THE
ROVING EYE The Arab counter-revolution is
winning By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great
Arab Revolt, please click here.
The current Arab counter-revolution is
brought to you by the House of Saud - and enabled
by the Pentagon. The Gulf has been plunged into
pre-emptive war. After the initial euphoria of the
great 2011 Arab revolt, the message of the Gulf
kingdoms and sheikhdoms to Washington has been
unambiguous - and effective; if we "fall", your
strategic game is in pieces. Once more,
"stability" trumps democracy.
It's hardly
surprising to see Saudi Arabia - the home of pious
Wahhabism, fanatic al-Qaeda, and hypocrite Saudi princes
gambling, drinking and
partying in London or the French Riviera -
smashing a popular desire for democracy and human
dignity.
The attached novelty is the
invasion of neighboring Bahrain. For the House of
Saud a pro-democracy movement in Bahrain today is
a worse existential threat than the fictional
possibility of Saddam Hussein invading the kingdom
way back in 1990.
Saudi media may slam
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his lethal
strategy against his own people. But Libya and
Saudi Arabia are equals. Gaddafi has laid out the
counter-revolution playbook; bomb the fight out of
the protesters. His winning strategy is the same
as Bahrain's, with crucial Saudi help.
The Gulf plunged into pre-emptive war
As far as the inextricable
Saudi/Washington nexus goes, democracy may be
acceptable for Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. But it's
a very bad idea for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and
other friendly Gulf dictatorships. United States
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a close
meeting in Paris with special envoy of the Libyan
transitional council Mahmoud Jabril. They
discussed "how to step up the level of US
outreach''. This after the Barack Obama
administration had coined the neologism "regime
alteration" for its new Middle East strategy.
So "outreach" means talking to
pro-democracy "rebels", while "regime alteration"
means endorsing brutal crackdowns against
pro-democracy protesters. The proof that the
policy is official is that Jeffrey Feltman, the
assistant US secretary of state for Near Eastern
Affairs, has been at the US Embassy in Manama
since Monday - where he oversaw, live, the Saudi
invasion and the subsequent bloody repression of
the Pearl/Lulu roundabout (50 tanks, heavy armored
vehicles, several helicopters). This is the fourth
time Feltman visited Bahrain in one month.
The predictable Saudi-orchestrated
counter-revolution has transformed demands for
justice, dignity and equality into the newest,
deadliest, incarnation of a Sunni-Shi'ite
sectarian war, so that imperiled Sunni regimes may
once again invoke the specter of a Shi'ite
crescent.
From Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq to
Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah in
Lebanon, not to mention the leadership in Tehran,
naturally they had to raise their voices to defend
unarmed, tear-gassed, shot at Shi'ite civilians.
But this is not about Sunni/Shi'ite; this is about
an across-the-spectrum desire for more justice,
equality and dignity.
The House of Saud
and the al-Khalifa dynasty have just fabricated a
war out of peaceful protests in Bahrain. The head
of the Shi'ite opposition bloc al-Wefaq, Abdel
Jalil Khalil, has identified it as "a war of
annihilation. This does not happen even in wars
and this is not acceptable ... I saw them fire
live rounds in front of my own eyes".
It's
never enough to repeat that Bahrain's youth
movement - at the forefront of the protests - is
basically composed of students, liberal
professionals and masses of unemployed. Young
Bahrainis - taking their cue from the Egyptians -
are saying, once again, Kefaya! (That's
enough.)
History is coming to get you
Judging by the way it is covering Bahrain
- especially when compared to its wall-to-wall
Libya coverage - al-Jazeera regrettably is now
aligning itself with the Arab counter-revolution.
That is, Qatar is also an accomplice. al-Jazeera
insists what's going on in Bahrain is just a
"confrontation". And it never refers to invading
Saudi troops; they are "Peninsula Shield" forces,
a stridently obvious Pentagon-style slogan along
the lines of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani,
Qatar's premier, has not excluded the intervention
of Qatari "peacekeepers". Nabil al-Hamr, a key
adviser to Bahrain's King Hamad al-Khalifa, showed
up on al-Arabiyyah TV - essentially a House of
Saud mouthpiece - to thank Qatar and other Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) members for their
military and "other" support in repressing
Bahrainis.
And as an extra reward, Saudi
Arabia will allow Qatar to appoint Abdul Rahman
al-Atiyyah - the outgoing GCC secretary general -
to be the next secretary general of the Arab
League. This is the same Arab League which voted
for a no-fly zone over Libya, but is mute on
repression in Bahrain and pre-emptive repression
in Saudi Arabia.
Bahrainis now have not
only a dictator to overthrow but a foreign army to
throw out. Sultan Qabus in Oman at least had the
decency of talking to the local protesters and
conceding more legislative powers. Bahrain's
al-Khalifas - especially the hardliners, led by
sinister Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman
al-Khalifa, the king's uncle, in power for not
less than 39 years - offer nothing but bullets.
The true public image of the al-Khalifas now is
their policemen shooting unarmed protesters, as
seen here.
The whole al-Khalifa demonization campaign
is sectarian-based. On Bahrain TV - an al-Khalifa
mouthpiece - protesters are painted as savages,
gangsters and terrorists. And the government - as
Hosni Mubarak did in Egypt - has unleashed its
goons en masse. True, Pakistani residents have
been attacked at random with swords and iron rods
in very dodgy circumstances. Hundreds of Sunni
Pakistanis have been recruited for Bahrain's riot
police (they get fast citizenship as well as
social benefits). Yet it's crucial that the
victims of these attacks have identified their
assailants as similar to the baltajiyya
thugs who wreaked havoc at the Bahrain University
earlier this week.
Only two kinds of
people in Bahrain have access to weapons; the
security services - infested with foreigners,
mercenaries included, and members of tribal
families allied with the ruling Sunni al-Khalifas.
The pre-emptive war in Manama is the
battle that the House of Saud, the emir of Qatar,
the sultan of Oman and the wealthy Emirates fear
having to fight at home. They have already proved
they are on the wrong side of history. Their
crackdown - blessed by Washington's "regime
alteration" policy - may work, for now. But sooner
or later history will vacuum-clean them to
oblivion.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
