Unfortunately, a real security situation in Oman is developing...

Those who are regulars to Muscat Confidential will know I've long insisted Oman is a jewel surrounded by places that are generally bat-shit crazy and horrible places to live: Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi, Yemen, and the UAE....

(see for yourself)


Here's a story [The Economist] I thought contained some of the worst news for us here in Oman I've read lately: Many currently held in Guantanamo Cuba are about to be released.... back to Yemen. Where a rump of Al Qaida, Tabliban-saudi's and local Islamo-nutters have already established a bridgehead.

The new 'Pakistan-Tribal-Areas' in 2009 may be about to become the hills of northern Yemen, and those idiots will only have 2 ways to go: Saudi and us. Fortunately, its Saudi they seem to have a fixation on... but being next door to well armed, hardened psychopathic islamo-nutcases with a chip on their shoulder about the West isn't a nice thing.



I hope and trust the powers that be are prepared for a significantly increased threat from the south later this year, and perhaps a long-lasting cross-border conflict if no-one drains the swamp (and no-one has for 5000 years).

It may be time to shut-down the border again.

The Joke is... when offered to be released in freedom, to escape to the hills of Northern Yemen, 80% of the prisoners said they'd rather stay in Cuba where they had AC, TV and 3 squares a day....
ba-boooom-cha.


Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The comments section in the article is worth a look. The best comment so far is posted after the extract from the Economist below...

Yemen and al-Qaeda
A nice safe haven for jihadists

Jan 29th 2009 | SANA’A
From The Economist print edition
When Guantánamo closes, many of its inmates will know where to go.

LAST March, al-Qaeda websites posted a message advising members to head for Yemen, the Arabian peninsula’s unruly south-west corner. The call, it seems, has been answered. The global terror franchise has released a video showing fugitive Saudi jihadists and their Yemeni hosts proclaiming a merger between their two branches, plus images of combat training in Yemen’s rugged mountains. Now other friends may soon be joining the fighters, by quite a different route. The Yemeni government says it expects most of the 100-odd Yemenis still held in the American prison camp at Guantánamo, where they now make up the largest national group of inmates, to be home by the spring. It is building a special camp where jihadist suspects will be allowed to live with their families, while undergoing reindoctrination to equip them for a peaceful return to society.

Yet, to the chagrin of the Yemeni and Saudi governments, as well as of an Obama administration that wants Guantánamo closed, the two Saudis in the video happen to be graduates both of the tropical island jail and of a vaunted Saudi rehabilitation programme. The Saudi authorities had freed them last year. Reunited with their families, they had benefited, as had several hundred other repentant jihadists, from state pensions designed to ease a return to civilian life. But the pair vanished a few months ago. In the video they vilify the Saudi counselling programme as a trick, and vow to pursue jihad. Nasir al-Wahishi, the new “emir of the Arabian Peninsula”, a Yemeni, to whom they have sworn loyalty, was himself one of 23 al-Qaeda suspects who escaped from a prison in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, in 2006.

With its rough terrain, weak central state and gun-slinging tribal culture, Yemen may prove a fairly secure redoubt for al-Qaeda. The group has suffered sharp setbacks in such places as Iraq, Lebanon and especially Saudi Arabia, where it has not mounted a serious attack since 2006. The relative quiet in Yemen, which some critics of its government ascribe to a secret amnesty whereby Sunni jihadists backed the state against a smouldering Shia insurrection in the country’s north, has been eroding. Waves of arrests, prompted partly by Western and Saudi pressure, have provoked an escalation of al-Qaeda attacks that culminated in a double car-bombing of America’s embassy in Sana’a last September; the attack failed to penetrate the fortified compound but left 16 people dead.

Though a Western diplomat in Sana’a describes al-Qaeda’s threat there as “very severe” and the government’s efforts to thwart it as merely “episodic”, it is Saudi Arabia, rather than Yemen itself, that is the group’s main target. The fact that al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch has been forced to regroup elsewhere, under Yemeni leadership, may be a sign of weakness rather than strength. As for Yemen, even if the danger of a few hundred armed jihadists is real, locals may well care more about other national plagues: the frightening scale of corruption, poverty, malnutrition, water depletion, Yemen’s plunging oil revenues, its ugly, four-year-old war in the north, simmering separatist sentiment in the south, constant tribal unrest and vicious power struggles among the ruling elite.

and the zinger (couldn't resist reposting, it struck a chord):

killremoval wrote

"You make little sense, as you are talking about something completely different. Perhaps you have nothing valuable to say?"

I was pointing out how ironic it was for you to claim that the Muslim community as a whole had a legitimate beef against the US or the west for attacks against other Muslims. In other words, it should be expected that a Muslim in, say, Frankfurt, would be angry and maybe even lash out in response to an attack by western forces on a Muslim in, say, Afghanistan or Iraq, even though these Muslims come from completely different cultures. If that is the case, wouldn't it make as much sense for a Christian in Oklahoma City to ahve a similar response to an attack on a Christian in Afghanistan or Iraq?

As for western Barbarism; you want to know what group is responsible for the most Muslim deaths world wide. Any guesses? It's other Muslims. If one were to provide an honest comparison of western vs Islamic violence anywhere in the world, they would have to ackonwledge that the Islamist forces frequently attack "soft" targets, or those that are less able to defend themselves. in other words, civillians. This makes sense from a strategic perspective, since the benefit of creating fear amongst one's civillian opponents (through the use of violence) carries much less risk than attacking the political opposition, which is often protected by some sort of formal security force. For example: say there is a village in Afghanistan that is hostile to the Taliban. They can cheaply and safely set off a bomb in that village. At the very least this would demonstrate to the people opf the village thier vulnerability, and it may well compel them to be more friendly to Taliban forces or less friendly to Coalition Forces. If the Taliban instead chose to engage conventional military ground forces, those forces could easily call in a B-52 to perform close Air Support. Within Minutes, that B-52 could very safely and very easily drop up to 25 thousand-plus pounds of guided and unguided munitions on their positions. That option carries a lot more risk, since they are probably going to die, while inflicting little or no damage to the enemy.

The whole intent of Islamism is not to defend against western imperialism, as you put it, but rather to replace it with a more Islamic version. It's also important to note than in many places what you refer to as imperialism is a natural function of popularity. To the best of my knowledge, the US Marines never landed in Pakistan with intent of forcing otherwise unwilling Muslims to watch american movies or drink Coca Cola. They do so because they choose to do so, and that choice represents a threat to a lot of conservative Muslims who view it as erosive to their own power. I'm sure you are familiar with Al Quaeda's long term question to re-establish the caliphate, reclaiming lost territories that have been westernized for hundreds of years, and christianized for even longer. That, my friend, is what I call Imperialism, and to my knowledge there are no comperable christian groups calling for another crusade to reclaim former Christian lands.

The US will always be disliked by much of the world, and although it's just my opinion I suspect it has a lot to do with her success. The far left has always despised the US becuase it was proof that capitalism and free markets were vastly superior to the alternate systems of communism, anarchism, and socialism. I imagine it's pretty hard to sell Marxism when one of the world's greatest success stories in the diametric opposite. Islamism, which may be the logical heir to communism, may suffer a similar dilemma. You would have to be very creative marketer to successfull sell a system that to a large degree vilifies science, knowledge, and enlightenment, while embracing and legitimizing ignorance, oppression, and suffering.

Anyway, I'm probably an ass for feeding the troll. My apologies.