If Saudi rulers had more brains, they might be formidably dangerous. Even with lackluster intelligence assets, they are already causing enough havoc and bloodshed across the Middle East and North Africa regions, pouring millions-of-dollars-worth of weaponry into Al Qaeda and other Takfiri networks that are destroying once proud civilizations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya through nihilistic sectarianism.
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And if the Saudi paymasters of terrorism could have it all their way, they would salivate at the chance of extending this destruction to Iran – the Shia power that they fear as their nemesis.
Fortunately, the Saudi rulers’ agenda of covert terrorism – an agenda that serves its Western masters – is not well concealed. This is because “Saudi state intelligence” is something of an oxymoron and leaves a trail of self-incriminating clues wherever it goes.
This uncovering of the real authors of regional violence and their motives curtails the plotters and will lead eventually to their downfall through their own damnation.
Take the latest disclosure that the Saudis tried to bribe Russia into abandoning its long-time ally, Syria. Given their own venal form of feudal rule, the Saudis seem to think that everyone else can be bought at a price. Apparently, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan dangled a $15-billion arms deal in front of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin if the latter would jettison his country’s strategic alliance with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
A CIA veteran's prescription for how the United States can get along with an ally it doesn't trust.
Milt Bearden is an author and former career CIA officer who during the 1980s managed the CIA's covert assistance to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation from neighboring Pakistan. He currently consults on resource issues in South Asia.
More than two months after the raid by U.S. Navy SEALS on the Abbottabad compound of Osama bin Laden, the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is at its lowest point in the almost six decades of a rocky, on-again-off-again alliance. The United States has suspended some $800 million in military aid, and the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, is traveling to Pakistan this week for what is certain to be a chilly meeting with his counterpart, Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Maybe these developments are not altogether bad, for amid this turmoil the leaders of both countries, if not their vocal populations, are beginning to understand that a new, interests-based regional partnership must be forged before some political point of no return is crossed. Pakistan and the United States need a new paradigm for cooperation, one that will not only guide the bilateral relationship through the endgame in Afghanistan, but also influence Pakistani and U.S. policies in an Indian Ocean region on the verge of a new Great Game for mineral resources and economic domination.
The main players in that game are India and China; the prizes are Afghan and Pakistani resources and overland trade routes to the Arabian Sea. The United States' role is important, even critical, but it is as yet undefined by American political leaders. Ultimately, the United States may have to shift part of its security and political focus from its Atlantic relationships to the Indian Ocean region.
The mineral resources of Afghanistan and Pakistan — copper, gold, rare-earth elements, iron, the list goes on — will play a major role in driving the hungry Chinese and Indian economies through the 21st century. Afghan minerals alone, valued by the U.S. Geological Survey conservatively at about $1 trillion, could follow a natural route south from Afghanistan through Pakistan's Baluchistan province, itself mineral rich, to the newly completed port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. From there, the minerals would find markets in China, India, and the West, producing along the way a greatly expanded Pakistani mining industry and transportation infrastructure, as well as tens upon tens of thousands of jobs for dangerously idle young Baluchi men.
But none of this will likely happen until Pakistan takes a bold leap into the 21st century, shedding its 1947 mindset of believing that it is just a hair trigger away from war with India and that it must at any cost be buttressed against Indian encroachment on its western flank in Afghanistan. To become a player in this new Great Game, Pakistan will first need to rework its relationship with the United States and, following that, with Afghanistan and India.
Received directly from the author — full article below the line.
Who Are They? What Do They Want? Why Do They Fight?
This paper presents the results of 78 in-depth interviews conducted with self-identified Afghan insurgents. If the interviewees are indeed representative of broader Taliban sentiments, then the future of Afghanistan is grim. It appears that only the return of a ‘pious’ Islamic government will satisfy them.
The retired Marine colonel who cued me to this report opined that, “This is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than any Administration or DoS blathering.” I would be totally unsurprised to find him 100% spot-on. I invite your attention to the final para, highlighted. If that is true, the (in)actions of our government may have rendered us incapable, fiscally and operationally, of effective response. Another Task Force Smith, another Kaserine Pass could be the foreseeable result.
Embassy closures are a signal of the rapidly escalated intervention in the region by the US
There is one thing certain about the publicized threat to our embassies; it is not what it is presented to be. To accept the official explanation of a nebulous threat from al Qaeda as the reason for closing our embassies across the Middle East and North Africa is being dangerously naive and simplistic.
This is much more serious than what we are being told, but not for the reasons we are being given. We are seeing the consequences of a long running “Cold War” on two major fronts of political conflict that could escalate into military engagement with proxy nations of world super powers. The world, and life as we know it, could change in an instant should we awaken one morning to the news of bombs flying across the Middle East. That is a very real possibility, as we are now in a heightened proxy war environment. We are standing in a thick forest of dry tinder, and the smallest of sparks could ignite a conflagration the likes of which we have never before seen.
Jailbreaks in Iraq. A surge in Syria. A growing presence in Lebanon. The terrorist group’s influence is on the rise, says Bruce Riedel.
TheDailyBeast.com, July 26, 2013
Two spectacular al Qaeda prison breaks in Iraq, freeing over 500 of its members in two separate prisons simultaneously this week, demonstrate the group is back with a vengeance. Al Qaeda’s Iraq branch is also the moving force behind the jihadist success in Syria. The resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq has sobering implications for what is likely to follow the drawdown of NATO forces in Afghanistan for the al Qaeda mother ship in Pakistan.
Th e speed of change throughout the Middle East and North Africa since 2011 has demonstrated that a policy of Soviet-era containment manifested since the Cold War by support for repressive dictatorships that suppressed, rather than emancipated their populations, catalysed the appeal of Al-Qaeda. Instead, as the Arab Spring has shown, populations desire economic growth, employment and good governance in the place of the defi cient development outcomes, conflict and militancy that characterise life in so much of this region. As the recently released US National Strategy for Counterterrorism elucidates, a comprehensive approach to tackling Al-Qaeda must include “objectives such as promoting responsive governance and respect for the rights of citizens, which will reduce Al-Qaeda’s resonance and relevancy.”149
Coming back to work topics after a weekend of covering Twitter's endless nerdwars I am pretty horrified by the news coming out of Syria.
Ethnic Kurds are the largest group of stateless people in the world. Their population straddles the meeting point for Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. I read a few weeks ago that the Assad regime had recognized early on that Kurdish disinterest was in their best efforts and they left the far northeast provinces alone. That is apparently changing.
The new round of fighting broke out in Tel Abyad, a border town near Turkey in the rebel-held Raqqa province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes began after Kurdish militias in the area discovered fighters from an al Qaeda-linked rebel group trying to rig one of their bases with explosives.
That headline appeared in my inbox earlier and I have been dreading it. The Syrian civil war has spilled over into Lebanon, it’s encroaching on Turkey’s territory, and it’s set off troubles in neighboring Iraq, which are now merging into an end to end regional threat.
Let’s take a look at how things got this way. The Ottoman empire laid claim to Syria and Iraq between 1512 and 1566.
Phi Beta Iota: A well illustrated historical overview with an itemization of current country by country one liners.
Saudi Rulers Pour Money Into Arming Militants in Region
