Oman as Iran’s Trojan Horse in the GCC

Prince Turki al-Faisal addressing the Manama Dialogue

Oman is emerging as Iran’s Trojan Horse trying to destroy the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) from within.

Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the monarch of Oman since 1970, reportedly played a key role in facilitating the secret U.S.-Iran talks leading up to the November 24 “historic” nuclear deal, according to The Associated Press.

Oman is isolated from much of the rest of the Arabian Peninsula by a formidable mountain range, while Iran is just across the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global oil shipments that has at times raised tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

As early as 2009, according to Wikileaks, the sultanate offered to arrange talks between the U.S. and Iran – which hadn’t had diplomatic relations for 30 years – on condition that they were kept quiet. But it was reportedly the hostage crisis of three American “hikers” that brought him into a mediating role between the two sides and helped win the release of the three Americans, who were arrested and accused of spying while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border.

With that success in his pocket, Sultan Qaboos offered to facilitate a U.S.-Iran rapprochement, the AP reports. In March, U.S. and Iranian officials met in Oman, Secretary of State John Kerry followed up in May, and the talks took on a momentum of their own after Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s June elections.

Sultan Qaboos wasn’t in front of the cameras in Geneva, but a news report in the Saudi daily al-Hayat this morning speaks of “fears within the GCC of Iranian-Omani efforts to break up” the six-member club grouping Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Oman and Saudi Arabia bickered publicly over the GCC’s future last week at the three-day Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, a forum on Middle East security.

A much-anticipated Gulf union is inevitable and will happen because people in the region are keen on it, Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former Intelligence Chief who also served as ambassador in both the United States and United Kingdom, told the conference.

He was commenting on remarks made Saturday by Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, the Omani foreign minister, who said his country rejected the Gulf union and would pull out of the club if the union were approved.

“Everyone has the right to express their opinions,” Prince Turki retorted. “However, this will not prevent the union from happening. Oman can join it then or later, or not at all,” he said.

On the nuclear talks in Geneva last month between the 5+1 world powers and Iran, Prince Turki said they lacked a “very important factor” – namely, the participation of Iran’s Gulf neighbors.

“I don’t know the reasons for that… because eventually we are the ones that will be affected by anything -- a military event or a nuclear leak or any earthquake that may hit the [nuclear] sites in Iran,” he remarked.

“No doubt we are now facing a big smile from the Iranian leadership in the way they are dealing with the Gulf.”

Prince Turki added: “Iran must take concrete measures before we can judge whether it is going forward with a smile, or simply showing its teeth.”

Prince Turki said television and radio stations in Iran are targeting the Gulf Arabs with inflammatory broadcasts tackling “sensitive issues in our Arab world.”

Addressing Iran, he said: “Why don’t you close them down and show us your good intentions? Show us you are serious about this real, wide smile you are showing us.”

The six GCC partners hold their annual year-end summit in Kuwait, tomorrow, Tuesday.

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat, has this word today to tell tomorrow’s summiteers:

The region is unlike the one that existed three years ago.

Governments are confused. Armies are anxious. Borders are violated or about to be…

Iraq’s disintegration is an undeniable fact. The dismemberment of Yemen is flagrant. What looked like a Syrian intifada turned out to be a sectarian war feeding tension into the neighbors’ arteries.

Lebanon’s institutions are in a coma and its doors are open to refugees and fire. Libya, which spent four decades under one leader, today terrorizes its people, neighbors and the world. From Yemen to Tunisia, al-Qaeda and its ilk are omnipresent…

Today’s world is much more dangerous than the world that witnessed the birth of the GCC in 1981.

Bar Israel, four key regional states will play a dominant role in this difficult phase depending on their respective internal stability, resources and alliances.

They are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Turkey.

GCC leaders who meet in Kuwait tomorrow are aware of the magnitude of the threats to stability and roles. They know the importance of adapting to change.

Oman’s attitude clearly unveiled that the Gulf union’s journey won’t be trouble-free.

But sensitivities should not forestall attempts to reconcile views of the various GCC member states on how to handle this phase of containing risks and assigning roles.  

“The Game of Nations” is defunct

This is the weekly think piece penned in Arabic by Saudi mass media celebrity Jamal Khashoggi for pan-Arab daily al-Hayat

Better stop being haunted by the 1950s and 1960s mentality. And better cast aside “The Game of Nations” book written by the famed ex-spy Miles Copeland.

Local or international intelligence operatives can no more change the course of history, build nation-states, demarcate borders or create national leaders.

Yes, they can sabotage a course of events or stop that course in its tracks, but they cannot reignite it or change its direction on a whim.

Some people are slow learners and persist in being obsessed by grand bargains.

Vast segments of the public still consider themselves “pawns on a chessboard” – another “book” that people should stop reading – and sit idly by waiting for whatever is decided for them. They would thoughtlessly subscribe to what columnists and political analysts propagate about plans in world capitals for “a grand political bargain” with Iran.

The grand bargain with Iran would see her reconciling with the West, putting her nuclear ambitions on hold (albeit temporarily), and sufficing with nuclear power production.

The deal would leave Syria, after its regime’s rehabilitation in one way or another, in Iran’s sphere of influence. In return, Saudi Arabia would get Lebanon as a consolation prize. A Lebanese government acceptable to Riyadh and amenable to Hezbollah would be set up.

Those with a 1960s mindset continue to redraw the map of the Middle East without installing “The Power of the Peoples” update on “The Game of Nations.”

After the Arab Spring’s defeats and setbacks, “The Power of the Peoples” is still alive and kicking. It will surely affect the outcome of events despite all the agreements that could be reached in Geneva-2 or at the public and hush-hush meetings being held around the globe to discuss the New Arab World, which is still in the making.

True, the Middle East is on fire and in a state of flux. The borders set in the Sykes-Picot Agreement are still in place, but the flow of people and across these so-called artificial borders has been ceaseless. Seeping through these porous frontiers too where these peoples’ pan-Arab problems.

All Middle East files have been opened concomitantly. It’s as though the world and history want to solve them all at the same time: the perennial Arab-Israeli dispute; chronic unemployment and underdevelopment; crises of democracy and freedoms; and even the Sunni-Shiite faceoff.

That’s what makes proponents of deal-making insist on the existence of “The Grand Bargain.”

When drawing a geopolitical map of the Middle East today, we find it leads off with the 5+1 talks in Geneva between Iran and the West. The negotiations have “temporarily” failed to yield an agreement for Tehran to suspend nuclear enrichment and for the West to temporarily lift some economic sanctions; and for the Islamic Republic to normalize relations with the West, ending its 34-year-old cold war with the United States.

Sitting on the sidelines are Saudi Arabia and her Gulf partners. Israel is close by. All of them are faithfully watching what’s going on with interest.

Only Israel is outspoken about her concern, fuming and threatening at times that any agreement reached will not stop her from acting alone to protect her national security.

In fact, Israel is the prime mover of Western and American interest in Iran’s nuclear program, which it perceives as an existential threat.

The Arab Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, don’t see it that way. They deem it as a threat liable to tilt the regional balance of power in favor of Iran, which is eagerly striving to become the region’s hegemon.

The Gulf Arabs are more concerned than Israel because the Geneva negotiations revolve around Iran’s nuclear ambitions and let pass Iranian interventionism and regional hegemony designs. The Geneva negotiations close the eyes to Iran’s obstruction of national reconciliation in Bahrain, her smuggling of arms to the Houthis in Yemen and what Prince Saud al-Feisal described as her occupation of Syria.

At best, the United States would tell us a solution of the nuclear problem would be crowned by a historic reconciliation bound to solve the other issues.

Such U.S. promises are empty words.

Washington won’t be bothered with what it describes as “local Middle Eastern” matters that don’t threaten her or Israel’s security – matters it does not understand or wish to understand in the first place.

Here we turn to the Syrian square on the Great Bargain’s chessboard.

Saudi Arabia wants the conflict to come to an end because the Syria crisis is taxing her and her partners in the region by virtue of the overflow of demographic changes and the threats made by al-Qaeda to turn Syria into its homestead. Al-Qaeda is already exploiting sayings of the prophet to sign up new recruits, chiefly from Saudi Arabia.

The United States for its part is not in a rush to resolve the Syria conflict. And herein comes the “Grand Bargain” theorists and their aforesaid talk of “Syria for Iran and Lebanon for Saudi Arabia.”

They stretch their imagination further, talking of a second deal with Egypt as the top prize and a third involving Libya. They might even dismember Syria as in the wake of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles with total disregard of the historical transformations that occurred in the region since the Arab Spring.

The most important of these shifts were “peoples’ power,” “cross border information” and the influence of “social media” and “organized political movement.”

These changes put a stop to underhand deals. Strong leaders who descend on their people “from the sky” are a thing of the past. And so are the “Secret Police” and the likes of the “Securitate” and the “Stasi.”

It is wrong to resist the power of history under the illusion that the powerful can strike deals and plan the future independently of the peoples whose divisions were caused by a lack of experience in democracy. These peoples are still in a state of flux and at times furious. They know what they want but are bewildered by it.

They will certainly not accept a new conqueror showing up on a white horse to lead them to a bright new dawn.

The era of one-man rule is dead and gone.

No longer a Shiite Crescent

Press clipping dated Monday, 13 June 1949

By Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s authoritative political analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news channel, writing in Arabic today for the mass circulation newspaper al-Hayat

When the term “Shiite Crescent” was coined a few years back, it was meant to warn of Iranian expansionism across the Levant.

Nowadays, after the Big Powers’ defeat in the Qusayr battle, Shiite fundamentalism is basking in all the glory of triumph.

With the resulting enlistment of hundreds of Iraqi Shiite volunteers in the war overtly championed by Iran, the Crescent is liable to evolve into a political axis stretching from Tehran to Beirut via Baghdad and Damascus.

The Iranian Oil Ministry will pull out old maps from its drawers to build the pipeline to pump Iranian oil and gas from Abadan (across Iraq) to Tartus.

The Iranian Ministry of Roads and Transportation will dust off the national railways authority’s blueprints for a new branch line from Tehran to Damascus, and possibly Beirut,

Why not? The wind is blowing in their favor and I am not making a mountain out of a molehill.

Tehran has been mulling and airing such projects for years without actually starting them.

But she will, once she settles the Syria war in her favor. It is only natural for her to consolidate victory on the ground by blending her triumphant axis in a singular political, economic and military network.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader or Guardian Jurist of Iran, will realize his dream of delivering his sermon from the pulpit of Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, announcing the attainment of Islamic unity he has long promised.

He will then pompously step down from the pulpit to stroke the forehead of a wheelchair-bound Damascene boy, signaling that forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

He will then stand next to a group of Syrian Sunni ulema wearing white turbans. There are lots of them, in the mould of Mufti Ahmad Hassoun, ready to oblige.

He will shake and raise their hands as camera clicks and flashlights capture the historic moment.

The Guardian Jurist will promise that his next prayer – or his successor’s. if he is sufficiently humble – will be in Jerusalem.

But he won’t mention the Golan. He knows the Russians are now the key component of the UN monitoring force separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the Heights.

Because Takfiris are still mounting desperate operations here and there, he realizes that Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters are busy keeping the peace in predominantly Sunni cities, towns and townships.

In that afternoon, a huge reception will be held in a newly rehabilitated Damascus palace still showing the scars of war to mark the signing of a mutual defense pact by the presidents of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The Guardian Jurist will stand wreathed in smiles in the background, perhaps in awe at the likely appearance of the Hidden Imam to bless the agreement.

We turn southward to Riyadh and find the capital calm and dusty but concerned the battle was settled in favor of Bashar al-Assad and his partners.

Riyadh is conscious the clean sweep is not Bashar’s but that of Iran and the old Khomeini scheme.

Bashar becomes the representative of Vali e-faqih in Damascus.

Riyadh is also alarmed by Iranian activity in its surrounding area.

It fears for Bahrain. The Houthis have won uncontested control of more than half the old North Yemen. South Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s traditional ally, is being gradually eaten away by Iran.

Gulf unity plans have dissipated. Some Gulf countries are keen to flatter Iran so as to preserve a modicum of their national sovereignty.

The Arab common market and Fertile Crescent idea evaporated and with it the dream of resurrecting the Hejaz Railway that ran from Istanbul to Holy Mecca across Syria and Jordan.

Even the Europeans are buying the Iranian oil flowing through the Abadan-Tartus pipeline. They are also thinking of linking the European Gas Network with its Iranian counterpart. They have forgotten all about sanctions because the world always prefers to deal with winners.

On the Arab Gulf home front, young men are seething. They feel their governments let them down by failing to face up to the Iranian stratagem. The young men are in a sectarian tinderbox and buckling under economic stress. Extremism is rampant and the security services are busy hunting down extremist groups.

A nightmare, don’t you think?

That’s why I believe Saudi Arabia expressly will not allow Iran to win in Syria.

Iranian presence there proved a burden from the day Hafez al-Assad sealed his alliance with Iran’s Islamic Revolution as soon as it took over power 40 years ago.

Whereas the Syrian regime’s muscle under Hafez left a margin of balance and independence in the partnership, his son submitted totally to the Iranians and Hezbollah.

It is thanks to them Bashar is still alive and ruling a country in ruin. Instead of being their partner, he has become their subordinate.

The implication is that Iran’s presence in Lebanon and Syria now constitutes a clear threat to Saudi Arabia’s national security, and Turkey’s as well.

Consequently, Saudi Arabia must do something now, albeit alone. The kingdom’s security is at stake.

It will be good if the United States joined an alliance led by Saudi Arabia to bring down Bashar and return Syria to the Arab fold. But this should not be a precondition to proceed.

Let Saudi Arabia head those on board.

Let us put aside any misgivings about sequels of the Arab Spring, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s ambitions.

Let the objective be to bring down Assad fast.

The objective is bound to draw together multiple forces ranging from the Anbar tribes to Hamas to Egypt’s Brothers to Tunisia to the Gulf Countries.

That would entice Turkey to partake in the alliance. France could follow. And whether the United States does or does not breeze in is inconsequential. After all, it’s our battle and our security. U.S. security is not on the line. 

The unmaking of the Arab world

Fahmi Howeidi is a leading Egyptian political and social scholar and author, and one of the Arab world’s most prominent columnists. Following is my abridgment of his syndicated think piece this week:

There is a sort of overlap in tuning in on the revolution and the government in Egypt.

That’s caused either by incessant media campaigns denigrating the revolution in the public eye or by the torrent of government crises news, which make people lose sight of the revolution’s achievements.

In effect, the Egypt revolution ended a reign of corruption and tyranny and returned the country to its people. It brought a Pharaonic era to a close, restored civil liberties, ended minority rule and empowered the masses to have the final say on their government.

But why did Egypt’s post-revolution administration stumble?

One explanation is that decade-long tyranny not only destroyed Egypt’s political and economic present, but its future as well.

The other explanation is the preclusion of all and sundry from Egyptian politics save for a restricted group of loyalists handpicked by the former president.

As a result, the political class was neither coached in managing state affairs nor shown the ropes of state administration.

This political class was also shut out from any communal endeavor to promote the national interest through state institutions.

Egypt’s post-revolution administration crisis can thus be blamed on a host of factors, including:

• The classic tension that dawns each time a revolution brings down a regime and tries to replace it
• The heavy legacy left by the deposed regime, such as the ruination of politics, the economy, state institutions and society.
• Mismanagement of state affairs by President Mohamed Morsi and his team and their reneging of election promises.
• Immaturity of opposition figures
• The tug-of-war among some nationalist camp components
• Lawlessness, which also undermines economic activity
• External pressures.

Everyone in Egypt is now aware that although it made good progress over the years in running its own business, the Muslim Brotherhood did not make the grade in reigning over and managing society.

That is the root cause of the current crisis, which led to the political stalemate in Egypt.

Overcoming the political deadlock requires a lot of wisdom, courage and foresight, all of which seem lacking – at least for the foreseeable future.

(2)

In the case of all four or five Arab Spring countries, revolt proved much more profound and far-reaching than actual or prospective regime change.

The new manifestations that are kept in the public eye day and night by the media touch only the surface of the spirit of rebellion, which drove ordinary citizens to protest loudly against oppression, corruption and social injustice.

The discrepancy made me distinguish between what I call the “tumultuous spring” and the “silent” variety.

“Tumultuous spring” came out in the open and called for regime change in some countries.

By contrast, the “silent spring” chose to express itself calmly through the social media.

Its aim is regime reform, but not regime change. It falls in the category of “reformist spring” as opposed to “revolutionary spring.”

The open letter calling for reform, which Saudi cleric Salman al-Odah posted last month on Facebook and Twitter falls in the latter category. Odah specifically called for ending the practice of media control, information censorship and the release of political prisoners.

Other reformists made similar appeals elsewhere in the Gulf.

(3)

From this perspective, I believe the pan-Arab nation is meanwhile facing an existential impasse that needs addressing.

While historic change looms on the horizon, a vacuum hangs on the Arab arena.

Observers fail to spot a leader or a plan the Arabs can rally around or defend.

When focusing on the Arab arena, all they spot are three endeavors: the Turks are expanding economically, the Iranian politically and the Israelis through land grabs to build settlements.

Moreover, changes on the ground suggest the region’s maps are being reconfigured and a new Sykes-Picot Agreement is being contemplated.

The pointers:

• Iraq faces partition after having been steamrolled by the United States invasion. Iraqi Kurdistan has almost seceded, and nothing keeps the lid on its independence other than the absence of a public declaration of self-determination preceded by a ban on hoisting the Iraqi national flag on its territory. A forceful call is also being made to divide Iraq into three regions – one for Kurds, another for Shiites and the third for Sunnis.
• Syria is poised to follow suit, especially that its regime seems on its last legs so far. Should the Assad regime fall, contingency plans are already in place to declare an Alawite state along the country’s coastline. In anticipation, Syria’s central bank reserves have reportedly been moved to Latakia, whose seaport and airport are being upgraded.
• The side-effects of the Syrian regime’s collapse would allow for (a) a shift in the balance of power in Lebanon at Hezbollah’s expense (b) a shot in the arm to the Sunni uprising in Iraq (c) a rekindling of the Kurdish issue, which explains Turkey’s recent preemptive peace deal with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, and (d) rethinking and re-planning in Tehran, particularly that a blitz by Israel on its nuclear facilities is not off the table yet.
• The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain in limbo and the risks of a third Intifada erupting mount.
• Sudan’s South has broken away from its North.
• In Yemen, calls are growing louder all the time for the secession of the South.
• Morocco is grappling with the Tamazight movement’s political demands shortly after recognizing the Tamazight language in its new constitution.
• Over and above the widening schism between its Sunnis and Shiites, the Arab world finds itself riven by rifts between the Salafi movement and Ennahda Movement in Tunisia, between Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and between Salafis and seculars in Algeria.

These are ample indicators of how the Arab world is liable to break up. The process of restructuring it is quietly moving ahead while it remains unfazed or unaware. 

Time for a rethink of Saudi foreign policy

“Saudi foreign policy requires large-scale reform. The policy’s premises and political instruments call for renewal as well.”

Dr. Khalid al-Dakheel

In a two-part series published February 3 and February 10 in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, authoritative Saudi analyst and professor of political sociology at King Saud University Khalid al-Dakheel penned a sober, in-depth analysis of the reasons for the required overhaul.

Here is the essence of his argument:

Changed times open the way to changed societies. Nation-states have to adapt and react accordingly.

Likewise at the regional level, where a nation-state is expected to respond and react to changed surroundings, revamping the rationale of its regional and international policies and alliances correspondingly.

Aftereffects of the changes sweeping the Arab World – all the way from the Arab Mashreq to the Arab Maghreb – for the past two years have been monumental. Because their socio-popular causes targeted the ruling establishment and the nature of the State, the Arab World we knew in the 20^th Century is fading away before our eyes.

Problem is, no one knows when or how or where the changes in the regional states’ political cultures, values, interests and alliances would lead.

What is certain is that the Arab World won’t be the same again.

The era of the two Assads’ rule in Syria, for example, is clearly fizzling out.

But what kind of Syria will emerge from the ruins, rivers of blood and social fabric distortions that the two Assads’ rule caused over 40 years?

In Egypt, the First Republic has cracked. But the Second Republic is yet to see the light because of a destructive struggle in free fall. The struggle pits two major components of a shabby political class. The Muslim Brotherhood leads one component while its detractors lead the other.

The same, or almost, can be said in the cases of Yemen, Libya and Tunisia.

Then comes Iraq, where years of suffering culminated in the U.S. invasion.

After the end of the U.S. occupation, came sectarian governance in Iraq under Iran’s thumb.

And now, there is a new uprising in Iraq’s west, seeking a redress.

Where would all this lead? What would happen to political power checks and balances in Jordan and Morocco? How would the situation in Bahrain end?

The questions are endless. But they are legitimate, pressing and on everyone’s mind. They also need to be addressed audaciously, transparently and realistically.

Saudi Arabia falls in the middle of these troubled waters and sits in the eye of their storm.

She is a vast, rich and politically stable country. But she is lashed by wild winds from all sides.

Paradoxically, Saudi Arabia’s influence on the stormy events’ course is far from being commensurate with her breadth, her potentials, her stability and her vast network of regional and international relations.

Her clout in Iraq, for instance, is now little. Saudi Arabia invested massively in this neighboring Arab country since 1973, essentially throughout the era of the late Saddam Hussein.

The investment ended with the disastrous invasion of Kuwait and its aftermath.

Among the consequences was Saudi Arabia exiting, and Iran entering, Iraq from the early days of the U.S. occupation.

Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said as much at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting in New York in September 2005. He told a questioner then that the United States was handing Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter.

This was stated publicly. But did Washington hand Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter by Saudi default? Why did the United States overlook the interests of Saudi Arabia and her Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners as well as Jordan and Egypt when it was occupying Iraq and running its internal affairs?

All the said states were Washington’s allies. So why did the administration of George W. Bush hand over the reins of power in Iraq to Iran’s Iraqi proxies?

How come the U.S. and Iran went fifty-fifty in Iraq since 2003?

What made Washington ignore the scope and depth of social and longstanding relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and their mutual interests, given that the two countries share a 900-kilometer-long common border?

Where Washington was concerned, its alliance with Riyadh in this case counted for little.

Why did this happen and how? Can the outcome be blamed on the conservative nature of Saudi foreign policy and its tendency to react instead of taking the initiative?

Turning to Syria, the payback was not any better.

Saudi Arabia invested much -- politically and financially -- in the Assad regimes for decades. It is fair to say the investment in Hafez paid off to a degree.

The investment secured a modicum of stability in intra-Arab and Arab-Iranian relations, in forging a Saudi-Syrian-Egyptian axis that played a key role in the October War and in realigning Arab positions generally.

But the axis failed to lay the foundations for equitable and solid Saudi-Syrian bilateral relations. Proof is that it failed to prevent Syria falling gradually into Iran’s lap. Under Bashar, a solid Damascus-Tehran alliance was cemented.

Saudi-Syrian relations started going downhill and reached breaking point after Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005. All accusing fingers pointed at the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia tried to overcome this in the three years leading to the May 2008 Doha Agreement, which gave Hezbollah – Iran and the Syrian regime’s cat’s paw in Lebanon – a one-third blocking majority in a planned government.

Hezbollah has since become the kingmaker in Lebanese politics. Armed to the teeth by Iranian weapons it receives via Syria, the party now decides the head, lineup and manifesto of every new Lebanese government.

Awkwardly, the Saudi-sponsored 1989 Taef Agreement provided for the disarmament of all national and non-national militias. All have disarmed apart from Hezbollah.

In other words, as part of her investment in the Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia provided Arab cover for the flow of Iranian arms to Hezbollah via Syria.

This does not mean Saudi Arabia approved all that was happening. But all this happened nevertheless.

Ultimately, Saudi-Syrian relations collapsed with the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution in March 2011, after which Assad described Saudi and Gulf Arab leaders as heads of Bedouin states that have “no tradition, no history.”

Doesn’t this warrant root changes in Saudi foreign policy and its cornerstones?

Over and above the foreign policy debacles of the highest order in Iraq and Syria, you can hardly point at any Saudi foreign policy success or breakthrough elsewhere since 1990 – one that would match the investment put in it.  

Of late, however, Saudi foreign policy succeeded partially in two instances.

Before the Arab Spring, it did well in cooperating with the Sana’a government to keep the political situation in Yemen under control.

After the Arab Spring, it succeeded through the “Gulf Initiative” in having Ali Abdullah Saleh transfer power to Vice-President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to lead the transition and spare Yemen a slide into civil war.

But the success is still unfulfilled. Southern separatism has reignited, the country remains in political transition under UN supervision, and Saleh is still lying in wait.

So why is Saudi foreign policy’s track record a blend of unfulfilled successes and utter disappointments?

To be fair, Saudi Arabia is not to blame for the Yemen initiative staying unfulfilled. The blame falls on the complexities of Yemeni politics and the meddling by Iran, which is bent on smuggling arms into the country to destabilize it and gain a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula’s south.

In March 2011, Saudi Arabia and her GCC partners decided to deploy Peninsula Shield forces in Bahrain to protect vital installations after the escalation of clashes there between security forces and protesters.

It was the right decision to make in terms of objective and timing, except that the decision lacked a political initiative to heal sectarian and political divisions that gripped Bahrain in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Again, Iran has been exploiting the Bahrain crisis to gain a foothold at Saudi Arabia’s doorstep.

In other words, Saudi Arabia and her GCC partners succeeded in helping Bahrain cope with the situation, but failed to bring it to a close.

It seems the anchors of Saudi foreign policy no longer suit this period.

The anchors were based on making the most of the balances of powers and interests in the region without direct involvement.

The geographic, economic, demographic and Islamic credentials of Saudi Arabia allowed her to carve herself a strategic position in a strategic part of the world. Until recently, she was one of the four legs of the Arab regional order table.

The irony is that Saudi Arabia had no military muscle to match either her geographic and economic weight or her political and regional role.

Today, she can no more be the region’s powerbroker, especially in the Arab Gulf.

Iraq and Iran were at one point the Gulf’s powerbrokers. Since the occupation of Iraq, Iran shares the role with the United States while seeking to become the region’s hegemon.

With foreign policies requiring teeth and power sources, Saudi Arabia is still relying on (1) diplomacy and financial giveaways and (2) regional and international power balances. She has control over the first two elements and controls nothing of the rest. The result is what we saw and are seeing in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Clearly, the policy of relying on the balances of power game without military muscle requires revision.

Are Turks in Somalia for the hajj or to sell beads?

Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and author now heading Al Arab News Channel, penned this think piece in Arabic for today’s al-Hayat

Erdogan and his wife Emine in Somalia in August 2011 

Next to us, we Saudis, and within our strategic security sphere, lies a country biting the dust for more than two decades.

Its collapse began when its last “effective” government, which was neither successful nor popularly elected, fell.

Even if that government had survived to this day, it surely would have been swept away by the Arab Spring.

Together with our neighbors in the region, we looked after it on one or two occasions, and then moved away.

Even the Americans ran out on it after a solitary attempt to save it in the wake of the war to liberate Kuwait. At the time, George Bush Sr. may have wanted to show his country was also ready to intervene and help a poverty-stricken Muslim country, unlike oil-rich Kuwait. It turned out to be a bitter American experience.

I am referring to Somalia.

Who wants to help Somalia? Its people are unruly, plagued by differences and internecine strife, and ruled by warlords. Al-Qaeda infested many of its citizens’ minds, adding to miseries and divisions even in single households.

In the end, Somalia became the hotbed of high sea piracy. The world came to shun both the state and its people. Somalis got to be a source of concern for Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners after a rise in their illegal immigration across Yemen through a transnational network of organized crime in the smuggling of migrants.

Everyone lost hope in Somalia and no one believed the failed state would recover anytime soon.

Or so it seemed.

There is now a glimmer of hope looming on the horizon.

International organizations now say Somalia is on the mend. Its markets are beginning to recover, together with trade and construction activities. People who visited Somalia of late say there is money moving around in the impoverished country.

So, what happened?

The answer is Turkey and its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is now the most popular leader there, with Somali mothers and fathers eager to name their newborns “Recep,” “Tayyip” and “Erdogan.”

So what is Turkey doing in Somalia and why? Is it on “a pilgrimage or selling beads” there -- which is a common expression used by Mecca residents well grounded in combining godliness and moneymaking?

One school of thought worth monitoring is known as “Turkey’s moderate Islam,” which combines advocacy with spreading the teachings of religion, economic development and trade.

It is capitalized on by dynamic Turkish businesses in carving out new markets.

There is a Turkish scholar, author and educator named Fethullah Gülen, who founded the Gülen movement that is believed to have 1,000 schools around the world and more than 10 million followers in Turkey alone. He currently lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania.

I was in Turkey some 25 years ago, trying to cover the rise of political Islam, when I first heard his name. But I didn’t get to meet him as he always shunned publicity and the media.

He had left Turkey for the United States when he was committed for trial in 2000 after the leaking of a video urging his followers to “move within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers. You must wait until such time as you have got all the state power.”

Originally charged with trying to undermine the secularity of the Turkish state, Gülen was acquitted in 2008 but continues to live in seclusion in Pennsylvania.

The Gülen movement is operating in Somalia through aid relief and development agencies, offering young Somali men and women scholarships for religious studies in Turkey. They would eventually replace Somali graduates of hard-line religious schools funded by Gulf charities.

By the time he flew to Somalia in August 2011, Erdogan had arranged for more than 1,200 Somali students to arrive in Turkey on full scholarship to study sciences, engineering, medicine and law at a cost of $70 million.

He then raised from Turkey’s private sector more than $365 in donations to Somalia, over and above his government’s $49 million contribution.

Today, Turkish traders and aid workers move freely across Somalia without needing to worry about being killed or kidnapped.

In contrast, UN and international aid workers remain holed up in their Somali offices or hotel rooms.

Is this happening because Turks, being Muslims, are familiar with the Somali people’s character and norms?

Julia Harte raises the question in her recent article, “Turkey Shocks Africa,” on which I relied to pen this think piece and which I strongly urge you to read.

Or does Turkey have a comprehensive plan – denied by the government – to marry advocacy and trade, thus help Turkish entrepreneurs and businesses gain favor among Somalis?

Or is energy-starved Turkey eyeing opportunities offered by the prospective find of 10 billion barrels of crude oil in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland province?

Alternatively, is Turkey mounting a smart charm offensive to increase its overall exports to Africa, which rose to $10.3 billion last year from $2.1 billion in 2003?

Turkey is now challenging China on African markets, but with a more humane face than the alienating method favored by the Chinese.

Regardless of Turkey’s motives, what happened benefited both the Turks and the Somalis.

And what about us?

It’s wrong to portray the Turks as competitors. They are friends who did what we should have done. It’s therefore good to catch up with them and participate in this benefaction. After all, we spearheaded the concept, “The Hajj…and the sale of beads.”