive proof because no one in either Doha or Washington is talking, but the emir was certainly "invited" to depose himself. And not by accident the Syrian "rebel" racket was entirely taken over by the House of Saud, via the spectacularly resurfaced Bandar Bush, aka Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

So the winners once again were the Saudis - as the Obama administration was calculating that both the MB and the al-Qaeda nebulae would then fade into oblivion in Syria. That remains to be seen; it's possible that Egypt from now on may attract a lot of jihadis from Syria. Still, they would remain in MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa).

As for Sisi, he was clever enough to seize the "terror" theme and pre-emptively equate MB with al-Qaeda in Egypt, thus setting the scene for the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath. The bottom line is that a case can be made that the Obama administration has in fact subcontracted most of its Middle East policy to the House of Saud.

Pick your axis
Only two days before the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey was in Israel getting cozy with General Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, discussing the proverbial "threats that could emanate out of the region - globally and to the homeland - and how we can continue to work together to make both of our countries more secure". It's unthinkable they did not discuss how they would profit from the imminent bloodbath that is not a bloodbath.

At the same time, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon bombastically announced a new "axis of evil"; Iran, Syria and Lebanon. That implies Tehran, Damascus and, significantly, Beirut as a whole (not only the predominantly Shi'ite southern suburbs). Ya'alon explicitly told Dempsey it was "forbidden" for them to win the civil war in Syria.

Considering that the Central Intelligence Agency itself has deemed the civil war in Syria as a "top threat" to US national security in case al-Qaeda-style outfits and copycats take over in an eventual post-Assad situation; and at the same time Washington is extremely reluctant to stop "leading from behind", a case can be made that Israel may be entertaining another invasion of Lebanon. An always alert Sheikh Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, has already been talking about the possibility.

Then Dempsey went to Jordan - which already holds around 1,000 US troops, F-16s with crews, and an array of Patriot missiles. The spin is that the Pentagon is helping Amman with "border control techniques" as in one of those favorite Pentagon acronyms, ISR ("intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance").

That's just spin. Most of all Dempsey went to survey the progress of the recent batch of anti-tank missiles, bought by - who else - the Saudis and supplied by the CIA, via Jordan, to (in theory) selected "good rebels" in southern Syria. Those "rebels", by the way, were trained by US Special Forces inside Jordan. Obviously Damascus will be preparing a counterpunch to this offensive by the American/Saudi/Jordanian axis.

Pick your evil

There's hardly any "American credibility" left in the Middle East - apart from puppet entities like Jordan and selected elites in the feudal Gulf, that "democratic" realm of corruption, mercenaries and imported proletariats treated like cattle.

It hardly helps that US Secretary of State John Kerry has recommended Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, as the next US ambassador to Egypt.

Perception is everything. Informed opinion all across the Middle East immediately identifies Ford as a creepy death squad facilitator. His CV prior to Syria - where he legitimized the "rebels" - is matchless; sidekick to sinister John Negroponte promoting the "Salvador Option" in Iraq in 2004. The "Salvador Option" is code for US-sponsored death squads, a tactic first applied in El Salvador (by Negroponte) in the 1980s (causing at least 75,000 deaths) but with deep origins in Latin America in the late 1960s throughout the 1970s.

Sisi will keep playing his game according to his own master plan - bolstering the narrative myth that the Egyptian army defends the nation and its institutions when in fact defending its immense socio-economic privileges. Forget about civilian oversight. And forget about any possible independent political party - or movement - in Egypt.

As for Washington, MB or "deep state", even a civil war in Egypt - Arabs killing Arabs, divide and rule ad infinitum - that's fine, as long as there is no threat to Israel.

With Israel possibly mulling another invasion of Lebanon; the Kerry "peace process" an excuse for more settlements in Palestine; Bandar Bush back practicing the dark arts; the pre-empting of any possible solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier; Egypt in civil war; Syria and also Iraq bleeding to death, what's left is the certified proliferation of all kinds of axes, and all kinds of evil.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at [email protected].

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Click to expand...

Egypt's Sisi banishes wild dogs

By M K Bhadrakumar

Yves Jego, mayor of Montereau-Fault-Yonne, in the southeast suburb of Paris, announced on Monday that dog owners in his town with no sense of civic duty will be henceforth caught on closed-television cameras if they do not pick up their pet's waste, and offenders will be fined 35 euros (US$46).

Mr Jego compared irresponsible dog owns to traffic offenders who pose a threat to public safety. The analogy can be applied to Syria. Indeed, even as the mayor spoke to Agence France-Presse, the French news agency also reported on an innocuous meeting being scheduled for the middle of next week, away from the glare of international publicity in a city 468.7 kilometers to the north of Paris - The Hague.

There are stirrings of hope that a clean-up act over Syria cannot entirely be ruled out.

Byzantine city of wild dogs
According to the AFP, the proposed meeting of top US and Russian officials at The Hague was originally conceived at the August 9 meeting in Washington within the "2+2" format of the foreign and defense ministers of the two countries.

Wendy Sherman, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, will lead the American team, which includes, interestingly, US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, whom President Barack Obama recently re-designated as the next envoy to Cairo. Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy on Syria, will also participate.

The stated purpose of The Hague meeting is to discuss preparations for the long-delayed international peace conference on Syria, dubbed as the "Geneva 2", aimed at bringing together the Syrian regime and its allies and the opposition.

Moscow is yet to disclose at what level it will be represented at The Hague meeting. Russia will be anxious to convey that it's business is as usual with Washington despite the brouhaha over the ex-CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden affair and the ensuing cancellation of President Barack Obama's "bilateral" with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month.

On the other hand, Ford's presence at The Hague could be somewhat disconcerting, given his controversial record as diplomat both in Iraq and Syria of leaving behind mountain heaps of dog waste, but then, Moscow will also ponder over an interesting thought that it is often such able hands who are also best employed to hold the broom and do an efficient job of cleaning up, since they know better than anyone else where the stench originates.

Equally, there is a lot going in favor of the Syrian peace talks picking up. For one thing, the dogs of war in Syria are finding themselves increasingly in dire straits. General Abdel Fattel al-Sisi, the Egyptian strongman, intensely hates dogs and has ordered the Syrian breed to vacate Cairo.

He is all set to follow Mr Jego's footsteps and install CCTV cameras all along the Nile banks, and the best part is that, although a poor man himself, his enterprise is a 100% self-financing one, being generously funded by the very same wealthy sheikhs to whom the dogs of war in Syria not too long ago belonged.

These sheikhs are increasingly worried that the winds might carry the stench in Egypt all the way to their own grand palaces and pollute their beautiful desert environs, in which case all the perfumes of Arabia would be insufficient to mask the odor.

An emboldened Sisi now intends to bring out of retirement former dictator Hosni Mubarak, whose legendary skills in dog-waste management are a legion in the Middle East and whom the sheikhs implicitly trust.

At any rate, the Syrian canine breed has been quick to read the ominous signs of Sisi's displeasure and have fled from Cairo to Istanbul, taking advantage of the authorities in Turkey and Egypt not being on talking terms anymore.

But they aren't going to be safe for long in Istanbul, either, because it is an ancient Byzantine city and there are wild dogs there, too. The Syrian breed is a relatively delicate one, whereas the ones from Kurdistan and further beyond in Mesopotamia are real bloodhounds and some of them are rumored to be dog-eating-dogs.

Also, there are vague hints that it is a matter of time before the Turkish master may himself follow Sisi's footsteps and decide to get rid of all dogs streaming into Anatolia from the surrounding regions that are polluting his beautiful compound too.

Tragic but potentially cathartic
This needs some explaining. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan phoned up Putin two weeks back and set up a meeting between the two on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit early next month in St Petersburg for a man-to-man talk regarding Syria.

Erdogan, being a gifted politician, understands that he has lost the game over Syria, while Putin holds most of the trump cards, including the fearsome "Kurdish card".

Amid the growing signs of a Kurdish entity shaping up in northern Syria along the Turkish border on the lines of Iraqi Kurdistan, Moscow has suggested with a poker face that Syrian Kurds could be independently represented at Geneva 2 talks.

Erdogan was quick to grasp the message. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar and Mohamed Morsi of Egypt used to be his closest associates in the Syrian project. But both have now relinquished power - one abdicating and the other deposed.

On the other hand, Egypt's coup finds Erdogan to be the odd man on the regional chessboard, while Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council allies, Iraq, Syria, Israel and even Iran have decided to do business with the junta in Cairo.

The unkindest cut of all has been that Obama is nowadays ignoring Erdogan. From the high pedestal of being acclaimed as a role model for the new Middle East, Erdogan has fallen and it has been a "Shakespearean fall" - at once tragic but potentially cathartic.

Erdogan knows that Obama has his hands full with Egypt for the rest of his term in the White House, which means the US is being forced into a virtual disengagement from the Syrian project. At any rate, this is not the best of times to push for "regime change" in the Middle East.

In sum, Erdogan understands perfectly well that Moscow sizes up that the tide has turned in Syria.

The blistering propaganda campaign from Moscow regarding the specter of al-Qaeda raising its hood in Syria has registered in Western consciousness, and meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad is pressing home the advantage on the battlefield and is edging closer than ever to getting re-elected as Syria's president in the 2014 poll.

Portents of evils imminent
Simply put, post-Soviet Russia is back with a bang on the Middle East's chessboard. Indeed, strange things are beginning to happen all over the region.

The Syrian National Council representative in Istanbul, Khaled Khoja, bitterly said in an interview with Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper over the weekend,

The movement of the Syrian opposition in Egypt is being limited [by the new rulers] and opposition figures are leaving the country. We are moving the headquarters of the Syrian National Coalition from Egypt to Turkey.

Politically, Bashar al-Assad has become a role model to Arab dictators. What al-Assad and the Shabiha [armed men in civilian clothing who support al-Assad] are to Syria, [General Abdel Fatteh] al-Sisi and axmen [armed groups] are to Egypt.

A conviction is going around among Arab dictators that somehow the Arab Spring can be stopped. They include the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which are in the group of the Friends of Syria. All of them have supported al-Sisi.

Following a nine-month siege, the opposition forces got hold of the airport near Aleppo and found Saudi Arabian rockets destined for the regime. The UAE is in the Friends of Syria Group, but Dubai has become the central bank of the Syrian regime. While members of the Friends of Syria should support the opposition, they are now showing the tendency of safeguarding the regime.

Unsurprisingly, Moscow's warm equations with the Mubarak-era Egyptian "deep state" and the manifest empathy it is now displaying toward the junta in Cairo, coupled with its visceral hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood historically, are bringing about a strange proximity between Russia and Saudi Arabia over the vital issues affecting the future trajectory of the Arab Spring.

Looking back, King Abdullah's initiative to depute his spy chief, Prince Bandar, to meet Putin last month underscored that the Saudis feel a commonality of interests over Syria emerging today on the regional plane with Moscow, which it does not feel with any other big power, including the US.

From all reports, it might have appeared that Putin and Bandar kept an ostentatious distance and warily probed each other, but in actuality they talked for four intense hours in the Russian leader's residence.

Syria has been and perhaps still remains a point of difference between Saudi Arabia and Russia, but then, both Putin and King Abdullah are pragmatists par excellence, and as Mao Zedong once put it, "The differences between friends cannot but reinforce their friendship."

Put differently, Sisi's decision to kick out the Syrian National Council fellows from their watering hole in Cairo couldn't have been possible without a Saudi nod and a wink, and it is highly improbable Bandar didn't sensitize Putin. The council's chief, Ahmad Jarba is, after all, widely regarded as a Saudi protege.

Syrian National Council representative Khoja could as well have repeated Julius Caesar's words in William Shakespeare,

Calpurnia, my wife, stays me at home;
She dreamt to-night she saw my statua,
Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it:
And these does she apply for warnings, and portents,
And evils imminent; and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Click to expand...

kalel17 said:

So I believe this was all staged, just like the Houla Massacre, to look like the work of the government.

Click to expand...

TerraN_EmpirE said:

now here is a little Irony

see the pic at the top note the weird looking magazine and the device holding it. That's a Magazine holder/foregrip it's an accessory one mounts to a rail system like the one you see their. the Irony you ask? it's a Product of Fab defense and Israeli accessory maker.

Click to expand...

Equation said:

That Magazine holder/foregrip seems to have a magazine release button if I'm not mistaken. Never seen such a device before. What's the advantage of this?

Click to expand...

hardware said:

it's seems to me that saude arabia bankrolled the overthrow of egypt's islamic brotherhood,when mubarak out of jail. mubarak has to repay the saude for helping him ,we could withness egyptian deeper involvement in syrian civil war.

Click to expand...