Arab power struggles: “The King is dead, long live the King” |James M. Dorsey

by Dr James M Dorsey

Political transition in the Middle East and North Africa operates so far on the principle of ‘The King is dead, long live the King.’

Libya’s battle for Tripoli alongside ongoing mass anti-government demonstrations that toppled autocratic leaders of Algeria and Sudan demonstrate that both popular Arab protests that in 2011 forced four presidents out of office and the counterrevolution it provoked are alive and kicking.

Protesters in Algeria and Sudan are determined to prevent a repeat of Egypt where a United Arab Emirates and Saudi-backed military officer rolled back the achievements of their revolt to install a brutal dictatorship or of Yemen, Libya and Syria that have suffered civil wars aggravated by interference of foreign powers.

In Libya, Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar, the UAE-Saudi-Egyptian-supported warlord, hopes that his assault on the capital Tripoli, the seat of the country’s United Nations-recognized government, will either end the conflict militarily or at the very least significantly increase his leverage in peace talks.

In all three countries, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the two Gulf nations most determined to maintain the Middle East and North Africa’s autocratic structure at whatever cost, have sought to either bolster military resolve to remain a decisive political force or support the rise of forces that fit their agenda.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE last week pledged a US$3 billion aid package to Sudan, including a US$500 million cash injection and transfers of cheap food, fuel and medicine.

The aid package contributed to deepening divisions among the opposition that has vowed to continue street protests until full civilian rule has been achieved despite the ousting of president Omar al-Bashir, the resignation of senior military officers, including the intelligence chief, and the arrest of Mr. Al-Bashir’s brothers.

While some Sudanese demanded that the military council reject the aid, other opposition groups, including several armed factions, travelled to Abu Dhabi to discuss a UAE-Saudi backed military proposal for a military-led transition council that would include civilians.

The Saudis and Emiratis are also hoping that Taha Osman al-Hussein, who was widely viewed as one of the most influential people in Mr. Al-Bashir’s inner circle, will play a key role in safeguarding the military’s position.

Mr. Al-Hussein returned to Khartoum this month from two years in exile in the kingdom, where he served as an African affairs advisor to the Saudi court, after having been unceremoniously sacked in 2017 on suspicion that he was a Saudi intelligence asset.

Moreover, the head of Sudan’s military council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan and his deputy, Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a paramilitary commander known as Hemeti, developed close ties to the Gulf states in their former roles as commanders of the Sudan contingent fighting in Yemen in support of the Saudi-UAE alliance.

A commander of feared Arab militias accused of genocide in Darfur, General Dagalo is widely viewed as ambitious and power hungry. His Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are deployed across Khartoum.

Western officials privately describe General Dagalo as “potentially Sudan’s Sisi,” a reference to Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who came to power in 2013 in a UAE-Saudi-supported military coup.

Mr. Al-Sisi has introduced one of the most repressive systems in recent Egyptian history. Western diplomats said General Dagalo’s ambitions virtually guaranteed that the military would not fully surrender power in any negotiated transition.

The military’s role in deposing president Hosni Mubarak as a result of a popular revolt in 2011 and subsequently restoring the military’s grip on power coupled with concern about General Dagalo inspired one of the Sudanese protesters’ chants: “It’s either victory or Egypt.”

Western and Arab diplomats also see Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the background of General Burhan’s decision not to meet with Qatari foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani days after receiving a Saudi-UAE delegation. Sudan has since said it was working out arrangements for a Qatari visit.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE together with Egypt and Bahrain have diplomatically and economically boycotted Qatar for the past 22 months in a bid to force the Gulf state to tow their geopolitical line.

For now, Mr. Haftar’s offensive has way laid a UN-sponsored peace conference that was expected to achieve an agreement that would have ensured that Islamists would continue to be part of the Libyan power structure.

Mr. Haftar, like his regional backers, accuses the Tripoli government of being dominated by Islamists, the bete noir of the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

On a visit to Saudi Arabia days before launching his attack on Tripoli, Mr. Haftar reportedly was promised millions of dollars in support in talks with Saudi King Salman, and his powerful son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in defiance of a United Nations arms embargo.

The battle for Libya could prove to be Mr. Haftar’s most difficult military offensive. His Libyan National Army (LNA) already controls Libya’s second city of Benghazi and much of rest of the country where it met relatively little resistance.

The battle also serves as a warning to protesters in Sudan and Algeria whose demands for fundamental change risk upsetting the UAE, Saud Arabia and Egypt’s applecart.

With no swift victory in sight in the battle for Tripoli, Libya risks another round of protracted war that could be aggravated by the fact that it is as much a domestic fight as it is a multi-layered proxy war.

Unlike Sudan, Libya has passed the corner. Years of civil and proxy wars have devastated the country and laid the groundwork for further violence. Algeria and Sudan still have a chance of avoiding the fate of Libya, or for that matter Syria and Yemen.

As the battle in Tripoli unfolds, Libya looms large as a live example of what is at stake. Protesters are up against forces whose backers have proven that there is little they will shy away from to achieve their objectives. Libya is but the latest example.

The king’s fate is at stake in the fighting in streets of southern Tripoli. His fate hangs like a sword of Damocles in the balance in the streets of Algiers and Khartoum..

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

America’s Way of War: Killing Civilians

TEHRAN (FNA)- From Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the United States and its allies have been really good at one thing only: Killing civilians in wars without end.

This has been going on since 2001, starting from Afghanistan, stretching to Yemen and then all the way back to Afghanistan, where the United Nations has once again warned that the United States and its allied forces are killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban and other armed groups do.

This has been largely the case in the first three months of this year. A new quarterly report from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan shows that from January to the end of March.

It’s interesting to note that in response to the report, US forces spokesman in Afghanistan Colonel Dave Butler has said: "We reserve the right of self-defense of our forces. The best way to end the suffering of non-combatants is to end the fighting through an agreed-upon reduction in violence on all sides."

The thing is, the ongoing violence could be reduced to a great extent if all US and NATO forces actually leave the war-torn country. This would reduce the high number of civilian casualties that the latest UN report shows are mostly being killed in massive airstrikes, drone operations, and brutal night raids.

The concern is that as the 2020 US elections approach, the situation could get worse and further civilian casualties won’t be off the charts. With the Taliban willing to negotiate peace with the central government in Kabul, even if the US is to carry out ever more drone strikes across the war-torn country, it will need better excuses to justify the presence of its drone bases, which are the favorite weapon of choice in this war of repetition.

During all these years, the US has tried everything in its manual of military tactics and still has gone nowhere: From dropping ‘the mother of all bombs,’ the largest non-nuclear munition in that military’s arena, to often time and again any other weaponry. Amid all that failure repetition, civilians are still dying; Afghans and others are being uprooted and displaced and terror outfits are spreading.

The argument is that this endless failure of the US military effort in Afghanistan is where it all began and where it seems never to end. And hard as it might be to believe, even when it comes to the US policy of negotiations with the Taliban, initiated by the Trump administration, it’s seemingly also going nowhere – but where it all began and it seems never to come to a decisive conclusion and result to end the tragedy.

On that note, the UN’s latest report on civilian casualties represents nothing new. In the past, we have read similar reports and warnings issued by the world body, which unsurprisingly failed to end America’s ‘the right war’ and hold anyone to account.

This understanding should do justice to this conclusion: Just like his predecessors, President Trump will also lose the longest war in American history. Which is to say, the next best possible plan is to try to follow through on a withdrawal plan, just as he promised during his elections campaign. He is likely to have a few problems on his hands. Above all, the Pentagon and the country’s commanders are still hooked on America’s longest war. They exhibit not the slightest urge to stop their murderous campaign.

After all, this represents the only thing the US military knows how to do in Afghanistan. And one thing is guaranteed: If they don’t plan a withdrawal strategy, they have the power and ability to kill even more civilians in that unfortunate West Asian nation.

And with that in mind, almost 18 years later, don’t think that victory is out of the question either. Every defenseless civilian that the US military kills in Afghanistan with its ‘precision’ weaponry is indeed a victory for the War Party in Washington and its terror proxy forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It justifies their ‘humanitarian’ occupation and makes sure the war that has cost the US economy billions of dollars will continue apace with no end in sight.

During Christmas USA Christian Americans Killing Jesus’ Brethren Goes On In Many Lands

by Jay Janson 

If commensurate responsibility of Christian Americans for the death from starvation and bombing of increasingly more than 85 thousand darling Yemeni children has no sobering effect on Christian Americans enjoying Christmas, then there is no Jesus Christ in USA CHRISTmas nor in the CHRISTian religion as practiced by the great majority of Americans who call themselves CHRISTians. No wonder Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s loud and angry cry, “God bless America? No! God Damn America for her crimes against humanity

As Christmas is celebrated in churches throughout the USA, sermons will be heard relating the birth of God in human form here on Earth. Evangelists will preach opening one’s heart to Jesus as salvation during life and afterlife, leaving unmentioned that Americans go on taking the lives of Jesus’ brethren in many Mideastern lands – leaving unmentioned as well that all-knowing Jesus certainly must know Americans are killing HIS brethren in multiple nations while celebrating HIS Birthday.

Though some Christian clergy counsel non participation in the military, the way Martin Luther King did, the vast majority of church congregations will hear no mention of the massive deadly US military action going on at present and for years in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Not Separation of Church and State 

This is not the often heralded ‘Separation of Church’ doctrine enforced by the government threat to lift a church’s non taxable status if its clergy criticizes its government’s military action bringing death to millions. This is the church in silent acquiescence to the taking of millions of lives.

Church Servile to State

Military chaplains bless soldiers off to kill and maim. Military Chaplains ‘serve’ in invasions that are sinful for Jesus, Who warns in the Bible, “You shall not murder,” (Matthew 19:18) This continual manslaughter is also a crime against humanity under the Nuremberg Principles in the United Nations Charter. Of course we presently still live in a lawless world wherein the military might of the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand ‘makes right.’

Murderous Apostasy

Given the teaching of Jesus, the Prince of Peace in the New Testament, this clergy led

silent accepting of the continual mass murder of people in their very own counties, as often as not in there very own homes, and silently accepting the lies in corporate mainstream media falsely justifying invasions and bombings, is mega horrific apostasy. Matthew 25:40 has the Lord saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”

Already a week ago, even criminal corporate mainstream networks reported that eighty-five thousand Yemeni children had already died of starvation for the bombing Americans are involved in, but Americans have not seen fit to feeding the Yemeni children still alive. Matthew 25:41 has the Lord saying to those on his left, Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food;” 44 and they will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry?’He will answer them, saying, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did not do it to Me.” New King James Version

If commensurate responsibility of Christian Americans for the death from starvation and bombing of increasingly more than 85 thousand darling Yemeni children has no sobering effect whatsoever on Christian Americans enjoying Christmas, then there is no Jesus Christ in USA Christmas nor in the Christian religion as practiced by the great majority of Americans who call themselves Christians in the United States of America. No wonder Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s loud and angry cry, “God bless America? No, no, God Damn America for her crimes against humanity! and American filmmaker Michael Moore’s condemning observation,“sick and twisted violent people that we’ve been for hundreds of years, it’s something that’s just in our craw, just in our DNA. Americans kill people, because that’s what we do. We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians.” 

Two years ago at Christmas time in 2015, OpEdNews, CounterCurrents of Kerala, India and Minority Perspective of Birmingham, UK, among others, published: Christ’s Birthday in an America that Kills Jesus Multiple Times in Multiple Countries Daily In it Jesus warns harming God’s children is equivalent to harming the Lord. “As you did it to one of the least of these My brothers and sisters, you did it to Me.” This principle of a common humanity is basic to the Nuremberg Principles of International Law, written to prosecute anyone who would do what the Nazis did, which included bombing, invading and occupying innocent nations as Christian Americans have done since end of World War Two.

And four years ago, at Christmas 2013, the same publications carried Jesus’ Birthday in an Apostate USA that Kills HIM Everyday Multiple Times USA places itself above Jesus. Shoots an Afghani, Pakistani, Yemeni, Somalian, Bang! Boom! there goes Jesus, shot down again at the same time, for in (Matthew 25:40:) Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” “All who draw the sword will die by the sword. ‘ (Matt. 26:52) “you know the commandments: you must not kill” (Mark 10.18)

Someday, America’s rulers, those powerful speculating investor bankers will be forced to factor into calculations for capital gains the possibility of imprisonment, seizure of assets to compensate for wrongful death in the millions, injuries in the tens of millions, massive destruction of property and theft of natural resources. Those present colossal investments in a third world war with China, Russia, Iran, etc. will come to be seen as unprofitable and the planet saved.

P.S. Your servant peoples historian is not naive enough not to realize the lack of interest in the USA for much of the above mentioned. The awakening of a demand for the application of natural, scriptural and international law on genocide will come from the populations in victim nations. This is only to be expected, for as Albert Einstein pointed out, “War …would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.”

Now to close, back to the long commercialized birthday celebration of Jesus, a Jesus, who was adamant about the damnation price for intentional and criminal homicide.

Jesus said, “you know the commandments: you must not kill…“ Mark 10.18

Jesus said, “why do you call me, “Lord, Lord” and not do what I say?” Luke. 6.46

Jesus said,“You must love your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10.26-28

Jesus said, “This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.” John. 14.22

Jesus said, “What I command you is to love one another.” John. 14.27

Jesus said, “You have learnt how it was said to our ancestors: ‘You must not kill; and anyone does kill he must answer for it before the court.’ But I say this to you: anyone who is angry with his brother will answer for it before the court.” Matt. 5.21-22

“Put your sword back in its place…for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Matt. 26:52

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Matt. 5:9

Full passage from Matthew 25:31-43

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,  naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him and say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ 

And the king will say to them in reply, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” 

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,  A stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ (New International Version)

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.