The Fast and Furious Sunni Revenge

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
April 19, 2012

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ND19Ak02.html

    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.

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 petro-
monarchies 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 petro-monarchies 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.

______________

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the
Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble
Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad
during the surge. His most recent book, just out, is
Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

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