tdaxp

"Saudis Back Calls for Syrian Pullout from Lebanon," by Dominic Evans, Reuters, Saudis Back Calls for Syrian Pullout from Lebanon, 3 March 2005 (from Democratic Underground).

The Saudis have hung onto both The Hejaz, Nijd, the Empty Quarter, East Arabia, and all their other despotates because they buy off internal enemies and can be useful to outside powers. For example:

Saudi Arabia added a key Arab voice on Thursday to mounting demands that Syria withdraw its troops swiftly from Lebanon, where they have helped secure it powerful influence for decades.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Riyadh for crisis talks where Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah told him immediate action was needed.

Abdullah, a regional ally of the United States, told Assad that "Syria must start withdrawing soon, otherwise Saudi-Syrian relations will go through difficulties," one Saudi official said.

Baby Assad runs from the obvious for as long as possible

Syria's official SANA news agency said of the Assad-Abdullah meeting: "The talks have tackled the upcoming Arab summit meeting and the situation in Lebanon and views were identical on this matter."

Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo refrained from joining in an increasingly public campaign calling for Syrian withdrawal and said they were opting for quiet diplomacy by individual Arab states.

One one hand, it's maddening. A key part of the Iraq War was to pressure Syria, they're nightmarish state enables terrorism, and they cruficy people.

On the other... The Saudis know which way the wind is blowing. They can read the writing on the wall, the signs in the sky, and a million other cliches. They join in popular causes after they know how it will end.

In sum: we are winning

PS: How's this for a dramatic map?



If this is the future of cartography, my brother has chosen the right field!

Update: Collounsbury sums it up: "It adds a whole new dimension of bad for the Syrians..."

"Saud Shiites, Long Kept Down, Look to Iraq and Assert Rights," by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/international/middleeast/02shiites.html, 2 March 2005 (from Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog).

A post about religious persecution in Wahabi-occupied East Arabia and the "pagan" nature of Shia Islam.

The images are from various websites, dealing mainly with the three generations of martyrs: Ali, Hussein, and Hussein's infant son.

The Shiite Muslim minority in this kingdom once marked their Ashura holy day furtively in darkened, illegal community centers out of fear of stirring the powerful wrath of the religious establishment.


But this year Ashura fell on the eve of the 10-day campaign for municipal council elections, to be held here on Thursday, and a bolder mood was readily apparent. Thousands thronged sprawling, sandy lots for hours to watch warriors on horseback re-enact the battlefield decapitation of Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, in 680.

A few young men even dared perform a gory, controversial ritual no one can remember seeing here in public - beating their scalps with swords until they drew blood to mirror Hussein's suffering.


"Maybe now, after all that has happened in Iraq, we will take something political from the story of Hussein," Mr. Ibrahim added, echoing a common sentiment. "Now the issue will take another route, because Shiites have started the growth of their political culture."

Saudi Arabia's religious establishment, which is dominated by the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, still damns such rites as pagan orgies. But the fact that Shiites, at least in this city, their main center, no longer feel the need to hide reflects a combination of important changes here and elsewhere in the Middle East.


But the little that has changed outside Qatif raises questions in the community about the government's commitment to tolerance. Ashura celebrations are banned in Dammam, a neighboring city of some 600,000, including 150,000 Shiites.

There is only one officially sanctioned Shiite mosque there, and no functioning Shiite cemetery. The distinctive Shiite call to prayer is banned, and even the small clay pucks that Shiites are supposed to rest their foreheads on during prayer are outlawed.

Saudi textbooks contain passages that describe Shiite beliefs as outside Islam - the original split emerging because Shiites supported the claim of Muhammad's heirs to control the faith. Wahhabis believe that Shiite veneration of the Prophet's family, including worshipping at tombs in the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Najaf, incorporates all manner of sins, including polytheism.

Such practices prompt some to revile Shiites as a lower order of infidel than even Christians or Jews.

Now, some might note the suspiciously Catholic nature of the iconography, passion plays, and holy family-veneration. Some might observe there is no strong evidence of these celebrations before the 16th century. Others might opine that the early 16th century saw a large influx of Spanish Jews into the Muslims lands, and that many of these had been employed in traveling passion play companies. But heh, if fellow "Christians" can call Catholic-rites pagan, I'll give the House of Saud a pass.

But anyway...

Wahabist Arabia is not our friend. It is a retrograde nightmare whose people attack us and whose "virtue police" attack their fellow subjects. The least we can do after liberating the Iraqi Shia is to encourage the self-liberation of the Shia of East Arabia.

"Shiite Rising," by Christopher Dickey and Rod Nordland, Newsweek International, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4340977/site/newsweek/, 1 March 2004.

"Shiites See an Opening in Saudi Arabia: Municipal Vote in East Could Give Suppressed Minority Small Measure of Power," by Scott Wilson, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58262-2005Feb27.html, 28 February 2005 (from Crossroads Arabia through Liberals Against Terrorism).

"Marginalized Shiites stand up to be counted in Saudi local elections: Clerics encouraging community to vote," by Ali Khalil, AFP, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=13012, 28 February 2005 (from Liberals Against Terrorism).

Some news on the Saudis' phony elections -- is the
The Shia Nova...

Social unrest here has often been triggered by outside events, making Iraq's recent elections particularly worrisome to Saudi leaders, who political analysts say opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq partly because of its potential effect on this region.

... forming a "Shia crescent"?

The prospect of even incremental Shiite political gain has alarmed Sunni Muslim leaders across the Middle East, who fear that long-suppressed Shiite communities such as this one astride the kingdom's lifeblood oil industry will push for an ever-greater role in government. Sunni heads of state have warned the Bush administration that the democratic reform it is encouraging in Iraq and Saudi Arabia could result in a unified "crescent" of Shiite political power stretching from here through Lebanon, Iraq and into Iran.

Could result? But there are bigger prizes than Lebanon... Take a look:



Tell me those people, united by a sea, do not mind the violent intolerance of Wahabis in The Saudis' Kingdom In Arabia or the Salafists in Iraq. Tell me that those people don't know that the oil is under their feet and that the retrograde Sunni extremists are on the wrong side of history.

"People hurt when they see the milk from the cow flowing to the center and the west, with only a little staying here," said Tayseer Khunaizi, a professor of finance at King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran. "Without the conquest of this region, the kingdom of bin Saud would never have survived. But deep inside of us, this is considered an occupation."

As Newsweek said

All the countries in the region with large Shiite populations—all those that are sending pilgrims to Iraq's ancient shrines—are watching these developments with rapt attention. Already you're beginning to hear rhetoric that hasn't been bruited since the height of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's power in Iran. Ali Al-Ahmed of the dissident Saudi Institute in Washington, for instance, says the world should stop talking about the Persian Gulf or, as the Arabs call it, the Arab Gulf. "It's the Shia Gulf," he says. "Look at the people who live around it, at least 90 percent of them are Shiites. The U.S. must take that into account. The Shiites are sitting on all that oil."

For now, Shia in Tskia keep their heads down

"There is no particular Shiite interest in the municipal councils ... There is national interest, and Shiites are part of this country," the Dammam-based revered Shiite scholar told AFP.

But not for long.

"Don't dare say hello to your `infidel' neighbor," by Nathan Guttman, Haaretz International, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Saudi&itemNo=539828, 16 February 2005 (from Free Republic).

Earlier I mused on the relation between the Reese Committe's "functional-dysfunctional" dualism and Barnett's "connectedness-disconnectedness." If there was any doubt that Saudi Arabia is a disconnecting retrograde state, this should end them]

Take, for example, a document signed by the cultural attache at the Saudi embassy in Washington that instructs Muslims arriving in the United States not to initiate a greeting when meeting Christians or Jews, and never to convey good wishes marking a Christian or Jewish holiday. In general, the attache recommends that the Muslim believer avoid friendships with the infidels, be careful not to imitate their customs (e.g. not to wear a cap and gown at a graduation ceremony), and try not to remain in the country any longer than required. The Saudis feel that a good Muslim can stay in America only for two reasons: acquiring knowledge and capital to promote the objectives of jihad, and lobbying the infidels to accept Islam.

The Saudis are not our friends. They are trying to keep their own people in a cultural ghetto. They tell their subjects not to be friendly. They promote travel to America only to fund wars of disconnection or to create the disconnected future they want.

"Q&A: Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari," by Bassam Alloni, United Press International, http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040811-030906-9371r.htm, 11 August 2004 (from Informed Consent).

After concrete proof, a candidate for Prime Minister in Iraq talks up an Iran-Iraq entente. It's old, but relevant.

I personally look at Iran as part of the geographical entourage of Iraq and a friendly state which stood by Iraq's side in time of crisis: It harbored Iraqis when Saddam Hussein killed, displaced and harmed many of them. It is a state like all Iraq's other neighbors, which has common interests with us. I look forward to seeing Iraq's relations with Iran and all its other neighboring countries rise to the level of advanced countries. But in return, I expect all neighboring countries to refrain from interfering in our sovereignty like we do not interfere in theirs.

Some are trying to disturb such relations with Iran, although there is a consensus within the Iraqi interim government on the need to improve ties with Iran and all other neighboring countries and to set up a common strategy with them. In case of any interference, we should address that neighbor openly and start a dialogue instead of resorting to a media war.

...

Regardless of the comments made by the defense minister, the strategic stance in my opinion should be protected with the aim of maintaining stable and normal relations with all neighboring countries based on mutual respect of rights, safeguarding common interests, and refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs.

Jaafari is very supportive of Iran, but his comments about other neighbors are hedged. He wants neighbors who have "common interests" and our part of a "common strategy." He threatens interference.

A clear goal of an Iran-Iraq axis is to liberate the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. KSA is a dysfunctional wahabi state that keeps its youth unemployed and keeps other religions down. This includes Shia Islam, which predominates the oil-rich East Province. KSA without the East Province is nothing. The East Province without KSA is an oil producer that does not support terrorism.

East Arabia's liberty does not have to be quick or violent. A peaceful, long-term push for autonomy will itself force reforms in the Saudi Kingdom.

"Russia Says It's Ready to Arm Saudi Arabia," by Lyuba Pronina, The Moscow Times, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/02/10/043.html, 10 February 2005 (from Democratic Underground).

"Landmark Civic Polls Start Today," by Raid Qusti and Nasser Al-Salti, Arab News, http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=58768&d=10&m=2&y=2005&pix=kingdom.jpg&category=Kingdom, 10 February 2005.

In the first non-story, our near-ally Russia agrees to sell military equipment to our near-ally Saudi Arabia, building on a base of selling to near-allies China, India, and Morocco

Moscow is preparing its first major defense contract with Saudi Arabia, the world's largest arms buyer that has traditionally spent its petrodollars on U.S.-made weapons.

The deal is part of a strategy aimed at diversifying Russia's arms buyers away from China and India, Sergei Chemezov, general director of state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport, told reporters Wednesday.

Russia also signed an arms contract with Morocco last month, he said, the first since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Make that, outdated military equipment.

Rosoboronexport has orders of $12 billion through 2007, but Chemezov said that this year Rosoboronexport can expect to make $1 billion less in revenues.

"The reason? Our companies cannot produce more modern weapons. [The industry] is in need of investment either from private companies or from the state," he said. "Today we sell weapons that were designed in the late 1970s and early 1980s."

By itself, this is a puny deal. It's chump change for obsolete and useless rockets. It is notable because it shows Saudi displeasure about... something. This signals they don't like something that is going on, or something that we are making them do. Now what could that be?

Saudi citizens are set to cast their first ballots in history when Riyadh region goes to the polls in the first of a landmark municipal elections.

Today’s polls in Riyadh and surrounding areas are the first of three rounds that will eventually see elected representatives take up half the seats on 178 municipal councils across Saudi Arabia.

The remaining seats will be filled by government appointees. The rest of the country will vote in March and April.

"Democractic-style" elections in Araby. This is the second non-story. It's only for local councils, and only for half of local seats at that. I could care less about women not voting -- heck, even a 10% suffrage would be an improvement. But a vote for half the seats on useless councils is the bare minimum. The bare minimum we are forcing them to do.

Asked about the reasons of the substantial differences between the total number of voters in the Riyadh region and of that in the Eastern Province, Prince Mansoor attributed the larger number in the Eastern Province to the efforts exerted by the local committee’s chairman Prince Abdul Aziz Al-Muqrin.

These elections are phony. But that the Eastern Province is a different polity is not. The Iraqi Shias have their country, and when the decrepit and cynical Tehran government is overthrown the Persians shall have theirs too. And with free Shia across the desert, and free Shia across the gulf, the Eastern Province Shia shall wake up. And from their dreamlands they will take their freedom and their oil from the Riyadhi Wahabis.

And that will be the story of the House of Saud.