The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[YGabbana]

I still can't get over the fact that they built a big **** clock.

I went to Saudi last year to do Umrah. I stayed in the Clock Tower. Not until I got there did I realise how disgusting it was. A land so beautiful being descerated by hideous buildings. This new hotel is pretty sickening to be honest. Umrah and specifically Hajj is why it is being built for. Hajj is supposed to be tough and a struggle to go through. These people are making it akin to a week in Vegas. Top 5 floors for Saudi royalty, yet they treat the immigrant workers like cattle. Yet they preach religiousness and holiness. These people forget the Prophet's, that they follow, last words. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.

Makes me sick.

On another note, ISIS will kill a few million. Climate change could end us all.

The saudi royal family arnt religious at all so its not suprising.

[maqroll]

I'm sure the next republican that gets in at the white house will ensure boots will be on the ground

Hillary is a hawk, so if she wins, we can expect the same.

[islingtonclaret]

Noticed they demolished an Ottoman fortress from the mid 18th century to build that absolute monster. It's on a par with the Romanian capital building and North Korea's pyramid hotel for minging-ness.

 

Mind you, those two buildings weren't built next door to the holiest site of one of the Abrahamic religions, so I guess it wins the title.

 

...because the best way forward for Mecca is to demolish it's character and history, right?

[omariqy]

They are also knocking down historic mosques so as to ensure 'people don't come and worship the history rather than the religion'.  Biggest load of balls ever.  This extreme Wahabism is somehow backed by our government!

[Awol]

They are also knocking down historic mosques so as to ensure 'people don't come and worship the history rather than the religion'. Biggest load of balls ever. This extreme Wahabism is somehow backed by our government!

Exactly the same principle as that applied by IS to historic irreplaceable sites of global heritage in Iraq and Syria. To borrow that wonderful New Labour phrase, it's about controlling the narrative.

As for the government, having initially flirted with the idea of the Arab Spring they have witnessed the Arab meltdown and will now back the remaining authoritarian regimes to the hilt in order to 'maintain stability'. The irony being that it plays directly into the extremist narrative that the petro-monarchies are puppets of the West.

[Wainy316]

Wasn't Wahhabism originally backed because it was battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan?

[MakemineVanilla]

 

obama is calling climate change a threat to the world as isis goes on the slaughter and kills 400 women and children. the guy is a pro islamist.

He's right. Wars come and go, but we've wrecked our planet, beyond repair. I will experience it, but it will be worse for my children and grandchildren's future.

 

 

Fixed!

 

According to chief scientist Julia Slingo at the Met Office, nothing we do now will alter the change already on its way.

 

Any attempts at mitigation will make no difference to the next 20-30 years and will only slow down what happens beyond that period.

[mjmooney]

I vote for the slowing down option, then.

[Awol]

Wasn't Wahhabism originally backed because it was battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan?

Wahhabism, named after it's founder Muhammad ibn Abd Al Wahhab became the dominant strain of Islam in what became Saudi Arabia, because he formed an alliance with the Al Saud tribe to form the first Saudi state - making the two became indistinguishable.

We supported and continue to support Saudi for obvious economic reasons.

[maqroll]

You can thank T.E. Lawrence for forging that tribal alliance.

[CrackpotForeigner]

You can thank T.E. Lawrence for forging that tribal alliance.

 

And the less famous William Shakespear:

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30796539

 

 

A hundred years ago this week, the camel-mounted armies of Abdulaziz - known as Ibn Saud, later to become the founding king of Saudi Arabia - were preparing to face their arch-enemies, the Rashidis.

Alongside, in full khaki battledress and pith helmet, stood William Shakespear.

After a glittering early career in the British Indian administration in Bombay, Captain Shakespear had been posted in 1909 to Kuwait.

There, already fluent in Arabic, he forged a close personal relationship with Abdulaziz, head of the House of Saud - but then just the ruler of a desert area in northern Arabia. [etc.]

Edited May 28, 2015 by CrackpotForeigner

[Awol]

You can thank T.E. Lawrence for forging that tribal alliance.

Haha, that pair teamed up in the 16th Century. I know the fashion in the US is to blame the current Middle East mess on the British Empire but that's a pretty epic historical fail.

[Rugeley Villa]

a court case in london of a man accused of terrorism acts in syria has been thrown out because it was proven british intelligence services were arming and funding these rebel groups in syria. great stuff, its as if we want all this shit.

[donnie]

a court case in london of a man accused of terrorism acts in syria has been thrown out because it was proven british intelligence services were arming and funding these rebel groups in syria. great stuff, its as if we want all this shit.

Hopefully the Tories will finally get there way and be able to scrap the stupid human rights act so crap like you have just mentioned doesn't happen no more.

[snowychap]

 

a court case in london of a man accused of terrorism acts in syria has been thrown out because it was proven british intelligence services were arming and funding these rebel groups in syria. great stuff, its as if we want all this shit.

Hopefully the Tories will finally get there way and be able to scrap the stupid human rights act so crap like you have just mentioned doesn't happen no more.

 

 

[omariqy]

[omariqy]

Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

Seumas Milne

Seumas Milne

The efforts of western states are fruitless – the sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the same power that incubated it in the first place

Eva Bee illustration

Illustration by Eva Bee

@seumasmilne

Wednesday 3 June 2015 20.56 BST Last modified on Thursday 4 June 2015 00.01 BST

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The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

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That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

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But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria.

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria

Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq?CMP=fb_gu

[maqroll]

Sadly the sectarian divide in the ME is so deep, theyll always be going at each other. The only thing that seems to keep a lid on sectarian violence and thd expansion of terrorist groups are quasi-secular strongmen like Saddam Hussein.

[Ikantcpell]

What is the diffrence between sunni and shia ?

 

Why dont they get along ?

[bickster]

a court case in london of a man accused of terrorism acts in syria has been thrown out because it was proven british intelligence services were arming and funding these rebel groups in syria. great stuff, its as if we want all this shit.

Hopefully the Tories will finally get there way and be able to scrap the stupid human rights act so crap like you have just mentioned doesn't happen no more.

Theirs an act protecting stupid humans? I'd scrap that too