THE ROVING
EYE The
fast and furious Sunni
revenge By Pepe Escobar
And the winner is ... the Gulf
Counter-revolution Club (GCC), also known as Gulf
Cooperation Council.
Their collective
celebration party is this weekend's Bahrain
Formula 1 Grand Prix - complete with buckets of
Moet and Ferraris oozing by. See it as a coterie
of Sunni sheikhs telling the "international
community" - we won; it's our way or the (boiling
hot) desert highway.
How could they not
gloat? The unruly waves of that noxious Arab
Spring never had a chance of disturbing the placid
waters of the Gulf. The arrival of the Fast White
Man Formula 1 circus - a spectacular public
relations operation - proves that the GCC is as
"normal" as an Arab prince swinging through Monte
Carlo with a
blonde babe in a Ferrari
458.
Who cares that Bahrain activists sent
a letter to Formula 1 emperor Bernie Ecclestone
denouncing the state of siege in the placid
al-Khalifa dynasty realm, the killing and torture
of pro-democracy protesters, the thousands still
in jail and the lack of the most basic human
rights? This does not concern The Fast White Man.
Revenge! Strategically, the GCC
was invented - with essential American input - to
defend those poor Gulf petromonarchies from the
evils of Saddam Hussein and the Iranian
Khomeinists, with its members comprising Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab
Emirates. But when the 2011 Arab revolt exploded
in Northern Africa - and then reached the Gulf, in
Bahrain, and even generated protests in Oman and
Saudi Arabia - the petromonarchies faced a larger
evil that simply petrified them: democracy. The
status quo had to be protected at all costs.
King Hamad al-Khalifa, technically, asked
the GCC for "help" into smashing the Bahrain
pro-democracy movement. The fact is the House of
Saud already had masterminded an invasion across
the causeway linking the capital Manama with Saudi
Arabia. The Pearl roundabout in Manama - Bahrain's
Tahrir Square - had to be literally razed to the
ground by the al-Khalifa dictatorship to erase any
physical memory of the protests.
For the
GCC and its top dog the House of Saud, not only
Bahrain was "contained", Saudi subjects were
placated with billionaire bribes. Ample
possibilities of profiting from the geopolitical
black hole in northern Africa were also opened.
Ever since the House of Saud and the emir
of Qatar, Hamad al-Thani, got their act together,
they have been on a roll - recent rumors of a
military coup against the emir notwithstanding.
The "humanitarian" bombing of Libya represented
the apex of the NATOGCC embrace - with Qatar in
the forefront and the House of Saud sort of
leading from behind.
Fabulous dividends
ensued. Abdel Hakim Belhaj is now Tripoli's
military commander; he's not only a former
al-Qaeda-linked jihadi, but he's also very close
to Qatari intelligence.
Now Qatar and
Saudi Arabia replicate their geopolitical acumen
in Syria: in the absence of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), they weaponize
mercenaries - including jihadis and transplanted
Libyan NATO rebels - forcing a civil war. Both the
House of Saud and Qatar know that betting on
inflaming sectarian Sunni-Shi'ite divisions always
goes down well in Washington.
And there's
also the extra bonus of further Wahhabi
penetration in northern Africa - via the funding
of Islamists in both Tunisia and Egypt. Qatar has
offered $10 billion of investment in Egypt to the
Muslim Brotherhood. And Qatar is now in fact
controlling a great deal of Libya's energy
resources - which means it will profit handsomely
from gas exports to Europe.
Doha can be
seen as a vastly more palatable version of
Medieval Riyadh - complete with cutting-edge
architecture and the Qatar Foundation imprinted on
FC Barcelona's jerseys. The cunning emir is more
than happy to play to the Anglo-French-American
gallery and use all manner of Western trappings in
the larger plot of a Gulf cover story for the
Western redesign of Middle East geopolitics.
Essentially, call it the Fast and Furious
Sunni Revenge. As the sheikhs see it, they are
winning a sectarian war against Shi'ites in Iran;
Shi'ites in Bahrain; Hezbollah in Lebanon; the
Alawites in Syria; and they are on the offensive
against the Shi'ite majority government in
Baghdad.
For The Fast White Man, these are
only distant rumblings in barbarous lands. What if
anybody who buys a ticket to the Bahrain Grand
Prix is supporting a murderous, regressive and
locally unpopular Sunni dynasty? The sheikhs
themselves couldn't care less either. So let's all
have fun with the drenched-in-blood-and-champagne
Arab Spring Grand Prix.
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