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A Too Complicated Game: Obama’s Deals With The Saudis And Al-Nusra
According to the Wall Street Journal Obama made a deal with the Saudis. They will lend legitimacy for his attacks against the Islamic State and AlQaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra) and he will later overthrow the Syrian government under president Assad. Like the Saudi prince Bandar, who nutured the Jihadists, was ousted over it, but is now back in the deal, the neocon editors of The Economist are doing victory jumps. They managed to get the U.S. back into their war. Hurray!
But as I understand it Obama's part of the deal is supposed come only later. It will take a year to train the "moderate, vetted" insurgents in Saudi Arabia and only when those are ready, and Obama a lame duck, may such action start (or not). U.S. voters know very well that Obama always keeps his promises (not). A year can be a quite a long time and who knows what will happen in between.
The urgency of the deal with the Saudis may have come because some folks felt a time-critical need to attack the al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) leadership in Syria. It may also have come from the low polls of Obama's leadership and his need to keep the Senate in the hands of Democrats after Novembers election. The second reason seems more likely.
To justify the hit on the leadership group it had to be differentiated from the ""the moderate Jihadis" al-Nusra organization with which there is cooperation on other issues. The "Khorasan" group was invented and a FUD campaign launched to justify the attack. The U.S. media predictably ate it all up and propagandized every fearmongering bit of what "officials said" about Khorasan. Only after the attack has taken place are doubts allowed to be aired:
Several of Mr. Obama’s aides said Tuesday that the airstrikes against the Khorasan operatives were launched to thwart an “imminent” terrorist attack, possibly using concealed explosives to blow up airplanes. But other American officials said that the plot was far from mature, and that there was no indication that Khorasan had settled on a time or location for the attack — or even on the exact method of carrying out the plot.
Some speculation: Jabhat al-Nusra is a nominal part of the al-Qaeda organization. It was led by al-Qaeda veterans who had been fighting in AfPak but came to Syria when the insurgency started. The U.S. relabeled these veterans the "Khorasan" group to have some reason to separately eliminate them. Their replacement may well turn out to be local men currently leading the groups in southern Syria and willing to further cooperate with USrael. A new version of the moderate cuddly homegrown al-Qaeda ploy.
The whole game played within the various proxy wars within the current Syriraq war is becoming increasingly complicate. I would not be astonished to see Obama throw the towel on this whole affair. After the November election he may well say "enough" and just leave the chaos behind him.
@ somebody #72
A Sunni religious group has hired a Washington consulting firm to make the case for creating a new semi-independent region in Iraq.
news report:
Mark Alsalih began representing the Common Council of Iraqi and Arabic Tribes, which is run by Suleiman, over the summer. Alsalih told Al-Monitor last month that he had been trying to draw interest from officials in Obama administration about collaborating more closely with Iraqi and Syrian tribes.
This has actually been going on for some time. Let’s hit some high points. First, I wrote an article about “The Caliphate” seen here. That includes Joe Biden’s May 2006 call for an Iraq divided into three parts, which followed the US instigation of intersect conflict in Feb 2006.
Next,
Jul 19, 2006, wikileaks
2. (C) Summary: Mark Alsalih, an Iraqi American from the Washington lobbying firm MITA, requested Embassy’s assistance on July 17 to make an introduction to Director of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency Prince Muqrin. MITA represents Tawafuq, and is seeking $3-4 million to fund Tawafuq’s lobbying activities in Washington. . .Alsalih requested the Embassy’s assistance for an introduction to Director of the General Intelligence Presidency Prince Muqrin. Alsalih stated that one item MITA and Tawafuq wanted to discuss with Prince Muqrin was development of the Iraq Stability Program (ISP), a MITA-designed program with the stated goal of providing Iraqi Sunni groups a greater voice in the new Iraqi government and with policymakers.
Four years later, 2010:
Feb 23, 2010, wikileaks
1. (C) In a surprising move, King Abdullah welcomed former Iraqi PM and current Iraqiyya coalition leader Dr. Iyyad Allawi to his desert encampment near Riyadh on February 20. . . In a meeting with Polcouns February 22, Mark Al-Salih, an American businessman purporting to represent Iraqi VP Hashimi, said he had spoken with Prince Muqrin following the Allawi meeting and that Muqrin had assured him the Saudis would begin to signal their support for the Iraqiyya coalition. A directive had already been passed to the Saudi-controlled Al-Arabiyya to begin providing positive media coverage of Iraqiyya, he continued, and an invite would be extended to VP Hashimi to visit in the near future. Asked what sparked this apparent turn-around, Salih gave some credit to the USG. The Saudis watched VP Hashimi’s visit to the U.S. very carefully, he posited, and were pleased to see how warmly he was received. In particular, the fact that he met with both President Obama and VP Biden made an impression.
Apr 8, 2010
Iraqiyya’s Path to Power
Iraq’s post-election wrangling has made it unlikely that former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi can reap the benefits of his election day victory. But if he plays his cards right, he just may have a shot. . .Iraqiyya’s strength, and its weakness, lies in its composition: Many of Iraq’s highest individual vote-getters are within the alliance. Running in Baghdad, Allawi received 407,537 votes, and Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi received 200,963 votes. In Ninewah province, Osama al-Nujaifi, leader of the local Hadbaa list, a predominantly Iraqi Sunni party that has a volatile relationship with Iraqi Kurds, won 274,741 votes.
Nov 11, 2010
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, one of America’s closest allies in the country, has rebuffed the personal request of President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to relinquish his post as Iraqis form a new government in Baghdad. . .Last Saturday, Mr. Obama phoned Mr. Talabani and asked him to give up the seat he has held since 2005 so that Mr. Allawi could be Iraq’s president, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials familiar with the diplomacy.
Jan 1, 2012, NYTimes OpEd – title: How Iraq Can Define Its Destiny, By ALI A. ALLAWI
Iyad “the Executioner” Allawi — Allawi served as the Iraqi face of the occupation during the reign of Paul Bremer, first as puppet “defense minister” and then Prime Minister. Allawi was a principal figure, second only to Chalabi, in the network of Iraqi exiles who did so much to lie us into war.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 26 2014 16:41 utc | 78
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