Yemen - Saudis Throw The Towel - Saleh is Baaack - Russia Wins by Moon of Al

Yemen - Saudis Throw The Towel - Saleh is Baaack - Russia Wins

The war on Yemen has finally taken a turn towards an end. Former President Saleh is back in his leading position. They Saudis accepted their defeat. The Houthis will be thrown out of the capital Sanaa and return to their northern areas. Yemen is devastated and will need to rebuild. Everyone who participated in this war has lost. The only winner is Russia.

A recap:

During the "Arab spring" (U.S.) induced Yemeni revolution President Saleh was kicked out after ruling the country for 34 years. In 2012 the former Vice-President Hadi was "elected" as the new president on a one choice ballot. With U.S. support the system prevailed.

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As I noted at that time:

The U.S. missed the chance to use the movement against Saleh for some real transition in Yemen. This will come back to bite.

Hadi was a Saudi puppet unable to rule the country. He tried to form a unity government under the National Dialogue Conference sponsored by the Gulf Cooperation Council. But two major constituencies were left out of the effort: the northern Yemeni Houthis of Zaidi belief, who for years had fought against Saudi-Wahhabi indoctrination in Yemen, and the followers of the ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Houthis and Saleh had fought each other for over a decade. Now they had a common enemy and united their efforts.

In 2015 the Houthi and Yemeni army troops loyal to Saleh took over the capital Sanaa. Hadi resigned (twice), fled to Aden in the south and later onto Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were afraid to lose influence over their dirt poor but self-confident neighbor. They falsely alleged that the Houthis were supported by their perceived arch-enemy Iran. They declared war on the country and tried to invade it. The U.S. and the UK supported and still support the Saudi war with intelligence, refueling flights for Saudi bombers and massive weapon supplies.

The Saudis sent their troops to invade the country, their neighboring United Arab Emirates sent its forces and additional mercenaries were hired from Sudan, south America and where ever they could be found. All to no avail. While the Saudis dropped more than 100 bombs per day onto Yemen their forces were defeated every time they tried to enter the mountainous heartland. The Houthi counterattacked within Saudi Arabia. They had no shoes but huge balls. Hundreds of Saudi border posts and military checkpoints were destroyed by them.

The Saudis tried to starve the Houthis of weapons, food and other supplies. They blockaded the country and bombed weapon depots, factories and all infrastructure. They completely destroyed Houthi cities in the north and tried to assassinate the leaders of the rebellion. Tens of thousands of Yemenis died in the often indiscriminate attacks. But the Houthi held out. For decades Yemen had been filled up with weapons. During his decades long rule former president Saleh had stashed ten-thousands of tons of ammunition and equipment. Additional supplies were captured or bought from the Saudi mercenaries.

The former Yemeni army units loyal to Saleh, as well as Saleh himself, stayed in the background. Their most visible contribution to the war was the launch of short range ballistic missiles (SRBM) against Saudi cities and military positions. These weapons had been bought earlier and were modified to have extended reach (see the excursion below).

The Saudi were stuck in a stalemate that cost them over $800 million per month. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were flourishing in the south which the Saudis and their allies nominally controlled. Saudi proxies were infighting with troops from the UAE. Missiles were falling down on Saudi cities. While only few missiles hit their targets each of them demonstrated the impotence of the Saudi rulers.

The Saudis finally send out peace feelers to former president Saleh. The Russians, who had kept their embassy in Sanaa open throughout the war, acted as the middleman. In mid October the first results of the diplomatic efforts became visible:

A Russian medical team flew into Sanaa on Oct. 11 with the approval of the Saudis, who control Yemeni airspace. The Russian surgeons then performed a life-saving procedure on the 75-year-old Saleh. Some reports say the surgery took place at the Russian Embassy in the capital. Saleh's exact health issue is unclear, but it apparently is a result of the severe burns and other injuries he suffered during an assassination attempt in 2011.
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Most likely the Saudis are hoping to break the rebel alliance between Saleh and the Houthis, which has been fraying this year.
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Both King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have their prestige heavily invested in this war. They rushed into it precipitously 2½ years ago.
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Salman was in Moscow earlier this month for an unprecedented state visit to Russia. ... It is reasonable to assume that the king and Putin discussed the Yemeni imbroglio. Russia has been openly critical of the UN's approach to the conflict, which Moscow rightly says is too friendly to the Saudi argument and insufficiently even-handed.

While Saleh was sick, the Houthis became uppity. They arrested and killed Saleh followers in Sanaa, occupied bases of his troops and raided homes of his officers. They may have gotten wind of the ongoing negotiations between Saleh and the Saudis. Over the last months their behavior towards their compatriots in Sanaa became unendurable.

Meanwhile negotiations between Saleh and the Saudis were ongoing in the backrooms and on the battle field. On November 4 the Yemeni troops launched a missile against the airport of the Saudi capital Riyadh. U.S. provided missile defense systems destroyed the missile before it hit, but the public damage was done. A serious hit on the airport would likely close it for civilian traffic. The economic and political consequences for the Saudi tyrants would be huge.

The Saudis responded with a total blockade of Yemen. Neither food nor medicine was allowed to pass. This led to a famine, hundreds of death per day and finally to a public outcry from the otherwise slavish UN. Not even the hundreds of millions the Saudis spend to manipulate the global media could prevent the backlash.

Another missile was fired on Thursday to increase the pressure. It targeting the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait. The Saudis finally folded. They agreed to Saleh's conditions.

We do not yet know what these conditions are but Saleh publicly announced that a deal had been made and immediately went to work. His first target were the no-longer-allied Houthi:

ADEN (Reuters) - Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he was ready for a "new page" in relations with the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen if it stopped attacks on his country.The call came as his supporters battled Houthi fighters for a fourth day in the capital Sanaa while both sides traded blame for a widening rift between allies that could affect the course of the civil war.
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"I call upon the brothers in neighboring states and the alliance to stop their aggression, lift the siege, open the airports and allow food aid and the saving of the wounded and we will turn a new page by virtue of our neighborliness," Saleh said in a televised speech.

The Saudis likewise publicly announced their agreement:

The Arab coalition has made a statement on Saturday amidst the ongoing fierce clashes in Sanaa.
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The coalition also said that it recognizes the noble members of the the Yemeni General People’s Congress (GPC), the GPC’s leadership and the Yemeni people who were forced to remain under Houthi-Iranian control. Also, the coalition recognizes that these noble individuals have endured numerous murder threats, torture, bombings and seizure of public and private property.

The Yemeni General People’s Congress (GPC) is Saleh's party. He is still the GPC chairperson. Saleh is now again the Saudi accepted ruler of Yemen. The "legitimate" president Hadi will be buried in Riyadh.

Saleh called on all his followers to oust the Houthi from their positions. His nephew and potential successor Colonel Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh will lead a new military council and run that side of the business. Houthi posters in Sanaa have been teared down. There is some fierce fighting ongoing in the city. Sanaa is Saleh territory. His troops are prepared and he is very likely to win the fight.

It is now left to Saleh and his family and followers to clean up the utter mess the U.S. induced "revolution" and the Saudi war on Yemen have caused. The Saudis will have to pay billions in reparations. Saleh's family will plunder a huge share of these. Despite the money Saleh is, like always, no ones puppet but the snake that bites everyone who stands in his way. That is how and why he could rule for so long.

The Houthis, who bravely fought against the Saudis, became too sure of themselves and too obnoxious towards their own people to be able to rule. They will be ousted from Sanaa and pushed back into their devastated northern homelands.

Everyone in Yemen lost in this war. Many, many have died for no good reason. It will take decades to rebuild all that was destroyed. The Saudis and the U.S. behind them have lost face and standing throughout the Arab world. They tried to fuck Yemen but Yemen fucked them.

The only real winners of the war are the Russians. They again demonstrated that they are able to create peace where the U.S. only creates war and chaos.

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Excursion:

The Saudis have alleged all along that the Houthi are an Iranian proxy force. That is not true. The Houthis are not Shia and not follower of Iranian state doctrines. They don't take orders. The military support they receive from Iran is minimal. The Saudis especially allege that the missiles fired under the Houthi label by the former Yemen troops under Saleh's command are of Iranian origin. But that is unlikely. Yemen has been under Saudi blockade for more than two years and ballistic  missiles can not be smuggled under a coat. Yesterday Reuters released a short piece in supports of the Saudi allegations. But a closer reading shows that these are false.

In mid November a confidential report by a UN panel found no evidence that the missiles launched against the Saudis are of QIAM-1 type from Iran:

“The supporting evidence provided in these [Saudi] briefings is far below that required to attribute this attack to a Qiam-1 SRBM,” wrote the panel. “The Saudi-Arabia led coalition has not yet though attributed the attempted attack against KKIA” — King Khalid International Airport, in the Saudi capital Riyadh — “to any particular type of SRBM.”“The Panel has seen no evidence to support claims of SRBM having been transferred to the Houthi-Saleh alliance from external sources in violation of paragraph 14 of resolution 2216,” the brief went on.

Like the specialists of IHS Janes (see below) the UN panel assessed that the missiles were modifications of a type that Yemen had earlier bought from North Korea:

The Yemeni military, the panel added, retained existing stockpiles of SCUD-B and Hwasong-6 missiles that were not completely destroyed by earlier Saudi airstrikes. The panel cite a Houthi spokesperson who said missiles that had been damaged were subsequently repaired and modified. “The panel has not discounted though that Yemen based foreign missile specialists may be providing advice,” the brief cautioned. The panel raised the possibility that missiles may have been altered to extend their range to reach targets farther into Saudi Arabia.

Now Reuters is trying to revive the Saudi claim by reporting on a new assessment with a very deceiving headline. Exclusive: Yemen rebel missiles fired at Saudi Arabia appear Iranian - U.N.:

Remnants of four ballistic missiles fired into Saudi Arabia by Yemen’s Houthi rebels this year appear to have been designed and manufactured by Riyadh’s regional rival Iran, a confidential report by United Nations sanctions monitors said, bolstering a push by the United States to punish the Tehran government.

The Reuters claim in its opening paragraph is not what the panel really said. Deeper into the report:

The independent panel of U.N. monitors, in a Nov. 24 report to the Security Council seen by Reuters on Thursday, said it “as yet has no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier” of the missiles
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“Design characteristics and dimensions of the components inspected by the panel are consistent with those reported for the Iranian designed and manufactured Qiam-1 missile,” the monitors wrote.

I agree that the "design characteristics" and "dimensions of components" are consistent with the QIAM-1. The explanation for that is trivial. The Iranian QIAM-1 is:

a licensed copy of the North Korean Hwasong-6.

The Hwasong-6:

is a North Korean tactical ballistic missile. It is derived from the Hwasong-5, itself a derivative of the Soviet R-17 Elbrus. It carries the NATO reporting name Scud.

According to an IHS Janes report (pdf) the missiles the Saleh government of Yemen had bought from North Korea were of the Hwasong-5 and probably Hwasong-6 type:

Prior to the outbreak of the current conflict, Yemen was known to have acquired R-17 Elbrus (SS -1C 'Scud B') ... ballistic missile systems from the Soviet Union
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Spanish naval vessels intercepted a ship carrying 15 Scud-type ballistic missiles to Yemen in December [2002]. That ship was later allowed to complete the delivery. The missiles found on board were 'Scud Bs' (a reference to North Korea's Hwasong-5 copy of the R-17), according to a June 2003 US diplomatic cable. ,,, [I]t is possible that it was one of several shipments that also included longer-range variants such as the Hwasong-6, which is also known as the 'Scud-C', and has a range of 500-550 km.

The Yemen army has over 30 years of experience with Scud-type missiles and knows how to modify these. They revealed "new Yemeni made" Burkan missiles before they fired on Riyadh. Janes notes:

The stated dimensions of the Burkan-1 suggest that it is a standard Scud that has been lengthened with additional sections welded into its fuselage and fuel tanks so that it can carry the additional propellant needed to extend its range. Iraq carried out similar modifications to produce Al Hussein missiles capable of reaching Tehran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
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The Burkan-2 appears to use a new type of warhead section that is locally fabricated. Both Iran and North Korea have displayed Scud derivatives with shuttlecock-shaped warheads, but none of these match the Yemeni version. The range of the Burkan missiles also appears to have been extended by a reduction in the weight of their warheads.

The Yemenis use locally modified Haewsong-5 and 6 missiles bought from North Korea. Iran builds a licensed copy of the Haewsong-6 under the name QIAM-1. These QIAM missiles will naturally have similar "design characteristics" and "dimensions of components" as the North Korean missiles the Yemenis use.

Reuters is pointing its readers into the false direction when it claims that the Yemeni missiles "appear Iranian". In reality both, the Yemeni Burkan as well as the Iranian QIAM, are variants of the same North Korean Haewsong-5 and 6 which are themselves copies of the Soviet R-17/Scud-B/Scud-C types. All of these were build from the same specification sheet and engineering drawings. That their dimensions and parts look alike, as the UN panel says, follows from that but proves absolutely nothing.

CIA intelligence on Islam: heavily-influenced by Saudis and Wahhabis by Wayne Madsen

CIA intelligence on Islam: heavily-influenced by Saudis and Wahhabis

A Central Intelligence Agency's "comprehensive" report on political Islam, titled "Islam and Politics: A Compendium," a formerly SECRET document issued in April 1984 during the Reagan administration, gets more wrong than right about the nature of radical Islam. At the time the report was completed, the CIA was using radical Islamist mujaheddin groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

One laughable statement in light of the rise of a number of Al Qaeda and subsequent affiliates and subordinates after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 is the following:

"Although fundamentalist groups can cause national crises overnight with terrorist acts, they usually lose more than they gain as the government undertakes repressive measures against them."

That certainly was not the case with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria, ISIL in Iraq, and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya.

The CIA report then makes a statement that more resembles propaganda than in-depth analysis:

"Ruthless suppression has had its successes, most notable in the Communist states. Other secular states, such as Syria, Iraq, and Indonesia, have also found that repression keeps opposition manageable." The presence of a strong Islamist group in northern Sumatra is a direct outgrowth of a CIA-funded Sumatran secession movement directed against President Sukarno in the 1950s. The fact remains that it was the CIA that began backing fundamentalist Islamists in Iraq, Syria, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Bosnia, and other "secular" states, including more recently, Libya and Egypt. In 1984, the CIA ironically suggested that Islamist radicals could make gains from financial assistance provided by Muammar Qaddafi's Libya and the anti-Sunni Wahhabi government of Iran. In fact, it was neither Qaddafi nor Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini who supplied the radical Sunni groups with the bulk of their aid, but the CIA and its Saudi, Gulf Arab, and Pakistani allies.

The CIA also claimed "we know of no charismatic leader who transcends national lines." Of course, the CIA was then grooming Osama bin Laden as one such "transcendental" leader in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's rise to the leadership of Wahhabi Islam's most radical force, Al Qaeda, would also enable the rise of other transnational Islamist radical leaders, including Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's Egyptian number two; Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Afghan war veteran who leads Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb or AQIM; and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the ISIL or the "Islamic State."

The CIA report cautions against an "overreaction" by the U.S. of an Islamic resurgence. The report claims, "In most cases, governments probably will continue to co-opt the clerics and integrate Islamic resurgence in a fashion that will not harm U.S. interests." That prediction did not come to pass in Afghanistan, Syria, briefly in Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt, and Libya.

The report does include an interesting reference to an active Muslim Brotherhood cell operating since 1980 in the Galilee region of Israel. Reports of Israeli connections to the battlefield successes of ISIL in Syria and Iraq may point to Israeli having co-opted the Muslim Brotherhood  and other Qatari- and Turkish-backed jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria. Although there have been reports of atrocities committed wholesale by ISIL of Christian, Kurdish, Yazidi, Turkoman, and Shi'a communities and shrines in northern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, there have been no credible reports of ISIL's defiling of Jewish shrines and cemeteries in regions conquered by ISIL.

The CIA's report is a typical agency product that lacks the key ingredient of "intelligence" in its formulation of an intelligence report. And it is noteworthy that at the time the political Islam report was created, current CIA director John O. Brennan was a junior ranking CIA officer responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence on the Middle East.

Will the name "Brennan" eventually become a synonym for "incompetent" in the same manner that "quisling" now means traitor and "lynch," named for colonial Virginia judge Charles Lynch, means dubious executions by hanging, known as "lynchings?" Perhaps one day, a poor analysis job may be known as a "brennan."


Ronald Reagan's and Bill Casey's "Operation Cyclone" saw the CIA strengthen the most radical Islamist factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. CIA documents show U.S. bias toward Islamist extremists.

The CIA took a hostile attitude toward the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen), which ultimately merged with North Yemen in 1990. The CIA was vexed that "the South Yemen radical regime has made only slight concessions to Islam and will continue to restrict fundamentalist activity." The CIA report had similar criticisms of secular, anti-Islamist governments in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria.

As for the USSR, the CIA report gloats over early Islamist extremism in the central Asian Soviet Socialist Republics. The CIA appears to relish the following events:

• March 1980: Riots in Alma Ata, capital of Kazakh SSR, when Muslims refused to let dead Muslims soldiers be buried in military cemeteries.
• April 1980: Assassination of Sultan Ibrahimov of Kirghiz SSR by "Muslim nationalists."
• Nov. 1982: Three days of violence in Muslim-dominated North Severo-Osetinkaya in the Caucasus, included ransacking of Communist Party headquarters.
• Nov. 1982:  Authorities broke up a large-scale  Muslim publishing operation in Uzbekistan.

These events coincided with stepped-up CIA support for Afghan mujaheddin guerrillas. At the same time, Yugoslavia began experiencing subterfuge within its own Muslim population in Bosnia, all linked to foreign interests.

It would not be surprising if the CIA's fingerprints were on all these radical Muslim events in the Communist bloc. It would also be interesting to ascertain what CIA director Brennan [below right with his Saudi friend, Interior Minister Prince Mohammad bin Naif bin Abdulaziz] may know about Saudi "off-the-books" CIA funding for such operations by Langley's operatives that targeted the USSR and Yugoslavia.

Another formerly TOP SECRET CIA report, dated March 26, 1985, states that the CIA's mujaheddin resistance in Afghanistan was tightly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, including its operations in "Europe and the United States," all of which were supported by "the governments of the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE."

Chief beneficiaries of the Muslim Brotherhood's assistance in Afghanistan were the Gulbuddin Hekmatayar and Younis Khalis factions of Hizb Islami, the Jamiat  i Islam, and the Harakat-i-Inqilab, based in Peshawar, Pakistan.

CIA and Arab support for the Afghan mujaheddin was funneled through Pakistan's Jamiat i Islam fundamentalist group, whose leader, Mian Tufail, was identified in the March 1985 CIA report as a relative of Pakistani President Muhammad Zia Ul-Haq.

CIA's history of dividing the Arab World by Wayne Madsen

CIA's history of dividing the Arab World

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which also calls itself the "Islamist State" and is led by former Abu Ghraib prison detainee Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, released from U.S. detention in 2004, would not be existence had the CIA abandoned its policy of creating Islamic extremist groups to sow dissension in the Middle East. After training and arming Sunni Islamist guerrillas in Turkey, Jordan, and post-Muammar Qaddafi Libya to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, CIA- and Saudi-nurtured jihadist insurgents have taken over large portions of eastern Syria, northern Iraq -- including Kurdish regions -- and are now moving into Lebanon. Targets of the ISIL forces are Kurds, Yazidis, Turkomans, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, and Shi'a Muslims. These minority religious groups are witnessing their members being slaughtered and their religious shrines and places of worship destroyed by the ISIL radicals who hew to the Wahhabist line dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Islamist mercenaries from the West would not be flocking to join the ranks of ISIL if it were not for the support given them by Saudi national security adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan, whose fingerprints are all over the 9/11 false flag attack on the United States. Nor would Kurdish towns and dams on the Euphrates River be falling to ISIL forces if it were not for the tacit support given umbrella jihadist guerrilla groups in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey by CIA director John Brennan. Brennan is probably the only senior member of the Obama administration who has been to Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca, something that is only permitted for devout Muslims or "special guests" of the Saudi monarch. Brennan is a former CIA station chief in Riyadh and he is a confirmed Saudophile, a close friend and supporter of the misogynistic and arcane Saudi kingdom.

Brennan's operations on behalf of anti-Christian and anti-Shi'a Islamist radicals would not have been possible without the diplomatic cover provided to him by the female duo of national security adviser Susan Rice and UN ambassador Samantha Power, both students of the George Soros "responsibility to protect" (R2P) school of thought. R2P, in reality, is nothing more than a baked-over neoconservative interventionist foreign policy trimmed with "humanitarian" intentions.

A formerly SECRET CIA reference guide titled "Islam and Politics: A Compendium," dated April 1984, outlines the agency's divide and conquer policies in the Muslim and Arab worlds. Issued when Brennan was a junior-ranking CIA case officer fluent in Arabic, the CIA document, produced by the Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis branch, stressed the importance of the most radical of Muslims being natural allies of the CIA in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Middle East and South Asia. America's dalliance with extreme Islam reached its pinnacle in the mujaheddin war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The CIA's involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the latter spawning various Islamist groups now wreaking havoc in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Mali, Somalia, and other countries.



America's first Wahhabist CIA director: John Brennan

The CIA document's description of fundamentalist Islam could have been drafted by the pro-Wahhabist Brennan himself. The adoption of draconian Shariah law by Muslim countries is described by the CIAS as "constitutional reform." The CIA states that fundamentalists merely "want society restructured to protect the underprivileged and to institutionalize an equitable distribution of the fruits of labor." In reality, it was the socialist government in Afghanistan supported by the USSR that assisted the underprivileged and provided gender and ethnic equality to the Afghan people. On the other hand, it was the Saudi-supported mujaheddin that wanted Afghanistan transformed into a backward fundamentalist "emirate" practicing Shariah law. And that is exactly what Afghanistan became when the CIA-supported Taliban seized control of the country in the early 1990s. Now, the CIA is watching over the same "Talibanization" process, financed by Saudi Arabia, taking place in Iraq and Syria.

The CIA document also refers to Islamist fundamentalist leaders as the "just ruler" who serves his populace. Fundamentalists are also described as condemning "lax morals of contemporary society" and standing in opposition to the "breakdown of family unity, deviation from the dietary prohibitions of Islam, the immodest dress of females, and the mingling of the sexes in school and commerce."

No where in the CIA document is it mentioned that senior Taliban leaders, many schooled in England's best universities, never gave up their liking for Scotch whiskey, particularly Johnnie Walker Black. Nor does the CIA's "intelligence" primer discuss the drunken debauchery that younger male members of the Saudi royal family often engaged in while visiting London, Paris, Rome, and Marbella on the Spanish Costa del Sol. In fact, the CIA manual of political Islam appears to have been drafted by Saudi Arabia's senior imams.

Rather than pointing out that the CIA's royal friends in the Persian Gulf financially supported the radical Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East and abroad, the CIA document states: "We have little evidence that the innumerable groups of religious revivalists calling themselves the Muslim Brotherhood that exist not only in the Arab states but in such non-Arab countries as West Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Malaysia are linked in any way. It many only be the name that is the common feature."

In fact, the CIA, itself, was a major link between such radical groups as part of its recruitment and support efforts for the mujaheddin forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, operations that involved Brennan. The name of the CIA analyst who wrote the monkeyshine about the Muslim Brotherhood, which is described as a "secret society," is redacted, however, such a bogus analysis could have easily come from the pen of John Brennan.

In its discussion of Islamic Sectarianism, the CIA document only refers to two branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, even though there are a number of others. Moreover, the following is how the CIA viewed the Islamic split: "To the Sunni (which the CIA describes as "more flexible," as if the Saudi Wahhabis could be "flexible" to any degree) or secular leadership in countries such as Lebanon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Kuwait, Shias have been perceived as a politically destabilizing threat that must be dealt  with -- sometimes delicately, sometimes with political repression." Sufism is dismissed by the CIA as a "heretical" form of Islam, even though it had strong roots in West Africa, particularly in Mali and northern Nigeria, before the CIA-enabled radical Sunni groups like Ansar Dine and Boko Haram, armed with weapons captured from the CIA-instigated civil war in Libya, destroyed Sufi shrines in Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal and killed Sufi adherents.

The CIA also wrongly attributed militant Islam to Iran and Libya while ignoring the support of Saudi Arabia for the most militant forms of Sunni Islam. In fact, Libya in 1984 was a socialist and largely secular regime that opposed the Wahhabist Islam then being exported by the Saudis.

The document also focuses in on the major factor that attracted the CIA to radical Sunni Islam: "The Arab secular regimes, which have never recognized Islam as a basis for government -- the Ba'thist socialists of Syria and Iraq, the embattled regime of divided and war-torn Lebanon, and Marxist South Yemen -- all face in varying degrees the threat of politicized Islam undermining their unpopular regimes."

The CIA wrongly concluded that secular and socialist regimes were "unpopular" with their people, when, in fact, the opposite was true. The CIA's tilt to Sunni radicalism as opposed to secular governance in the Arab world was a result of the Cold War "black-and-white" view of the world by the neo-conservatives who penetrated the Ronald Reagan administration from top to bottom. In the world of the neocons, there was but one form of Islam -- the most radical variety -- that was the ally of the United States against monolithic communism and socialism. That mindset would continue to destabilize the world long after the end of the Cold War.

The CIA's doctrine, as seen in the 1984 reference guide, has been pro-radical Sunni and very anti-Shia. The overthrow of moderate Sunni regimes in Libya and Iraq, followed by CIA support for anti-Shia and anti-Alawite jihadists supported by the Saudis and Muslim Brotherhood elements funded by Qatar and Turkey is a direct outgrowth of the CIA's misguided analysis of political Islam from the Cold War era. The CIA has provided Saudi, as well as Zionist propaganda, to U.S. policy makers in the guise of "intelligence." And, today, the Middle East burns because of the CIA's erroneous intelligence.

The Wahhabi-Likudnik war of terror By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE      The Wahhabi-Likudnik war of terror By Pepe Escobar The double suicide bombing targeting the Iranian embassy in Beirut - with at least 23 people killed and 170 wounded - was a de facto terror attack happening on 11/19. Numerology-wise, naturally 9/11 comes to mind; and so the case of the Washington-declared war on terror metastasizing - largely conducted by oozy forms of Saudi "intelligence". Yet don't expect the "West" to condemn this as terror. Look at the headlines; it's all normalized as "blasts" - as if children were playing with firecrackers. Whether carried out by a hazy al-Qaeda-linked brigade or by Saudi spy chief Bandar bin Sultan's (aka Bandar Bush's) goons, the Beirut terror attack is essentially configured as a major, Saudi-enabled provocation. The larger Saudi agenda in Syria implies getting both Hezbollah and Iran to be pinned down inside Lebanon as well. If that happens, Israel also wins. Once again, here's another graphic illustration of the Likudnik House of Saud in action. Nuance also applies. Bandar Bush's strategy, coordinated with jihadis, was to virtually beg for Hezbollah to fight inside Syria. When Hezbollah obliged, with only a few hundred fighters, the jihadis scurried away from the battlefield to implement plan B: blowing up innocent women and children in the streets of Lebanon. While Hezbollah welcomes the fight, wherever it takes place, Tehran's position is more cautious. It does not want to go all out against the Saudis - at least for now, with the crucial nuclear negotiation on the table in Geneva, and (still) the possibility of a Geneva II regarding Syria. Yet the House of Saud is not welcoming Geneva II anytime soon because it has absolutely nothing to propose except regime change. On Syria, the main pillar of Bandar Bush's strategy is to turn the previously "Free" Syrian Army into a "national army" of 30,000 or so fully weaponized hardcore fighters - mostly supplied by the "Army of Islam", which is nothing but a cipher for the al-Qaedesque Jabhat al-Nusra. King Playstation of Jordan, also known as Abdullah, collaborates as the provider of training camps near the Syrian border. Whatever happens, one thing is certain; expect Bandar Bush's goons to be carrying out more suicide bombings on both Lebanon and Syria. The Zionist/Wahhabi/Salafi axis The dodgy al-Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades in theory exist since 2005, placing the odd bomb here and there. One sheikh Sijareddin Zreikat tweeted responsibility for the Beirut terror attack. Curioser and curioser, the claim was "discovered" and translated into English by the Israeli disinformation website SITE. [1] Yet another Israeli intelligence disinformation site, DEBKAfile, claimed the terror attack was an Iran/Hezbollah false flag, based on a "Saudi warning" reaching "Western intelligence agencies, including Israel". [2] The rationale, according to "Saudi intelligence", was "to convince Hezbollah fighters consigned against their will to the Syrian battlefield". This does not even qualify as pathetic. Hezbollah is basically defending the Lebanese-Syrian border, and has only a few hundred fighters inside Syria. Moreover, no string of suicide bombings will deter Hezbollah and Tehran from regaining control of what really matters in the Syrian strategic context; the Qalamoun area. Qalamoun, ringed by mountains, is a 50-kilometer stretch bordering the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, between Damascus and al-Nabk, and right on the absolutely critical Damascus-Homs corridor of the M5 highway. The Syrian army is on the offensive in Qalamoun. Recapturing the whole area is just a matter of time. This means controlling the northern approach to Damascus. Hezbollah is helping in the offensive out of Bekaa valley. This does not mean they will camp out in Syria afterwards. Now for the false flag accusation. As far as real false flags are concerned, one just has to re-examine three recent international bombings that supposed victimized Israel. In India the bomb had no projectiles; it barely injured an Israeli attache. In Azerbaijan the bomb was miraculously "discovered" before it went off. And in Thailand, the bomb exploded too soon, injuring only a nearby Iranian. Crass Israeli disinformation is unmasked when it leaps into this conclusion: If Tehran is capable of such atrocities merely as a diversionary tactic, then perhaps Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin ought to take a really hard look at their negotiating partner across the table before signing a major deal Wednesday, Nov. 20, which leaves Iran's nuclear program in place. So this neatly ties up with the current Israeli hysteria about the Geneva negotiations, which also includes the umpteenth report by a News Corporation outfit, London's Sunday Times, that Saudi Arabia will help Israel to attack Iran. [3] It also ties up with the proverbial US shills spinning, gloating rather, that, "strategically, this de-facto Israeli alliance with the Saudis is an extraordinary opportunity for Israel". [4] Even such shills have to admit that the House of Saud is "blocking formation of any government in Lebanon, for example, to obstruct Iran's ally, Hezbollah". "Blocking" of course is a euphemism to normalize suicide bombing. And then comes the ultimate wishful thinking disguised as "analysis"; Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu "bidding to replace the United States as military protector of the status quo". Translation; the Likudniks dreaming of becoming the new military Mob boss of petrodollar Wahhabis. The enablers Bandar Bush's strategy - weaponizing and providing cover to Salafis, jihadis and every patsy or mercenary in between - will go on unabated. After Bandar Bush convinced Washington to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Qataris, the Saudis are the supreme warfare go-to channel. The Bandar Bush machine has ties with virtually every jihadi outfit in the Levant. It certainly helps that Bandar has the perfect cover; the fact that he knows and has cajoled every significant player in Washington. In the US, Bandar Bush remains a dashing hero, even eliciting fawning comparisons with Gatsby. [5] Right. And my name is actually Daisy. Even with its own embassy attacked in Lebanon, Iran is maintaining an extremely calibrated approach. The number-one priority is the nuclear negotiations in Geneva with the partner that really matters, the US. This explains Iran blaming the Beirut terror attack on the proverbial "Zionists", and not Saudi-enabled jihadis posing as "rebels" and part of the whole Bandar Bush nebula. For the moment though, enough of Orwellian newspeak. What happened in Beirut was a terror attack, cheered by Israel, and fully enabled by Saudis; a graphic display by the Likudnik-House of Saud axis. Notes: 1. Al-Qaida-linked group claims responsibility for deadly Beirut attack, Ha'aretz, November 19, 2013. 2. Incredible! Beirut bombings killing 25 people were self-inflicted by Iran and Hizballah as a diversionary tactic, DEBKAfile, November 19, 2013. 3. Israel, Saudi Arabia Unite For Attack On Iran, RT, November 17, '13. 4. The stakes of an Iranian deal, Washington Post, November 15, 2013. 5. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's Gatsby, Master Spy, The Daily Beast, November 16, 2013. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Fear and loathing in House of Saud By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Fear and loathing in House of Saud By Pepe Escobar Every sentient being with a functional brain perceives the possibility of ending the 34-year Wall of Mistrust between Washington and Tehran as a win-win situation. Here are some of the benefits: The price of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf would go down; Washington and Tehran could enter a partnership to fight Salafi-jihadis (they already did, by the way, immediately after 9/11) as well as coordinate their policies in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban in check post-2014; Iran and the US share the same interests in Syria; both want no anarchy and no prospect of Islamic radicals having a shot at power. An ideal outcome would balance Iranian influence with a power-sharing agreement between the Bashar al-Assad establishment and the sensible non-weaponized opposition (it does exist, but is at present marginalized); With no more regime change rhetoric and no more sanctions, the sky is the limit for more trade, investment and energy options for the West, especially Europe (Iran is the best possible way for Europeans to soften their dependence on Russia's Gazprom); A solution for the nuclear dossier would allow Iran to manage civilian use of nuclear energy as an alternative source for its industry, releasing more oil and gas for export; Geopolitically, with Iran recognized for what it is - the key actor in Southwest Asia - the US could be released from its self-imposed strategic dogma of depending on the Israeli-Saudi axis. And Washington could even start pivoting to Asia for real - not exclusively via military means. Ay, there's the rub. Everybody knows why the Israeli right will fight an US-Iran agreement like the plague - as Iran as an "existential threat" is the ideal pretext to change the debate from the real issue; the occupation/apartheid regime imposed on Palestine. As for the House of Saud, such an agreement would be nothing short of Apocalypse Now. I'm just a moderate killer  It starts with Syria. Everybody now knows that shadow master Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush, has been fully in charge of the war on Syria since he was appointed Director of National Intelligence by his uncle, Saudi King Abdullah. Bandar is taking no prisoners. First he eliminated Qatar - the major financier of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) - from the picture, after having a helping hand in Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad, deposing himself to the benefit of his son, Sheikh Tamin, in late June. Then, in late July, Bandar spectacularly resurfaced in public during his now famous "secret" trip to Moscow to try to extort/bribe Russian President Vladimir Putin into abandoning Syria. Notoriously, the House of Saud's "policy" on Syria is regime change, period. This is non-negotiable in terms of dealing a blow to those "apostates" in Tehran and imprinting Saudi will on Syria, Iraq, in fact the whole, mostly Sunni Levant. In late September, the Jaish al-Islam ("Army of Islam") entered the picture. This is a "rebel" combo of up to 50 brigades, from supposedly "moderates" to hardcore Salafis, controlled by Liwa al-Islam, which used to be part of the FSA. The warlord in charge of Jaish al-Islam is Zahran Alloush - whose father, Abdullah, is a hardcore Salafi cleric in Saudi Arabia. And the petrodollars to support him are Saudi - via Bandar Bush and his brother Prince Salman, the Saudi deputy defense minister. If this looks like a revamp of the David Petraeus-concocted "Sunni Awakening" in Iraq in 2007 that's because it is; the difference is this Saudi-financed "awakening" is geared not to fight al-Qaeda but towards regime change. This (in Arabic) is what Alloush wants; a resurrection of the Umayyad Caliphate (whose capital was Damascus), and to "cleanse" Damascus of Iranians, Shi'ites and Alawites. These are all considered kafir ("unbelievers"); either they submit to Salafist Islam or they must die. Anybody who interprets this stance as "moderate" has got to be a lunatic. Incredibly as it may seem, even Ayman al-Zawahiri - as in al-Qaeda central - has issued a proclamation banning the killing of Shi'ites. Yet this "moderate" tag is exactly at the core of the present, Bandar Bush-concocted PR campaign; sectarian warlords of the Alloush kind are being "softened", so they are palatable to a maximum range of Gulf sources of funds and, inevitably, gullible Westerners. But the heart of the matter is that Jaish al-Islam, essentially, sports just a slight chromatic difference with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) - the al-Qaeda-linked umbrella which is the prime fighting force in Syria; as in a bunch of weaponized fanatics on varying degrees of (religious) crystal meth addiction. Paranoia paradise To complicate matters, the House of Saud is in disarray because of the succession battle. Crown Prince Salman is the last son of King Abdul Aziz, the founder of the Saud dynasty, to have a shot at power gradually by age. Now all bets are off - with hordes of princes engulfed in the battle for the great prize. And here we find none other than Bandar Bush - who is now, for all practical purposes, the most powerful entity in Saudi Arabia after Khalid Twijri, the chief of King Abdullah's office. The nonagenarian Abdullah is about to meet his Maker. Twijri is not part of the royal family. So Bandar is running against the clock. He needs a "win" in Syria as his ticket to ultimate glory. That's when the Russia-US agreement on Syria's chemical weapons intervened. The House of Saud as a whole freaked out - blaming not only the usual suspects, UN Security Council members Russia and China, but also Washington. No wonder the perpetual foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, snubbed his annual address to the UN General Assembly last week. To say he was not missed is an understatement. The House of Saud's nightmare is amplified by paranoia. After all those warnings by King Abdullah for Washington to cut "the head of the snake" (Iran), as immortalized on WikiLeaks cables; after all those supplications for the US to bomb Syria, install a no-fly zone and/or weaponize the "rebels" to kingdom come, this is what the House of Saud gets: Washington and Tehran on their way to reaching a deal at the expense of Riyadh. So no wonder fear, loathing and acute paranoia reign supreme. The House of Saud is and will continue to do all it can to bomb the emergence of Lebanon as a gas producer. It will continue to relentlessly fan the flames of sectarianism all across the spectrum, as Toby Matthiesen documented in an excellent book. And the Israeli-Saudi axis will keep blossoming. Few in the Middle East know that an Israeli company - with experience in repressing Palestinians - is in charge of the security in Mecca. (See here and here (in French)). If they knew - with the House of Saud's hypocrisy once more revealed - the Arab street in many a latitude would riot en masse. One thing is certain; Bandar Bush, as well as the Saudi-Israeli axis, will pull no punches to derail any rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. As for the Bigger Picture, the real "international community" may always dream that one day Washington elites will finally see the light and figure out that the US-Saudi strategic alliance sealed in 1945 between Franklin D Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud makes absolutely no sense. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.