Category: Qatar

The Gulf crisis: Royal ambitions and shaky alliances

Galip Dalay

The scale, scope and causes of the Gulf crisis have been perplexing even for keen observers of the region’s political scene. The architects of the blockade against Qatar are conducting a large-scale campaign of public diplomacy, tailoring different messages to different audiences in order to legitimise their moves and frame as acceptable what is really absurd.

While charges of Qatar having purported links with radical Islamist movements are meant to appeal to Western audiences, the accusations that Qatar has secret and intricate links with Iran is aimed at appealing to the Sunni Arab audience given its growing dislike of Iran thanks to the role it plays in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Then, after Iran and Turkey offered their support for Qatar, it appears that this time the same bloc has aimed at stirring up Arab nationalist sentiment against Qatar. The UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar bin Mohammad Gargash has accusedQatar of seeking the backing of two non-Arab states in the region. Fearmongering has been on full display during this recent campaign.

But in order to understand what is really going on in the Gulf right now, one has to look beyond official statements, posturing and threats.

Royal ambitions and fears

Certainly, the main protagonists of this move, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, have sought personal aggrandisement and benefit from this crisis. Mohammed bin Salman tried to make up for his youthfulness, erratic behaviour, bad-temper and inexperience by adopting an image of a man who is a committed foe to both Iran and political Islam. In this way, he seeks to endear himself to the Western, and particularly American, political establishment and gain advantage over his more statesman-like cousin and rival, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Al Saud, on the question of succession.

And in this relationship, it seems that Mohammed bin Salman represents the brawn, while Mohammed bin Zayed represents the brains. For Mohammed bin Zayed, this move aims at getting rid of moderate political Islam as an alternative political project and killing the Arab Spring phenomenon with its initial promises of democratisation and progress, which have shaken the region’s authoritarian status quo to its foundations.

Although the recent crisis has its roots in the Arab Spring era, it is only the latest iteration of a region-wide struggle to shape the post-Arab Spring regional order. In fact, the composition of the anti-Qatari bloc reflects the post-Arab Spring reality and political realignment in the region. At its core, this move aims at setting up a new regional order, mostly along the lines of the post-Cold War authoritarian status quo protected by the US security umbrella.

The trouble with this camp is that they fail to advance a coherent vision for a regional order and a more benign form of state-society relations enjoying legitimacy and sustainability. Its elitist authoritarian regional order was rejected by the forces of the Arab Spring and the political psychology that this process unleashed. The Arab uprisings also rejected the personalisation of power and the way succession was handled within this regional order: either by transfer of power from aging autocrat to his son or by a military coup.

Pursuing this line of reactionary politics, Saudi Arabia and the UAE went as far as accusing other countries of supporting terrorism. The main accusation against Qatar is that it supports the Muslim Brotherhood, a mainstream political Islamist organisation which isn’t on any Western terror list. In fact, it was not even on the terror list of the UAE or Saudi Arabia until 2014 and is still part of the legal political establishment in Kuwait.

The fact that neither Saudi Arabia nor UAE realised that the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928, was a terrorist organisation until the aftermath of the Egyptian coup speaks for the real motives behind this move. They have waged a war on the Muslim Brotherhood because it became a real political factor and alternative to the decaying monarchical and autocratic regimes, despite all the group’s shortcomings, short-sightedness and blunders.

In short, for the likes of Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, the revolutionary spirit of the Arab uprisings and political Islam represent an existential threat because they could challenge their personal power projects.

The UAE-Saudi alliance is shaky

On top of this, once the common denominator of resisting change is taken out, the interests of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not easily reconcilable. In fact, authoritarian collusion is not a sustainable form of alliance structure that can re-establish a broken regional order.

The positions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the Yemeni crisis, for example, are diametrically opposed to each other. They support different factions and different solutions for the Yemeni crisis. While the UAE is a staunch supporter of the former governor of Aden Aidarous al-Zubaidi and police commissioner of Aden Shallal Shaye and envisions the partition of Yemen, the Saudi regime has thrown its support behind Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government and is opposed to the idea of the partition of Yemen.

Even the much-hyped Iranian factor is not the significant unifying factor that the protagonists of this latest blockade would like to portray. The emphasis on Iran is primarily designed to serve as a legitimacy-enhancing factor for this move.

Its protagonists believe this will also go down well with the Trump administration, which is gradually transitioning from an ISIL-first to an Iran-first strategy in the region. If Iran were the real reason, one would then anticipate that Saudi Arabia would first make a similar move against Oman, a country that has such extensive, deep and open ties with Iran. Or one might even expect Saudi Arabia to ask its close ally the UAE to block Iran’s attempt to evade Western sanctions by using Dubai as one of its major hubs for trade.

According to The Financial Tribune, Iran’s main English-language economic newspaper, during the last financial year ending March 20, 2017, the UAE was Iran’s second-largestexport destination after China, accounting for 17 percent of Iranian exports – a significant increase from the year before.

It remains to be seen how long the UAE-Saudi alliance can survive for, but one thing is for sure: The escalation and blockade they plotted will not resolve their legitimacy issues.

This article was first published by Al Jazeera in June 15, 2017

July 14, 2017
The blockade of Qatar is a move against the values of the Arab spring

Melania and Donald Trump on their visit to Saudi Arabia

Wadah Khanfar

The move of Saudi Arabia,the UAE and Bahrain against Qatar was swift. It was launched on the back of a fake news report placed by hackers on the website of Qatar’s official news agency. That allowed the three Gulf states to launch a media campaign led by Saudi- and UAE-controlled TV channels.

Qatar was simultaneously accused of hosting Hamas; supporting the Muslim Brotherhood; backing Hezbollah; having close ties with Iran; sowing the seeds of sedition inside Saudi Arabia, and all the while maintaining intimate relations with Israel. If you can do all those things at the same time, you are indeed a magician.

The incoherence of these claims did not matter. The Saudis and Emiratis were addressing two audiences: the western one, which sees conflict in the Middle East through the exclusive prism of fighting terrorism; and the Gulf audience, which sees red when any of its leaders talk to Iran or Israel.

On Monday, a set of measures were announced that are unprecedented in peacetime: cutting diplomatic relations; closing all the borders, sea lanes and airspace; banning citizens of all participating states from travelling to Qatar, and banning all Qataris and residents of Qatar from travelling to those countries. These are measures not even used in a warzone. They violate all the norms of international aviation.

The pretext offered for all this was the desire to cut the funding of terrorist groups and radical Islamist ideology. And yet the most significant demand had nothing to do with this: it was to close down the al-Jazeera media network. This has been eagerly sought by many Arab states, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, ever since the original news channel launched in 1996.

Al-Jazeera transformed the Arab media from a natural extension of the intelligence and security agencies to an independent sector whose values were transparency, accountability and democracy. This is exactly what so many Arab regimes fear.

Al-Jazeera is very familiar with the charges Qatar now faces, because they were made against it: al-Jazeera was accused of aligning itself with Hezbollah, supporting Islamist groups and having intimate ties with Israel.

The most important event al-Jazeera covered was the Arab spring in 2011. This was a political earthquake, driven by the dreams and aspirations of a new generation, born under dictatorship but raised in the age of the internet. Young people sought to turn those dreams into reality, taking to the streets, using the power of networking and learning from the experiences of other youth groups from around the world. The dynamic was neither partisan, sectarian nor ideological.

Toppling regimes proved to be the easiest step. For these were ageing regimes whose structures had been infested with rampant corruption. Establishing consensus and rebuilding the state on democratic foundations was much harder. Young people alone were not up to the task. Counter-revolutionary forces, funded by the entire wealth of the Gulf, regained control.

The dividing line was wealth. Revolutions erupted in the poorer nations such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, while the rich countries stood behind the counter-revolution. The three countries that have imposed a siege on Qatar funded the 2013 military coup in Egypt and have propped up the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. They have also funded and armed General Khalifa Haftar in Libya and waged an open war on the forces of the Arab spring.

Qatar distanced itself from these policies. Qatar is not a democracy. Yet it was not hostile to the Arab spring.

This was the reason behind the first Gulf escalation against Qatar in 2014, when the same three countries withdrew their ambassadors from Doha and threatened to close their borders. They demanded Qatar support the Sisi regime, fight the Muslim Brotherhood and curb al-Jazeera’s independence.

The crisis did not escalate, as Barack Obama’s administration was not enthusiastic about such conflicts. By contrast, the current situation is being seized upon by Qatar’s foes. In his tweets, Donald Trump claimed ownership, saying the moves to isolate Qatar were the fruits of his address to more than 40 leaders of Muslim nations last month.

The current dispute has nothing to do with funding terrorism or radical ideology and even less to do with any official Qatari leaning toward Iran. This is a resumption of an old fight: drying all the fountains of independent conscience in preparation for a restoration of the old order in the Middle East. This time, however, the old order has tough new security powers, created by the war on terror and the support of a president who has jettisoned all the US’s values.

But are we going to fight terror with more persecution, or learn lessons from history? The fact is that dictatorial and corrupt regimes were the incubators of extremism in the region. Decades of suppressing liberties and violating human rights provided the oxygen for jihadi groups. While these regimes flouted the rule of law, they still enjoyed US support. As a result, the Middle East continues to be engulfed by conflicts and instability.

We should not rebuild the Middle East on the foundations that generated terrorism. We should align ourselves with a future of youthful dreams. These may often be utopian or unrealistic. But at least we would be walking forward, rather than stumbling backwards.

This article was first published by The Guardian

July 14, 2017
Implications of the Qatar Crisis for Regional Security in the Gulf

The involvement of countries such as Turkey, and potentially Russia and Iran, is likely to widen existing fractures within the GCC and weaken the web of partnerships with Western states that have formed the cornerstone of the post-1991 Gulf security architecture.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

Abstract: The standoff in the Gulf that commenced in May 23 between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) presents the greatest challenge to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the Gulf War in January–February 1991. The demands made of Qatar by the trio of fellow GCC states have laid bare the tensions in the GCC that have for years complicated moves toward any meaningful form of collective defense cooperation. In addition, the fallout from the spat threatens to split the GCC along multiple lines and open inroads for new participants in regional security structures. The involvement of countries such as Turkey, and potentially Russia and Iran, is likely to widen existing fractures within the GCC and weaken the web of partnerships with Western states that have formed the cornerstone of the post-1991 Gulf security architecture.

Two threads run through regional security structures in the Gulf and connect the past to the present. The first is the presence of external forces with their own interests in maritime and regime stability, while the second is the imbalance of power and difference in threat perception between the three larger states—Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia—and the five smaller states—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE. While the exact nature of this imbalance has fluctuated considerably over time, ithas contributed to a marked preference for bilateralism over multilateralism in most matters of national security, and created trajectories that may widen further with the Qatar crisis.

The Politics of Protection

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The United Kingdom was the paramount external power in the Gulf from 1820, when Britain signed a General Treaty of Peace with local rulers on the coastline of the Arabian Peninsula, to 1971, when the British government withdrew its military from all positions east of Suez under financial duress. Britain concluded individual treaties with the rulers of the Trucial States (since 1971 the UAE) in 1835, Bahrain in 1861, Kuwait in 1899 and again in 1914, and Qatar in 1916.[1] These agreements consolidated the internal legitimacy and power of the individual ruling families by bestowing diplomatic recognition and a measure of external protection for their survival.[2] This protection additionally gave ruling elites in the Gulf States—whether members of ruling families or British officials—a considerable stake in maintaining the conservative status-quo. Consequently, when Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced Britain’s impending withdrawal from the Gulf by the end of 1971, the rulers of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar offered to assume the costs of maintaining the garrisons.[3]

The loss of British-protected status in 1971 rendered the newly-independent states of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE vulnerable to their larger and more powerful neighbors. Iraq massed troops on its border with Kuwait immediately upon Kuwaiti independence in 1961, a move that necessitated the return of British forces to Kuwait just six days after they had left

For the smaller Gulf States, a dangerous decade separated Britain’s military withdrawal in November 1971 and the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council at a summit in Abu Dhabi in May 1981. The loss of British-protected status in 1971 rendered the newly-independent states of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE vulnerable to their larger and more powerful neighbors. Iraq massed troops on its border with Kuwait immediately upon Kuwaiti independence in 1961, a move that necessitated the return of British forces to Kuwait just six days after they had left. In Bahrain, the Shah revived Iran’s longstanding territorial claim on the archipelago in 1968 in a move that was ultimately settled through a UN mission that visited Bahrain and determined that its citizens wished to become an independent Arab state. More worrying for local officials was Iran’s seizure of the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the emirates of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah respectively on the day before Britain’s withdrawal in November 1971.[4] The young Gulf States’ sense of vulnerability was further heightened by Ba’athist Iraqi involvement in a coup against the ruler of Sharjah in 1973,[5] and in Baghdad’s support for, and hosting of, revolutionary cells of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman until 1975.[6]

The GCC and the US

The creation of the GCC in May 1981 was an immediate ad hoc reaction to the situation of profound uncertainty occasioned by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq war in 1980.[7] It emerged from several competing visions of regional cooperation that extended back to a meeting of the foreign ministers of all eight Gulf States in Muscat in 1976. The Shah’s replacement by a clerical regime in Iran initially committed to exporting its (Shia) revolutionary fervor seen as an imminent threat to regional security in Gulf capitals. Consequently, Iraq and Iran were excluded from the regional organization that was launched in Abu Dhabi on May 25, 1981. This reflected the fact that the GCC was primarily the defensive response of six relatively like-minded political entities intended to shield their member states and societies from the transnational threat of spill-over from the warring parties of two revolutionary regimes (Iraq and Iran) with hegemonic designs.[8] Neither a political nor a military alliance, the GCC lacked an integrated supranational decision-making institution for the sharing of sovereignty and had no explicit treaty-based foreign policy-making power.[9]

From the beginning, the six GCC member states struggled to find a consensus on the key regional foreign and security policy challenges.[10] This was immediately evident during the Iran-Iraq War, when the two camps rapidly emerged. Their geographical position in the northern Gulf and the greater intermixing of Sunni and Shia communities exposed Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to a range of material and ideological threats to their security. All three countries experienced acts of political violence and terrorism, including an Iranian-backed coup attempt in Bahrain in 1981, a wave of bombings in Kuwait, an attempt to assassinate the Kuwaiti Emir in 1985, and the emergence of Hezbollah Al-Hijaz in Saudi Arabia in 1987.[11] However, in the South there was less immediate Iranian threat compared to the northern states in the Gulf. Policymakers in Qatar, the UAE and Oman sought to balance limited financial and declaratory (through GCC communiqués) support to Iraq with continuing commercial relations with Iran. This balancing act reached extreme proportions in the UAE, where Dubai, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain favored Iran while the other four emirates of Abu Dhabi, Ras al-Khaimah, Ajman and Fujairah sided with Iraq[12]

Decisions taken near the end of the Iran-Iraq war greatly expanded the U.S. military and security footprint in the Gulf as developments between 1986 and 1988 brought a sizeable external naval force into the region for the first time since Britain’s departure in 1971. This occurred as the United States (along with the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France and Italy) sent warships to conduct convoy operations for re-flagged and chartered vessels. Iranian attacks on re-flagged merchant shipping now invited external retaliation, as when the U.S. Navy destroyed Iranian offshore oil platforms in response to attacks on U.S.-flagged ships in October 1987 and April 1988.[13]

The intervention of the United States as a regional security participant had its roots in longstanding U.S. security arrangements with Saudi Arabia and the presence of a naval detachment in Bahrain (the U.S. Middle East Force), both of which dated back to the 1940s, as well as the Carter Doctrine of January 1980, which stated that the U.S. would use military force, if necessary, to protect its national interests in the Gulf. Successive presidential administrations under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the 1990s designed a ‘Dual Containment’ policy that excluded Iraq and Iran from regional security structures and deepened bilateral security relations with GCC states.[14] This was achieved through an existing access-to-facilities agreement with Oman and separate defense cooperation agreements with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE (with the first two also being accorded Major Non-NATO Ally status in 2002 and 2004). The GCC states developed into major logistical and command-and-control hubs for the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Manama in 1995, and the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Doha in 2002, while substantial stocks of military equipment were position at airbases and ports in the UAE, and Kuwait became the administrative and logistical lifeline for multinational forces in Iraq after 2003.[15]

The Illusion of Collective Action

Collective GCC policymaking, particularly in defense matters, has remained a chimera as each of the GCC states has been integrated into the American security umbrella on a bilateral basis, and sporadic efforts to formulate a collective approach to security have foundered. In part, this reflects an underlying wariness among four of the smaller five GCC states (Bahrain being the exception) about the potential for Saudi hegemony within a closer-knit GCC.[16] Attempts to create a unified internal security mechanism within the GCC failed in 1982 and again in 1994, on both occasions due to Kuwaiti resistance, and were only pushed through in 2012 in the wake of the region-wide political upheaval triggered by the Arab Spring.[17] Border skirmishes between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in 1992 and 1993 and a brief clash between Saudi and Emirati vessels in disputed waters in 2010 also heightened concerns about the power imbalance between the Kingdom and its much smaller neighbors.[18]Even the intervention in Bahrain in 2011, packaged as the deployment of the GCC’s Peninsula Shield Force to assist the Bahraini government restore order, was, in reality, more of a Saudi and Emirati initiative, and a group of Kuwaiti medics was denied entry to Bahrain.[19]

More recently, Saudi attempts to transform the GCC into a more politically integrated Gulf Union both failed to make headway in the face of stiff opposition from other member states. King Abdullah announced his vision for a closer ‘Gulf Union’ at the GCC Summit in Riyadh in December 2011, reportedly taking his fellow rulers largely by surprise with the unilateral announcement. Despite then-Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal Al Saud expanding the proposals for an integrated military and regional security policy, neither a mid-year GCC Consultative Summit in Riyadh in May 2012 nor subsequent annual Summits in Bahrain (December 2012) or Kuwait (December 2013) reached a consensus on the move towards a closer political union. Yusuf bin Ali, Oman’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, rejected the Saudi initiative in an unprecedentedly open and direct manner, telling the attendees in a security conference in Bahrain that ‘We are against a union. We will not prevent a union, but if it happens we will not be part of it.’[20]

Divergent Paths Ahead

The standoff between Qatar and its neighbors has its roots in their diverging policy responses to the Arab Spring. Qatari policymakers—and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera media group—supported the uprisings in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen—though not Bahrain—and assisted a range of Islamist groups in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, in the political transitions that followed. Qatar’s sympathetic stance toward the Brotherhood was diametrically opposed to the view in Abu Dhabi that the Brotherhood—and Islamist movements more generally—posed a grave threat to the regional political order.[21] The assistance provided from 2011 to 2013 by Qatar to regional Islamist groups was countered by the formulation of more assertive regional policies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that accelerated after the reassertion of military control in Egypt in 2013, an event that signified the end of the initial phase of the Arab Spring.[22]

Post-2011 Egypt (and Libya) have furthered revealed the differences between Qatari and Emirati approaches to regional affairs, while the war in Yemen since 2015 has illustrated the practical challenges of aligning quite distinct national security objectives (in Saudi Arabia and the UAE) under a nominally multilateral umbrella. In each instance, greater assertiveness from GCC states in terms of power projection occurred largely through national channels, with only a loose coordinating mechanism for collective action. This was also the case for a previous iteration of the Saudi – Emirati – Bahraini diplomatic spat with Qatar, when the three countries withdrew their ambassadors from Doha for 8 months in 2014. On that occasion, as in the current standoff, neither Kuwait nor Oman joined their counterparts in acting against Qatar, and the GCC Secretariat was notable more by its policymaking absence than by any attempt to resolve the issue.[23]

This dispute differs significantly from that of 2014 in several respects. The first difference is the Saudi and Emirati conviction that the Qatari leadership has not altered course since the previous confrontation and is therefore unlikely to do so unless greater pressure is applied this time. This likely explains the addition of economic sanctions on Qatar and restrictions on the flow of trade and people to and from Qatar, as well as the attempt to mobilize other regional states such as Egypt against Doha. However, it also means that passions on both sides of the divide are far higher than they were in 2014 and have widened fissures that will be rather more difficult to repair. These cracks in the always-fragile notion of ‘Gulf unity’ open up opportunities for new entrants to insert themselves into regional security dialogues in ways that may increase tensions further and reinforce the divergent trajectories noted above. One example is the Saudi-led coalition’s demand that Qatar shut the Turkish military base that became operational in 2016; further strains may occur if bilateral relations between Qatar and Iran proliferate in response to the standoff.[24]

Finally, the crisis has implications for the United States and other international partners with a stake in the regional security architecture. At best, the standoff is an unnecessary crisis that is a distraction from the more serious challenges of defeating Islamic State forces in Mosul and Raqqa, finding a diplomatic solution to the Syrian catastrophe, and preventing total state collapse in Yemen and Libya. Yet, Bahrain’s decision to kick out Qatari military personnel serving with the U.S.-led Bahrain-headquartered counter-Islamic State coalition leave the country illustrates how the crisis has already impacted international responses to regional conflicts.[25] Moreover, the spat has come at a time when the new U.S. government is distracted by domestic affairs and has struggled to coordinate policies between the White House and government departments, resulting in a series of mixed messages that have called into question the consistency of U.S. leadership in the Gulf. Putting an end to the centrifugal forces driving apart the Gulf and finding ways to rebuild trust and confidence will test the capacity of an inexperienced president and the institutional durability of the network of partnerships that have formed the cornerstone of regional security structures for a generation.

Endnotes:

[1] James Onley and Suleyman Khalaf, ‘Shaikly Authority in the Pre-oil Gulf: An Historical-Anthropological Study,’ History and Anthropology, 17(3), 2006, p.193.

[2] Lisa Anderson, ‘Absolutism and the Resilience of Monarchy in the Middle East,’ Political Science Quarterly, 106(1), 1991, p.9.

[3]Shohei Sato, “Britain’s Decision to Withdraw from the Persian Gulf, 1964-68: A Pattern and a Puzzle,” Journal of Imperial and CommonwealthHistory, 37(1), 2009, p.108.

[4] William Roger Louis, ‘The British Withdrawal from the Gulf, 1967-71,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31(1), (2003), p.102.

[5] Christopher Davidson, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (London: Hurst and Co., 2008), p.251.

[6] Marc Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (London: Hurst and Co., 2009), p.60.

[7]Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, ‘The Gulf Cooperation Council: Nature, Origin and Process,’ in Michael Hudson (ed.), Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p.154.

[8] Author interview with Abdullah Bishara (Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, 1981-93), 2009.

[9] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘Is the GCC Worth Belonging To?’ Chatham House Expert Comment, 20 June 2017.

[10] Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

[11] Hasan Tariq Alhassan, ‘The Role of Iran in the Failed Coup of 1981: The IFLB in Bahrain,’ Middle East Journal, 65(4), 2011, p.603; Toby Matthiesen, ‘Hizbullah al-Hijaz: A History of the Most Radical Saudi Shi’a Opposition Group,’ Middle East Journal, 64(2), 2010, p.179.

[12] Christopher Davidson, The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival (London: Lynne Rienner, 2006), p.206.

[13] Abdul-Reda Assiri, Kuwait’s Foreign Policy: City-State in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp.107-8.

[14] Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.201.

[15] F. Gregory Gause III, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.127.

^[16] Anthony Cordesman, quoted in Ibrahim Suleiman al-Duraiby, Saudi Arabia, GCC and the EU: Limitations and Possibilities for an Unequal Triangular Relationship (Dubai: Gulf Research Centre, 2009), p.89.

[17] Joseph Kechichian, ‘The Gulf Security Pact: Another GCC Dilemma,’ Al Jazeera Online, 24 February 2014.

[18] ‘Saudi-Qatar Flare-up,’ Gulf States Newsletter, Volume 19, Issue 501, 12 December 1994, p.5; ‘Naval Battle Between UAE and Saudi Arabia Raises Fears for Gulf Security,’ The Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2010.

[19] ‘Kuwait Medical Team Hopes for Bahrain Clearance,’ Associated Press, 23 March 2011.

[20] ‘GCC Unity Questioned as Summit Begins,’ Gulf States Newsletter, Volume 37, Issue 960, 12 December 2013, p.7.

[21] David Roberts, ‘Qatar, the Ikhwan, and Transnational Relations in the Gulf,’ Project on Middle East Political Science, 9 March 2014.

[22] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘The Gulf States and the Rebalancing of Regional and Global Power,’ Rice University’sBaker Institute for Public Policy, 8 January 2014.

[23] Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ‘Is the GCC Worth Belonging To?’ Chatham House Expert Comment, 20 June 2017.

[24] Martin Chulov, ‘Erdoğan Rejects Saudi Demand to Pull Turkish Troops Out of Qatar,’ The Guardian, 25 June 2017; ‘Iran: Hassan Rouhani Condemns ‘Siege of Qatar’,’ Al Jazeera Online, 25 June 2017.

[25] Naser Al Wasmi and Taimur Khan, ‘Deadline for Qataris to Leave UAE Has Passed,’ The National, 18 June 2017.

July 14, 2017
AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America
Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003

Istanbul: 13 November 2014

Yesterday, three sailors from the uncontrollably violent neighborhood called America met the true face of Turkey. Poor boys, they don’t even know what they represent. They don’t even know that their so-called leaders have made them punching bags for its criminal enterprise called American imperialism. They don’t even know how America and its treasonous internal agents, in particular the Turkish government, are attempting to destroy the future of the Turkish youth.

Perhaps these American boys got a quick lesson in the true nature of Turkish-American relations yesterday? But, sadly, probably not. The American boys ran back to the false safety of their warship, re-entering their “safe” world of imperialist propaganda, economic excess and hypocrisy. But there is no safety anywhere any longer. That is the gift of America to Turkey, and to the world. As usual, America authorities and its treacherous collaborating Turkish puppets screamed in outrage. And, as usual, the youth of Turkey, the true defenders of the Republic of Turkey, went to jail for exercising their patriotic duty. Nothing has changed, except one thing. Turkish young people, the nation’s true patriotic voice, will not take American crap anymore. And America should understand that. Listen and learn, America. You owe it to your own youth. Think of it this way, think of it as a symbol.

That’s the way the resident American-imposed agent of destruction, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thought about his hooding of Turkish women into a grotesque series of Middle Age costumes that squeeze feminine brains into numb submission. So what, declared the then prime minister, if the head scarf is a political symbol? So what, indeed! Erdoğan used his compliant covered women to destroy democracy in his own country. He and his collaborators hid behind their women’s headscarves to do America’s dirty work. And now they cannot safely visit any neighborhood in their own land. No “hood” is safe for the hoodlums. And now the new president hides in a billion-dollar illegal palace, his inadvertent monument to treason. So what if he and his ilk cannot appear in public! So what!

So what if in 1980 the American president celebrated the success of his CIA-engineered military coup by proclaiming “Our boys did it!” Yes, then his gangster BOYZ did it. And yesterday, today’s Turkish youth remembered. And yesterday, our Turkish boys did it to America, symbolically, of course, because Turkish youth is civilized. They can be no other way; they are the current-day “soldiers of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.” This is something that the treacherous opposition political polities can neither say nor understand. Yes, Turkish young people are civilized and enlightened by the patriotic principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That’s why, yesterday, no one, neither American boy nor Turkish boy was hurt. No one was tortured. No one was hung. No one was shot, exploded, beaten, gassed, or otherwise maimed. And that’s a lot more than America can ever say about their overt and covert interventions in Turkey’s affairs.

So what if America and its craven ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, aided and abetted the Turkish government in its beating, gassing, maiming and murdering of democratically assembled Gezi Park protestors. “The Turkish government is having a conversation with its people,” said the deceitful ambassador, as he arranged to have more poisonous gas sold to Erdoğan and his hoodlum police. A “conversation?” So what!

So what if the same ambassador conspired with the main opposition party leader to assure the election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency!

So what if yesterday the American boys’ heads momentarily felt the experience of being symbolically hooded! Symbolically hooded, not actually hung like so many patriotic Turkish young people have been. And by their own government! The Turkish people have been strangled and hooded by America, by its CIA meddlers and by its corrupt politicians for decades. And in the past decade of Erdoğan’s treacherous rule, America’s CIA “boys” have done it again. Or tried to.

So what if America has used its youth to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in its deceitful, illegal war of aggression!

So what if America has humiliated the Turkish military by hooding its soldiers in Iraq in July 2003!

So what if America has conspired with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan to kill hundreds of thousands of Syrians in its deceitful pretext of bringing democracy!

So what if America has supported the treasonous, under-educated, Islamic zealot, CIA-asset, Fethullah Gulen for decades in the Pennsylvania countryside!

So what if Gulen and Erdoğan have collaborated for decades in treacherous union to do America’s bidding in the subversion of the Turkish Republic! So what if the Turkish Army has been destroyed! So what if the independence of the Turkish judiciary has collapsed! So what if rivers have been stopped, farmers’ fields uprooted, forests felled, eternal olive trees murdered, lakes polluted, mountains plundered, the air made poisonous, all in pursuit of private profit, all indicative of massive governmental corruption! So what if the government has looted public funds! So what if the Turkish mass media slithers like a reptile on its overstuffed belly doing the bidding of its governmental master! So what if Turkey stinks from America’s subversion like a rotting corpse in the noonday sun!

Yes, SO WHAT?

Yesterday, clearly, directly, in a street-theater performance, Turkish “boyz” encountered American “boyz” in the Turkish “hood.” The US embassy in Turkey called the incident “appalling.” What is appalling is the embassy’s ignorance and arrogance. What is appalling is the criminal behavior of its criminal boss, the president of the United States. It is he and Erdoğan and all their co-conspirators, all the ones who need protection by regiments of armed-to-the-teeth goons, who deserve to be hooded. And now they can never step foot in our hood, ever again. Not ever! That’s the message from yesterday. Take your warships and your political puppets and go!

James C. Ryan

Istanbul

13 November 2014

November 13, 2014
WE ARE WITNESSING THE DISASTER

13 October 2014
Istanbul

Aydinlik Daily correspondent Mustafa Birol made an interview with former US Army officer and columnist James Ryan concerning his criminal complaint towards the governments of United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Great Britain, Jordan and Romania regarding violations of Article 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute.

Mustafa Birol:
I talked to James Ryan, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and also a columnist in Aydinlik Daily, concerning his criminal complaint entitled “Criminal Carnage in Syria by the Criminal Cabal for Perpetual War” towards 12 countries including the US and Turkey to the International Criminal Court regarding violations of Article 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute which deal with war crimes and the crime of aggression.

— You have very recently made a criminal complaint against 11 countries including the USA and Turkey for alleged infringements of Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Your criminal complaint constitutes a detailed summary of the war crimes conducted by the countries which can be defined as the anti-Syria coalition. Can you please tell me about the process which prompted you to make the criminal complaint and also the political developments that shaped your application?

Just living is a process, and not an easy one. The seeds for my filing this Complaint came from living in a foreign land, in my case, Turkey. Living abroad is the best way to see one’s native country as a foreign land. It’s called objectivity. I am a graduate of West Point, the United States Military Academy. It has an honor code—cadets will not lie, cheat or steal. And they are bound by honor to report themselves if they do. They face expulsion for an infraction. That moral behavior is intended to last long after graduation. A deceitful military officer is a danger to all.

In 2006, there was great concern that the illegality of Bush’s attack on Iraq could lead to war crimes charges being made against US military personnel. I and two other classmates began an organization called West Point Graduates Against the War ). We were appalled by the deceitful, murderous behavior of the government of the United States. The commander-in-chief of the military, George W. Bush, was a liar. And we had hundreds of fellow graduates who agreed and joined the organization. And so we come to today to the horrors in Syria and the awful truth about America and its criminal accomplices.

The political developments can be described by two words—greed and immorality. For oil, for power, for new markets, for post-bombing reconstruction contracts, anything and everything to do with money. America and its criminal accomplices live by the rule of the jungle, demonizing all who stand in their way, the latest target being Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria. Syria is a secular, culturally diverse, religion-tolerant country, something America should surely encourage. It is bewildering to me that America is so intent on destroying all the secular nations in this region, including its long-lasting, and apparently successful project in Turkey. Although they finally seem to have awakened from their thirty-four year sleep since the 1980 military coup.

— If we consider that the USA, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are not State Party signatories to the Rome Statute, do you still have hopes that your complaint will be examined carefully and result in a fair verdict?

Absolutely. The USA, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court because their crime of aggression and war crimes against sovereign Syria were planned, prepared and initiated on, in and over those nations who are State party signatories. And Jordan, Belgium, Croatia, Bulgaria, France, Great Britain and Romania ARE signatories. No guns, no war, and most of the guns came from Turkey via Libya and an array of European “donors.” Such generosity… to displace three million Syrians, kill hundreds of thousands and bathe the sovereign nation in blood.

Think of it this way—the weapons and ammunition for the mercenaries didn’t rain from the heavens. When Ilyushin 76 Jordanian transports flying under Jordanian military call signs leave Pleso Airport in Croatia and land in Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, when Qatari air force C-17s make 36 roundtrips between Amman and Zagreb, Croatia, when Qatari and Saudi Arabian C-130s make 30 roundtrips between Zagreb and Ankara…Are they hauling baklava and simit? No, they are hauling the stuff of war crimes and aggression. The evidence is overwhelming. And the law is clear.

Jordan has even given its territory to terrorist training camps run by the intelligence agencies of the United States, France, Great Britain and itself. This is in clear violation of Article 8(e), Crime of Aggression. What national leader gave the order to do this? Hopefully, we shall find out in court.

None of these countries live by the rule of international law, even those who signed the Rome Statute pledging their word to abide by its provisions. Jordan is a particularly hypocritical example. And those who did not sign? They think they are exempt. But they are not. The reason for including Jordan and the others is because they DID sign the Rome Statute. And Article 12(2)(a) and (b) are quite clear. And for this reason the four non-signatory nations should fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Their crimes are ICC statutory crimes. Therefore under Rome Statute Article 12(2)(a) the Court has jurisdiction to prosecute them because their crimes were committed on, in and over ICC member states. Jordan and its fellow signers of the Rome Statute provide the jurisdictional legal leverage to get to the principal criminals, what I call the Criminal Cabal for Perpetual War, that is the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan.

One of the beautiful things about the law is its respect for and emphasis on language. One word emphasized by the International Criminal Court is “impunity,” that is, “to be free of punishment.

According to the Court, those perpetrators that commit grave crimes that threaten the peace and security of the world must not go unpunished. The preamble to the Rome Statute says it clearly, that the Court is “determined to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus contribute to the prevention of such crimes.”

So I say, let justice begin with these eleven nations and its so-called leaders and their lamentably vicious advisors. The names are in my Complaint. Interested readers can see the entire document on my website, Brightening Glance.

Finally, I have utmost confidence in the International Criminal Court. It is the last, best hope for peace and, importantly, to guarantee a lasting respect for international law and its enforcement. Without that, we have nothing.

— What do you think are the major strategic and financial goals of the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, the nations most responsible for the crimes committed in your criminal complaint, on the path of developing such a covert war against Syria?

There is a nonsensical idea called Full Spectrum Dominance that the US military came up with a few years ago combined with the neo-con hallucination called the Project for the New American Century. It’s a two-headed monster that says America knows best and the world will understand, sooner or later, or else. And so this war-driven, financial machine has been grinding away at humanity, aided and abetted by the subversive help of its collaborating allies. The primary, motivating force for these disastrous policies is the sublimely arrogant and illogical idea that somehow, some way, America is “exceptional.” Obama loves to profess how much he believes in American “exceptionalism.” This is an historical extension of “winning” World War II and dropping the atomic bomb on two defenseless Japanese cities to get Russia’s attention. Thus the Cold War began. And as the world knows, Ronald Reagan won the Cold War and America has lived happily since. Setting this nonsense aside, there is a tremendous similarity between the powerful American forces of that era and those of today. One of Eisenhower’s last acts as president was to warn of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex. He was solidly ignored, except by one man, the man who succeeded him as president. Today, Eisenhower’s warning could be called the Military-Globalization Complex. These seem to be the deep-state monsters that must be obeyed at all cost. Democratic ideals are irrelevant.

When John F. Kennedy delivered an address entitled A Strategy of Peace in 1963, he also delivered his death sentence. “Mankind must put an end to war,” he said, “or war will put an end to mankind.” Five months later, another criminal cabal put an end to him. And to the prospects of peace, perhaps forever. And every president since then has paid attention to that criminal fact of Kennedy’s murder in full daylight in a street in Dallas, in particular, Barack Hussein Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

But you asked about the major strategic financial and strategic goals of the five Cabal members. Without getting stuck in a lot more words, here’s a one-word answer—MORE!

–You have openly stated in your complaint that the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Levand organization (ISIS), infamous with mass murders and brutal catastrophes in Iraq-Syria line, had been created by the United States and and funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. So, what is the aim of the operations conducted again by the same anti-Syria coalition under the guise of stopping the ISIS atrocity?

Stopping the ISIS atrocity is a feeble attempt to stop the monster the Cabal created. And it cannot put the genie back in the bottle. We are witnessing the disaster that is US foreign policy and Turkish incompetence. And unless we face these absolute facts, nothing will improve. ISIS could have been destroyed two months ago as they charged along the roads from Syria into Iraq. I remembered the so-called Highway of Death in Iraq where the retreating, helpless Iraq army was destroyed by a relentless air attack. George Bush, the father, was so shocked by the atrocity that he called off the attack and declared victory. That same condition prevailed this summer but no one attacked. President Maleki requested air support to no avail. A great silence prevailed. Obama and his fellow felons were thinking. And so we arrive at today. A paralyzed Turkey. A confused America. And lots of people are dying. It is one of the blackest, sickest jokes in history. And the politicians that created this massive war crime, this massive crime against humanity must pay the price. Arrest. Trial. And if convicted, jail, and perhaps worse. And the International Criminal Court has the jurisdiction and the power to do this.

We face the following picture when we examine your criminal complaint in detail: The United States of America, of which you are also a citizen, is establishing terrorist organizations to achieve its strategic objectives. It is also establishing the logistics network of the said terrorist organizations and managing the transfer of militants, weapons and ammunition. Isn’t this fact sufficiently known by the citizens of the United States? Why can’t the people of the United States develop an effective anti-war opposition just as they have organized in the period of the invasion of Vietnam?

America is an expert in establishing terrorist organizations. It was their most important tool for their military coup business. SAVAK, the secret police in Iran. The Contras in Nicaragua, Augusto Pinochet, himself, in Chile. Kenan Evren, himself, in Turkey. And don’t forget the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. That’s where the South American CIA-inspired bombers perfected their assassination skills. The so-called school was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. I think I hear George Orwell laughing uproariously.

America always has willing accomplices. My Complaint names a few. There are many more. Power seeks out power. So when Obama speaks of America’s “partners” he really means accomplices.

Regarding the anti-war movement in America, I ask, “What war?” No draft of American youth into military, no war. Why do you think America went to the moon? To see if it was really made of green cheese? Such was a childhood myth. Why did America send satellites into outer space? To see if there were really little green men on Mars? Next question. Aren’t cell phones and I-phones wonderful? Sure they are. They tell us almost everything…except one thing…who is targeting us…for that’s what they are, a targeting system. All of these space-age heroic endeavors were but to develop a total targeting system. It’s part of Full Spectrum Dominance, it being the dominance of outer space. It being the domain of so-called “smart bombs.” “Smart” weapons systems eliminated the need for “boots on the ground.” “No boots needed” means American young people have no fear of being called to military service to defend the deceitful purposes of today’s America. So the deceit continues. So the hundreds of millions of parents are safe from having their children killed or maimed. Oh, there are some youngsters who volunteer for the glory of defending America from Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. And these few are enough to maintain the illusion of boots being available to be on the ground. As far as Americans are concerned, someone else is fighting these wars. For them, America is exceptionally “exceptional.” And its all because their cell phones can tell them where they are. And its technology can kill anyone that threatens to kill them or their children.

— When I read your columns in different media organs in the specific dates I realized that you have faced disappointment with the foreign policy adopted by Barack Obama after being elected as the President of the USA. What had you been expecting and what did you face?

I, and many, many others like me, viewed Obama as the great hope. A highly intelligent, educated lawyer, he spoke sense, and spoke it well. On election day I wept in joy. And I never wept for a politician before. Now I weep, almost every day, for what might have been, for what didn’t happen, and for my native country in general.

Everything he could have done, he did not do. In fact, he became a greater killer than Bush. And now he even sounds stupider than Bush. I am sad, very sad, for this. He spoke so glowingly of change. And change things did. Now the world is in a catastrophic state. And what is to come? No leader speaks sense. Corruption is general all over. Who will save the children of this world? The likes of religious fakes? The likes of hack, sold-out politicians? The likes of boot-licking journalists on the CIA payroll? The likes of singers, and writer and actors that conspire with pseudo-fascist governments to sing and act the safe, party-line? Who will save the children? Smart Bombs?

This is what we face. This is why I filed my Criminal Complaint with the International Criminal Court.

The hero of the epic called LIFE will be the people blessed with the energy and brains of youth. These are the vast majority of people in the world, all of whom have put up with the nonsense of so-called democratic living for decades. They see clearly the disaster that incompetent leadership has brought. The world is on the edge. Brutality is everywhere, from the mouths of politicians to the knives in the bloody hands of ISIS.

So who will save us? We will. There is no other way.

I remember a story on this subject:
A man once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The man replied, ‘In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.”

So let’s do something this afternoon.

— The charges attributed to Turkey in the criminal complaint are the providing of chemical and war weapons as well as logistics, intelligence and financial support to several terrorist organizations fighting against the Assad administration in Syria. Can you please tell us about the role of Turkey in the broader plan?

Are you asking me whether a country like Turkey, basically a state with a thoroughly politicized and dysfunctional legal system could be expected to abide by international law? Because that is the problem. With such a judiciary system, that allows politics to determine the law, how can one expect Turkey to do anything but participate with America in the rape of Syria as it participated in the earlier rape of Libya? And that’s why the principals should be brought to trial. Things will only worsen if they are not.

As far as Turkey’s role in the broader plan…it was America’s naughty errand boy, doing the dirty work and making some money on the side from black market oil and the like. I think that the duplicity and corruption is, at last, obvious to the world. Turkey’s foreign policy is a disaster and fully responsible for the catastrophe in Syria. That’s the reason for the Syrian catastrophe, that and American stupidity. Turkey did not realize that the Syrian army was well-equipped, well-trained and had high morale. How irresponsible of the prime minister and the general staff! Indeed, it was the height of reckless ignorance. Now it’s zero friends and nothing but enemies for Turkey. And no way out. Due to its cheap thinking and small-minded bargaining, to say nothing about the destruction of the Turkish army, navy and air force, Turkey cannot even defend the borders that its politicians have erased. So a role in a broader plan? What plan? No role, in anything. How Turkey will recover from this domestic and international fiasco is beyond my understanding.

Finally, do you have any message for the pro-peace readers Aydinlik?

Being pro-peace is not enough. But that does not mean making war. It does mean realizing that we have a lot more power than we think we do. We have vastly more collective brain power than the ignoramuses who have brought this world to its current sad condition.

For openers, read my Criminal Complaint to the International Criminal Court at:

http://www.brighteningglance.org/criminal-complaint-international-criminal-court-6-october-2014.html

If you support it, tell the Chief Prosecutor at:

otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int

And finally a few closing words from the last pro-peace American president, John F. Kennedy:
“Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”

I believe that. But first we have to get the criminal politicians out of our way.

####

October 19, 2014
LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF

Satan’s Army, Gustav Doré

So numberless were those bad angels

Hovering on wing under the cope of hell

John Milton, Paradise Lost

LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF

22 August 2014

“I suppose the pain of parting will be red and loud.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

Yesterday President Obama announced that “the entire world is appalled” by the beheading of an American photojournalist. Marie Harf, a spokesperson for the US State Department stressed that nothing whatsoever will change and that the bombings will continue. “We don’t make concessions to terrorists,” she said.

Exceptional America! Please excuse me, dear reader. I’ll be back in a few minutes——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————Okay, I’m back. Thank you for your patience. I feel much worse.

“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” said the president of the United States a few months ago at West Point. And for the past five minutes I have been laughing my head off at the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s “exceptional America.”

And Ms. Harf’s words really cracked me up. Let me describe my out-of-head experience:

I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen. Early morning, still dark. Now, all the mornings and days are dark. I think about how Obama and Clinton and Kerry and Erdoğan and Davutoğlu cooked up this outrageous crime against humanity to destroy Libya and Syria. They would use Turkey as a staging area for their proxy army, their Satanic army of well-paid mercenaries. What geniuses! Exceptional America did the same thing decades ago in Afghanistan funding Bin Laden’s mujahideen that later became al-Qaeda. Wow! How smart these dopes are! Very humorous. And they all wear expensive suits and ride in black, shiny, sad limousines. And again they drive over the terror cliff, this time with the arrogant assistance of the treacherous Turkish government. They say you can’t tell the same joke twice. But not America, not “exceptional” America. Do you remember the song lyric? But where are the clowns?/Quick, send in the clowns/ Don’t bother, they’re here. If you remember, you get the idea.

And these clowns had their military and intelligence and diplomatic agents assemble in Adana, Turkey about three years ago. Everything was secret, except everyone with half a brain knew what was going on, except the American press and the lame, obedient Turkish media. Oh, Petraeus, the boy wonder, was involved, too. So was Fidan, the chief Turk spook. It’s funny how time flies when you are having fun, isn’t it? Ha! Ha! Ha! They had donors come too. Rich, treacherous folks like the obese Saudis and the tennis-tournament-sponsoring-but-non-tennis playing Qataris. They have money, oil money, and lots of it, and not much else, except duplicity.

They also met in Istanbul. At fancy hotels. What better conditions to assemble Satan’s army? But you knew this, didn’t you? No? You mean the New York Times didn’t cover the story? Aydınlık newspaper broke the story in Turkey. Too bad the American correspondents missed it. Not that it really mattered. But how sad. How hilariously tragic. I am now laughing out loud at the empty remarks of Ms. Harf. Marie Harf, spokesperson! Exceptional America certainly does not make concessions to terrorists. How silly of me to think so. Instead of mere concessions, it sponsors, feeds, arms, outfits and pays outrageous salaries to them. Ha, ha, ha, I keep laughing, catching the ironic humor in Harf’s weasel words.

Now I am positively giddy thinking about Turkey. What a funny country! How can two Turkish war criminals become America’s favorite foreign friends. So well did they destroy their own country that America suggested that they both be promoted. And they were! Wow, how funny is that? One, the destroyer of Gezi Park youth, is president, the other, the “zero-problems-with-neighbors” genius, will be prime minister. This genius who wears a perpetual smirk beneath his scruffy moustache wrote a book on foreign policy called Strategic Depth. The destruction that is Turkish foreign policy resides in a deep, deep strategic cesspool. For that, and other miscues, mishaps and misdeeds, he will lead the nation. The ever consistent Erdoğan’s first act as president-elect was to knowingly violate the Turkish constitution. Since the position of the Turkish president is supposed to be above politics—HA! HA! HA!—Erdoğan must immediately resign as prime minister and as head of his political party. He refuses to do this. Why? Because he would lose his immunity from prosecution for a few days. And in case you haven’t heard, Erdoğan has a problem in this regard. But surely the political opposition, the “bread boys,” are pressuring him. Well, ha! ha! ha! not exactly.

Even funnier is how just about everyone in Turkey who can help America is paid off to make it happen. How else to explain this amazing comedy of errors and stupidities. I mean, bribes, big bribes. Big, CIA level unaccountable bribes. How else can one explain a media that only prints pro-government propaganda? Why else would a media fire any and all columnists who dissent? How else can one explain a political opposition that helps their opposition, the opposition that they are supposed to oppose? What a weird sentence that was…but not as weird as the political opposition leaders Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Devlet Bahçeli. These two should have a comedy act on one of the brainless Turkish TV channels. Slapstick would be appropriate—they can beat each other with loaves of bread reminding the electorate of their pathetically inept choice of a presidential candidate.

Just thinking of these two walking laugh-riots makes what’s left of my brain spin. In fact my head is now spinning faster and faster and faster and—whoops!— there it goes, bouncing along the floor—tak! tak! tak!— into the corner by the refrigerator. My left eye sees the wall, the other, the dark space between the floor and the front of the refrigerator. The rest of myself remains on the chair. How humorous this is. I laugh and blow dust. I sneeze and blink my eyes so rapidly that my head rolls back an inch and I can see myself out of the corner of my right eye. There I sit, headless, my arms crossed, stupidly waiting. My head by the refrigerator thinks how it must be for the hundreds that have been beheaded by the evil breed of the American scheme, the devilish Free Libya Army, changing to the diabolical Free Syrian Army, changing now to the fiends of ISID.

I am now hysterical. Like me, even babies, mostly Christian babies, have also been beheaded. But I did it willingly through laughter. They had it done by America and Turkey, by the so-called “leaders” and by their ignoramus makers of foreign policy. How humorous was Ignoramus Clinton to revel in the barbarous disembowelment and anal rape of MuammarKhadafy? “We came, we saw, he died…Ha! Ha! Ha!” chuckled the ignoramus American Secretary of State. Is Kerry, and his litany of lies about Syria, any less amusing? Any less of an ignoramus clown? Ha! Ha! Ha! No. He is just another monstrously “exceptional” American. And speaking of monsters…

How does the president of the United States explain to the American taxpayers that their dollars are financing the beheading of Christian babies…and so much more? The president announced that “the entire world” is appalled by the beheading of an American journalist. But is he, Obama, appalled? If he is, how does he explain that he has assembled Satan’s Army? And why does it take a bestial slaughtering of an innocent journalist to get Obama’s attention to the horror that his policies have created? The world knows this. There are no more cover stories. He has made a devil’s bargain with the “strategic depth” incompetent ignoramuses in Turkey. This is the horrible truth. It is a horrible mistake. Now what?

As for my own beheading through hysterical laughter? My head continues to gather dust by the refrigerator. I can still see my other part on the sitting on the chair like two sacks of onions. Can I stop laughing long enough at this darkest of all tragicomedies to pull myself together? Is it really worth the effort?

James (Cem) Ryan

Istanbul

22 August 2014

August 22, 2014