All Arab countries are FREE and DEMOCRATIC...EXCEPT FOR SYRIA.
This is what the relentlessness, persistence, and fierceness of Qatari
foreign minister Hamad Bin Jasem in his quest to take down the Syrian Regime
insinuates.
Is this true?
Decide for yourself after reading the here-below piece written by
Thierry Meyssan of the Voltaire Network. Meyssan sheds light on a lot of what
is going on in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, and of
course Syria.
NB: My emphasis in italic, bold, red font.
Thierry Meyssan. Voltairenet.org, May 26th, 2011
A Saudi clan, the Sudairi, is spearheading the
counter-revolutionary tide unleashed by the United States and Israel in the
Middle East. In a vast overview, published in serial form by the leading
Russian language daily, Thierry Meyssan from Damascus paints a general picture
of the contradictions which are convulsing the region.
Within months, three pro-Western governments have fallen in the
Arab World: parliament removed Saad Hariri’s Lebanese government, while popular
movements drove out Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Husni Mubarak in
Egypt. These changes have been followed by demonstrations against U.S.
domination and Zionism. They politically benefit the Axis of Resistance,
comprised of Iran and Syria at the state level and at the non-state level by
Hezbollah and Hamas.
To lead the counter-revolution in this region, Washington and Tel
Aviv have relied on their best support: the Sudairi clan, which embodies
despotism at the service of imperialism unlike any other.
THE SUDAIRI
You have probably never heard of them, but for decades the SUDAIRI have been the
world’s richest political organization. Among the 53 sons of
King Ibn Saud, founder of Saudi Arabia, the Sudairi are the 7 that he sired
with Princess Sudairi. Their leader was King Fahd, who ruled from 1982 to 2005.
Only six are still alive. The eldest is Prince Sultan, minister of defence
since 1962, who is 85(*). At 71, the youngest is Prince Ahmed, deputy interior minister
since 1975. Since the 60s, it was their clan that organized, structured, and
funded the pro-Western puppet regimes of the “Greater Middle East.”
A LOOK BACK IS REQUIRED HERE.
Saudi Arabia is a legal entity created by the British during the
First World War to weaken the Ottoman Empire. Although Lawrence of Arabia had
invented the concept of the “Arab nation,” he never managed to make a nation of
this country, let alone a state. It was and still is the private property of
Al-Saud. As the British inquiry on the Al-Yamamah Scandal brought to light, in
the 21st century there are still no bank accounts or budget for
the Kingdom. It is the accounts of the royal family that serve to administer
the Kingdom, which is its private domain.
The area fell under U.S. control after the Second World War, when
the United Kingdom could no longer maintain its empire. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt made an agreement with King Ibn Saud: the family of Saud guaranteed
oil supplies to the United States which in return guaranteed the military
assistance necessary to keep the Saud in power. This alliance is known as the Quincy
Agreement, negotiated on a ship by the same name. It is an agreement, not a
treaty since it does not bind two states, but a state and a family.
The Quincy Agreement binds the United States to the Saud family.
The founding king, Ibn Saud, having had 32 wives and 53 sons, serious rivalries
between potential successors were not slow to emerge. Thus it was decided that
the crown would not be handed down from father to son, but from half-brother to
half-brother.
Five of Ibn Saud’s sons have already sat on the throne. The
current king, Abdullah I, 87, is a rather open-minded person, although totally
out of touch with today’s realities. Aware that the current dynastic system is
headed for ruin, he intends to reform the rules of succession. The crown would
thus be appointed by the Council of the Kingdom – this means selected by
representatives of various branches of the royal family – and could potentially
go to a younger generation.
This wise idea does not suit the Sudairi. Indeed, given the
various abdications to the throne for health reasons or self-indulgence, the
next three candidates belong to their clan: Prince Sultan, formerly appointed
Interior Minister, 85; Prince Naif, Interior Minister, 78; and Prince Salman,
the governor of Riyadh, 75. If it were to be applied, the new dynastic rule
would work to their disadvantage.
One can easily understand that the Sudairi, who never cared much for
their half-brother, King Abdullah, hate him at present. And, also, that they
have decided to throw all their forces into the current struggle.
PRINCE BANDAR AND “HIS BROTHER” GEORGE W. BUSH: THE RETURN OF
BANDAR BUSH
In the late 70s, the Sudairi clan was headed by Prince Fahd, who
noticed the rare qualities of one of his brother Sultan’s children: Prince
Bandar. He sent him to Washington to negotiate arms contracts and was impressed
by the way he handled an agreement with President Carter.
He is now the working arm of the gerontocratic
Sudairi clan. During his long stay in Washington, Prince Bandar befriended the
Bush family, in particular George H. Bush, with whom he was inseparable. The
latter likes to portray him as the son that he would have liked to have, so
much so that his nickname in the capital is “Mr. Bandar Bush.” What George H. –
former director of the CIA and U.S. president – appreciated most about him is
his taste for illegal actions. “Mr. Bandar Bush” made a place for himself in
U.S. high society. He is both a manager for life of the Aspen Institute and a
member of the Bohemian Grove.
The British public first found out about him during the Al-Yamamah
Scandal: the biggest arms deal in history as well as the largest corruption scandal.
Over two decades (1985-2006), British Aerospace, soon renamed BAE Systems, sold
$80 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia while quietly dropping a portion
of this windfall into the bank accounts of Saudi politicians and probably
British politicians, with $2 billion going to Prince Bandar alone.
This is because His Highness has a lot of expenses. Prince Bandar
has taken over responsibility for numerous Arab fighters trained by Pakistani
and Saudi intelligence during the Cold War to fight the Red Army in Afghanistan
at the request of the CIA and MI6. Of course, the best known figure in this
milieu was none other than billionaire guru turned anti-communist jihadist,
Osama bin Laden.
It is impossible to say precisely how many men Prince Bandar has
at his disposal. Over time, we have seen his involvement in many conflicts and
terrorist acts across the Muslim world from Morocco to China’s Xinjiang.
For example, one may recall the small army that he had planted, by
the name of Fatah Al-Islam, in the Palestinian camp of Nahr el-Bared in
Lebanon. The mission of these fighters was to incite the Palestinian refugees,
mostly Sunnis, to proclaim an independent emirate and to fight Hezbollah. The
affair turned sour when the salaries of the mercenaries were not paid on time.
Ultimately, in 2007, Prince Bandar’s men entrenched themselves in the camp. 30,000
Palestinians were forced to flee, while the Lebanese army waged a two-month
battle to gain control of the camp. This operation cost the lives of 50
mercenaries, 32 Palestinian civilians and 68 Lebanese soldiers.
In early 2010, Bandar staged a coup to overthrow King Abdullah and
to place his father, Sultan, on the throne. The plot
was discovered and Bandar left in disgrace without however losing his official
titles. But in late 2010, the declining health of the king and his surgery gave
the Sudairi the upper hand and they engineered Bandar’s comeback with the
support of the Obama Administration.
Saudi-Lebanese politician Saad Hariri has rallied behind the
Sudairi. After his resignation as Lebanese Prime Minister three months ago, he
has remained as caretaker Prime Minister and has blocked the formation of a new
government ever since. It was after having visited the king, who was
hospitalized in Washington, and having concluded too quickly that he was dying,
that Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri rallied to the side of the Sudairi. Saad
Hariri is a Saudi, born in Riyadh, but with dual nationality. He inherited his
fortune from his father, who owed everything to Saud. He is
therefore obligated to the king and became Prime Minister of Lebanon at his
urging, while the U.S. State Department was concerned about his ability to fill
the position.
During the period when he had to obey King
Abdullah, Saad Hariri began to reconcile with President Bashar al-Assad. He
withdrew the accusations he had made against him about the assassination of his
father, Rafik Al-Hariri, and apologized for having been manipulated to
artificially create tension between Lebanon and Syria.
In endorsing the Sudairi, Saad has made a political volte-face.
Overnight, he renounced King Abdullah’s policy of conciliation towards Syria
and Hezbollah and launched an offensive against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad,
for the disarmament of Hezbollah, and for a compromise with Israel.
However, King Abdullah came out of his semi-comatose state and
didn’t wait long to demand accountability. Deprived of this essential support,
Saad Hariri and his government were overthrown by the Lebanese Parliament in
favor of Najib Mikati, another bi-national, but less adventurous, billionaire.
As punishment, King Abdullah ordered a tax investigation into Hariri’s largest
Saudi society and had several of his associates arrested for fraud.
THE SAUDIRI LEGIONS
The Sudairi have decided to launch the counter-revolution in all
directions.
In Egypt, where they financed Mubarak on one hand and the Muslim
Brotherhood on the other hand, they have now imposed an alliance between the
Brotherhood and pro-U.S. army officers. This new coalition has shared
power by excluding the leaders of the revolution in Tahrir Square. It
refused to convene a National Assembly and contended itself with amending the
constitution marginally. First, they declared Islam the state religion to the
detriment of the Coptic Christian minority (about 10%) who were oppressed by
Husni Mubarak and who mobilized en masse against him. In addition, Dr. Mahmoud
Izzat, the number two of the Brotherhood, called for the rapid introduction of
Sharia law and the restoration of Sharia punishment.
Young Wael Ghoneim, who had played a leading role in the overthrow
of the tyrant, was barred from the podium during the victory celebrations,
February 18, which rallied nearly 2 million people. Conversely,
the star preacher of the Brotherhood, Youssef Al-Qardawi, returning after 30
years of exile in Qatar, was allowed to speak at length. He, who had been
stripped of his citizenship by Gamal Abdel Nasser, projected himself as the
incarnation of the new era: that of Sharia law and peaceful coexistence with
the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv. Nobel Peace
Prize Muhammad Al-Baradei, whom the Muslim Brotherhood opted as a spokesman
during the revolution to give themselves a more liberal image, was physically
assaulted by the same Brothers during the constitutional referendum and was
ejected from the political scene.
The Muslim Brothers made their formal entry into politics through
the creation of a new party, Freedom and Justice, with the support of the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and by imitating the profile of the
Turkish AKP (The same strategy was chosen in Tunisia with the Renaissance
Party).
In this context, violent attacks were perpetrated against religious
minorities. Thus two Coptic churches were burned. Far from punishing the
aggressors, the Prime Minister offered them a guarantee: he dismissed the
governor that he had appointed in the province of Qenna, the respected General
Imad Mikhael, because he is a Coptic Christian and not a Sunni Muslim.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (CGC) clamored for a NATO intervention
in Libya and sent the Saudi army and UAE police to crush the protest in
Bahrain. In Libya, the Sudairi transferred armed fighters into Cyrenaica
pending the green light from France and Britain to start the insurrection
against the government of Tripoli. They are the ones who distributed weapons
and the red-black-green star and crescent flags, symbols of the Senoussi
monarchy. Their goal is to get rid of troublemaker Gaddafi and restore Prince
Mohammed on the throne of what was once the United Kingdom of Libya.
It was the Gulf Cooperation Council that was the first to call for
military intervention against the government of Tripoli. At the
Security Council, it was the Saudi delegation which led the diplomatic
manoeuvres for the Arab League to endorse the attacks by Western armies.
Colonel Qaddafi for his part declared in several speeches that
there was no revolution in Cyrenaica, but that his country was facing an
Al-Qaeda destabilization operation; claims that wrongly elicited smiles and
which were personally confirmed to his great embarrassment by General Carter F.
Ham, U.S. AfriCom commander. In charge of the initial U.S. military operations
before being supplanted by NATO, General Ham was surprised at having to choose
his targets based on information from spies on the ground who were known to
have fought against the Coalition forces in Afghanistan – in short, bin Laden’s
men.
Bahrain, meanwhile, presents itself as an independent kingdom since
1971. In reality, it is still a territory dominated by the British. During
their rule they had chosen a Khalifa as prime minister and the position has
been maintained for 40 years continuously, from the fiction of independence up
until today. This is a continuum which is not displeasing to the Sudairi. King
Hamad has granted an important concession to the United States, which
established its Central Command and the Fifth Fleet naval headquarters in the
port of Juffair.
In these circumstances, the popular demand for constitutional
monarchy would imply access to real independence, the end of British rule, and
the departure of U.S. forces. Such a development would certainly have a domino
effect in Saudi Arabia and threaten the foundations of the system. The Sudairi
convinced the king of Bahrain to bloodily crush the hopes of the population.
Guarantor of the established order, Prince Nayef has been the
implacable Saudi Minister of the Interior and Information for the past 41
years. On 13 March, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates arrived in Manama to
initiate the coordination of operations, which began with the entry of Saudi
special forces, known as “Nayef Eagles”, under the command of Prince Nayef.
Within days, all the symbols of protest were destroyed, including the public
monument erected in Pearl Square. Hundreds of people died or went missing.
Torture, which had been abandoned for almost a decade, was again widespread.
Doctors and nurses who treated injured protesters were arrested in their
hospitals, detained incommunicado, and brought before military tribunals.
But, the most important element in this terrible repression is the
determination to transform a classic class struggle, between an entire
population and a privileged class tied to foreign imperialism, into a sectarian
conflict. The majority of Bahrainis are Shiites while the ruling family is
Sunni. The Shias are seen as the vehicle of the revolutionary ideal of Ruhollah
Khomeini, who was designated as a target. In one month, the “Nayef Eagles”
razed 25 Shiite mosques and damaged 253 others.
21 of the main political protest leaders will soon be tried by a
special court. They face the death penalty. More
so than the Shiites, the monarchy is going after Ibrahim Sharif, the party
chairman of the Wa’ad (a secular leftist party), whom they accuse of not
playing by the rules because he is a Sunni Muslim. Having failed
to destabilize Iran, the Sudairi have concentrated their attacks against Syria.
THE DESTABILIZATION OF SYRIA
All the revolutions staged for the media have a logo. This is for
the “Syrian Revolution 2011″, which appeared on Facebook. In early February,
when the country had yet to experience any demonstration, a page titled “The
Syrian Revolution 2011” was created on Facebook. It called for a “Day of Wrath”
on Friday 4; the call was relayed by Al Jazeera, but did not resonate anywhere.
Al Jazeera deplored the lack of reaction and stigmatized Syria as the “kingdom
of silence” (sic).
The name “The Syrian Revolution 2011” is puzzling:
it is in English and has the characteristic of an advertising slogan. But what
genuine revolutionary would think that if he fails to realize his objectives in
2011, he would simply go back home?
Even stranger, on the day of its creation this
Facebook page registered more than 80,000 friends. Such enthusiasm in a few
hours, followed by nothing, suggests manipulation carried out with computer
software that creates multiple accounts. Especially considering that the
Syrians have a moderate level of internet use and have only had access to ADSL
since January 1st.
The troubles began a month later in Deraa, a rural town located at
the Jordanian border and a few miles from Israel. Vandals paid adolescents to
tag anti-government graffiti on the walls of the city. Local police arrested
the students and treated them as criminals to the annoyance of their families.
Local notables who intended to settle the dispute were turned away by the
governor. The young men were beaten. Furious, the families attacked the police
station to set them free. The police responded with even more brutality,
killing protesters.
President Bashar Al-Assad then intervened to punish the police and
the governor – a cousin whom the President had appointed to Deraa, far from the
capital, to keep him out of sight. An investigation was opened to shed light on
the police killings. The officials responsible for the violence have been
indicted and put under bail. Ministers have apologized and offered condolences
to the victims’ families on behalf of the government, gestures which have been
publicly accepted.
Everything should have returned to normal, but
suddenly masked snipers stationed on rooftops fired on both the crowd and at
police, plunging the city into chaos.
This type of confrontation has recurred. People sought protection
from the army responding to the attackers who stormed the city. Three thousand
men and tanks were deployed to protect the inhabitants. Ultimately, a battle
has pitted the infiltrated fighters against the Syrian army in a scenario
similar to the Lebanese army siege on Nahr Al-Bared. Except this
time, the international media has distorted the facts and accused the Syrian
army of attacking the people of Deraa.
Meanwhile, clashes erupted in Lattakia, a port which has long been
the home of criminal organizations that specialize in maritime smuggling. These
individuals received arms and money from Lebanon. They vandalized downtown. The
police intervened. On presidential order, the police were armed only with
batons. The gangsters then unleashed war weapons, killing dozens of unarmed
policemen.
The same scenario was repeated in the neighboring town of Banias,
a town of less importance, but much more strategic because it is home to the
main oil refinery in the country. This time the police used their arms and the
confrontation turned into a pitched battle.
Finally, individuals in Homs, a major city, came
to participate at a mosque and called their fundamentalist followers to
demonstrate against “the regime that is killing our brothers in Latakia.”
While the clashes were intensifying in the localities concerned, the
police managed to stop the fighters. According to their televised confessions,
they were recruited, armed, and funded by a pro-Hariri MP in Lebanon, Jamal
Jarrah, which he denies.
Jamal Jarrah is a friend of Prince Bandar. His name had been cited
in the case of Fatah Al-Islam in Nahr Al-Bared. He is the cousin of Ziad
Jarrah, a jihadist accused by the FBI of being responsible for the hijacking of
Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. He is also the
cousin of the Ali and Yousef Jarrah brothers, who were arrested by the Lebanese
army in November 2008 for spying for Israel.
From London and Paris, Ali Saad-al-din Bayanouni (secretary
general of the Syrian section of the Muslim Brotherhood) and Abdel-Halim
Khaddam (former vice president of Syria) call for Bachar el-Assad’s
overthrow. Jamal Jarrah is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he
also denies. In 1982, the Brotherhood tried to seize power in Syria. They
failed and became victims of a terrible repression. Since the amnesty
proclaimed by President Bashar Al-Assad it was believed that these painful
memories had been forgotten. On the contrary, this branch of the Brothers is
now funded by the Sudairi. The role of the Banias Brotherhood in the clashes
has now been acknowledged by all.
Allegedly, Jamal Jarrah also used Lebanese Hizb ut-Tahrir militants,
an Islamist organization based in London and especially active in Central Asia.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, which advocates non-violence, is accused of masterminding many
attacks in the Ferghana Valley. It was with the intention of
curbing this group that China began its rapprochement with Russia within the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Despite much debate in the House of Commons
about the group, its representatives in London have never been inconvenienced and
they all occupy positions as high-level executives in Anglo-American
multinationals.
Last year, Hizb ut-Tahrir opened a branch in Lebanon. On that
occasion, it organized a conference to which foreign dignitaries were invited,
including a Russian intellectual of international repute. During discussions,
the organizers called for the establishment of an Islamic state, stating that
Lebanese Shiites, Druze, and even some Sunnis are not real Muslims and should
be expelled like the Christians. Flabbergasted by such outrageous remarks, the
Russian guest promptly gave television interviews to disassociate himself from
these fanatics.
At first, Syrian security forces appeared to be overwhelmed by
events. Trained in the U.S.S.R., senior officers used force without worrying
about the consequences on the population. But the situation was gradually
reversed. President Bashar Al-Assad took control of the situation. He changed
the government. He repealed the state of emergency and dissolved the State
Security Court. He granted citizenship to thousands of Syrian Kurds who were
historically denied citizenship because of a disputed census. In addition, he
took a number of other measures, such as repealing the fines for late payment
of public utilities (electricity, etc.). In doing so, he satisfied the main
demands of the population and mitigated opposition. On the “Day of Rage”
(Friday, May 6) the overall number of protesters in the country did not reach
50,000 people out of a population of 22 million.
Specifically, Mohammed Al-Sha’ar, the new interior minister,
called for anyone who was involed in the riots to report voluntarily to the
police and be granted amnesty in exchange for complete cooperation. Over 1,100
people responded. Within days, the principal conduits were dismantled and many
weapons caches seized. After five weeks of violence, calm slowly returned to
almost all the troubled cities.
Among the ringleaders identified and arrested, several were Israeli
or Lebanese officers and one was a politician with close ties to Saad Hariri.
This attempt at destabilization has a sequel.
AN OPEN CONSPIRACY
What was originally a plot to overthrow the Syrian regime turned
into open blackmail through destabilization. Realizing that the revolt was not
picking up steam, the anti-Syrian Arab press shamelessly echoed the
negotiations that were in progress.
They reported the visits of negotiators going to Damascus to
present the requirements of the Sudairi. If we are to believe the newspapers,
the violence will not stop until Bashar Al-Assad bends to two requirements:
break with Iran; and stop supporting the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, and
Iraq.
INTERNATIONAL PROPAGANDA
The Sudairi want a Western military intervention to end the Syrian
resistance, along similar lines as the aggression which is unfolding in Libya.
To do this, they mobilized propaganda specialists.
To everyone’s surprise, the satellite TV station Al Jazeera abruptly
changed its editorial line. It is no secret that the station was created by
David and Jean Frydman, the French billionaire brothers who were counsellors to
Ytzakh Rabin and Ehud Barak. They wanted to create a medium that allowed a
debate between Israelis and Arabs, since such a debate was forbidden by law in
each of the countries concerned. To set up the network,
they called on the Emir of Qatar who initially acted as a cover. The drafting
team was recruited among the BBC’s Arabic Service, so that from the beginning
the majority of journalists were leading British MI6 agents.
However, the Emir took political control of the network, which
became the working arm of his monarchy. For years, Al Jazeera has indeed played
a role of appeasement by promoting dialogue and understanding in the
region. But the network has also contributed to trivializing the Israeli
system of apartheid, as if the violent methods emplyed by IDF were merely unfortunate
blunders on the part of a basically acceptable regime, whereas they constitute
the essence of the regime itself.
This about-face deserves an explanation. The attack on Libya was
originally a Franco-British plan conceived in November 2010, i.e. well before
the “Arab Spring,” in which the U.S. has been involved. Paris and
London intended to settle scores with Tripoli and defend their colonial
interests.
Indeed, in 2005-2006, the Libya National Oil Company (NOC) had
launched three international tenders for exploration and exploitation of its
reserves, the largest in Africa. Colonel Gaddafi had imposed his own game rules
on Western companies, forcing them to accept agreements that were hardly
advantageous in their eyes. They even represented the less favourable contracts
to multinationals worldwide. In addition, there were several disputes related
to the cancellation of lucrative contracts for equipment and armament.
From the earliest days of the alleged Benghazi uprising, Paris and
London set up the Transition National Council that France officially
acknowledged as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. This
Council has created a new oil company, the LOC, which was recognized by the
international community at the London summit as the holder of the rights to the
country’s hydrocarbons. During the gathering, it was decided that the marketing
of oil stolen by the LOC would be done by … Qatar, and that the contact group
of allied states would henceforth meet in Doha.
According to Youssef Al-Qardawi, the liberation of Palestine is less
important than the establishment of Sharia law. On cue, tele-evangelist Youssef
Al-Qardawi started howling for the overthrow of President Bashar Al-Assad on a
daily basis. Sheikh Al-Qardawi is president of the
International Union of Scholars and also of the European Council for Fatwa and
Research. He is the icon of Muslim Brotherhood and preaches for an
original brand of Islam, a mix of U.S. “market democracy” and Saudi
obscurantism: he recognizes the principle of elected officials provided they
undertake to enforce the Sharia in its most limited interpretation.
Youssef Al-Qardawi was joined by Saudi cleric Saleh Al-Luhaidan who
urged: “kill a third of Syrians so the other two-thirds may live” (sic). Kill one-third
of the Syrian population? That would imply slaying the Christians, Jews,
Shiites, Druze and Alawite. So that two-thirds may live? That would amount to
establishing a Sunni state before it cleanses its own kind.
To date, only the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Hamas, appears to resist the seductive power of the Sudairi petro-dollars. Its
leader, Khaled Meshaal, not without a moment’s hesitation, confirmed he would
remain in exile in Damascus vowing his support for President Al-Assad. With the
latter’s help, he preempted imperialist and Zionist plans by negotiating an
agreement with Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas.
Since March, Al-Jazeera, BBC Arabic, and Arabic France24 have turned
into massive propaganda organs. By multiplying false
testimonies and manipulated images, they spin events to make the Syrian
Republic look like the Tunisian regime of Ben Ali.
They have attempted to portray the Syrian army as
a force of repression similar to the Tunisian police, one which does not
hesitate to fire on peaceful citizens fighting for their freedom. These
networks have even announced the death of a young soldier who refused to fire
on his fellow citizens and was allegedly tortured to death by his superiors. In
fact, the Syrian army is a conscript army, and the young soldier whose vital
statistics had been published was actually on leave. In an interview with
Syrian television, he affirmed his willingness to defend his country against
foreign mercenaries.
At any rate, the prize for lying goes to Al Jazeera. The network
went so far as to present images of a demonstration of 40,000 people in Moscow
calling for the end of Russia’s support for Syria. It was actually footage shot
during the annual May 1 celebrations, in which the network had planted actors
to make fake statements.
THE REORGANIZATION OF PRINCE BANDAR’S NETWORKS AND THE OBAMA
ADMINISTRATION
The counter-revolution device used by the Sudairi is up against one
difficulty. Until now Prince Bandar’s mercenaries had fought under the banner
of Osama bin Laden, whether in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya or elsewhere.
Initially considered an anti-communist, Bin Laden had gradually become
anti-Western. His shift was influenced by the ideology of the Clash of
Civilizations that was expounded by Bernard Lewis and popularized by his
student Samuel Huntington. It experienced its era of glory with the terrorist
attacks of September 11 and the War on Terrorism: Bandar’s men fomented
disorder wherever the United States wanted to intervene.
In the current period, the image of the jihadists needs to be
changed. They are now expected to fight alongside NATO, as they once fought
alongside the CIA in Afghanistan against the Red Army. It is
therefore advisable to revert to the pro-Western discourse of the past and to
find a substitute for anti-communism. This will be the ideological task of
Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi.
To facilitate this makeover, Washington has announced the official
death of Osama bin Laden. With their father figure gone, the mercenaries of
Prince Bandar can be mobilized under a new banner. This redistribution of roles
is accompanied by a game of musical chairs in Washington.
General David Petraeus, who as commander of CENTCOM was to deal
with the men of Bandar in the Middle East, became the director of the CIA. We
must therefore expect an accelerated withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan
and greater involvement of Bandar’s people in the secret operations of
the CIA.
Leon Panetta, the outgoing director of the CIA, became the
secretary of defence. According to the internal agreement of the U.S. ruling
class, this post should be reserved for a member of the Baker-Hamilton
Commission. Panetta, like Gates, was a member. In the case of new wars, he
would limit ground deployment, except for Special Forces.
In Riyadh and Washington they have already drafted the death
certificate of the “Arab Spring.” The Sudairi can say about the Middle East
what Il Gattopardo (the Leopard) used to say about Italy: “everything must
change so that everything can stay the same and we can remain masters.”
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