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IS/ISIL/ISIS and the Gulf Cooperation Council
As a long-time resident and man about town here in the Arabian Gulf, I was intrigued by the President’s speech on how we are to deal with IS/ISIL/ISIS.
I read and reread the communique agreed to by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners and Secretary Kerry. I can’t see why the U.S. believes these nations are going to rush to help in any fashion other than providing monetary assistance (as they already have been doing). Having worked deeply with the Saudi armed forces in the 90s and Bahrain’s armed forces for 20 years I know full well their capabilities and limitations, which will not be mentioned here.
Bahrain is still in the throes of reigning in a deeply un-trusting Shia constituency and doesn’t have the manpower to mobilize any land army to go and fight up north. Saudi, while mobilizing almost 30,000 National Guard forces to patrol and guard the northern border, would be hard pressed to do much more. Special Forces may and probably will be the only thing provided, but even they will come with strings attached.
The bottom line over here is that nobody trusts us anymore. Many contacts in senior positions in both countries are tired of the U.S.’s lack of direction and cautious because of the withdrawal from Iraq. They are afraid to commit forces only to be left out in the desert to fight some of the very folks they were funding just months ago.
This is going to be a very interesting few months……
Published in General
They’ve already been doing a lot more than just sending money.
Saudi, especially, has been sending a lot of weapons to various groups in Syria. There are a lot of US-made TOW and Chinese-made HJ-8 anti-tank missiles in Syrian now in “rebel” hands, all supplied from Saudi and UAE stocks.
Those are just the weapons that are the most “obviously” provided by them, since there’s nowhere else they could have come from. But certainly, there’s a lot more weapons flowing from them.
Obviously, GCC isn’t going to intervene in Syria with their own armies. They have proxy armies, just as they have been doing.
Along with what AIG said, the Saudis are also seeking some sort of arrangement with Iran, via Lebanon, to devise a strategy to deal with ISIS. Saudi Arabia gave Lebanon $1 billion for the purpose of counterterrorism, however, Saudi Arabia has not made one mention to Lebanon about Hizballah. They want the LAF to focus on the border region with Syria which has had “Sunni extremists” crossing the border to attack towns in Lebanon. This is going to be a very interesting few months indeed.
While I am highly skeptical of our President’s odds of running this right, I agree with him that we should avoid getting US ground troops involved…other than special forces. I supported the Iraq war for many years and I fault the Obama administration for pulling out our troops well before it was time.
That said, the idea of our soldiers and Marines going door to door to root out ISIS fighters makes me cringe. There are lots of things we will no doubt be required to do that I will be OK with but the bottom line for me is that the locals, be they Shi’a, Sunni, Syrian, Iraqi, Saudi, or whatever, have to do the heavy duty ground work.
Otherwise, I think we are just being used and will be crucified by the locals and the press…foreign and American. Because it is Obama, the American press will probably go easy on this but the foreign press and the locals will be brutal.
Sorry, Arabs…it’s time for you to stand up and fight you don’t want to be slaughtered or enslaved. Let’s see what you got. We won’t be fooled again…