Egyptians Outraged At Government Plan To Hand Over Islands To Saudi Arabia As Saudi King Arrives In Turkey

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/12/2016 11:27 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-12/egypt-outraged-plan-hand-over-islands-saudi-arabia-saudi-king-arrives-turkey
While the algos are focusing on where the next "OPEC freeze" headline (and subsequent rejection) will come from, Saudi Arabia is quietly creating a new alliance among the U.S. "reject" nations in the region.
Earlier today, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on Tuesday. After an official welcoming ceremony, Erdogan presented the order of the State of the Republic of Turkey to the Saudi monarch. It is the Saudi king's first visit to Turkey since ascending the throne early last year.


Salman arrived in Ankara en route from Egypt, where he had paid a five-day-visit.

According to Anadolu, the visit has been realized before an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit hosted by Turkey is expected to take positive relations between the two countries to an important level.  The OIC summit is to be held in Istanbul on April 14 and 15 says the Turkish president's office. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host the event.
And while King Salman will move to push for closer strategic ties with Turkey which lately has seen its relations with the U.S. cool substantially and is thus willing to find a new foreign partner, the fallout of his visit to Egypt has infuriated the locals.
As a reminder, the Egyptian government said on Saturday that the two countries had signed maritime demarcation accords that put the islands of Tiran and Sanafir in Saudi waters in the process handing over the two islands to the Saudi kingdom,
As Reuters reported, "Egypt's announcement during a five-day visit by King Salman that it would transfer two Red Sea islands to its Saudi ally has outraged Egyptians, who took to social media to criticize the move, which now faces a legal challenge."


Saudi and Egyptian officials said the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Saudi Arabia's founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud, asked Egypt in 1950 to protect them.
But the accord, which still needs ratification by Egypt's parliament, caused consternation among Egyptians, many who said they were taught in school the islands were theirs.
According to the government they were wrong, and as a result they promptly took to Twitter.
The hashtag "Awad sold his land" trended on Twitter after the announcement, referring to a song about an Egyptian who sold his land, seen as a shameful act. Egypt has struggled to restore economic growth since the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year-rule.
Saudi Arabia, which opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, has showered Egypt with billions of dollars in aid since general-turned-President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted elected President Mohammed Mursi of the Brotherhood in 2013 and banned the group.
That led many to wonder if Egypt sold the islands.
Egyptian comic Basem Yousef, exiled after lampooning successive leaders, compared Mr Sisi on Twitter to a bazaar merchant willing to sell his country and its heritage: "Come closer sir, the island is one billion, the pyramid is two with two statues on top for free."
As anger spread on Monday, veteran lawyer Khaled Ali filed a complaint with the administrative court, arguing that according to a 1906 maritime treaty between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, the islands are Egyptian and the move amounts to a transfer of sovereignty. The treaty precedes the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
Ali is alleging that the accord violates article 151 of Egypt's constitution, which requires all treaties related to sovereignty to be approved by referendum. The court will hear the case on May 17.
But Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid told Egypt's CBC television channel: "This land is Saudi and Egypt administered it based on a request from the kingdom and this door that spreads doubts, which have no foundation in truth, must be closed."
The island issue has put Egypt's ruler Sisi, who once enjoyed widespread support, under renewed pressure.
Once-fawning newspaper editors no longer hide their disappointment as the crackdown on dissent has spread and critics say the government has mishandled a series of crises including the killing of a driver by a policeman in a fare dispute.
Five of 11 people who held a protest against the accord in Cairo on Sunday were arrested and later freed, security and judicial sources said. Thousands of people have supported a Facebook campaign calling for protest on Friday "to protect our country."
"Even if Saudi Arabia is entitled to the islands ... to hand them over to Saudi in this way, without consideration for Egyptians, showing no respect for their feelings, presence and even their pride in their nation?" television chat show host Wael El Ebrashy said on Sunday night. "We are all shocked."
Where it gets even more interesting is that Egypt's state-owned Al Ahram newspaper reported on Monday that Israel had been informed in advance about the treaty, as it is entangled in a 1979 peace deal with Israel. Many Egyptians were upset their government thought of Israel but not them.
What is emerging is that a new geopolitical triangle appears to be emerging, one of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt? And now, perphaps, Turkey, all on the same side. On the other? Iran, Syria and whatever allies the two can cobble together.
Suddenly the balance of power in the Middle East is looking very precarious once again.

Read The Powerful Saudi Terrorism Article Censored By Al-Jazeera

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2016 17:05 -0500

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-06/read-powerful-saudi-terrorism-article-censored-al-jazeera

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

On December 3rd, a month before Saudi Arabia carried out it largest mass execution since 1980 — subsequently setting the region on fire — Arjun Sethi wrote an article for Al-Jazeera titled: Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As An Excuse for Human Rights Abuses. According to Cora Currier at the Intercept:

Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar appear to have blocked the article outside of the United States because it is critical of an ally of Qatar.

Naturally, this makes you want to drop everything and read it. So here are some excerpts courtesy of theIntercept:

Reports emerged last week that Saudi Arabia intends to imminently execute more than 50 people on a single day for alleged terrorist crimes. 

All the convictions were obtained through unfair trials marred by human and civil rights violations, including in some cases torture, forced confessions and lack of access to counsel. Each defendant was tried before the Specialized Criminal Court, a counterterrorism tribunal controlled by the Ministry of Interior that has few procedural safeguards and is often used to persecute political dissidents. Lawyers are generally prohibited from counseling their clients during interrogation and have limited participatory rights at trial. Prosecutors aren’t even required to disclose the charges and relevant evidence to defendants. 

The problems aren’t just procedural. Saudi law criminalizes dissent and the expression of fundamental civil rights. Under an anti-terrorism law passed in 2014, for example, individuals may be executed for vague acts such as participating in or inciting protests, “contact or correspondence with any groups … or individuals hostile to the kingdom” or “calling for atheist thought.” 

One of the defendants, Ali al-Nimr, was convicted of crimes such as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” and “going out to a number of marches, demonstrations and gathering against the state and repeating some chants against the state.” For these offenses, he has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion, with his beheaded body to be put on public display as a warning to others. 

Because of these procedural and legal abominations, the planned executions for these Shia activists must not proceed. They should be retried in public proceedings and afforded due process protections consistent with international law, which includes a ban on the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18. 

This deafening silence is not lost on Saudi Arabia and has emboldened its impunity.In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the kingdom’s brutal campaign against its Shia minority and political opposition has deepened. Shias have limited access to government employment and public education, few rights under the criminal justice system and diminished religious rights. Those who protest this discrimination face arbitrary trial and the prospect of execution for terrorism. Consider that Saudi Arabia has not carried out a mass execution for terrorism-related offenses since 1980, a year after an armed group occupied the Grand Mosque of Mecca. 

Despite its appalling human rights record, Saudi Arabia was awarded a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council last year and this summer was selected to oversee an influential committee within the council that appoints officials to report on country-specific and thematic human rights challenges. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia has used its newfound power to thwart an international inquiry into allegations that it committed war crimes in Yemen.

So that’s a great example of how Saudi Arabia blocks the truth within the region. Now let’s look at how it mobilizes its U.S. mercenaries to spew propaganda across mainstream media. From the Intercept:

Saudi Arabia’s well-funded public relations apparatus moved quickly after Saturday’s explosive execution of Shiite political dissident Nimr Al-Nimr to shape how the news is covered in the United States.

The Saudi side of the story is getting a particularly effective boost in the American media through pundits who are quoted justifying the execution, in many cases without a mention of their funding or close affiliation with the Saudi Arabian government.

A Politico article about the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran by Nahal Toosi, for instance, quoted only three sources: the State Department, which provided a muted response to the executions; the Saudi government; and Fahad Nazer, identified as a “political analyst with JTG Inc.” Nazer defended the executions, saying that they served as a “message … aimed at Saudi Arabia’s own militants regardless of their sect.”

What Politico did not reveal was that Nazer is himself a former political analyst at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a think tank formed last year that discloses that it is fully funded by the Saudi Embassy and the United Arab Emirates.

The Washington Post quoted consultant Theodore Karasik of Gulf State Analytics as saying that the executions were a “powerful message that Saudi Arabia is intent on standing up to its regional rival.” Karasik is a columnist at Al Arabiya, an English-language news organization based in the UAE and owned by Middle East Broadcasting Center, a private news conglomerate that has long been financially backed by members of the Saudi royal family. Its current chairman is Sheikh Waleed bin Ibrahim, a billionaire Saudi businessman whose brother in law was the late King Fahd. (Al Arabiya‘s coverage of the crisis is almost comically pro-Saudi, featuring headlines like “Storming embassies.. Iranian speciality.”)

The U.S. government is obviously not  eager to alienate a government that President Obama has wooed with warm words and over $90 billion in arms sales. The diplomatic offensive by Saudi-financed flacks and media has provided some space for it to provide a muted response to the execution.

Yes, you read that right. $90 billion. Make sense considering Saudi Arabia is now the world’s biggest arms importer.

Russia Now Has A Mid-East Airbase: Here Is How Far Its Aircraft Can Reach

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/15/2015 09:56 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-15/russia-now-has-mid-east-airbase-here-how-far-its-aircraft-can-reach
On Wednesday, we highlighted reports from Flashnord which indicated that Russia was set to send its only aircraft carrier - the Admiral Kuznetsov - to Syria.

If true, it would mark only the sixth deployment in the ship’s history and would serve as a test for a vessel that has historically been less than reliable.
Now, Russia is out denying the “rumors”. Here’s Xinhua:

The press service for the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet on Wednesday denied reports that the fleet's aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is bound for Syria.

The aircraft carrier is currently undergoing maintenance work in the northern port of Murmansk, Russia. On completion of the maintenance work, it will be put to a series of routine tasks in the Barents Sea over the coming weeks, said the Northern Fleet's press service in a statement.

Fair enough. And because you can’t exactly hide an aircraft carrier, we’re sure someone, somewhere, will speak up if the Admiral Kuznetsov shows up in the Mediterranean in the coming weeks and months.
In any event, it’s not entirely clear that Russia even needs a flattop vessel to achieve its operational goals in the Mid-East.
As we’ve documented extensively, it seems fairly clear at this point that part of the plan here is for Iran to use its influence with Shiite lawmakers and militias in Iraq to get permission for Russian strikes against ISIS and other targets in the country. Indeed this was all but confirmed earlier this week. Here’s al-Jazeera:

Iraqi MP Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the parliamentary and defence committee, told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday that Iraqi air force jets used the intelligence to target a meeting of mid-level ISIL commanders .

Officials had initially claimed the attack targeted the leader of the group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but security officials later said he had not been present.

The intelligence sharing alliance, which comprises Syria, Iran, and Russia, was announced last month. Iraqi sources said two Russian one-star generals were stationed at the centre.

Zamili, a leading Shia Muslim politician, said each of the four member countries has six members in the intelligence sharing and security cooperation cell, which holds meetings in Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" that once housed the headquarters of the US occupation.

"We find it extremely useful," the Iraqi official said. "The idea is to formalise the relationship with Iran, Russia and Syria. We wanted a full-blown military alliance."

And then from Sergei Lavrov (via Sputnik):

Russia provides military and technical assistance to Iraqi Kurds with the consent of Baghdad and exclusively through the Iraqi government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

Of course the Iraqi Kurds and to a much greater extent, the country's Shiite militas, receive a great deal of support from Iran as well. The obvious next step here is for Russian airstrikes to move from Syria to Iraq. If that is indeed the plan - and we think it certainly is, as it would not only allow Russia to expand its influence in the Mid-East on the way to completing Moscow's utter embarrassment of Washington, but would also effectively give Tehran complete control of the country - then the question becomes one of logistics, and thanks to Russia's air base at Latakia, The Kremlin really has no need to send the Admiral Kuznetsov.
Here's Stratfor with some color on how Russia can conduct airstrikes in Iraq:

The start of Russian airstrikes in Syria has given new hope to loyalist forces in their battle against a host of rebel factions, including the Islamic State. Now Russia may expand these operations into Iraq if requested to do so by Baghdad. Indeed, from its position in Latakia, Russia has the range to strike Islamic State targets in Iraq, although further deployment of resources may be required to do so effectively.



Strictly speaking, targets in Iraq already fall within range of Russian naval assets in the Caspian Sea and of the Su-24 Fencer and Su-34 Fullback long-range ground attack aircraft Russia has positioned at Bassel al Assad airbase in Syria. Though these aircraft would have to spend less time over targets in Iraq than they do in Syria, Russia could conduct aerial refueling operations to remedy that. 

Russian ships launched 26 cruise missiles in the Caspian Sea, striking targets across Syria after traveling through Iranian and Iraqi air space. Four of these cruise missiles crashed in Iran, near the town of Takab, as a likely testament to Russia's limited experience in actually using this type of weapon system in an operational environment. But the strikes still demonstrate that Russia's naval assets give it the power to hit targets in Iraq.

In other words: whereas previously, Russia only had a naval base at Tartus, it now has an air base at Latakia as well, which gives Moscow the range to conduct effective strikes on targets in Iraq and means its aircraft can also reach the Suez Canal, a key chokepoint for oil and global trade:

And while the long-term strategic significance of this should not be forgotten, the obvious near-term questions are: what happens to the US in this equation? Will Washington simply cede the airspace over Iraq to the Russians just as it has in Syria? Or is there a breaking point here at which the US decides that enough is enough with the Russian-Iran Mid-East power play?

Obama Weighs "Syria Retreat" As White House Ends Training Of Moderate Rebels

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/09/2015 08:41 -0400

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-09/obama-folds-white-house-weighs-syria-retreat-it-ends-training-moderate-rebels

This past weekend we called Obama's latest failed attempt to replace Syria's president (after a comparable attempt in 2013 also ended in failure) for what it is: "Make no mistake, this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam - and we don't think that's an exaggeration."

Some of our high level observations:

The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.

Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.

Today, less than a week later, we have confirmation that this assessment was accurate, following two major developments in the Syria global proxy war.

First, Bloomberg reports that a week into Russia's military intervention in Syria, some top White House advisers and National Security Council staffers are trying to persuade President Barack Obama to scale back U.S. engagement there, to focus on lessening the violence and, for now, to give up on toppling the Syrian regime.

It adds that "the administration came to this conclusion late. Despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Putin's military buildup was intended to keep Assad in power, the White House nonetheless decided to explore cooperating with Russia on the ground. Throughout the summer and into the fall, top Russian officials -- including Putin himself in a meeting last month with Obama at the U.N. -- said they were not committed to keeping Assad in power for the long term, and would only target Islamic State fighters in their military offensive, according to U.S. officials."

So U.S. intelligence is shocked that following a multi-year campaign which was launched in 2011, which escalated in 2013 to a near-naval war, and which culminated in 2014 with the "mysterious" emergence of ISIS whose stated purpose according to leaked CIA documents was a simple one: to depose Assad, that Obama's biggest antagonist on the global superpower stage, Russian president Putin would do everything in his power to prop up his own key pawn in the middle east.

Putin's intervention has had the U.S. flummoxed from day one. As the Russian military moved into Syria, U.S. intelligence officials tell us, the intelligence community was skeptical that it intended to focus its military campaign on the Islamic State. Even so, as the New York Times reported, the U.S. was surprised by the speed with which Russia built and then announced its new coalition with the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq to support its military campaign.

Did we say "U.S. intelligence"? Scratch that.

In any event, after confirming virtually every word of our conclusion from past weekend, now that the administration realizes it is trapped without a credible way out absent de-escalation, it has no choice but to do just that:

Obama has ruled out engaging in a proxy war with Putin's military, leaving few good options. One path, however, would mean finding ways to tamp down the fighting by negotiating small, local ceasefires with the Assad regime. “The White House somehow thinks we can de-escalate the conflict while keeping Assad in power,” one senior administration official told us.

“The current policy of the United States and its partners, to increase pressure on Assad so that he ‘comes to the table’ and negotiates his own departure, must be rethought,” Malley’s predecessor at the National Security Council, Philip Gordon, wrote at Politico as Russia was amassing its forces in Syria.

The planted Bloomberg story, meant solely to lessen the blow from the latest foreign policy humiliation adds that "that view, being pushed by top White House National Security staffers, including senior coordinator for the Middle East Rob Malley, is not new. But it has received fresh emphasis given Russian intervention."

To be sure, there are neo-con war hawks, led by John Kerry and Samantha Power, who as a reminder was the puppet-masted behind the Ukraine coup, who want to escalate to the bitter end, even if it literally ends in a mushroom cloud: "The NSC view is opposed by top officials in other parts of the government, especially Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. They are trying to persuade Obama that the only way to solve Syria is to increase the pressure on Assad in the hopes he will enter negotiations."

However, just like in the 2013 Syria campaign, when Kerry huffed and puffed and ultimately folded, so two years later the man who married into the Heinz family fortune will have no choice but to fold again:

Yet Kerry and Power now find themselves without any hope that Putin might bring the Syrian regime to the table. Kerry, though always skeptical of Russia, has been the point man on engaging the Russian government through several conversations with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But it’s now clear the Russians were leading the Obama administration down the primrose path.

Others in Congress have already understood the endgame: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said that by not doing more to confront Putin’s escalation, "the administration is tacitly admitting it will no longer be able to secure Assad’s ouster."

The implications are profound:

"If Assad is staying and there’s no political process in sight, this argument goes, the U.S. might as well focus on alleviating the suffering of the Syrian people and mitigate the growing refugee crisis.

Local ceasefires have been struck sporadically throughout the war, mostly in areas under siege by the Assad regime. The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has been pushing this idea for over a year.

This means that the dramatic migrant exodus heading into Europe, which is now spun as positive for the economy, and would have been the catalyst form more deficit-funding QE as a result of debt-funded spending spree required by Germany to pay for the millions in refugees, may be coming to an end, with substantial implications for monetary policy.

Bloomberg's own conclusion shows a glimmer of hope that the end is not in sight just yet:

Caught between two camps in his administration, Obama may not end up shifting the U.S. approach to Syria at all, although the de-escalation side has the momentum. Either way, as Russia, Iran and the Syrian regime change facts on the ground, the relative position of America and the Syrians it has supported becomes graver by the day.

And then moments ago, the NYT confirmed that the de-escalation process has begun, when it reported that "the Obama administration has ended the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels, administration officials said on Friday, in an acknowledgment that the beleaguered program had failed to produce any kind of ground combat forces capable of taking on the Islamic State in Syria."

Pentagon officials were expected to officially announce the end of the program on Friday, as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter leaves London after meetings with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, about the continuing wars in Syria and Iraq.

A senior Defense Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there would no longer be any more recruiting of so-called moderate Syrian rebels to go through training programs in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Instead, a much smaller training center would be set up in Turkey, where a small group of “enablers” — mostly leaders of opposition groups — would be taught operational maneuvers like how to call in airstrikes.

To be sure, the admin tried to soften the blow: moments ago Reuters added that "The U.S. military program to train and equip Syrian rebels is not "ending" but is instead being refocused, a senior U.S. defense official said on Friday, ahead of an announcement on overhauling the troubled U.S. effort." No matter how one diplomatically phrases it though, at this point the wheels are in motion.

Which brings us to our own conclusion from last week:

If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night.

It is precisely this scenario that U.S. "intelligence" just realized, and why Obama is now sounding the retreat. The only question is whether Putin, who is now on the offensive across the mid-east region, agrees to take Obama's olive branch, or whether he continues the "campaign to end ISIS", in the process creating the biggest shift in the mid-east balance of power with a Russia-Syria-Iran-Iraq axis, and with China waiting patiently in the wings.

Finally, this may be just the catalyst that ends the torrid surge in oil higher over the past week now that the biggest geopolitical factor pushing black gold above $50 is in the rear view mirror.

Competing Gas Pipelines Are Fueling The Syrian War & Migrant Crisis

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/10/2015 14:42 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipelines-are-fueling-syrian-war-migrant-crisis
Submitted by Mnar Muhawesh via MintPressNews.com,
Don’t let anyone fool you: As we have detailed since 2013, sectarian strife in Syria has been engineered to provide cover for a war for access to oil and gas, and the power and money that come along with it.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect recent Wikileaks revelations of US State Department leaks that show plans to destabilize Syria and overthrow the Syrian government as early as 2006.  The leaks reveal that these plans were given to the US directly from the Israeli government and would be formalized through instigating civil strife and sectarianism through partnership with nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and even Egypt to break down the power structue in Syria to essentially to weaken Iran and Hezbolla. The leaks also reveal Israeli plans to use this crisis to expand it’s occupation of the Golan Heights for additional oil exploration and military expansion.
* * *
Images of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy who washed up dead on Mediterranean shores in his family’s attempt to flee war-torn Syria, have grabbed the attention of people around the world, sparking outrage about the true costs of war.
The heart-wrenching refugee crisis unfolding across the Middle East and at European borders has ignited a much needed conversation on the ongoing strife and instability that’s driving people from their homes in countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq. It’s brought international attention to the inhumane treatment these refugees are receiving if — and it is a major “if” — they arrive at Europe’s door.

In Syria, for example, foreign powers have sunk the nation into a nightmare combination of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism. Syrians are in the impossible position of having to choose between living in a warzone, being targeted by groups like ISIS and the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown, or faring dangerous waters with minimal safety equipment only to be denied food, water and safety by European governments if they reach shore.

Other Syrians fleeing the chaos at home have turned to neighboring Arab Muslim countries. Jordan alone has absorbed over half a million Syrian refugees; Lebanon has accepted nearly 1.5 million; and Iraq and Egypt have taken in several hundred thousand.
Although it’s not an Arab nation or even part of the Middle East, Iran sent 150 tons of humanitarian goods, including 3,000 tents and 10,000 blankets, to the Red Crescents of Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon via land routes to be distributed among the Syrian refugees residing in the three countries last year.
Turkey has taken in nearly 2 million refugees to date. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan made international headlines for opening his nation’s arms to migrants, positioning himself as a kind of savior in the process.

A paramilitary police officer carries the lifeless body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi after he drowned when the
boat he and his family members were in capsized near the Turkish resort of Bodrum early Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015.
(Photo: Nilüfer Demir/DHA)

Meanwhile, Gulf Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have provided refuge to zero Syrian refugees.
While there’s certainly a conversation taking place about refugees — who they are, where they’re going, who’s helping them, and who isn’t — what’s absent is a discussion on how to prevent these wars from starting in the first place. Media outlets and political talking heads have found many opportunities to point fingers in the blame game, but not one media organization has accurately broken down what’s driving the chaos: control over gas, oil and resources.
Indeed, it’s worth asking: How did demonstrations held by “hundreds” of protesters demanding economic change in Syria four years ago devolve into a deadly sectarian civil war, fanning the flames of extremism haunting the world today and creating the world’s second largest refugee crisis?
While the media points its finger to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s barrel bombs and political analysts call for more airstrikes against ISIS and harsher sanctions against Syria, we’re four years into the crisis and most people have no idea how this war even got started.

This “civil war” is not about religion

Citing a lack of access on the ground, the United Nations stopped regularly updating its numbers of casualties in the Syrian civil war in January 2014. Estimates put the death toll between 140,200 and 330,380, with as many as 6 million Syrians displaced, according to the U.N.
While there is no question that the Syrian government is responsible for many of the casualties resulting from its brutal crackdown, this is not just a Syrian problem.
Foreign meddling in Syria began several years before the Syrian revolt erupted.  Wikieaks released leaked US State Department cables from 2006 revealing US plans to overthrow the Syrian government through instigating civil strife, and receiving these very orders straight from Tel Aviv.  The leaks reveal the United State’s partnership with nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and even Egypt to use sectarianism to divide Syria through the Sunni and Shiite divide to destabilize the nation to weaken Iran and Hezbolla.  Israel is also revealed to attempt to use this crisis to expand it’s occupation of the Golan Heights for additional oil exploration.
According to major media outlets like the BBC and the Associated Press, the demonstrations that supposedly swept Syria were comprised of only hundreds of people, but additional Wikileaks cables reveal CIA involvement on the ground in Syria to instigate these very demonstrations as early as March 2011.

FILE – In this Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 file photo, Syrians hold a large poster depicting Syria’s President Bashar
Assad during a rally in Damascus, Syria. Some activists expressed regret that one year later their “revolution”
against President Bashar Assad’s rule had become mired in violence. (AP Photo/Muzaffar Salman, File)

Just a few months into the demonstrations which now consisted of hundreds of armed protesters with CIA ties, demonstrations grew larger, armed non-Syrian rebel groups swarmed into Syria, and a severe government crackdown swept through the country to deter this foreign meddling. It became evident that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be jumping on the opportunity to organize, arm and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army as outlined in the State Department plans to destabilize Syria. (Just a few months ago, WikiLeaks confirmed this when it released Saudi intelligence that revealed Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been working hand in hand to arm and finance rebels to overthrow the Syrian government since 2012.)
These foreign nations created a pact in 2012 called “The Group of Friends of the Syrian People,” a name that couldn’t be further from the truth. Their agenda was to divide and conquer in order to wreak havoc across Syria in view of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar Assad.

A Free Syrian Army soldier carries his weapon at the northern town of Sarmada, in Idlib province, Syria,
Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012. (AP Photo)

The true agenda to hijack Syria’s revolt quickly became evident, with talking heads inserting Syria’s alliance with Iran as a threat to the security and interests of the United States and its allies in the region. It’s no secret that Syria’s government is a major arms, oil and gas, and weapons ally of Iran and Lebanon’s resistance political group Hezbollah.
But it’s important to note the timing: This coalition and meddling in Syria came about immediately on the heels of discussions of an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was to be built between 2014 and 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field through Iraq and Syria. With a possible extension to Lebanon, it would eventually reach Europe, the target export market.
Perhaps the most accurate description of the current crisis over gas, oil and pipelines that is raging in Syria has been described by Dmitry Minin, writing for the Strategic Cultural Foundation in May 2013:

“A battle is raging over whether pipelines will go toward Europe from east to west, from Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean coast of Syria, or take a more northbound route from Qatar and Saudi Arabia via Syria and Turkey. Having realized that the stalled Nabucco pipeline, and indeed the entire Southern Corridor, are backed up only by Azerbaijan’s reserves and can never equal Russian supplies to Europe or thwart the construction of the South Stream, the West is in a hurry to replace them with resources from the Persian Gulf. Syria ends up being a key link in this chain, and it leans in favor of Iran and Russia; thus it was decided in the Western capitals that its regime needs to change.

 

It’s the oil, gas and pipelines, stupid!

Indeed, tensions were building between Russia, the U.S. and the European Union amid concerns that the European gas market would be held hostage to Russian gas giant Gazprom. The proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would be essential to diversifying Europe’s energy supplies away from Russia.
Turkey is Gazprom’s second-largest customer. The entire Turkish energy security structure relies on gas from Russia and Iran. Plus, Turkey was harboring Ottoman-like ambitions of becoming a strategic crossroads for the export of Russian, Caspian-Central Asian, Iraqi and Iranian oil and even gas to Europe.
The Guardian reported in August 2013:

“Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar and Turkey that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was ‘to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.’”

Note the purple line which traces the proposed Qatar-Turkey natural gas pipeline and note that all of the
countries highlighted in red are part of a new coalition hastily put together after Turkey finally (in exchange for
NATO’s acquiescence on Erdogan’s politically-motivated war with the PKK) agreed to allow the US to fly combat
missions against ISIS targets from Incirlik. Now note which country along the purple line is not highlighted in red.
That’s because Bashar al-Assad didn’t support the pipeline and now we’re seeing what happens when you’re a
Mid-East strongman and you decide not to support something the US and Saudi Arabia want to get done.
(Map: ZeroHedge.com)

Knowing Syria was a critical piece in its energy strategy, Turkey attempted to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to reform this Iranian pipeline and to work with the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline, which would ultimately satisfy Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations’ quest for dominance over gas supplies. But after Assad refused Turkey’s proposal, Turkey and its allies became the major architects of Syria’s “civil war.”

Much of the strategy currently at play was described back in a 2008 U.S. Army-funded RAND report, “Unfolding the Future of the Long War”:

“The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized. … For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources. … The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war.”

In this context, the report identifies the divide and conquer strategy while exploiting the Sunni-Shiite divide to protect Gulf oil and gas supplies while maintaining a Gulf Arab state dominance over oil markets.

“Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces. … the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace. … U.S. leaders could also choose to capitalize on the ‘Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict’ trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world…. possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran.”

The report notes that another option would be “to take sides in the conflict, possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran.”
This framework crafted an interesting axis: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.S., Britain and France vs. Syria, Iran and Russia.

Divide and conquer: A path to regime change

With the U.S., France, Britain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — aka, the new “Friends of Syria” coalition — publicly calling for the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad between  2011 and 2012 after Assad’s refusal to sign onto the gas pipeline, the funds and arms flowing into Syria to feed the so-called “moderate” rebels were pushing Syria into a humanitarian crisis. Rebel groups were being organized left and right, many of which featured foreign fighters and many of which had allied with al-Qaida.

Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the League of Arab States Ahmad al-Qattan, center, attends the Arab
League summit in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, March, 29, 2012. (AP Photo)

The Syrian government responded with a heavy hand, targeting rebel held areas and killing civilians in the process.
Since Syria is religiously diverse, the so-called “Friends of Syria” pushed sectarianism as their official “divide and conquer” strategy to oust Assad. Claiming that Alawites ruled over a majority Sunni nation, the call by the “moderate” U.S.-backed rebels became one about Sunni liberation.
Although the war is being sold to the public as a Sunni-Shiite conflict, so-called Sunni groups like ISIS,  the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra Front) and even the “moderate” Free Syrian Army have indiscriminately targeted Syria’s Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Jews. At the same time, these same foreign nations supported and even armed the Bahraini government, which claims to be Sunni, in its violent crackdown on the majority Shiite pro-democracy demonstrations that swept the nation.
The Syrian government army itself is over 80 percent Sunni, which indicates that the true agenda has been politically — not religiously — motivated.
In addition to this, the Assad family is Alawite, an Islamic sect that the media has clumped in with Shiites, though most Shiites would agree that the two are unrelated. Further, the Assad family is described as secular and running a secular nation. Counting Alawites as Shiites was simply another way to push a sectarian framework for the conflict: It allowed for the premise that the Syria-Iran alliance was based on religion, when, in fact, it was an economic relationship.
This framework carefully crafted the Syrian conflict as a Sunni revolution to liberate itself from Shiite influence that Iran was supposedly spreading to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

But the truth is, Syria’s Sunni community is divided, and many defected to join groups like the Free Syrian Army, ISIS and al-Qaida. And as mentioned earlier, over 80 percent of Assad’s military is Sunni.

As early as 2012, additional rebels armed and financed by Arab Gulf nations and Turkey like al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, declared all-out war against Shiites. They even threatened to attack Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s government after they had overthrown the Assad government.
Soon after, the majority of the Muslim Brotherhood rebels became part of al-Qaida-affiliated groups. Together, they announced that they would destroy all shrines — not just those ones which hold particular importance to Shiites.
Hezbollah entered the scene in 2012 and allied itself with the Syrian government to fight al-Nusra and ISIS, which were officially being armed and financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And all the arms were actively being sold to these nations by the United States. Thus, US arms were falling into the hands of the same terror group the US claims to be fighting in its broader War on Terror.

Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of Hezbollah member Mohammad Issa who was killed in an airstrike that
killed six members of the Lebanese militant group and an Iranian general in Syria, during his funeral procession,
in the southern village of Arab Salim, Lebanon, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. Hezbollah has accused Israel of carrying
out Sunday’s airstrike, which occurred on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. Issa was the highest-ranking among
the group, and was among the senior cadres who headed the group’s operations in Syria against the Sunni-led
rebellion. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

According to reports, Hezbollah was and has been been active in preventing rebel penetration from Syria to Lebanon, being one of the most active forces in the Syrian civil war spillover in Lebanon. Despite this, the U.S. sanctioned both the Syrian government and Hezbollah in 2012.
Also that year, Russia and Iran sent military advisers to assist the Syrian government in quelling the terror groups, but Iranian troops were not on the ground fighting during this time.
What was once a secular, diverse and peaceful nation, was looking more like it was on its way to becoming the next Afghanistan; its people living under Taliban-style rule as jihadists took over more land and conquered more cities.

Effects of foreign meddling outweigh self-determination

If you think that was hard to follow, you’re certainly not alone.
Most sectarian civil wars are purposely crafted to pit sides against one another to allow for a “divide and conquer” approach that breaks larger concentrations of power into smaller factions that have more difficulty linking up. It’s a colonial doctrine that the British Empire famously used, and what we see taking place in Syria is no different.
So, let’s get one thing straight: This is not about religion. It might be convenient to say that Arabs or Muslims kill each other, and it’s easy to frame these conflicts as sectarian to paint the region and its people as barbaric. But this Orientalist, overly simplistic view of conflict in the Middle East dehumanizes the victims of these wars to justify direct and indirect military action.
If the truth was presented to the public from the perspective that these wars are about economic interests, most people would not support any covert funding and arming of rebels or direct intervention. In fact, the majority of the public would protest against war. But when something is presented to the public as a matter of good versus evil, we are naturally inclined to side with the “good” and justify war to fight off the supposed “evil.”
The political rhetoric has been carefully crafted to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. Ultimately, no matter the agendas, the alliances or instability brought on by foreign meddling, the calls for freedom, democracy and equality that erupted in 2011 were real then and they’re real today. And let’s not forget that the lack of freedom, democracy and equality have been brought on more by foreign meddling to prop up brutal dictators and arm terror groups than by self-determination.

Refugee’s assist a fellow Refugee holding a boy as they are stuck between Macedonian riot police officers and
refugees during a clash near the border train station of Idomeni, northern Greece, as they wait to be allowed by
the Macedonian police to cross the border from Greece to Macedonia, Friday, Aug. 21, 2015. Macedonian special
police forces have fired stun grenades to disperse thousands of refugees stuck on a no-man’s land with Greece, a
day after Macedonia declared a state of emergency on its borders to deal with a massive influx of refugees heading
north to Europe. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

The people in the Middle East once stood united and strong together against foreign meddling, exploitation and colonialism no matter their religious or cultural background. But today, the Middle East is being torn to shreds by manipulative plans to gain oil and gas access by pitting people against one another based on religion. The ensuing chaos provides ample cover to install a new regime that’s more amenable to opening up oil pipelines and ensuring favorable routes for the highest bidders.
And in this push for energy, it’s the people who suffer most. In Syria, they are fleeing en masse. They’re waking up, putting sneakers on their little boys and girls, and hopping on boats without life jackets, hoping just to make it to another shore. They’re risking their lives, knowing full well that they may never reach that other shore, because the hope of somewhere else is better than the reality at home.

In Bed With The Despotic House Of Saud

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/07/2015 21:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-07/bed-despotic-house-saud
Submitted by Paul Pillar via ConsortiumNews.com,

The U.S.-Saudi alliance is no longer just an anachronism. It has become a dangerous anachronism with the Saudis implicating the United States in their brutal sectarian conflicts, such as the wars in Yemen and Syria, and in their reactionary human rights policies, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

Saudi King Salman visits Washington amid disagreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia on a broad range of issues. Moreover, the disagreements are rooted in fundamental characteristics of the anachronistic Saudi regime.
Many regimes around the world, and the political and social systems of which they are a part, are markedly different from what is found in the United States, but the Saudi polity is one of the most different. The anachronism that is Saudi Arabia represents a major problem for U.S. foreign policy, both because of the impact Saudi-related matters have on the Middle East and beyond and because of the close association between Saudi Arabia and the United States that has come to be taken for granted.

King Salman the President and First Lady to a reception room at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Little of this has anything to do with the just-completed agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, despite the attention that subject has been receiving. Riyadh is more likely to accept the agreement as a done deal — and already has publicly indicated its formal acceptance — than the accord’s opponents in the United States and Israel.
The Saudis will continue to look for ways to discourage others, including the United States, from developing warm relations with their rival across the Persian Gulf, but this will not preclude the Saudis themselves, along with the other Gulf Arabs, from undertaking their own rapprochement with Tehran, just as they have done in the past.
In hot spot after hot spot in the Middle East, U.S. and Saudi objectives and priorities diverge, even if in some loose sense they are considered to be on the same side. In war-torn Syria, the United States and Saudi Arabia have never agreed on whether the ouster of the Assad regime or the containment of ISIS should be the main objective.
Saudi priorities are based on a variety of considerations that are specific to it and not to the United States, including hatred of the Assads for whatever role they may have played in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri, a special friend of the Saudis. Reflecting the different priorities and objectives is disagreement over selection and vetting of Syrian rebels to be deemed worthy of support.
In Iraq, Saudi priorities are influenced by some of the same sectarian motives that shape Saudi policy toward Syria. And again, such motives are quite different from U.S. interests. Desired overthrow of the regime is not the factor that it is in Syria, but distrust of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad is a major part of the Saudi approach toward Iraq.
In Yemen, the United States has allowed itself to become associated with a destructive and misguided Saudi military expedition, and thus also with the humanitarian tragedy that the operation has entailed. The main Saudi objective is to show who’s boss on the Arabian Peninsula, another objective not shared with the United States. Saudi Arabia’s operation has shown itself, more so than Iran, to be a destabilizing force intent on throwing its weight around in the neighborhood.
In his most recent column Tom Friedman identifies what may be the most worrisome thing about Saudi Arabia for U.S. interests: “the billions and billions of dollars the Saudis have invested since the 1970s into wiping out the pluralism of Islam — the Sufi, moderate Sunni and Shiite versions — and imposing in its place the puritanical, anti-modern, anti-women, anti-Western, anti-pluralistic Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.”
Friedman notes that Islamist extremist groups that the United States has come to consider preeminent security concerns, including Al Qaeda and now ISIS, “are the ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.”
The specific terrorist consequences of what the Saudis have done is justifiably an immediate concern for U.S. policy-makers. But the underlying bargain that Ibn Saud, the founder of the current Saudi kingdom, reached years ago with the Wahhabis also underlies much else that makes Saudi Arabia what it is today, and makes it the problem that it is. The kingdom’s troublesome characteristics are inextricably linked to how Ibn Saud’s offspring are trying to claim legitimacy and thus to cling to power.
Consider some of the chief characteristics of the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is a family-run enterprise in which the distribution and exercise of political power are every bit as medieval as they ever were in any country ruled by the Plantagenets. There is no religious freedom. Human rights in many other respects are sorely lacking. Women are still subordinated. It was considered a big deal when they recently were told they could vote and run as candidates — in elections to local councils with scant power and in which the king will still appoint half the members — but women still cannot function as independent persons in many aspects of daily life. They still are not allowed to drive.
It ought to be astounding that a place this far removed from the liberal democratic values with which the United States likes to be associated, even without considering the aforementioned divergence of objectives elsewhere in the region, still is considered a close partner of the United States. The usual, and to a large degree valid, explanation is that, as Friedman puts it, “we’re addicted to their oil and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.”
But there is another American attitude involved, which persists even in the shale-fracking era. Once a nation is considered a partner or ally in a region that is perceptually divided into allies and adversaries, the perceived line-up tends to stay fixed until and unless there is a political alteration sufficiently great to be labeled regime change.
And regime change would be the most troubling chapter of all in the Saudi story. Some Saudi leaders, including the late King Abdullah, seem to have recognized the need to move in the direction of modernization and liberalization, even if only at the glacial pace that is possible in a Wahhabi-committed family enterprise.
It is an open question whether the regime will be able to keep this kind of change ahead of demands for change of a more drastic and radical sort. If it fails to do so, and the revolution comes, then the association of the United States with the ancien régime will an even greater problem for U.S. policy-makers than what they face now.

Israeli helicopters transport terrorists injured in Syria battlefield: Report

http://presstv.com/Detail/2015/09/04/427721/Syria-Israel-helicopters-treatment-injured-militants

Fri Sep 4, 2015 1:29PM

The file photo shows an Israeli soldier standing guard along the line separating the Syrian part of the Golan Heights from the Israeli-occupied sector. (AFP)

Israeli helicopters have transported for treatment to the occupied territories six injured members of terrorist groups operating against the government in Syria, a report says.
The official Syrian news agency, SANA, quoted Israeli media on Friday that the helicopters transported the wounded the day before.
One of the injured militants was taken to a hospital in the city of Safed and the other five were transported to a medical center in Haifa.
The news comes as no surprise given the fact that the Tel Aviv regime has a long history in supporting militant groups against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the past more than four years of turmoil in the Arab country.
Reports say Israel has set up field hospitals near the border with Syria to treat the injured militants coming in from battlefield.

The file photo shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shaking hands with a militant in an Israeli field hospital in Syria’s occupied Golan Heights.

The Israeli-occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights has hosted the field hospitals for the treatment of the wounded militants. In June, locals in the Golan intercepted an Israeli vehicle transporting two members of the al-Nusra Front terrorist group on the road between al-Sheikh Mountain and the village of Majdal Shams.
Ehud Yaari, an Israeli political commentator, said in October 2014 that the Tel Aviv regime has provided medical treatment for over 1,400 militants wounded in the operations against the government in Syria.