The MbS-Blackwater Marriage Of Convenience

Authored by Ghassan Kadi via The Saker blog,

Mohamed Bin Salman’s (MBS) royal Saudi coup is still in the making and its stories of mystery and intrigue are unfolding.

Some recent articles written about this unprecedented Saudi development have focused on whether or not MBS was actually desirous of instigating reform within the kingdom of sand and capable of putting together the infrastructure that made such reform possible and how. Other more cynical articles have cast little doubt on his ability to create any change and classified him as yet another puppet of the legacy that his grandfather King Abdul Aziz, the founder of the Saudi dynasty, has forged with the West. In between the two extremes, many perhaps waited in anticipation to see what was to happen next in the now quick-changing kingdom that did not change at all in essence for nearly a hundred years.

To put recent developments into perspective, we must objectively look at MBS’s achievements and failures since his rise to prominence; with a special emphasis on the developments of the last few weeks.

MBS has failed to turn previous Saudi Government failed policy on Syria to his advantage by distancing his own legacy from it. If anything, the outcome of the Syrian opposition conference that was held in Riyadh was a farcical outcome of Saudi diplomacy. Not only did this conference coincide with the 20^th of November 2017 Putin-Assad Sochi victory summit, but it is still “demanding” the removal of Syrian President Assad from power.

The arrogant and seemingly naive Saudis seem to be still under the illusion that they are able to dictate terms of settlement of the “War on Syria” despite the fact that they have put all of their efforts into winning it but have lost decisively.

However, the more painful fact for them is that they lost without a single bargaining chip remaining for them to capitalize on.

Whilst MBS can be “excused” for not being able to find a face-saving way out of Syria, he has failed abysmally in the war that he orchestrated in Yemen, and as this war drags on, the international community is beginning to wake up to the atrocities and genocide that the Saudi-led coalition is inflicting upon Yemen, and no one can be held more accountable for this military failure and crime against humanity than MBS himself.

MBS also failed to contain the loss he “inherited” from the failures of previous Saudi policies in Lebanon and Iraq. If anything, his determination to remain steadfast with these has turned regional Saudi policies into a total joke.

So where did MBS score any success, if any at all?

In my previous related articles and herein, I have mentioned and reiterate that MBS is increasingly gaining popularity within the ranks of young and educated Saudi men and women of all ages and in general amongst the grass-roots of the population. Hence, in this venture, he is scoring two birds with a single stone. In rounding up more popular support, he is confiscating and freezing badly-needed cash under the pretext of corruption.

The estimates of the number of incarcerated Saudi princes and businessmen are not any less subject to a game of guess work than the funds involved in this kerfuffle. Ignoring how many men have been put under detention, the tally of funds confiscated and frozen is estimated at a minimum of USD 150 bn to a maximum of USD 800 bn.

Given that the total official Saudi savings reserve is in the tune of “only” USD 700 bn after decades of high financial times, even the low estimate of USD 150 bn is a huge sum by proportion and by any proportion of course. It is little surprise that MBS is trying to replenish into the coffers of the state such sums, and if he manages to do it, it would be to his credit.

Whilst on the subject of official Saudi savings, after many decades of huge petroleum exports and at elevated prices, the Saudi savings reserve figure should be in the vicinity of a few trillion dollars. But a huge proportion of Saudi petro-dollars has been squandered on royal funds, holidays yachts, prostitutes, drugs, bribes, theft, corruption at all levels, and on this account and this account only, MBS can be acknowledged for bringing corrupt individuals to account.

But whether or not MBS is able to stamp out corruption and/or whether or not he is guilty of the same charge, as his cousins and some others argue, how much command does he have over the affairs of the kingdom, and over the royal family he staged a coup against?

Inside, unconfirmed reports allege that whether or not MBS has any command on traditional local troops that he can rely on, he is not taking any second chances.

To elaborate, the reader ought to be reminded that the Al-Saud legacy built its reign of power (and terror) on Wahhabism and money.

Wahhabism was used as the doctrine, and money was the catalyst for buying loyalty and support.

With MBS’s purge on the royals, no traditional royal supporter with known wealth is left feeling safe. How can they feel safe if they hear reports of news of princes like Al-Walid bin Talal not only being in custody, but also getting tortured and his assets frozen and sieged by the state?

In my previous article, The Second Saudi Dynasty: MBS’s Reset Button, I wondered how can MBS count on any local supporters. Apparently, he is not.

Recent inside information that was later on published in various media, reports that MBS has been using Blackwater to do his dirty work.

If those reports are true, MBS has hired Blackwater to arrest, with orders to kill whoever resists arrest, Saudi princes and high-ranking businessmen, and to answer to no one but him.

In retrospect, the fatal shooting of Prince Abdul Aziz, son of former King Fahed, was highly unlikely to have been done by a Saudi as this would attract a death sentence in the event of the coup failing.

It has even been reported that Blackwater personnel are driving around in tinted Saudi Police and security agency personnel vehicles in a manner that is totally unbeknown and hidden from the Saudi public.

This cannot be corroborated any more than they can realistically be dismissed.

If true, such reports indicate that MBS’s coup is not over. They indicate that he is not taking any chances, but most practically, they indicate that he trusts no one; no one expect Blackwater.

Most importantly and significantly however, such news, if confirmed, indicates that MBS does not have a true hold on power.

If such is the case, and seeing the ambition he has, there is more reason to believe that MBS is going to have no choice but to go with his cousins all the way to the wire and until he has destroyed them all and confiscated all of their assets.

After all, he needs their money to achieve his dreams and get his kingdom out of its financial mess. He needs to blame his failure on them. He needs to eliminate any possible claim they can make for the throne.

Almost overnight, MBS has changed Saudi Arabia from a kingdom of sand upon which Al Saud reigned with a solid foothold and strong base, to a kingdom of quick-sand upon which princes and power brokers no longer have a leg to stand on. They either have to pledge total and unconditional loyalty to MBS or fear persecution. On the other hand, if they do pledge that loyalty, and MBS’s coup fails as a result of a counter-coup, then they will risk being seen as enemies of the winners of the counter-coup. It is a damned if you do and a damned if you don’t situation.

Not any less perplexing than the dilemma of the princes is the dilemma of the lower tiers of power in Saudi Arabia; especially senior military officers and their subordinates. With its tribal mentality, Saudi Arabia has had several tiers of armed forces, some of whom are loyal to particular princes rather than to the state itself. Prince Mutaib for example, the son of former King Abdullah, was until the 4^th of November, the Minister of the National Guard. The hierarchy within the National Guard are loyal to him personally, and now the big boss is in jail. MBS therefore has a few options; either to coerce those military officers to become loyal to him under the risk of them stabbing him in the back, or, to throw everyone in jail and bring his own people in. But, where would he bring his own people in from and who are they to begin with? After all, and despite all the great power he gave himself, he is Mr Johnny-come–lately and he hasn’t had the advantage of time to slowly build his own army. His practical alternative was based on pragmatism and securing his own safety, and to that effect, he cannot find a more faithful and better trained army than Blackwater. And even though Blackwater does not come cheap, but clearly to MBS the objectives he seeks justify the costs.

Some may argue that Blackwater can also be bought by counter coup leaders and even foreign governments. Whilst this is possible, MBS remains to have no better alternative. However, one would imagine that for a company like Blackwater, to guarantee its business success and continuity, it would have a strict code of conduct that stipulates that it will refrain from entering contractual agreements that can generate conflict of interest between its clients. After all, and irrespective of its criminal and underhanded mercenary modus operandi, who would hire it knowing beforehand that it is in the habit of breaking contracts and replacing them with ones with the adversaries? Whilst it is arguable as to whether or not any client of Blackwater can actually take legal action against it and win is another story because, without any doubt, Blackwater, inhumane and criminal as it is, cannot afford to see its reputation ruined.

To sum it up therefore, whilst MBS’s coup is still in the making and its final outcome remaining unclear, what is evident is that MBS does not have enough local Saudi power base that he can rely on in the upper echelons of power. Whilst his grass root popularity among the general population is on the rise, traditional power brokers can neither be supportive of him, seen to be supportive or seen to be against him. Either way, and even though some of them could potentially become strong and faithful proponents of MBS, at the moment any pledges of allegiance are highly risky for all involved.

In his reliance on Blackwater however, MBS is achieving a more guaranteed short term objective. However, this policy can backfire very violently; because it is allowing certain key Saudi power brokers to sit on the fence for a little longer until they see who is the final winner in all of this for them to eventually back.

"Thank Goodness The Stock Market Only Goes Up..."

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

It must be exciting to wake up on a gilded bed somewhere in Riyadh and realize that you are Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, mover and shaker of Middle East order. Actually, exciting just to have woken up at all.

Perhaps Prince MBS checks to make sure that there aren’t seventy-two virgins in the room before he rises to prayers, state business, and the prospect of World War Three.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has been a giant gasoline bomb waiting to explode for decades. It occupies one of the geographically least hospitable corners of the earth. Its existence as a modern (cough cough) state relies strictly on the reserves of oil discovered as recently as the late 1930s, that is, within the lifetime of people still reading this blog. The oil supply is in steep decline, and so, of course, is the stability of the kingdom.

Politically, it’s a super-medieval operation, an absolute monarchy tied to a severe religious order with the law floating precariously between the two, and old-fashioned customs such as the public beheading of criminals (for misdeeds such as “adultery,” “atheism,” and “sorcery”). The Saud clan has controlled the throne all these years, and its grip on power is slipping as the country itself slips into the prospective next era of its history, minus the endless gusher of oil that has made its existence possible - hence, a true existential crisis without the usual pseudo-intellectual bullshit.

How are they going to support the thirty or forty million people who will still be there when the oil exports dribble down? Most of the work done in the country is performed by foreign “guests.” The indigenous folk don’t even remember how to milk a camel, let alone run routine maintenance on a desalinization plant. (And what are you going to run the de-sal plant on when the oil runs down?) These are questions that must drive thoughtful Saudi royalty mad.

Hence, the Kingdom is going mad. The current king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, is the latest in a line of geriatric monarchs. His brother and predecessor, Abdullah, spent his last years in a limbo of medical life-support (virgins standing by), and Salman is reputed to be dotty. Crown Prince MBS has assumed more of the king’s duties by necessity, but the land is filled with thousands of other princes, many of them frustrated, angry, and jealous of the Crown Prince’s prerogatives.

One can only imagine the clouds of intrigue wafting through the ornate corridors of wealth and power. Crown Prince MBS is lately out to deprive his many royal rivals of those two critical assets, and a couple of said rival princes - Abdul Aziz bin Fahd and Mansour bin Muqrin - were offed altogether (gunfight, helicopter crash) two weeks back. A score of non-royal public officials and business poobahs have also been arrested, including top ministers (Finance, Economy & Planning), the former CEO of the national airline, and a brother of Osama bin Laden, whose family ran the country’s biggest construction company.

It really amounts to a nascent civil war and it comes around at exactly the moment that the Kingdom’s arch-enemy, Iran, is feeling comfortably aggressive. Iran, formerly known as Persia, is a much sturdier old polity that has been around long before there was much ado about oil. They were fighting the ancient Greeks and Romans back in the day, and won a few rounds. But, of course, Iran has a good deal of oil, too. And having pissed off the Americans not so long ago by overrunning the US embassy and all, our country has been striving to punish them ever since — especially making it difficult for them to sell oil to our “friends” in Europe. As it happens, there are plenty of customers elsewhere for Iran’s oil — and, yes, they will eventually face their own depletion problems, but they do have the world’s largest untapped reserve stash next door in Iraq, which they are steadily and increasingly coming to control. And they do have that millennium-and-a-half beef with Arabia’s Sunni branch of Islam headquartered in KSA.

Crown Prince MBS may see war as a unifying theme for his domestic difficulties. He has a fifty-plus years’ stock of American war toys that have hardly been used - except for turning neighboring Yemen into a landfill. The USA has been KSA’s staunch ally all these years, and MBS has every reason to believe we have his back, as Iran probably believes Russia has its back. And then there is Israel in the background with its nuclear-armed subs… Israel, which actually took seriously Iran’s declaration a few years ago to wipe it off the face of the earth - and which now much of the world castigates Israel for so doing.

And in the middle of all this, poor, feckless, Hezbollah-haunted Lebanon, and the boneyard formerly known as Syria. The region is seriously coming apart. Someone is going to make a dangerous misstep.

The Golden Golem of Greatness has been off far away sampling General Tsao’s chicken and Singapore noodles.

And this country is completely preoccupied with Sex Among the Stars. Thank goodness the stock market only goes up.

Second Saudi Prince Confirmed Killed During Crackdown

Following the death of Prince Mansour bin-Muqrin in a helicopter crash near the Yemen border yesterday, the Saudi Royal Court has confirmed the death of Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd - killed during a firefight as authorities attempted to arrest him.

The death has been confirmed by the Saudi royal court.

The Duran and Al-Masdar News both report that the prince died when his security contingent got into a firefight with regime gunmen attempting to make an arrest.

Prince Aziz (44) who was the youngest son of King Fahad.

The Duran"s Adam Garrie points out that Prince Abdul Aziz was deeply involved in Saudi Oger Ltd, a company which until it ceased operations in the summer of this year, was owned by the Hariri family. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was in charge of the company until it ceased operations.

Prince Abdul Aziz’s strange and sudden death which is said to have occurred during an attempted arrest, sheds light on the theory that the clearly forced resignation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had more to do with internal Saudi affairs than the Saudi attempt to bring instability to Lebanon.

The Saudi Royal family has now lost two princes in 24 hours.

As Al Jazeera notes, in this Saudi version of "Game of Thrones", the 32-year-old Bin Salman shows that he is willing to throw the entire region into jeopardy to wear the royal gown.

His actions have already all but destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC); Yemen can no longer be referred to as a functioning state; Egypt is a ticking time bomb; and now Lebanon may erupt.

There"s a lot to worry about.

As Saudi King's Health Wanes, War Architect Bin Salman Set To Become King

Authored by Whitney Webb via TheAntiMedia.org,

While his health and even sanity have been in doubt for years, fresh rumors are spreading that King Salman of Saudi Arabia’s physical condition has further deteriorated. According to Saudi sources cited by Oil Price, Salman’s health will likely forced him to abdicate the throne in the next few months.

Though it was long believed that Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s nephew and the country’s Minister of the Interior, would assume the throne, bin Nayef’s sudden ouster as Saudi Crown Prince during Ramadan definitively changed that, with King Salman’s son and the current Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, now positioned to take control.

Bin Nayef’s ouster was initially reported by international media as having gone “smoothly.” However, it soon emerged that bin Salman had planned the entire affair and that the former Crown Prince, following his acquiescence of the title, was essentially under house arrest. Since then, rumblings have emerged that many in the Saudi royal family, which has long been guided by deference to elders and group consensus, are none too happy with the sudden turn of events in the normally stable kingdom.

Now, with King Salman on vacation in Morocco for an entire month, the ambitious Crown Prince has been left in charge, promising a taste of things to come for the oil-rich kingdom. Already, speculators are stating that the kingdom’s balance of power is “on a knife-edge.”

One such indication that there is trouble brewing within the royal family is the King’s recent string of drastic policy changes that stripped the Interior Ministry, formerly headed by bin Nayef, of many of its key mandates, including counter-terrorism.

These functions have now been transferred to a new entity called the Presidency of State Security, which is under the direct command of the King, who also serves as Prime Minister. A royal decree further stated that “whatever concerns the security of the state, including civil and military personnel, budgets, documents, and information will also be transferred to the new authority.” According to experts, the overhaul of security services indicated there still exists opposition to bin Salman’s position as Crown Prince.

It is highly probable that this mass concentration of authority under the king and the essential gutting of the Interior Ministry was orchestrated by bin Salman himself, much like bin Nayef’s ouster. Given that King Salman’s suspected dementia has led the Crown Prince to “practically” administer the entire kingdom, bin Salman’s now-elevated position makes it highly likely that such efforts were intended to reduce opposition to his forthcoming rule and consolidate his power.

A warhawk ascends to the throne

While speculation is rife over how bin Salman is set to manage domestic affairs, there seems to be little disagreement over bin Salman’s likely handling of key foreign policy issues, considering his tenure as Defense Minister has shown his penchant for war, as well as his hotheadedness.

It was bin Salman, after all, who began the Saudi’s atrocious war in Yemen and oversaw its military’s use of force against civilian infrastructure and gatherings. Since it began in 2015, the war has claimed the lives of over 10,000 civilians and has brought Yemen to the brink of collapse. In addition, the Saudi’s repeated bombings of hospitals and its blockade of aid and medicine have caused the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history to spread through Yemen.

Despite the increasingly dire situation in Yemen, bin Salman stated in May that he was in no hurry to end the conflict, saying “time is in our favor,” later adding that Saudi troops were planning to wait for the rebels “to tire out.”

In addition, bin Salman has caused great discomfort with the Saudis’ foreign allies by orchestrating a diplomatic crisis with Qatar. The diplomatic row put the United States, a major foreign ally of the Saudis, in an uncomfortable situation as it sought to repair the rift between the two influential Gulf state monarchies. The United States has been tepid in its embrace of bin Salman, largely due to the fact that his predecessor as Crown Prince, bin Nayef, was highly regarded by U.S. counterterrorism officials and was seen as a close ally of the U.S. in the region.

The move was likely orchestrated to pressure Qatar to end support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which bin Salman despises, as well as its support of Hezbollah, a consolation from bin Salman to Israel. Indeed, bin Salman has been hailed as a “dream come true” for Israel and has pushed to normalize relations between the Saudi kingdom and the apartheid state in recent months.

In addition, the Saudis have also demanded that Qatar end all contact with Iran, speaking to bin Salman’s aggressive brinkmanship with the Islamic Republic. Prior to becoming Crown Prince, bin Salman had said that dialogue with Iran, i.e. a diplomatic solution to disagreements, was “impossible” and has hinted at a Saudi pre-emptive strike against Iran, stating that “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, we’ll work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

While bin Salman has publicly stated that he will not push for war with Iran since he became Crown Prince, Iran doesn’t seem so sure. After bin Salman’s hawkish comments on Iran, the Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan stated that “If the Saudis do anything ignorant, we will leave no area untouched except Mecca and Medina.” Then, after terror attacks targeted the heart of Tehran a month later in early June, Iran’s intelligence community accused Saudi Arabia of involvement, vowing revenge. The Islamic State, a terrorist organization known to be directly funded by the Saudi kingdom, took credit for the attack in Tehran.

Some experts agree with Iran’s concern that bin Salman’s growing power will lead to more war, not less. For instance, Shirleen Hunter, professor of political science at Georgetown University, believes that bin Salman’s appointment and forthcoming ascension to the throne “means that Saudi Arabia’s hardline approach towards the war in Yemen as well towards Iran will continue.” In an interview with the Tehran Times, she added that “relations with Iran, in particular, could seriously deteriorate as Bin Salman might increase destabilizing efforts inside Iran.”

Coupled with rising domestic dissent and economic damage resulting from the artificial manipulation of oil prices and the high cost of the war in Yemen, bin Salman – though eager to gain power – will likely find himself in a perfect storm. Though many young Saudis see bin Salman as a potential reformer, his history of warmongering and making rash decisions suggests that he is set to unravel the power balance that has allowed the Saudi kingdom to maintain its influence in the Middle East for so long.