[News] The counter-revolution club

[Anti-Imperialist News]

THE ROVING EYE
The counter-revolution club

By Pepe Escobar

May 28, 2011

To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click 
<http://atimes.com/atimes/others/Pepe2011.html>here.

They are a shish kebab of hereditary monarchies, emirates and 
outright theocracies. Most sit on oceans of oil (45% of the world's 
reserves). They are addicted to the West's glitter and glamour - from 
London to Monte Carlo, from the delicacies of Paris to the weaponized 
delicacies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO. They 
abhor democracy like they abhor poverty. Some would be glad to topple 
their own people - as indeed they do. And they view Shi'ite Iran as 
worse than the anti-Christ.

Welcome to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), formed in 1981 by top 
dog Saudi Arabia plus the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, 
Bahrain and Oman. A more appropriate denomination would be Gulf 
Counter-Revolutionary Council - or club; a Gulf club to end all golf 
clubs. As far as the GCC is concerned, the great 2011 Arab revolt 
will triumph over their (wealthy) dead bodies.

How can they be so sure? Republican dynasties as in Tunisia or Egypt 
may be toppled; Libya may be bombed to the Stone Age; Syria may be 
threatened. But nothing will happen to the GCC because the 
enlightened West - not Allah - is their supreme guardian.

New members welcome
It's instructive to note that those 3,000-plus bombing raids on Libya 
since NATO took over the war on March 31 were conducted mostly by 
monarchies (Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar and the 
UAE), apart from republican France, and before that, via Africom, the 
United States.

Only a few hours before United States President Barack Obama and 
British Prime Minister David Cameron were enjoying a special 
relationship barbecue this week, NATO was turning 19 Libyan civilians 
into, well, barbecue, and slightly roasting at least 130 others. The 
GCC merrily applauded.

The European Union (EU) and the GCC have issued a joint declaration 
forcing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to go, not before handing over power 
to the Libyan Transitional National Council - which happens to be 
financed and armed exactly by NATO and the GCC.

Now the GCC has declared it would love the idea of Jordan joining the 
club - and the same applies to Morocco. As for Yemen - which has 
yearned to be a member since 1999 - forget it; it's not a monarchy, 
and "unstable" to boot, with al those unruly people protesting. The 
best the GCC can do is to allegedly "mediate" into what is in effect 
regime change - fully supported by the US and the EU.

Apart from tiny Oman, whose Sultan Qabus follows the Ibadi school, 
all GCC members are hardcore Sunnis. There are plenty of Jordanian 
"advisers" among the Bahraini/Saudi repression machine.

Jordan and Morocco may get to become GCC members not only because 
they're monarchies - but most of all because they hate Iran like the 
plague (even though they are not exactly located in the Persian Gulf.)

Jordan's King Playstation, sorry, Abdullah II, invented the murky 
concept of the "Shi'ite crescent" way back in 2004, a conspiracy 
according to which Shi'ites from Iran and Iraq to Lebanon and Syria 
would violently take over the Middle East. Morocco's King Muhammad VI 
for his part cut off diplomatic relations with Tehran in 2009.

The GCC's top moment of counter-revolutionary glory, so far, happened 
less than two days after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates left 
Bahrain - when Saudi Arabia, with a minor contribution from the UAE, 
invaded Bahrain in support of their cousins, the Sunni al-Khalifa 
dynasty, and against the overwhelming majority of the peaceful, 
protesting Bahraini population. The GCC's secretary general, 
Abdullatif al-Zayani, happens to be an al-Khalifa-aligned Bahraini.

There were no US, United Nations or EU sanctions, much less a NATO 
bombing spree to "celebrate" this invasion. Instead, earlier this 
week, EU foreign ministers slapped even more sanctions against 
Belarus, Iran, Libya and Syria. Not by accident all of them have been 
Washington targets for regime change, since the time of the neo-conservatives.

Let us play in your courtyard
Neo-colonial NATO and monarchic/theocratic GCC is a match made in 
weapons contractor heaven. The GCC will be incorporated into the 
global US missile shield system. Soon, there'll be that juicy $60 
billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia - the largest in American history.

Western idolatry practitioners that they are, GCC members also wanna 
have fun and be part of the real post-modern action - neo-colonial 
war. After all, NATO itself can be interpreted as a professional 
mercenary neo-colonial army, ready to intervene anywhere from Central 
Asia to Northern Africa.

Take Qatar. Qatar was the first country to recognize that dodgy 
bunch, the Libyan "rebels"; the first GCC member to supply NATO with 
French Mirage fighter jets and American C-17 Globemasters; it set up 
satellite Ahrar TV for the Transitional Council; showered them with 
MILAN missile launchers; and most of all immediately started to 
"supervise" oil exports from Cyrenaica.

The reward was inevitable; on April 14, Obama hosted the emir of 
Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, at the White House, and 
lavishly praised him for his "leadership" in promoting "democracy in 
the Middle East" - a reference to Qatar's role in Libya.

As for Salman al-Khalifa, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, on May 19 he 
glowingly posed for a photo-op on the steps of 10 Downing Street in 
London with Prime Minister Cameron, proving that slaughtering 
civilian, unarmed protesters and giving a green light for the House 
of Saud to invade his country was definitely good for business.

But no one beats the UAE in the deadly toy realm. President Nicolas 
Sarkozy opened France's first military base in the Middle East in Abu 
Dhabi. The UAE has sent fighter jets to NATO in Libya. They are a 
"troop-contributing nation" for NATO in Afghanistan. And they will be 
the first GCC and Arab nation to send an ambassador to NATO 
headquarters in Brussels.

Along with Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, the UAE is a member of one of 
NATO's myriad "partnerships" - the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative 
military partnership. Translation: NATO encroaching on the Persian 
Gulf, positioning itself to raise any amount of hell against Iran.

And then there's Zayed Military City; a secluded training camp in the 
desert for a secret army of mercenaries, to be deployed not only in 
the UAE but throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Off with their heads!
Milking the GCC's burning desire to outsource mercenaries; that's the 
latest high-value-added scam of former Navy SEALS and former 
Blackwater supremo Erik Prince (in 2009 Blackwater was rebranded Xe Services.)

It was in Abu Dhabi that Prince - through a joint venture called 
Reflex Responses - signed a first contract of $529 million on July 
13, 2010, to deliver his services to "progressive" Sheik Mohamed bin 
Zayed al-Nahyan. The idea was Zayed's.

The New York Times may have had its kicks depicting, in a May 14 
story, Colombians entering the UAE posing as construction workers, 
with special visas stamped by the UAE's military intelligence branch, 
so they could clear customs and immigration with no questions asked; 
yes, Prince wants battalions of Colombian and Central American 
mercenaries; he won't recruit Muslims to kill their own cousins and 
be faced with malfunctioning units.

At least the paper pointed that Prince "is hoping to build an empire 
in the desert, far from the trial lawyers, congressional 
investigators and Justice Department officials" - without asking any 
hard questions about it.

The mercenary army's agenda contains everything one needs to know; 
they will be involved in special ops inside and outside the UAE; 
"urban combat"; the "securing of nuclear and radioactive materials"; 
"humanitarian missions" (?); the defense of oil pipelines and sleek 
glass towers from "terrorist attacks"; and most significant of all, 
"crowd-control operations", where the crowd "is not armed with 
firearms but does pose a risk using improvised weapons [clubs and stones]".

There it is, spelled out; internal repression all across the Persian 
Gulf, as against the sprawling labor camps housing tens of thousands 
of South Asian workers; or in case citizens of the UAE get the 
Bahrain pro-democracy fever. The excuse for all these ops could not 
be less original: the Iranian bogeyman, or "aggression".

Prince had always wanted Blackwater to be a mercenary army deployable 
anywhere in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He even wanted the US 
Central Intelligence Agency to use it for global special ops - before 
the CIA decided to laser on drones as a more cost-effective method. 
Now Prince has a wealthy Sheikh - a Pentagon fan who's in favor of 
bombing Iran - to bankroll his ''vision''.

The first battalion boasts 580 mercenaries. Zayed's men have promised 
that if they prove themselves in a "real-world mission", the Emirate 
will pay Prince for a whole brigade of several thousand men, to the 
tune of billions of dollars. Prince could then move to his dream of a 
desert mercenary training complex modeled after Blackwater's compound 
in Moyock, North Carolina.

So expect another "House of Saud does Bahrain" scenario. Like the 
mercenary army beating to death Pakistanis, Nepalis, Bangladeshis and 
Filipinos who want better working conditions in the UAE.

Or expect covert special ops in Egypt and Tunisia to ensure their 
next governments align themselves with the US and the EU. Or expect 
boots on the ground in Libya to "provide humanitarian aid to 
civilians" (oops, that was two months ago; even Obama now says it's 
all about regime change).

Still, all those Libyan "oil facilities" must be in the safe hands of 
US and EU multinationals (and not Russian, Indian and Chinese). 
Still, Gaddafi's inner circle must be "neutralized". And still Libya 
must be kept subdued, according to the age-old imperial tenets of 
divide and rule.

So when the goin' gets tough, who you're gonna call? Definitely Xe 
Services' "innovative solutions", brought to you by Sheikh Zayed. No 
wonder the GCC club is the talk of the (counter-revolutionary) town.

Pepe Escobar is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim>Globalistan: 
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 
2007) and 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>Red 
Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, 
just out, is 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1>Obama 
does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com.



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