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Are Saudi
Jihadis Entitled to a "Safe Zone"?
By Pepe Escobar
February 02,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Sputnik"
-
Straight after the “extreme vetting” blitzkrieg – which,
technically, is not a “Muslim ban” - President Trump
called the lucidity-impaired King Salman of Saudi Arabia
and “requested, and the king agreed to support” (in the
words of the White House), safe zones in Syria and
Yemen.
No wonder
serial eyebrows were raised facing the prospect of a
Trump/House of Saud alliance in Syria — which the Saudis
have been destroying for years via weaponizing/cash
support for “rebels” – and
Yemen – which the Saudis have been bombing in an
unwinnable war.
Trump and King
Salman did not exchange a single word on the “Muslim
ban”. And why should they? Saudi Arabia is
mercifully excluded from the “Muslim ban”.
The official White
House statement did mention a Saudi request for Trump
to lead "an effort" not only to "defeat terrorism"
but also to improve the Middle East socially and
economically. This could be easily interpreted as the
House of Saud asking Trump to lead the Arab world. It
will be no doubt exciting to monitor how the pan-Arab
street will manifest its “approval”.
As for the
safe zones, everyone is waiting for the
Trump-ordered Pentagon assessment, to be led by
“Mad Dog” Mattis, on how they would be enforced.
Drones? Multiple Black Hawk patrols? Squadrons
of fighter jets? Boots on the ground?
Certified
jihadis with Saudi passports, meanwhile,
enthusiastically turbo-charge their celebrations.
I’ll
bomb your visa to ashes
On the “Muslim
ban”, let’s cut to the chase. Trump’s seven-nation list
is the
Obama administration’s list. These nations were
“rounded up” by the Obama administration already
in 2011, and are included in Obama's Terrorist Travel
Protection Act 2015.
Homeland Security
was
already targeting these seven nations as “countries
of concern”. Customs and Border Protection,
detailing the “Visa Waiver Program and Terrorist
Travel Protection Act of 2015”, even explicitly
mentioned the seven nations. The whole package was
signed into law on December 18, 2015, as part of the
Omnibus Appropriations Act of fiscal year 2016.
So the Trump
White House is essentially enforcing a law that already
exists. In a nutshell, it has been official USG policy
for over a year to target, and turn admission to the US,
an absolute odyssey for these nationals.
Whether these
nations should be in the list is a completely different
issue. The notion that Iran “exports terrorists” exists
only in the fantasies of neocons/deranged Likudniks and
their shills.
What the list
does is to evoke the notorious neocon-penned Pentagon
memo, revealed by former NATO supreme commander Gen.
Wesley Clark, describing “how we’re going to take
out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq
and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and then
finishing off (with) Iran.” Yemen ended up replacing
Lebanon.
The record
shows the USG has bombed (into democracy or otherwise),
directly or indirectly, no less than six out of the
seven nations on Obama/Trump’s list. The exception is
Sudan. In the case of Iran, Washington destroyed a
packed Iran Air passenger jet in mid-air in 1988 with a
missile, and has been consistently mute on Israeli
targeted attacks on Iranian nationals.
Saudi Arabia's
ideological matrix inspires Salafi-jihadis all across
"Syraq" and beyond.
Yemeni refugees
are fleeing a Saudi war — conducted with US weapons —
on their nation. Syrian refugees are fleeing a war
on Damascus where Riyadh plays a major role
"facilitating" the work of "moderate rebels" which are
in fact Salafi-jihadis.
Not to mention
that most Daesh jihadis hail
from Tunisia; their numbers are ahead of Saudi
Arabia, Russia (essentially Chechens), Turkey and
Jordan. None of these American allies — Russia,
of course, is a strategic competitor — are on the
seven-nation list.
Where’s
section 6?
Something
extraordinary happened along Trump’s Executive Order (EO)’s
path to stardom.
Here’s the
undated draft, that should be carefully compared
with
the final EO.
On both there’s no
explicit mention of Muslims or Islam. Yet the key fact
is how the former section 6, Establishment of Safe Zones
to Protect Vulnerable Syrian Populations, simply
disappeared.
The only
reasonable explanation is that Trump, former New York
City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who helped draft the EO) and
chief strategist and new National Security Council
stalwart Steve Bannon, had to acknowledge that it’s
Moscow who’s in charge in Syria, not Washington.
So the safe
zones had to go, just to reappear in Trump’s call
to King Salman.
The House of Saud
is frantically spinning its (glorious?) absence from the
list, plus the phone call, as evidence of Saudi Arabia
configured as leader of the Arab/Muslim world.
For the
official Saudi Press Agency, “the view of the two
leaders were identical” in terms of confronting
terrorism and extremism, as well as “those who seek
to undermine security and stability in the region and
interfere in the internal affairs of other states.”
That’s a not
exactly subtle reference to
Iran. A Trump-House of Saud anti-Iran axis is on the
move – part of the
Kissinger-advised strategy of breaking up Eurasia
integration by seducing Russia away from China and
harassing Iran.
Tehran,
cautiously but predictably, is already engaged
to retaliate against the visa ban. And the tension
will be up a notch next week, when naval exercise
Unified Trident starts in the Gulf, with US, British and
French naval vessels simulating an attack on – who
else — Iran.
So,
essentially,
Trump’s EO – while not technically a Muslim ban — is
extremely harsh, and unfair to multiple actors
(including Iranians, Iraqi “collaborators” with the US
military, Syrian refugees). It is already being drawn
into a swamp infested with crossfire bureaucracy,
multiple lawsuits and even possible civil rights
violations.
But the irrational
seven-nation list is inherited from Obama. White House
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus though has left open the
possibility that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan may be
added to the list. No mention of Tunisia.
This list is
yet another proof that the Global War on Terror (GWOT)
is the gift that will keep on giving. The Cheney regime
blew the Middle East apart; the Obama/Clinton continuum
entertained the illusion of managing it; and Trump wants
an easy way out. Iranian engineers, Iraqi interpreters,
Syrian and Yemeni refugees, are all caught in the
crossfire.
Meanwhile, GWOT
will remain a pathetic parody as long as Wahhabi Saudi
Arabia – the ideological matrix of Salafi-jihadism — is
not dealt with for what it is: a huge, unaccountable,
threatening danger zone.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
