HamWatan
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I know this is going to sound haughty but it'll be well worth the time and effort. As vastly and incrementally alternate media, social media, rapid information sharing etc have expanded, one country that seems as lost as it's always been when it comes to enhancing knowledge and understanding is Pakistan. We haven't really been newsworthy for a long time and our populace is ignorant and un-represented in the modern day information wars enough that people think the ISI and CIA are together trying to destroy Pakistan and that noble India wants to save it. I've literally seen this nonsense come up plenty of times. That's how weak our game is. And nowhere is it worse than when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs - which are extremely significant to us no matter what the occasional Pakistani hipsterist 'lulz f$^% da Muslim Ummah let's just be Pakistan :d' crowd says. There's a bunch of made-in-Pakistan canards (which are unsurprisingly limited to Pakistani circles and contribute all the more to our intellectual isolation from countries/blocs we should be close to), cliches and platitudes about Middle East conflicts that are just ridiculous, do us no good and, as I said earlier, find n tract anywhere else.
'Iran and Saudi Arabia are the same thing, both are as bad as each other'
This is something you'll hear very often from a large section of our Pakistani punditry and it's either a lazy short-cut of an 'analysis' and subsequent false dichotomy of a conflict because we hate actually reading up on things or just a somewhat minor expression of Sunni bias against Shias. The inability to admit that, through the lens we Pakistanis undeniably view conflicts between Muslim countries (i.e who does more for pan Islamic unity, who fights the enemy and who works for it or with it etc), there is no comparison between Iran and KSA is itself the inability to admit that a Shia state and country is doing better than a 'Sunni' one (while Iran is indeed a Shia state, Sunni identity has nothing to do with KSA's policies and I'll expand upon this in the next point). That's sectarianism right there. Iran's consistently been named as a target in prominent neocon-Likudnik strategy papers and hindrance to their violent country's expansionist designs in the Middle East for a reason. They've always maintained support to Palestinian factions despite a series of betrayals by Hamas of the Iranians (they even mediated the rapprochement between Syria and Hamas in 2017, 5 years after Hamas' Qatari links led to it joining the Al Nusra attack vs a benefactor Syrian government). Iran's credentials will continue to slide through in the rest of this post, anyway, so I think I'll just jump straight to a description of what a despicable state KSA is and what a role of treachery is will, by design, always play.
The Saudi family was rewarded for its subservience to colonial designs - which included the establishment of the Zionist state and thus providing of the impetus for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and land-grab of 1948 against Arabs by armed Jews - in the 1920s and 1930s with control of the territories that would form KSA in 1932. Many other Arabs had rebelled against the Ottomans, but many of them had the eventual wisdom and/or integrity to see that they'd been used by the Brits who wouldn't ever fulfill their promises (unified Arabia etc) to them. Ibn Saud didn't care, he lacked the integrity others such as Sharif Hussain demonstrated. KSA was established as a pro-Western state and always followed the Western dictate. Opposing the iconic Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Arab nationalism (Nasser hated Pakistan by the way, considered its joining the Baghdad Pact which was a response to the UAR as an example of it being a Western patsy state), opposing the nationalist revolution in Iraq in the late 1950s, opposing Iran vehemently once it ceased to be a pro-West monarchy in 1979 and contributed nothing to the war efforts against Israel, futile as they were for a number of reasons. Every large scale conflict the Middle East theatre's seen has seen KSA consistently be on the same side as Israel with Israeli designs being particularly harmful to the region. I remember how King Fahd of KSA in 1982 tried to utilize the gruesome Iran-Iraq War to try and coerce the Syrians - a country with a strong anti-colonial nationalist tradition and which never accepted Israel's existence - into accepting the fraudulent '8 Point Peace Plan' which would mandate recognition by Arab states of Israel in exchange for the fraudulent 'Two State Solution' (setting up a broken, helpless 'Palestine' that Israel can bomb to oblivion in days). Keep in mind 1982's the same year that an Israeli whistleblower, Israel Shahak, released to the English press the famous 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s' paper by Oded Yinon, formulated in tandem with the US neocons (close affiliates for Israel and it's violent Likud Party). Israel's goal, since prior to the establishment of Israel, has always been to expand to the frontiers their demented ideology says 'God' gave to them. Two State, One State, doesn't matter. They annex land and that's what they do. Nice going, King Fahd. Also, the MbS-Jared Kushner 'cooperation', or in plainer terms consistent foreign policy screw-ups such as pushing Qatar to the Iranians and Russians, alienating the powerful Turkey and failing to stir up conflict in Lebanon via the Harriri kidnapping, isn't a 'new paradigm' in truth. Saudi Arabia's general move toward open relations with Israel predates MbS. For example, decisions by Israel and KSA to conduct joint military drills on islands given to KSA by Egypt. News from around 2014 or so. Can't post links yet until I get my post count to the sufficient number but Googling should be easy enough for this.
Oh yeah, and the Saudis funded takfirism in Pakistani madrassahs, poisoning our already-reckless Yanky Jihad in Afghanistan against the USSR and ensuring we lost many youth to extremism. In fact they've done that throughout the Middle East in history, forming groups acting as efficient privateers and paramilitary groups for KSA's masters to use. I wonder why Shia Iran always lets out fatwas - to go with practical implementation - of Shia-Sunni unity and even bans on Shias insulting some figures dear to Sunnis.
Even an American puppet like Musharraf looks good in front of these guys.
'KSA and Israel 'rapprochement is due to MbS liberalization scheme to make KSA good place for drugs and alcohol huhuhu'
As explained earlier, KSA and Israel were never truly on bad terms. Their cooperation has been strategic for a long time. Couldn't have ever been otherwise. Nothing to do with MbS and his stupid Vision2030. Israel also does not have relations based on any sort of values so the idea that 'religious KSA' wouldn't maintain ties with Israel is narrow-minded and dumb.
'Syria is sect war between Iran and KSA, Shia Assad vs Sunni rebels huhuhuhu'#
This was almost like a world war in terms of its significance to the stakeholders involved and the very idea of it being a 'sect war between Iran and KSA' is actively retarded. I'm sorry for the language but to describe the Syrian War in this manner is just so stupid and sad. It restricts our understanding of a vital conflict (although Pakistan's response to the Syrian crisis has been pretty good and I see it serving as a wake-up call for lots of Pakistanis caught up in the canards, cliches and platitudes that explain nothing). I'll do my best to sum it up.
Netanyahu and the 'right-wing' Likud Party (no such thing as left wing Zionism since it all entails racism, ethnic cleansing and expansion) campaigning for elections in 1996, apparently sick of the 'land for peace' Oslo 'Peace Process' (despite being a land-grab facilitated by the now-traitor Yasser Arafat, Zionists always crave more than they're getting so Oslo was considered a 'soft' approach by the Likudniks and neocons), had their new Israeli security strategy enshrined in a highly must-read document called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm' written for them by the Israeli-partisan American neocons in 1996. Check out the document on IRMEP's website, again I can't post links yet lol. Many of these American neocons would go on to play vital roles in bringing about the removal of long term Israeli adversary Saddam in 2003 (Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, for example, would create the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon in 2002 for disseminating false intel around the White House, Congress and media). The major principles of this document were that Iran was the primary threat, that Syria and its armed presence in Lebanon acted as a deterrent to Israeli expansion in Lebanon and as an Iranian link to Hezbollah (rightly recognized as the only obstacle to Israeli hegemony in Lebanon) and that Israel needed to take out Lebanon. States to be taken as allies of Israel in achieving these goals would be Turkey, Jordan, Egypt etc (Egypt been a powerless state since Nasser's death long back). Syria has to be removed from Lebanon and 'rolled back'. Lebanon's still the main target.
The people who drew up this document would eventually become policy-makers in important positions (e.g Pentagon during Bush administration that was filled with neocons). Come 2005, Rafik Harriri, prominent Sunni politician, closely affiliated to Saudi, in Lebanon, gets murdered with the hastily-assembled judicial team (headed by an AIPAC-affiliated German judge who concocted false evidence against Gaddafi in 1986 of terrorism, so yeah honest guy as per usual) immediately accusing Bashar al Assad of Syria. Not Hezbollah, but Syria. Assad, whose stance during these years was not anti-US at all (even Hafez tried to court Henry Kissinger in the 1990s and supported the US vs Saddam because Saddam and Hafez hated each other) and was even positive toward KSA, Turkey, Jordan etc, took the pressure and withdrew Syrian troops from their 29 year long presence in Lebanon.
Come 2006, Israel invades. Sold-out Lebanese government (can't remember the PM's name, but was anti-Hezbollah) and its army don't even participate in the defense. Hezbollah does, though. Complete disaster for Israel; aerial bombing does nothing, ground assault results in heavy casualties and the IDF cowards run back in haste and Israel commits a PR blunder by bombing Christian areas in Lebanon for ego and bringing some Western media attention to Israel's crimes. Hezbollah gains mad popularity. IIRC their current leading alliance, March 8 Alliance, was also created in 2006 or near that period. Hezbollah's socio-political clout continued rising - in stark comparison to other factions like Harriris - and Israel shifted its target to Syria itself now as opposed to Lebanon.
You'll remember the Wikileaks revelations via leaked diplomatic cables of US decision to utilize Kurdish secessionism against Syria and Assad dating back to 2006. Can't take down Lebanon, gotta target Syria directly now. Also, Kurds have been a faction heavily invested in by Israel since the 1960s, and their epic failure in the late 2017 KRG referendum (and subsequent ownage by Iran, Iraq and Turkey in both Iraq and Syria) provided the funny picture of the erratic Israel ending up being the only country openly supporting Kurd independance. Anyhow I hope you guys can put the pieces together.
... Apparently all this is 'Aketchually Iran and Saudi doing Shia Sunni fight'. Assad, like Nasser and Saddam, is an Arab nationalist. Baath Arab Socialist Party. He himself is not a Shia (whatever he may be, he isn't a Shia, and Alawite beliefs are not Shia at all if they are what I see on the Wiki page at least lol), his wife's a Sunni, his army majority Sunni, his parliament majority Sunni, country very secular and diverse, etc etc and so on and so forth.
I think this is pretty long and sufficient for now. Please stop making us Pakistanis look like fools with all these paindoo pseudo-analyses. The Middle East has a more complex dynamic than what you 'everything is Shia-Sunni fighting' crowd give it credit for. You guys keep pushing this nonsense everywhere, makes us look like ill-informed losers.
'Iran and Saudi Arabia are the same thing, both are as bad as each other'
This is something you'll hear very often from a large section of our Pakistani punditry and it's either a lazy short-cut of an 'analysis' and subsequent false dichotomy of a conflict because we hate actually reading up on things or just a somewhat minor expression of Sunni bias against Shias. The inability to admit that, through the lens we Pakistanis undeniably view conflicts between Muslim countries (i.e who does more for pan Islamic unity, who fights the enemy and who works for it or with it etc), there is no comparison between Iran and KSA is itself the inability to admit that a Shia state and country is doing better than a 'Sunni' one (while Iran is indeed a Shia state, Sunni identity has nothing to do with KSA's policies and I'll expand upon this in the next point). That's sectarianism right there. Iran's consistently been named as a target in prominent neocon-Likudnik strategy papers and hindrance to their violent country's expansionist designs in the Middle East for a reason. They've always maintained support to Palestinian factions despite a series of betrayals by Hamas of the Iranians (they even mediated the rapprochement between Syria and Hamas in 2017, 5 years after Hamas' Qatari links led to it joining the Al Nusra attack vs a benefactor Syrian government). Iran's credentials will continue to slide through in the rest of this post, anyway, so I think I'll just jump straight to a description of what a despicable state KSA is and what a role of treachery is will, by design, always play.
The Saudi family was rewarded for its subservience to colonial designs - which included the establishment of the Zionist state and thus providing of the impetus for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and land-grab of 1948 against Arabs by armed Jews - in the 1920s and 1930s with control of the territories that would form KSA in 1932. Many other Arabs had rebelled against the Ottomans, but many of them had the eventual wisdom and/or integrity to see that they'd been used by the Brits who wouldn't ever fulfill their promises (unified Arabia etc) to them. Ibn Saud didn't care, he lacked the integrity others such as Sharif Hussain demonstrated. KSA was established as a pro-Western state and always followed the Western dictate. Opposing the iconic Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Arab nationalism (Nasser hated Pakistan by the way, considered its joining the Baghdad Pact which was a response to the UAR as an example of it being a Western patsy state), opposing the nationalist revolution in Iraq in the late 1950s, opposing Iran vehemently once it ceased to be a pro-West monarchy in 1979 and contributed nothing to the war efforts against Israel, futile as they were for a number of reasons. Every large scale conflict the Middle East theatre's seen has seen KSA consistently be on the same side as Israel with Israeli designs being particularly harmful to the region. I remember how King Fahd of KSA in 1982 tried to utilize the gruesome Iran-Iraq War to try and coerce the Syrians - a country with a strong anti-colonial nationalist tradition and which never accepted Israel's existence - into accepting the fraudulent '8 Point Peace Plan' which would mandate recognition by Arab states of Israel in exchange for the fraudulent 'Two State Solution' (setting up a broken, helpless 'Palestine' that Israel can bomb to oblivion in days). Keep in mind 1982's the same year that an Israeli whistleblower, Israel Shahak, released to the English press the famous 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s' paper by Oded Yinon, formulated in tandem with the US neocons (close affiliates for Israel and it's violent Likud Party). Israel's goal, since prior to the establishment of Israel, has always been to expand to the frontiers their demented ideology says 'God' gave to them. Two State, One State, doesn't matter. They annex land and that's what they do. Nice going, King Fahd. Also, the MbS-Jared Kushner 'cooperation', or in plainer terms consistent foreign policy screw-ups such as pushing Qatar to the Iranians and Russians, alienating the powerful Turkey and failing to stir up conflict in Lebanon via the Harriri kidnapping, isn't a 'new paradigm' in truth. Saudi Arabia's general move toward open relations with Israel predates MbS. For example, decisions by Israel and KSA to conduct joint military drills on islands given to KSA by Egypt. News from around 2014 or so. Can't post links yet until I get my post count to the sufficient number but Googling should be easy enough for this.
Oh yeah, and the Saudis funded takfirism in Pakistani madrassahs, poisoning our already-reckless Yanky Jihad in Afghanistan against the USSR and ensuring we lost many youth to extremism. In fact they've done that throughout the Middle East in history, forming groups acting as efficient privateers and paramilitary groups for KSA's masters to use. I wonder why Shia Iran always lets out fatwas - to go with practical implementation - of Shia-Sunni unity and even bans on Shias insulting some figures dear to Sunnis.
Even an American puppet like Musharraf looks good in front of these guys.
'KSA and Israel 'rapprochement is due to MbS liberalization scheme to make KSA good place for drugs and alcohol huhuhu'
As explained earlier, KSA and Israel were never truly on bad terms. Their cooperation has been strategic for a long time. Couldn't have ever been otherwise. Nothing to do with MbS and his stupid Vision2030. Israel also does not have relations based on any sort of values so the idea that 'religious KSA' wouldn't maintain ties with Israel is narrow-minded and dumb.
'Syria is sect war between Iran and KSA, Shia Assad vs Sunni rebels huhuhuhu'#
This was almost like a world war in terms of its significance to the stakeholders involved and the very idea of it being a 'sect war between Iran and KSA' is actively retarded. I'm sorry for the language but to describe the Syrian War in this manner is just so stupid and sad. It restricts our understanding of a vital conflict (although Pakistan's response to the Syrian crisis has been pretty good and I see it serving as a wake-up call for lots of Pakistanis caught up in the canards, cliches and platitudes that explain nothing). I'll do my best to sum it up.
Netanyahu and the 'right-wing' Likud Party (no such thing as left wing Zionism since it all entails racism, ethnic cleansing and expansion) campaigning for elections in 1996, apparently sick of the 'land for peace' Oslo 'Peace Process' (despite being a land-grab facilitated by the now-traitor Yasser Arafat, Zionists always crave more than they're getting so Oslo was considered a 'soft' approach by the Likudniks and neocons), had their new Israeli security strategy enshrined in a highly must-read document called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm' written for them by the Israeli-partisan American neocons in 1996. Check out the document on IRMEP's website, again I can't post links yet lol. Many of these American neocons would go on to play vital roles in bringing about the removal of long term Israeli adversary Saddam in 2003 (Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, for example, would create the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon in 2002 for disseminating false intel around the White House, Congress and media). The major principles of this document were that Iran was the primary threat, that Syria and its armed presence in Lebanon acted as a deterrent to Israeli expansion in Lebanon and as an Iranian link to Hezbollah (rightly recognized as the only obstacle to Israeli hegemony in Lebanon) and that Israel needed to take out Lebanon. States to be taken as allies of Israel in achieving these goals would be Turkey, Jordan, Egypt etc (Egypt been a powerless state since Nasser's death long back). Syria has to be removed from Lebanon and 'rolled back'. Lebanon's still the main target.
The people who drew up this document would eventually become policy-makers in important positions (e.g Pentagon during Bush administration that was filled with neocons). Come 2005, Rafik Harriri, prominent Sunni politician, closely affiliated to Saudi, in Lebanon, gets murdered with the hastily-assembled judicial team (headed by an AIPAC-affiliated German judge who concocted false evidence against Gaddafi in 1986 of terrorism, so yeah honest guy as per usual) immediately accusing Bashar al Assad of Syria. Not Hezbollah, but Syria. Assad, whose stance during these years was not anti-US at all (even Hafez tried to court Henry Kissinger in the 1990s and supported the US vs Saddam because Saddam and Hafez hated each other) and was even positive toward KSA, Turkey, Jordan etc, took the pressure and withdrew Syrian troops from their 29 year long presence in Lebanon.
Come 2006, Israel invades. Sold-out Lebanese government (can't remember the PM's name, but was anti-Hezbollah) and its army don't even participate in the defense. Hezbollah does, though. Complete disaster for Israel; aerial bombing does nothing, ground assault results in heavy casualties and the IDF cowards run back in haste and Israel commits a PR blunder by bombing Christian areas in Lebanon for ego and bringing some Western media attention to Israel's crimes. Hezbollah gains mad popularity. IIRC their current leading alliance, March 8 Alliance, was also created in 2006 or near that period. Hezbollah's socio-political clout continued rising - in stark comparison to other factions like Harriris - and Israel shifted its target to Syria itself now as opposed to Lebanon.
You'll remember the Wikileaks revelations via leaked diplomatic cables of US decision to utilize Kurdish secessionism against Syria and Assad dating back to 2006. Can't take down Lebanon, gotta target Syria directly now. Also, Kurds have been a faction heavily invested in by Israel since the 1960s, and their epic failure in the late 2017 KRG referendum (and subsequent ownage by Iran, Iraq and Turkey in both Iraq and Syria) provided the funny picture of the erratic Israel ending up being the only country openly supporting Kurd independance. Anyhow I hope you guys can put the pieces together.
... Apparently all this is 'Aketchually Iran and Saudi doing Shia Sunni fight'. Assad, like Nasser and Saddam, is an Arab nationalist. Baath Arab Socialist Party. He himself is not a Shia (whatever he may be, he isn't a Shia, and Alawite beliefs are not Shia at all if they are what I see on the Wiki page at least lol), his wife's a Sunni, his army majority Sunni, his parliament majority Sunni, country very secular and diverse, etc etc and so on and so forth.
I think this is pretty long and sufficient for now. Please stop making us Pakistanis look like fools with all these paindoo pseudo-analyses. The Middle East has a more complex dynamic than what you 'everything is Shia-Sunni fighting' crowd give it credit for. You guys keep pushing this nonsense everywhere, makes us look like ill-informed losers.
