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Syria: The Saudis Can Not Lead
Bob Woodward propagandizes for the Saudi prince Bandar in the Washington Post:
Persian Gulf countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are moving to strengthen their military support for Syrian rebels and develop policy options independent from the United States in the wake of what they see as a failure of U.S. leadership following President Obama’s decision not to launch airstrikes against Syria, according to senior gulf officials.
In another attempt to unify the Syrian opposition the Saudis want to build a complete new external army with weapons from France and Pakistani special force training. That army is then supposed to defeat the Syrian government.
It is not going to work writes Carnegie's Yezid Sayigh:
This Saudi effort will only serve to further polarize the rebels. The main losers are likely to be the currently recognized leaders of the opposition—the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the allied Higher Military Council of the Free Syrian Army.
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Unless the Saudi-supported rebels adhere to an agreed political strategy and buy into being represented by the National Coalition, they are likely to suffer the same lack of cohesion and capacity as those they seek to supplant. And by funding its own chosen group of rebels, Saudi Arabia too risks slamming shut its windows of opportunity and undercutting its goals in Syria.
That prediction was quite good. The head of Revolutionary Military Council of the so called Free Syrian Army, Abdul-Jabbar-Akidi just resigned. This came after his loss of Safira and the reopening of the government supply line between Damascus and Aleppo. Several Damascus suburbs were also recently cleared of insurgency forces.
There are some scary phantasies of what the Saudis could do to press on the U.S. to wage open war against Syria. But any of the measures the Saudis could take could be easily countered. In the worst case, from the Saudi perspective, the U.S. would just turn around, make nice with the Persians and put the Saudi family dictatorship instead of Iran onto the "axis of evil" list. There are likely rather few people in this world who would have problems with such a move.
The Saudi rulers are internally devided over the succession of King Abdullah as well as their internal and external policies. That is not a consolidated position from which they could lead the Arab world or even seriously challenge the Syrian government.
There is a sense in which Saudi Arabia is an illusion, not a real state but a construct of US foreign policy which, very handily, occupies an empty quarter of the Arabian peninsula.
It is meant to be unstable. It lacks anything resembling a constitution, giving its government legitimacy, because its sponsors prefer it that way: if the people of Arabia were given a voice it would be almost unanimous in its opposition to the Kingdom’s allies, in support of Palestine and against collaboration with Israel and the US.
The alternative source of legitimacy, that of protectors of the Holy Places, is equally fragile. Photographs showing the appalling “redevelopmemnt” of Mecca almost suggest a deliberate affront to pious muslims and traditionalists with the added provocation of mimicking the most vulgar “western” idioms and tastes.
This makes the ruler, whoever he may be, completely dependent on the US government and Aramco. The fact that the oil resources are largely located in the shia Eastern Province, whose people are doubly discriminated against-firstly as mere subjects, secondly as heretics -greatly compounds that dependence. The one authentic note in the alleged Saudi complaint against Obama’s Syrian policy was that the US failed to guarantee security in the Eastern Province. It sounded right because without US involvement in keeping the lid on the east (and Bahrain) the Saudis would long since have been expelled.
The truth is that Saudi Arabia is ruled by foreigners, although many of them are born in Arabia. Prince Bandar is a perfect example: after quarter of a century as Ambassador in Washington and years of indoctrination/education in American ways, he thinks not like an American but like a member of the ruling Beltway elite and regards Americans and people generally as pawns (see above) to be played with.
All these stories of “Saudi anger” with Washington are nonsensical, but there is a grain of truth in them: Bandar and his ilk are part of the neo-con faction, fundamentally allied with the Likud-ist factions in the United States. The “anger” Bandar expresses is part of a neo-con chorus which includes Tel Aviv’s hard line fascists and Washington’s dominant Israel First party.
It is no accident that all the Gulf emirs, as well as Jordan and Saudi, are not only entirely dependent on foreign support but pursue policies designed to alienate their subjects, just as it is no accident that Britain sponsored the rule of sunni tribalists, from the interior, over urbanised, often shia, families in the ports which fell under Imperial “protection” in the C19th. The protection offered was against the merchants, fishermen, port workers and sailors of places like Aden and Bahrain. Many of the rulers of these places-Abdullah of Jordan being a pathetic example- retain only the slenderest of links to their fellow countrymen. They are educated in the US and Britain, they are socialised in the jet set and barely speak their own language.
They follow in the model of the late, and greatly unlamented, Shah, a playboy and dilettante whose power rested on the twin foundations of banks and torture chambers, all staffed by foreign or foreign trained professionals.
Bandar’s plan for Syria- the neo-con plan- is a classic expression of a US foreign policy which goes round in ever diminishing circles.
The jihadi auxiliaries who have been knocking about since at least Yemen in the early sixties, but in fact can be traced back much further, have moved from the periphery. They first served as not much more than useful distractions for public opinion and, more importantly, fall guys for SAS type terrorism, now they have become central. Almost the entire burden of the fighting falls on them and their militias, ‘stiffened’ with veterans of CIA jihads in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
The strategy of using sunni fanatics to pull down US enemies and then disposing of them before they can turn against their masters has been abandoned. US policy, modelled after Israel’s, has become entirely destructive. The aim is to turn the middle east into a wasteland full of lightly armed warlords who can be ruled from, literally, above. This is the old Churchillian fantasy of the RAF plus a few fortified bases ruling Iraq, Yemen and the Gulf. Now the RAF is replaced by drones, and there is no need for bases at all.
The Libyan “no fly” zone strategy was an example of this recycled thinking.
The logic of the current policy inexorably leads to the lunacy of an Israeli Empire: the entire region to be openly policed and managed by Israel, making it a major Mediterranean and European power as well as Uncle Sam’s oilfield security guard.
Which is to say that, left to itself, the US and Israel will very likely self destruct, because, as the current Saudi succession crisis will almost certainly show, the great problem with puppets is that they aren’t very good at decisions. They lack the mental agility and understanding of reality that helps so much in ruling.
Posted by: bevin | Nov 4 2013 16:10 utc | 3
There is a sense in which Saudi Arabia is an illusion …. – bevin at 3.
The clan of the Royals with many hangers-on, some desperate- rules other clans, tribes, populations. Royals hold Gvmt., politics, and the religious authorities, as well as revenues (oil). This system is on its face decentralized (districts etc.) yet de facto run from the top. Thus the Royals make all the decisions at all or any level(s) but without a clear structure amongst themselves, be it collaborative or authoritarian or other.
About? 5-8 thousand people locked into personal relations, pecking orders, and rivalries. Therefore the internal divisions, the incapacity to act and follow a clear line.
The Royals hold the rest of the country hostage through redistribution of the oil dividends, importing cheap slave-type labor.
With the attendant clashes between nationals who want jobs (KSA has many poor ppl, though that is relative, see one link below) and legals and illegals who are exploited, regulated, maybe thrown out, even imprisoned, with the upper, qualified, foreign workers essential (petro etc.) …
It is the extension of an ancient tribal system to a large, rich territory, which has made ‘modernization’ efforts hollow, as they clash with the basic spirit and structure, and end up costing a bomb for no return. As have efforts to move away from oil as the primary, practically only, source of revenue.
The no woman-no drive rule is very emblematic. Conservative doctrine would have it that women occupy a trad home role. Modernity that all Saudis have the right to move freely about (spatially and professionally) and work (not just be ‘edjucated’) and paid. (1.)
Were that to happen, the Royals would be toast, so they oppress half the population plus keep many men out of meaningful work or locked in schemes of patronage and corruption. Concurrently, the culture is skewed to privacy, the home, family relations. Public space is merely lines on a map that follow a route to a shopping mall. Public *discourse* is non-existent. Children are locked into their own class and under familial control.
As long as the oil gushes this system will not change.
Right now KSA is pissed at another patronage system wobbling – US is not stepping up to the plate re. Syria, Iran. (China is now KSA’s biggest client.) So KSA is an illusion, in the sense that it is not a 20th century ‘Nation State’, but a territory occupied by a some brand of elites, which, btw is one reason why the alliance with US-Isr. has held for so long. (Gotta love the oppression.)
1. Many Saudi women, maybe 15% – work, as entrepreneurs, or U profs, or secretaries, part of the ‘allowed’ upper class, rich, with, SUVs, chauffeurs, and home help to take care of the kiddies. Others work in only-F environments, low level, like the Orthodox in Israel at xyz factories.)
vid – poverty in KSA
10 mins. subs in Eng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlSBqgW5xx0
Posted by: Noirette | Nov 6 2013 15:22 utc | 45
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