THE
ROVING EYE The cold hard cash
counter-revolution By Pepe
Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on
the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
The counter-revolution, paraphrasing the
late, great soul jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, will
not be televised; it will float downstream flush
with hard cash. Take Egypt. The House of Saud has
just given Supreme Military Council leader Field
Marshall Tantawi US$4 billion in cold hard cash -
although not even the Sphinx knows for sure how
much power Tantawi, 75, deposed tyrant Hosni
Mubarak's former minister of defense, really
wields.
Washington extended Cairo $1
billion in "debt forgiveness" and another $1
billion in loan guarantees. Not much - compared to
what Washington extends to Israel, but still a
signal. And then the
International Monetary Fund
extended an extra $3 billion in loans. The "new"
Egypt will start to do business already bound in
unforgiving chains.
This goes a long way
to explain how the "opening" of Rafah - the border
with Gaza - was not really an opening. The quota
of free-moving Gazans is a maximum of 400 a day;
and no less than 5,000 Gazans remain blacklisted.
So essentially the gulag situation remains similar
to Mubarak-sanctioned levels.
This also
goes a long way to explain why now you see it/now
you don't tentative Egyptian presidential
candidate Mohamed ElBaradei is now on an overdrive
charm offensive on Saudi media - singing the
praises of King Abdullah while performing the
contortionism of ignoring frenetic Saudi support
for Mubarak until (and beyond) the last minute.
Cash is king In Yemen, the
House of Saud is - what else - buying Yemeni
tribes with cold hard cash, in the name of
"stability in the region". Even though it is
living up to its reputation of prime asylum for
fleeing Arab dictators, the House of Saud
officially is in favor of President Abdullah Saleh
stepping down in the name of "less bloodshed and
less unpredictability".
The House of Saud
insists - no irony intended - Saleh is being
hosted for "humanitarian motives". Officially, the
House of Saud also abhors a "power vacuum". Said
vacuum nonetheless remains quite persistent, now
coupled with fears of "rising chaos". Washington,
meanwhile, scans the horizon frantically trying to
spot any dronable al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula
(AQAP) "targets".
If Saleh ships himself
back to Yemen that could only happen because the
House of Saud said so. So we have a situation
where Saleh's son Ali is commanding the elite
Republican Guard - from inside the presidential
palace - and his four cousins are also in control
of key military units. The current "acting"
leader, Vice President Abdu-Rabo Mansur Hadi, is a
figurehead.
Saudi Arabia seems to condone,
for now, this theoretically vacuum-cleaned power
arrangement. As for the wide-ranging Yemeni
protest movement, their only shot now would be to
force Hadi to hang on, push for a transitional
government, and try to quell the
counter-revolution, directed by Saleh's family,
with people power. If that's the case, the House
of Saud will brutally - and directly - step in.
In Bahrain, the House of Saud explicitly
supports the National Human Rights Organization;
no wonder, its head was appointed by King Hamad
bin Isa al-Khalifa last year, so the organization
must support the ruling dynasty - yet not as much
as the Saudi masters. Bahrain's really independent
human-rights organizations, meanwhile, have had
their leading activists arrested and facing
military trials.
And just like a thief in
the dead of night, who sneaked into Washington to
be received at the White House by US President
Barack Obama this past Tuesday? No one else than
Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman al-Khalifa.
There was no press conference. There were
no pictures. It's like this conversation would
self-destruct in five seconds - but it did take
place, between a drone-heavy Nobel Peace Prize and
the head of the military of a Persian Gulf
American satrapy which is busy toppling its own
people. No amount of rhetoric will alter the math:
Washington fully backs outright repression all
across the Persian Gulf - to the extreme delight
of the House of Saud.
He is heavy, he's no
brother
Then there's the Muslim
Brotherhood question - essential in the context of
the carefully orchestrated US/Saudi
counter-revolution.
The Muslim Brotherhood
is being instrumentalized by the House of Saud all
across the board, from Syria to Egypt. In Egypt,
the reactionary old guard Brotherhood is working
very close with the Military Council; "rewards"
for good behavior by both Washington and Riyadh
should be in the works.
Clearly this won't
translate as an endorsement of ElBaradei - whose
appeal is towards disenfranchised young people,
liberals, a few leftists and a smatter of
progressive Islamists who defected from the
"traditional" Muslim Brotherhood.
As for
the even more reactionary Salafis, they are now
getting into Facebook groups, in a public
relations offensive to try to improve their
dreadful image and sort of mingle with "other
intellectual and political currents".
Saudi media meanwhile is awash with their
own public relations extolling the merits of the
kingdom and denigrating the "corruption of the
ruling family and its cronies" in selected Arab
republics such as Syria and Libya. According to
the official platform of the Gulf
Counter-Revolution Club, also known as Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC), all Arab monarchies are
as virtuous as virgins in paradise.
As the
cold hard cash counter-revolution goes on, the
future of the great 2011 Arab revolt looks grimmer
and grimmer. It all depends on how forcefully the
Tahrir Square spirit will keep the Military
Council in Egypt in check. And how progressive
forces in Egypt, Yemen and beyond find ways to
counterpunch the relentless impact of the House of
Saud oil wealth.
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