Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater Founder Erik Prince’s Private Army of “Christian Crusaders” in the UAE

May 18, 2011

The United Arab Emirates has confirmed hiring a company headed by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the military firm Blackwater. According to the New York Times, the UAE secretly signed a $529 million contract with Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign mercenaries. The troops could be deployed if foreign guest workers stage revolts in labor camps, or if the UAE regime were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world. Prince has one rule about the new force: no Muslims. We speak to investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and Samer Muscati of Human Rights Watch.

AMY GOODMAN: The United Arab Emirates has confirmed hiring a company headed by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater. According to the New York Times, the UAE secretly signed a $529 million contract with Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, or R2, to put together an 800-member battalion of mercenaries.

Documents show the force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from attacks, and put down internal revolts. The troops could be deployed if foreign guest workers stage revolts in labor camps, or if the UAE regime were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world. One contract document describes, quote, "crowd-control operations" where the crowd "is not armed with firearms but does pose a risk using improvised weapons (clubs and stones)."

The UAE is a close ally with the United States, and it appears the deal has received the Obama administration’s support. One U.S. official told the Times, quote, "The gulf countries, and the U.A.E. in particular, don’t have a lot of military experience. It would make sense if they looked outside their borders for help. They might want to show that they are not to be messed with."

News of the deal also comes just weeks after the UAE’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, visited President Barack Obama at the White House late last month. A White House statement said Obama and the Crown Prince would discuss, quote, "the strong ties between the United States and the U.A.E. and our common strategic interests in the region."

A number of U.S. citizens, including former Blackwater employees, have occupied senior positions in the operation. Legal experts have questioned whether those involved might be breaking federal laws prohibiting U.S. citizens from training foreign troops if they did not secure a license from the U.S. Department of State. The force is reportedly made up of Colombians, South Africans and other foreign troops. Prince reportedly has a strict rule against hiring any Muslims because he’s worried they could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims.

Prince himself now lives in the United Arab Emirates after moving their last year under a cloud of legal controversy here in the United States. The UAE deal is the first to emerge publicly since Prince sold Blackwater and suggested he would leave the private military business behind.

For more, we’re joined by independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, Nation writer, Jeremy Scahill, author of the award-winning bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Jeremy was the first journalist to report on Prince’s move to the United Arab Emirates, two months before it was publicly confirmed.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this mercenary army that Prince is setting up for the UAE.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, when Erik Prince decided to move to the United Arab Emirates, he gave an interview to a former CIA employee in Vanity Fair in which he said that he was going to be leaving the soldier of fortune business and said he wanted to go and teach high school, and he said, you know, "I’ll teach history. Even Indiana Jones was a teacher." Well, it’s true that Indiana Jones was a teacher, but he also was an anti-mercenary. In fact, in a famous scene in the movie, Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, his archnemesis, Belloq, who’s working for the Nazis, accuses Indiana Jones of giving a bad name to mercenaries. So, Erik Prince, rather than pursuing that path, has actually pursued the path of the mercenary.

And when he moved to the United Arab Emirates, he said he did so because it was a free society and a country that respected the free market. Well, it didn’t take long for him to get down to business with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and essentially hatched a plot to build up a mercenary army within the borders of the UAE, relying on labor from Colombia. Blackwater has a long history of working with Colombians. In fact, Blackwater paid Colombians $34 a day to operate in Iraq. And when the Colombians protested their payment, saying that they were getting less than the Bulgarians or the others that were working for Blackwater, the white soldiers, Blackwater threatened them, according to the Colombians, and wouldn’t give them their passports back and said, you know, "We’re just going to release you onto the streets of Baghdad." And eventually the Colombians left, and they went and they assassinated the recruiter that had hired them for Blackwater. So it’s ironic that Prince is using the Colombians. Now their pay has been increased to something like $150 a day.

And the purpose of this force, as stated in the corporate documents and in the New York Times, is to deal primarily with the internal situation in the United Arab Emirates. Anyone who’s been to the UAE knows that the economy is entirely fueled by migrant workers, people from the Philippines or from Pakistan or Bangladesh. And they live in these camps, and their conditions are not good, to say the least. So, one of the concerns seemed to be that unrest could spread in those camps, and they didn’t want to use UAE forces to quell those rebellions, but instead send in Erik Prince’s.

The other thing, Amy, that I think is significant about this—and we reported on this on Democracy Now! a year ago—Erik Prince gave a speech in late 2009 in which he talked about the rising influence of Iran in the Middle East and talking about how the Iranians were fanning the flames of Shia revolt. The regime in Bahrain has used the justification to crack down on protesters that they’re agents of Iran or that they’re being influenced or supported by Iran. And Prince essentially came up with a plan, in front of this military audience, for the United States to advocate quietly sending in—this is in late 2009—quietly sending in private forces, run by Americans or other Westerners, into countries in that region with the express purpose of confronting Iranian influence. We now know that part of the UAE’s arrangement with Erik Prince was aimed precisely at that. So this seems like it’s been something in the works for some time.

I spoke to Representative Jan Schakowsky earlier this week, who of course is on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and has been the most ferocious congressional critic of Blackwater. And she’s raising some very serious questions about whether Erik Prince obtained the necessary license to export these types of services to a foreign country. You have to have a license, what’s called an ITAR license, from the State Department that says, hey, this former Navy SEAL, who has had access to top-secret information from the United States, actually is authorized to conduct these services. Blackwater has been fined in the past millions and millions of dollars by the Justice Department for not obtaining those kinds of licenses. So, it could be, if he didn’t obtain these licenses, that he is actually breaking U.S. law in providing these services to the UAE.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about other U.S. Americans going over there?

JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean, look, the fact is that one of the major sources of income, and one of the things that the UAE is becoming famous for, is being a playground for the war game globally. Companies that service the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have set up shop there, because of the tax situation, because of its proximity to these war zones. And so, you have massive, massive presence of the U.S. war industry in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. And so, for Erik Prince to set up shop there is no surprise. I mean, I know—when I went to Afghanistan late last year, when you’re in the airport in Dubai, it’s journalists, rich Emiratis, or it’s people in transit to Bangladesh or other countries, or it’s the war industry. You see the 18-inch biceps, the wraparound sunglasses. I mean, it really is sort of a gateway to war and a good place to position yourself if you want to make a killing.

AMY GOODMAN: And the other Americans working with Prince in UAE?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, there’s a former FBI agent who actually—CT Chambers, who actually ran Blackwater’s, quote-unquote, "training operation" in Afghanistan for a shell company that Blackwater set up called Paravant. And it seems as though this company was set up explicitly to keep the name Blackwater out of the contract bidding process. It won that contract, and Blackwater still has these contracts to train Afghan national police and military forces. That company came under an intense investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee led by Senator Carl Levin, exploring whether or not Blackwater and the massive war company Raytheon effectively conspired to win contracts for Blackwater while explicitly shielding or shrouding Blackwater’s involvement in secrecy. Two members of that Blackwater force in Afghanistan were recently convicted of manslaughter stemming from the shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians. So the man who ran that program that’s under intense congressional scrutiny right now, and Senator Levin has asked the Justice Department to investigate, is another key player in this Prince operation. He’s supposedly making upwards of $300,000. But the contract is worth $100 million a year, and it started in June, and it’s supposed to go through May of 2015.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to journalist Jeremy Scahill, who wrote the book Blackwater. We’re also joined via Democracy Now! video stream by Samer Muscati. He is the Iraq and UAE researcher for Human Rights Watch, joining us from Toronto. Talk about the human rights situation in UAE, Samer.

SAMER MUSCATI: The human rights situation has gotten worse over the past few weeks. Since April 8, UAE authorities have detained five peaceful activists, including Ahmad Mansour, a prominent rights figure in the UAE and a member of our advisory committee board. And also, they have dissolved the elected boards of two of the country’s longstanding civil society organizations: the Jurists Association and the Teachers’ Association. All this follows calls by citizens for greater electoral rights and greater freedoms. They signed a petition in March, and the associations made a public action in April asking for greater political reforms. And this has been the response of the government. So, unfortunately, the situation has deteriorated further over the past few weeks.

And the UAE also has a long tradition of abusing workers, including the ones that unfortunately this mercenary force appears to be set up to deal with. There’s about 750,000 construction workers and a similar number of domestic workers in the UAE, and they have quite serious complaints, including the fact that they have to pay recruitment fees, which are illegal under UAE law, but they spend thousands of dollars to come to the UAE, and they’re in debt. They work for jobs that pay them very little and in horrible conditions. Even this week, we see temperatures have risen to about 130 degrees Fahrenheit across the UAE, and construction workers are out in the sun, for pennies, basically, slaving away.

AMY GOODMAN: This issue of who lives in the UAE and who would be—whose rebellions would be quelled, if you could talk more about that, Samer, and how much the United States is involved with the UAE, a close U.S. ally?

SAMER MUSCATI: I mean, there is no chance for rebellion, even small protests. We saw in January, the same day that we released our report in the UAE about human rights, about conditions over the past year, the UAE government detained and deported 71 Bangladeshis who had strike because of wage issues. So any sign of discontent or dissent, the UAE authorities act quite quickly to make sure that these type of actions are ended. And even with the latest arrests, I mean, these guys are basically asking for just basic reforms; they’re not asking for an overthrow of the government. And we see the government has come down very hard on them. So the chance of having a widespread movement, that we’ve seen in other countries, I think is not plausible in the UAE.

At the same time, the fact that they’ve taken such draconian measures against these activists, I think, only fuels the idea that reform is needed and, in the long term, undermines the UAE authorities in how they’ve responded to these so-called threats. So it’s—we’re hopeful that these activists will be released soon, but there’s no indication that they will be. And they’re being—basically they’re being looked at for crimes of opposing the government and for insulting the ruling family.

AMY GOODMAN: And the press coverage of what’s going on inside UAE?

SAMER MUSCATI: You know, the press coverage, similar to other press coverage of UAE human rights violations, is minimal locally. Many of the papers are run by the state, and there’s a lot of self-censorship that happens with journalists in the UAE, who are afraid to cover or are unable to cover these issues. It’s fitting that this piece was broken by the New York Times. And what we’ve seen from the UAE local press has been very little coverage of this, of this issue. And the coverage we’ve seen has focused on the statement that was issued by the government, as opposed to a lot of the allegations that have come from the New York Times. But it’s typical. The press in the UAE is not free, and they’re unwilling to report on the serious issues, including this crackdown, and basically present the government’s opinion and analysis, as opposed to what’s happening on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: And unions, Samer?

SAMER MUSCATI: Unions in the UAE, there are no unions. And people who try to formally organize and strike are deported if they’re foreigners. And nationals, if you want to form an association, you have to apply. The regulations are quite stringent. And if they do interfere in what is perceived as politics, what we’ve seen is the UAE government clamps down, dissolves the board, and basically takes over associations. So, there is no notion of unions in the UAE.

AMY GOODMAN: And what can the international community do? I mean, you have a lot of U.S. institutions, as well, not only the U.S. government working with the UAE, of NYU, Guggenheim, a number of institutions that are building branches there and operate there.

SAMER MUSCATI: Absolutely. And we’ve called on these institutions to take a stand. These institutions are partners of the UAE government. They’re saving millions of dollars from the UAE government. And they’re building these branches there, which I think is a good idea, but at the same time, they have to make sure that, you know, they’re not tarnishing their reputation.

AMY GOODMAN: Who are they?

SAMER MUSCATI: New York University is one. We have the Guggenheim. Sorbonne University, whose—one of the lecturers, Nasser bin Ghaith, was actually detained and continues to be detained by the UAE authorities. We’ve written letters to these institutions, asking them to take a stand and not to be complicit in the crackdown. The response we got from Sorbonne University, unfortunately was, you know, they tried to minimize Bin Ghaith’s relationship with the university, as opposed to promising they’d actually voice their concern and demand his freedom. And we haven’t received a response back from the other institutions, who are eager and happy to take money from the UAE, but unfortunately they haven’t been vocal about this latest crackdown, even though the Guggenheim, for instance, has been vocal in China when an artist has been arrested. But closer to home, in the UAE, they’ve been very quiet. And if these institutions don’t speak up—I mean, there in excellent position—then who will? These are institutions that are partnering with the government.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. And, well, as Samer talked about, the issue of the UAE military confirming this arrangement with Blackwater, the spin on it was quite interesting in the official statement, because while much of the attention that’s been focused by the New York Times on this issue has revolved around the potential use to suppress an internal rebellion inside of the UAE, the statement from the military there actually praised the work of Prince’s company and other Western companies that have been working with the military, because it’s enabled them to engage in, quote-unquote, "successful" operations in other theaters of operation, like Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Now, this is interesting because there is a ripe opportunity for mercenary forces to engage in Libya, either on contract with some form of a rebel government or alliance there. And so, if Prince’s company is involved with an arrangement through the UAE that somehow involves Libya, that would be the subject of quite a bit of interest, I’m sure, on Capitol Hill and in capitals around the world, because I think it’s just a matter of time before we start to see an incursion of special operations contractors going into Libya, if they’re not there already.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Jeremy Scahill, the timing of Erik Prince moving to the United Arab Emirates, what’s happening here at home, and then if you could also comment on John Ashcroft in his new position?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, Erik Prince put the wheels in motion to go to the United Arab Emirates almost immediately after the five Blackwater executives under him were indicted on a range—a 32-count indictment, felony indictment, for weapons violations, allegations of bribery, of lying to agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The United Arab Emirates does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. It’s not—I think that Erik Prince knows where so many bodies are buried that he kind of is in pole position in terms of being indicted himself. He’s been grey-mailing, what they call it, the U.S. government by leaking details of operations he’s been a part of, as a way of saying, "If you come after me, I’m going to go Ollie North on you and blow the whole thing open." And so, I think he more—in terms of strategic viewpoint regarding the investigations and indictments of Blackwater officials, Prince is trying to make it very difficult to be questioned in these matters. And the UAE is a safe place for him to operate.

And if you have the support of the royals there, which he clearly does, and he’s supporting them—you know, it’s a marriage of convenience and love, apparently—then he has very little to worry about from them. Despite the fact that this Crown Prince can sit with President Obama one day and then be hatching mercenary plots with Erik Prince the next day, is a stunning commentary on how little things have changed from Bush to Obama on this issue of mercenaries.

AMY GOODMAN: And John Ashcroft, the former attorney general?

JEREMY SCAHILL: You know, John Ashcroft has been named—I mean, you can’t make this stuff up—has been named the chief ethics officer for the new Blackwater, that’s actually being run by Bobby Ray Inman, who, you know, was a major figure under the Clinton administration, was picked to take over as defense secretary for Les Aspin, and his nomination was broiled in controversy.

AMY GOODMAN: And he was national security adviser.

JEREMY SCAHILL: And he was the former national security adviser. So they’re sort of trying to rebrand Blackwater. But, I mean—

AMY GOODMAN: New name, Xe, X-E?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, it changes every day. It’s Xe, or it’s United States Training Center. I mean, there’s—

AMY GOODMAN: USTC.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, there’s—I mean, Blackwater has all these shadow entities around the world. I mean, we’ve seen—a new one pops up every day. Now it’s Reflex Response now, R2, Paravant, Greystone. I mean, I could list probably—I could sit here for 10 minutes listing their various shell companies for you.

But, I mean, putting John Ashcroft in charge of ethics at Blackwater is like asking the fox to take care of the baby chicks, you know, on a farm somewhere and hoping everything is going to be fine. I mean, he’s going to devour the very idea of ethics. If you look at his track record when he was attorney general, I mean, this is not an ethical man and not anyone that has any business overseeing the ethics of a notorious mercenary firm.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Nisoor Square, the latest on it, the killings by Blackwater forces in Iraq?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, the five Blackwater guards, as they’re called, were indicted by the federal government for the shooting at Nisoor Square, and the case was dismissed largely on technical grounds and because of malfeasance on the part of prosecutors. The government—of federal prosecutors. The government appealed that decision. And recently, there was—excuse me—there was a ruling favorable to the government. And so, that case very well could move toward settlement, because the guards probably don’t want to stand trial, or it could go to trial, in which case there is going to be a question of how secret it’s going to be.

There is one civil case still remaining against Blackwater, that we’ve covered extensively on Democracy Now!, brought by the father of the youngest victim of the Nisoor Square shootings, the nine-year-old boy named Ali Kinani. That case has been moving forward quietly and could very well go to state court in North Carolina, where if it hits trial, there would be no cam on damages that could be awarded. So that really is the wild card to watch. It could be the one place where there’s any accountability for Blackwater at Nisoor Square.

AMY GOODMAN: And to sum up, this issue of no Muslims in this force that UAE has contracted Erik Prince for, this idea of a private Christian militia in the Middle East?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, you know, I do not need to wax on my opinion about this. We can look at documents submitted in federal court cases from Prince’s own former employees, who say that he is—he views himself as a Christian crusader whose role in the world is wiping out Muslims and Islam in general. They said that he set a tone at Blackwater that rewarded the taking of Muslim life, viewed the operations in Iraq as, quote, "payback for 9/11," even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So the idea that he would implement a policy that had at its core that Muslims would not fire on other Muslims, if they were working for this kind of a force, is consistent with everything we’ve heard out of Blackwater about Mr. Prince’s worldview regarding religion and the supremacy of Christianity over Islam.

It’s very dangerous, Amy, when you have these kinds of forces in such volatile environments, with all of the uprisings happening. The last thing that region needs is a Christian crusader force that appears to have the legitimacy or backing of the United States government, regardless of if it actually does. You know, it’s incendiary, and it’s just—it’s dousing an already burning fire with gasoline. And it’s very, very dangerous. The Obama administration, if they’re not supporting this, they need to do something about it. If they are, well, then that’s serious, and they need to answer questions about what on earth they’re doing continuing this business with Erik Prince’s Christian crusader force.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a Nation fellow, a Puffin fellow, writes for The Nation at thenation.com, and is a Democracy Now! correspondent. Samer Muscati, thanks for being with us, Iraq and UAE researcher at Human Rights Watch.

ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures

PFAW.org

ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures

Table of Contents

Introduction

When state legislators across the nation introduce similar or identical bills designed to boost corporate power and profits, reduce workers rights, limit corporate accountability for pollution, or restrict voting by minorities, odds are good that the legislation was not written by a state lawmaker but by corporate lobbyists working through the American Legislative Exchange Council.  ALEC is a one-stop shop for corporations looking to identify friendly state legislators and work with them to get special-interest legislation introduced. It’s win-win for corporations, their lobbyists, and right-wing legislators. But the big losers are citizens whose rights and interests are sold off to the highest bidder.

Who Founded and Funds ALEC?

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, who helped build a nationwide right-wing political infrastructure following the reelection of Richard Nixon. In the same year, he helped establish the Heritage Foundation, now one of the most prominent right-wing policy institutes in the country. One year later, Weyrich founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the predecessor of the Free Congress Foundation. In 1979, he co-founded and coined the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, and in 1981 he helped establish the ultraconservative Council on National Policy.
ALEC’s major funders include Exxon Mobil, the Scaife family (Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation), the Coors family (Castle Rock Foundation), Charles Koch (Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation), the Bradley family (The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation) and the Olin family (John M. Olin Foundation). These organizations consistently finance right-wing think tanks and political groups.
Members of ALEC’s board represent major corporations such as Altria, AT&T, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft, PhRMA, Wal-Mart, Peabody Energy, and State Farm. Such corporations represent just a fraction of ALEC’s approximately three hundred corporate partners. According to the American Association for Justice, over eighty percent of ALEC’s finances come from corporate contributions.

Who’s Behind ALEC?

ALEC’s activities reflect its founding, funding, and control by corporate interests. According to the American Association for Justice, “the nuts and bolts of lobbying and crafting legislation is done by large corporate defense firm Shook Hardy & Bacon.” This firm plays a significant role in managing ALEC’s legislative and governmental advocacy programs.
The American Bar Association Journal describes Shook Hardy & Bacon as the “darling of corporate America. ” Their tenacious defense of the tobacco industry “made Shook Hardy the firm many of the world’s biggest companies turn to at the first hint of trouble with one of their products.” A New York Times report on Shook Hardy said “tobacco is their middle name,” and the firm’s lawyers have been viewed as “industry propagandists, apologists and co-conspirators.” Shook Hardy represents clients from the pharmaceutical, energy, food, banking and tobacco industries, like Pfizer, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Cargill, Kraft, Bank of America, Philip Morris, Lorillard Tobacco, and British American Tobacco. ALEC’s monthly periodical Inside ALEC demonstrates the significant role of Shook Hardy, as members of the law firm contributed essays criticizing environmental protection efforts1, endorsing corporate immunity from lawsuits2, and defending abusive insurance company practices3.
The clout of corporations and corporate-backed groups comprising ALEC is unmistakable: Victor E. Schwartz, a Shook Hardy partner and head of its Public Policy Group, chairs ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force; Tom Moskitis, the American Gas Association’s Director of External Affairs, chairs the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force; Bob Williams, founder and senior fellow of the corporate-funded Evergreen Freedom Foundation, chairs the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force; Bartlett Cleland, director of the corporate-financed Institute for Policy Innovation, chairs the Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force, and Emory Wilkerson, associate general counsel for State Farm Insurance, chairs the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force.
Simply put, “corporations can implement their agendas very effectively using ALEC,” as stated by Edwin Bender of the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

How Does ALEC Work?

ALEC serves as a means for corporations to advise, lobby and sway legislators. By paying hefty dues and sponsorship fees, corporations are able to participate in ALEC ventures, forums and legislative advocacy work and also underwrite conferences, task forces and meetings with politicians. Corporations use ALEC to formulate, present and promote model legislation to elected officials who are ALEC members and sometimes hold leadership roles in the organization.
“Our members join for the purpose of having a seat at the table. That’s just what we do, that’s the service we offer,” explains Dennis Bartlett, an ALEC task force head who is also the executive director of the American Bail Coalition. “The organization is supported by money from the corporate sector, and, by paying to be members, corporations are allowed the opportunity to sit down at the table and discuss the issues that they have an interest in.”
ALEC propagates a wide range of “model legislation” that seeks to make it more difficult for people to hold corporations accountable in court; gut the rights and protections of workers and consumers; encumber health care reform; privatize and weaken the public education system; provide business tax cuts and corporate welfare; privatize and cut public services; erode regulations and environmental laws; create unnecessary voter ID requirements; endorse Citizens United; diminish campaign finance reformand permit greater corporate influence in elections.
In order to draft and promote their “model legislation,” ALEC operates task forces that bring representatives from corporations together with lawmakers. Each ALEC task force is chaired by both elected officials and “private sector” members. According to Jesse Zwick of the Washington Independent, “ALEC’s task forces are better known for crafting legislation that coincides, rather than conflicts, with the interests of its private-sector members. Famous for hosting lavish conferences for state legislators who possess no staff of their own, the group pampers lawmakers while providing them the opportunity to collaborate on legislation often previously researched and introduced by the policy shops of its corporate members.”
According to ALEC, in 2009, of the 826 “model bills” that were introduced in state legislatures, 115 of those bills were enacted into law. That number is sure to grow following the major Republican gains in the 2010 elections.

ALEC was influential in crafting and passing a Texas law, dubbed the “Successor Asbestos-Related Liability Fairness Act, that shielded Crown Cork and Seal, a business that in 1966 acquired a company that used asbestos in its products, from lawsuits from the company’s workers. Even though Crown agreed to pay the company’s liabilities, it wanted immunity from paying damages to workers facing asbestos-related diseases. Crown Cork and Seal turned to ALEC to help shape the Texas law, which put an extremely low cap on liability for companies like Crown who acquired companies which committed wrongdoing, known as a “successor immunity” law.” Mark Behrens, an attorney for Shook Hardy, worked as a lobbyist for both ALEC and Crown to encourage allied lawmakers to introduce and pass the bill. The American Association for Justice writes that “this so-called ‘successor immunity’ has all the hallmarks of an ALEC special interest bill. It is plainly designed not with public policy in mind, but rather a specific industry (or in this case, a specific company).” The Texas Supreme Court ultimately found the cap to be an unconstitutional retroactive protection for Crown that inhibited the rights of people to rightfully sue corporations for damages, but similar ALEC-derived laws are still on the books in other states.

In Arizona, an investigative report by NPRfound that ALEC significantly helped one of its clients, the Corrections Corporations of America (CCA), influence the state’s new immigration law. The CCA is a for-profit prison company whose “executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market,” and thought that a law which “could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants” to prison would “mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.” As a dues-paying member of ALEC, the CCA was able to write, present and lobby Arizona policymakers for a draconian immigration bill at an ALEC-hosted conference. “Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona’s immigration law,” and many of the bill’s cosponsors later received significant campaign contributions from the CCA.  ALEC also helped the CCA by pushing “truth in sentencing” laws that restrict parole eligibility for felons, and consequently increase the number of prisoners.

What Does ALEC Lobby For?

Since the organization claims to only “exchange” legislation, ALEC is not technically a lobbying firm, and does not need to register. However, ALEC’s tactics and operations are strikingly similar to those of registered lobbyists with corporate benefactors.

Undercutting Health Care Reform

After the passage of health care reform, ALEC’s top priority has been to challenge the law by encouraging members to introduce bills that would prohibit the law’s insurance mandate. ALEC’s Health and Human Services task force is led by representatives of PhRMA and Johnson & Johnson, and representatives of Bayer and GlaxoSmithKlein sit on ALEC’s board. The group’s model bill, the “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,” has been introduced in forty-four states, and ALEC even released a “State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare” discussing a variety of model legislation including bills to partially privatize Medicaid and SCHIP. The legislative guide utilizes ideas and information from pro-corporate groups like the Heritage Foundation, the Goldwater Institute, the James Madison Institute, the Cato Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis and the National Federation of Independent Business.

Corporate Power and Workers’ Rights

ALEC works fervently to promote laws that would shield corporations from legal action and allow them to limit the rights of workers. The group’s model legislation would roll back laws regarding corporate accountability, workers compensation and on the job protections, collective bargaining and organizing rights, prevailing wage and the minimum wage. ALEC is a main proponent of bills that undermine organized labor by stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights and “right to work” laws.They also push “regulatory flexibility” laws that lead to massive deregulation. It is no surprise that the director of ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force previously worked as a Koch Associate at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Tax Policy

As states face challenging budget deficits, ALEC wants to make it more difficult to generate revenue in order to close shortfalls. Bills include the “Super Majority Act,” which makes it so complicated for legislatures to change tax policy that California voters overturned the law; the “Taxpayer Bill Of Rights,” which brought fiscal disaster to Colorado; and measures to eliminate capital gains and progressive income taxes. The main beneficiaries of ALEC’s irresponsible fiscal policies are corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers.

Private School Vouchers

Despite constitutional problems, negative impacts on public schools, bias against disadvantaged students, and comprehensive studies in cities like Washington DC, New York, Milwaukee, and Cleveland which demonstrate that private school voucher programs failed to make any improvements to the education system, ALEC sees vouchers as a way to radically privatize the public education system. Under the guise of “school choice,” ALEC pushes bills with titles like “Parental Choice Scholarship Act” and the “Education Enterprise Act” that establish private school voucher programs.

Voter ID and Election Laws

ALEC is directly tied to the emerging trend among state legislatures to consider voter ID laws. Using false allegations of “voter fraud,” right-wing politicians are pursuing policies that disenfranchise students and other at-risk voters,--including the elderly and the poor--who are unlikely to have drivers’ licenses or other forms of photo ID. By suppressing the vote of such groups, ALEC’s model “Voter ID Act” grants an electoral advantage to Republicans while undermining the right to vote. In addition, ALEC wants to make it easier for corporations to participate in the political process. Their Public Safety and Elections taskforce is co-chaired by Sean Parnell of the Center for Competitive Politics, one of the most vociferous pro-corporate election groups, and promotes model legislation that would devastate campaign finance reform and allow for greater corporate influence in elections.

Obstructing Environmental Protection

At the bidding of its major donors like Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, ALEC is behind state-level legislation that would hinder the ability of government to regulate and curb polluters. ALEC has previously said that carbon dioxide “is beneficial to plant and human life alike,” and promotes climate change denialism. The group’s model legislation assails EPA emissions guidelines and greenhouse gas regulations, destabilizes regional climate initiatives, permits free-reign for energy corporations, and pushes for massive deregulation. Unsurprisingly, ALEC’s “Energy, Environment and Agriculture” task force is led by Tom Moskitis of the American Gas Association and Martin Shultz of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a major lobbyist firm for oil and gas companies like ConocoPhillips. The group receives funding from ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, Texaco, Amoco, the American Petroleum Institute, and the American Electric Power Association.

Conclusion

Americans are increasingly recognizing and speaking out against the disproportionate power of corporations in shaping public policy and steering politicians, and ALEC is a prime example of how Corporate America is able to buy even more power and clout in government. Rather than serve the public interest, ALEC champions the agenda of corporations which are willing to pay for access to legislators and the opportunity to write their very own legislation.  It helps surrogates and lobbyists for corporations draft and promote bills which gut environmental laws, create a regressive tax system, eliminate workers’ rights, undermine universal and affordable health care, privatize public education, and chip away at voting rights.  It's no wonder that so many big corporations view ALEC  as a wise investment.  ALEC represents an alarming risk to the credibility of the political process and threatens to greatly diminish the confidence and influence ordinary people have in government.

Endnotes

  1. Phil Goldberg, “State-Sponsored Global Warming Litigation is Weighing Down on American Business.” Inside ALEC. March 2011.
  2. Victor Schwartz and Cary Silverman. “Rage Against Federal Pre-Emption.” Inside ALEC. June 2009.
  3. Victor E. Schwartz. “How “Bad Faith” Becomes Bad Law.” Inside ALEC. November/December 2009. 

Monday, May 16, 2011

Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’s Founder

May 14, 2011
NYT
By MARK MAZZETTI and EMILY B. HAGER

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand.

The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom.

Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by The New York Times.

The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year.

The U.A.E.’s rulers, viewing their own military as inadequate, also hope that the troops could blunt the regional aggression of Iran, the country’s biggest foe, the former employees said. The training camp, located on a sprawling Emirati base called Zayed Military City, is hidden behind concrete walls laced with barbed wire. Photographs show rows of identical yellow temporary buildings, used for barracks and mess halls, and a motor pool, which houses Humvees and fuel trucks. The Colombians, along with South African and other foreign troops, are trained by retired American soldiers and veterans of the German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion, according to the former employees and American officials.

In outsourcing critical parts of their defense to mercenaries — the soldiers of choice for medieval kings, Italian Renaissance dukes and African dictators — the Emiratis have begun a new era in the boom in wartime contracting that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And by relying on a force largely created by Americans, they have introduced a volatile element in an already combustible region where the United States is widely viewed with suspicion.

The United Arab Emirates — an autocracy with the sheen of a progressive, modern state — are closely allied with the United States, and American officials indicated that the battalion program had some support in Washington.

“The gulf countries, and the U.A.E. in particular, don’t have a lot of military experience. It would make sense if they looked outside their borders for help,” said one Obama administration official who knew of the operation. “They might want to show that they are not to be messed with.”

Still, it is not clear whether the project has the United States’ official blessing. Legal experts and government officials said some of those involved with the battalion might be breaking federal laws that prohibit American citizens from training foreign troops if they did not secure a license from the State Department.

Mark C. Toner, a spokesman for the department, would not confirm whether Mr. Prince’s company had obtained such a license, but he said the department was investigating to see if the training effort was in violation of American laws. Mr. Toner pointed out that Blackwater (which renamed itself Xe Services ) paid $42 million in fines last year for training foreign troops in Jordan and other countries over the years.

The U.A.E.’s ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, declined to comment for this article. A spokesman for Mr. Prince also did not comment.

For Mr. Prince, the foreign battalion is a bold attempt at reinvention. He is hoping to build an empire in the desert, far from the trial lawyers, Congressional investigators and Justice Department officials he is convinced worked in league to portray Blackwater as reckless. He sold the company last year, but in April, a federal appeals court reopened the case against four Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

To help fulfill his ambitions, Mr. Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, obtained another multimillion-dollar contract to protect a string of planned nuclear power plants and to provide cybersecurity. He hopes to earn billions more, the former employees said, by assembling additional battalions of Latin American troops for the Emiratis and opening a giant complex where his company can train troops for other governments.

Knowing that his ventures are magnets for controversy, Mr. Prince has masked his involvement with the mercenary battalion. His name is not included on contracts and most other corporate documents, and company insiders have at times tried to hide his identity by referring to him by the code name “Kingfish.” But three former employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements, and two people involved in security contracting described Mr. Prince’s central role.

The former employees said that in recruiting the Colombians and others from halfway around the world, Mr. Prince’s subordinates were following his strict rule: hire no Muslims.

Muslim soldiers, Mr. Prince warned, could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims.

A Lucrative Deal

Last spring, as waiters in the lobby of the Park Arjaan by Rotana Hotel passed by carrying cups of Turkish coffee, a small team of Blackwater and American military veterans huddled over plans for the foreign battalion. Armed with a black suitcase stuffed with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of dirhams, the local currency, they began paying the first bills.

The company, often called R2, was licensed last March with 51 percent local ownership, a typical arrangement in the Emirates. It received about $21 million in start-up capital from the U.A.E., the former employees said.

Mr. Prince made the deal with Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. The two men had known each other for several years, and it was the prince’s idea to build a foreign commando force for his country.

Savvy and pro-Western, the prince was educated at the Sandhurst military academy in Britain and formed close ties with American military officials. He is also one of the region’s staunchest hawks on Iran and is skeptical that his giant neighbor across the Strait of Hormuz will give up its nuclear program.

“He sees the logic of war dominating the region, and this thinking explains his near-obsessive efforts to build up his armed forces,” said a November 2009 cable from the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi that was obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

For Mr. Prince, a 41-year-old former member of the Navy Seals, the battalion was an opportunity to turn vision into reality. At Blackwater, which had collected billions of dollars in security contracts from the United States government, he had hoped to build an army for hire that could be deployed to crisis zones in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He even had proposed that the Central Intelligence Agency use his company for special operations missions around the globe, but to no avail. In Abu Dhabi, which he praised in an Emirati newspaper interview last year for its “pro-business” climate, he got another chance.

Mr. Prince’s exploits, both real and rumored, are the subject of fevered discussions in the private security world. He has worked with the Emirati government on various ventures in the past year, including an operation using South African mercenaries to train Somalis to fight pirates. There was talk, too, that he was hatching a scheme last year to cap the Icelandic volcano then spewing ash across Northern Europe.

The team in the hotel lobby was led by Ricky Chambers, known as C. T., a former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who had worked for Mr. Prince for years; most recently, he had run a program training Afghan troops for a Blackwater subsidiary called Paravant.

He was among the half-dozen or so Americans who would serve as top managers of the project, receiving nearly $300,000 in annual compensation. Mr. Chambers and Mr. Prince soon began quietly luring American contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and other danger spots with pay packages that topped out at more than $200,000 a year, according to a budget document. Many of those who signed on as trainers — which eventually included more than 40 veteran American, European and South African commandos — did not know of Mr. Prince’s involvement, the former employees said.

Mr. Chambers did not respond to requests for comment.

He and Mr. Prince also began looking for soldiers. They lined up Thor Global Enterprises, a company on the Caribbean island of Tortola specializing in “placing foreign servicemen in private security positions overseas,” according to a contract signed last May. The recruits would be paid about $150 a day.

Within months, large tracts of desert were bulldozed and barracks constructed. The Emirates were to provide weapons and equipment for the mercenary force, supplying everything from M-16 rifles to mortars, Leatherman knives to Land Rovers. They agreed to buy parachutes, motorcycles, rucksacks — and 24,000 pairs of socks.

To keep a low profile, Mr. Prince rarely visited the camp or a cluster of luxury villas near the Abu Dhabi airport, where R2 executives and Emirati military officers fine-tune the training schedules and arrange weapons deliveries for the battalion, former employees said. He would show up, they said, in an office suite at the DAS Tower — a skyscraper just steps from Abu Dhabi’s Corniche beach, where sunbathers lounge as cigarette boats and water scooters whiz by. Staff members there manage a number of companies that the former employees say are carrying out secret work for the Emirati government.

Emirati law prohibits disclosure of incorporation records for businesses, which typically list company officers, but it does require them to post company names on offices and storefronts. Over the past year, the sign outside the suite has changed at least twice — it now says Assurance Management Consulting.

While the documents — including contracts, budget sheets and blueprints — obtained by The Times do not mention Mr. Prince, the former employees said he negotiated the U.A.E. deal. Corporate documents describe the battalion’s possible tasks: intelligence gathering, urban combat, the securing of nuclear and radioactive materials, humanitarian missions and special operations “to destroy enemy personnel and equipment.”

One document describes “crowd-control operations” where the crowd “is not armed with firearms but does pose a risk using improvised weapons (clubs and stones).”

People involved in the project and American officials said that the Emiratis were interested in deploying the battalion to respond to terrorist attacks and put down uprisings inside the country’s sprawling labor camps, which house the Pakistanis, Filipinos and other foreigners who make up the bulk of the country’s work force. The foreign military force was planned months before the so-called Arab Spring revolts that many experts believe are unlikely to spread to the U.A.E. Iran was a particular concern.

An Eye on Iran

Although there was no expectation that the mercenary troops would be used for a stealth attack on Iran, Emirati officials talked of using them for a possible maritime and air assault to reclaim a chain of islands, mostly uninhabited, in the Persian Gulf that are the subject of a dispute between Iran and the U.A.E., the former employees said. Iran has sent military forces to at least one of the islands, Abu Musa, and Emirati officials have long been eager to retake the islands and tap their potential oil reserves.

The Emirates have a small military that includes army, air force and naval units as well as a small special operations contingent, which served in Afghanistan, but over all, their forces are considered inexperienced.

In recent years, the Emirati government has showered American defense companies with billions of dollars to help strengthen the country’s security. A company run by Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser during the Clinton and Bush administrations, has won several lucrative contracts to advise the U.A.E. on how to protect its infrastructure.

Some security consultants believe that Mr. Prince’s efforts to bolster the Emirates’ defenses against an Iranian threat might yield some benefits for the American government, which shares the U.A.E.’s concern about creeping Iranian influence in the region.

“As much as Erik Prince is a pariah in the United States, he may be just what the doctor ordered in the U.A.E.,” said an American security consultant with knowledge of R2’s work.

The contract includes a one-paragraph legal and ethics policy noting that R2 should institute accountability and disciplinary procedures. “The overall goal,” the contract states, “is to ensure that the team members supporting this effort continuously cast the program in a professional and moral light that will hold up to a level of media scrutiny.”

But former employees said that R2’s leaders never directly grappled with some fundamental questions about the operation. International laws governing private armies and mercenaries are murky, but would the Americans overseeing the training of a foreign army on foreign soil be breaking United States law?

Susan Kovarovics, an international trade lawyer who advises companies about export controls, said that because Reflex Responses was an Emirati company it might not need State Department authorization for its activities.

But she said that any Americans working on the project might run legal risks if they did not get government approval to participate in training the foreign troops.

Basic operational issues, too, were not addressed, the former employees said. What were the battalion’s rules of engagement? What if civilians were killed during an operation? And could a Latin American commando force deployed in the Middle East really be kept a secret?

Imported Soldiers

The first waves of mercenaries began arriving last summer. Among them was a 13-year veteran of Colombia’s National Police force named Calixto Rincón, 42, who joined the operation with hopes of providing for his family and seeing a new part of the world.

“We were practically an army for the Emirates,” Mr. Rincón, now back in Bogotá, Colombia, said in an interview. “They wanted people who had a lot of experience in countries with conflicts, like Colombia.”

Mr. Rincón’s visa carried a special stamp from the U.A.E. military intelligence branch, which is overseeing the entire project, that allowed him to move through customs and immigration without being questioned.

He soon found himself in the midst of the camp’s daily routines, which mirrored those of American military training. “We would get up at 5 a.m. and we would start physical exercises,” Mr. Rincón said. His assignment included manual labor at the expanding complex, he said. Other former employees said the troops — outfitted in Emirati military uniforms — were split into companies to work on basic infantry maneuvers, learn navigation skills and practice sniper training.

R2 spends roughly $9 million per month maintaining the battalion, which includes expenditures for employee salaries, ammunition and wages for dozens of domestic workers who cook meals, wash clothes and clean the camp, a former employee said. Mr. Rincón said that he and his companions never wanted for anything, and that their American leaders even arranged to have a chef travel from Colombia to make traditional soups.

But the secrecy of the project has sometimes created a prisonlike environment. “We didn’t have permission to even look through the door,” Mr. Rincón said. “We were only allowed outside for our morning jog, and all we could see was sand everywhere.”

The Emirates wanted the troops to be ready to deploy just weeks after stepping off the plane, but it quickly became clear that the Colombians’ military skills fell far below expectations. “Some of these kids couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” said a former employee. Other recruits admitted to never having fired a weapon.

Rethinking Roles

As a result, the veteran American and foreign commandos training the battalion have had to rethink their roles. They had planned to act only as “advisers” during missions — meaning they would not fire weapons — but over time, they realized that they would have to fight side by side with their troops, former officials said.

Making matters worse, the recruitment pipeline began drying up. Former employees said that Thor struggled to sign up, and keep, enough men on the ground. Mr. Rincón developed a hernia and was forced to return to Colombia, while others were dismissed from the program for drug use or poor conduct.

And R2’s own corporate leadership has also been in flux. Mr. Chambers, who helped develop the project, left after several months. A handful of other top executives, some of them former Blackwater employees, have been hired, then fired within weeks.

To bolster the force, R2 recruited a platoon of South African mercenaries, including some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s. The platoon was to function as a quick-reaction force, American officials and former employees said, and began training for a practice mission: a terrorist attack on the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. They would secure the situation before quietly handing over control to Emirati troops.

But by last November, the battalion was officially behind schedule. The original goal was for the 800-man force to be ready by March 31; recently, former employees said, the battalion’s size was reduced to about 580 men.

Emirati military officials had promised that if this first battalion was a success, they would pay for an entire brigade of several thousand men. The new contracts would be worth billions, and would help with Mr. Prince’s next big project: a desert training complex for foreign troops patterned after Blackwater’s compound in Moyock, N.C. But before moving ahead, U.A.E. military officials have insisted that the battalion prove itself in a “real world mission.”

That has yet to happen. So far, the Latin American troops have been taken off the base only to shop and for occasional entertainment.

On a recent spring night though, after months stationed in the desert, they boarded an unmarked bus and were driven to hotels in central Dubai, a former employee said. There, some R2 executives had arranged for them to spend the evening with prostitutes.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Amid the Arab Spring, a U.S.-Saudi split

By Nawaf Obaid, Published: May 15
The Washington Post

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

A tectonic shift has occurred in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Despite significant pressure from the Obama administration to remain on the sidelines, Saudi leaders sent troops into Manama in March to defend Bahrain’s monarchy and quell the unrest that has shaken that country since February. For more than 60 years, Saudi Arabia has been bound by an unwritten bargain: oil for security. Riyadh has often protested but ultimately acquiesced to what it saw as misguided U.S. policies. But American missteps in the region since Sept. 11, an ill-conceived response to the Arab protest movements and an unconscionable refusal to hold Israel accountable for its illegal settlement building have brought this arrangement to an end. As the Saudis recalibrate the partnership, Riyadh intends to pursue a much more assertive foreign policy, at times conflicting with American interests.

The backdrop for this change are the rise of Iranian meddling in the region and the counterproductive policies that the United States has pursued here since Sept. 11. The most significant blunder may have been the invasion of Iraq, which resulted in enormous loss of life and provided Iran an opening to expand its sphere of influence. For years, Iran’s leadership has aimed to foment discord while furthering its geopolitical ambitions. Tehran has long funded Hamas and Hezbollah; recently, its scope of attempted interference has broadened to include the affairs of Arab states from Yemen to Morocco. This month the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi, harshly criticized Riyadh over its intervention in Bahrain, claiming this act would spark massive domestic uprisings.

Such remarks are based more on wishful thinking than fact, but Iran’s efforts to destabilize its neighbors are tireless. As Riyadh fights a cold war with Tehran, Washington has shown itself in recent months to be an unwilling and unreliable partner against this threat. The emerging political reality is a Saudi-led Arab world facing off against the aggression of Iran and its non-state proxies.

Saudi Arabia will not allow the political unrest in the region to destabilize the Arab monarchies — the Gulf states, Jordan and Morocco. In Yemen, the Saudis are insisting on an orderly transition of power and a dignified exit for President Ali Abdullah Saleh (a courtesy that was not extended to Hosni Mubarak, despite the former Egyptian president’s many years as a strong U.S. ally). To facilitate this handover, Riyadh is leading a diplomatic effort under the auspices of the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council. In Iraq, the Saudi government will continue to pursue a hard-line stance against the Maliki government, which it regards as little more than an Iranian puppet. In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia will act to check the growth of Hezbollah and to ensure that this Iranian proxy does not dominate the country’s political life. Regarding the widespread upheaval in Syria, the Saudis will work to ensure that any potential transition to a post-Assad era is as peaceful and as free of Iranian meddling as possible.

Regarding Israel, Riyadh is adamant that a just settlement, based on King Abdullah’s proposed peace plan, be implemented. This includes a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. The United States has lost all credibility on this issue; after casting the sole vote in the U.N. Security Council against censuring Israel for its illegal settlement building, it can no longer act as an objective mediator. This act was a watershed in U.S.-Saudi relations, guaranteeing that Saudi leaders will not push for further compromise from the Palestinians, despite American pressure.

Saudi Arabia remains strong and stable, lending muscle to its invigorated foreign policy. Spiritually, the kingdom plays a unique role for the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims — more than 1 billion of whom are Sunni — as the birthplace of Islam and home of the two holiest cities. Politically, its leaders enjoy broad domestic support, and a growing nationalism has knitted the historically tribal country more closely together. This is largely why widespread protests, much anticipated by Western media in March, never materialized. As the world’s sole energy superpower and the de facto central banker of the global energy markets, Riyadh is the economic powerhouse of the Middle East, representing 25 percent of the combined gross domestic product of the Arab world. The kingdom has amassed more than $550 billion in foreign reserves and is spending more than $150 billion to improve infrastructure, public education, social services and health care.

To counter the threats posed by Iran and transnational terrorist networks, the Saudi leadership is authorizing more than $100 billion of additional military spending to modernize ground forces, upgrade naval capabilities and more. The kingdom is doubling its number of high-quality combat aircraft and adding 60,000 security personnel to the Interior Ministry forces. Plans are underway to create a “Special Forces Command,” based on the U.S. model, to unify the kingdom’s various special forces if needed for rapid deployment abroad.

Saudi Arabia has the will and the means to meet its expanded global responsibilities. In some issues, such as counterterrorism and efforts to fight money laundering, the Saudis will continue to be a strong U.S. partner. In areas in which Saudi national security or strategic interests are at stake, the kingdom will pursue its own agenda. With Iran working tirelessly to dominate the region, the Muslim Brotherhood rising in Egypt and unrest on nearly every border, there is simply too much at stake for the kingdom to rely on a security policy written in Washington, which has backfired more often than not and spread instability. The special relationship may never be the same, but from this transformation a more stable and secure Middle East can be born.

The writer is a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research & Islamic Studies.


Print Send RSS
Nawaf Obaid is a glib Saudi representative who for some time sported a luxuriant, back-of-the-collar hairdo on American television – rather a novelty among those speaking for the desert kingdom, where mullahs are preferred to mullets. He has been known since the mid-1990s as an indefatigable Washington gadfly.
Obaid has been associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and most recently was affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 1999 he published, in the Middle East Quarterly (MEQ), a study of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist cult that is the Saudi state religion and which inspires Al-Qaida. There he issued a warning against the Wahhabis – who he called by that name, without adopting the term "Salafi" or any other deceptive terms. He wrote, "American analysts have underestimated, overlooked, or misunderstood the nature, strength, and goals of the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia. This led to a failure to predict the oil embargo, the ferocity of anti-American sentiments after the Kuwait war, and to understand what the Taliban would become."
After the atrocities of September 11, 2001, Nawaf Obaid could have added the rise of Al-Qaida to his roster of unexpected results of Western obliviousness about the Wahhabis. But curiously, he did not. Rather, he suddenly forgot all that he had previously said about Wahhabism, and on cable TV talk shows tried to deny that "Wahhabism" even existed. According to him, the concept was an invention of authors like myself, who he claimed knew nothing of the kingdom.
Last year Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz, the wheeling, dealing, and vodka-serving Saudi ambassador to the U.S., departed Washington. Bandar had once bragged that unlike Israel, the Saudis did not need a formal lobby in America, because they had a grip on the White House. The kingdom appointed a new ambassador, Prince Turki al-Faisal. Turki is more sophisticated than most of the desert denizens who come to Washington, and he hired the slick Obaid as his "private security and energy adviser." Obaid therefore operated in the shadow world powerful Saudis typically prefer – he was both a D.C. think-tank "expert" and a semi-official functionary. He remained a narcissistic fool, according to Saudi dissidents.
Then Nawaf Obaid did something extremely provocative. On November 29, 2006, The Washington Post published a shocking op-ed column signed by him, titled "Stepping Into Iraq." Therein, Obaid warned, in aggressive language, that "massive Saudi intervention" would support Sunni Arab terrorists if the U.S.-led coalition were to leave Iraq abruptly. Further, according to the arrogant Obaid, "it would be impossible to ensure that Saudi-funded militias wouldn't attack U.S. troops." A Saudi thrust into Iraq on the Sunni side must be considered inevitable: "Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks – it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse."
Obaid was even impudent enough to allege that when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Saudi King Abdullah late in November, Abdullah delivered the same menacing message to Cheney. Obaid's inciting language was especially outrageous to those like myself who follow Saudi events closely, because it has been obvious in recent months that King Abdullah wants exactly the opposite outcome. The king, as Obaid himself admits, seeks reconciliation between Iraqi Sunnis and Shias, not more Sunni violence.
Extremist Saudis (among whom I do not count King Abdullah) were, not long ago, happy to see Wahhabi bloodshed carried out far from their borders, in the U.S. on 9/11, in Israel, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But the fire of the Sunni jihad burns too hot for them when it flares up on the northern border of the kingdom itself. No normal person wants a house ablaze next door.
The consequences are already felt: Sunni Arab terror in Iraq draws most of its "foreign fighter" volunteers from the Saudi kingdom. When they are killed, their biographies and photographs appear in Saudi media. Some of them have come back to Saudi Arabia complaining that the Iraqis did not desire the establishment of a Taliban regime; but these veterans of mass murder in Iraq nonetheless express a renewed desire to halt change in the Saudi kingdom.
So Nawaf Obaid, speaking from the pages of one of America's leading newspapers, issued a threat: play the Saudi way or risk even worse terrorism in Iraq. Soon, more curious events transpired. The Saudi government immediately repudiated Obaid's statements, and within a week he who had once flaunted his mullet in the green rooms of American cable networks was fired from his job as a Saudi adviser. In an admirably cold-blooded and even amusing dismissal comment, Ambassador Turki said of Obaid, "We felt that we could add more credibility to his claims as an independent contractor by terminating our consultancy agreement with him."
What really happened here? Will Saudi Arabia send armed fighters into Iraq on the pretext of protecting Sunni Arabs, but also with the inclination to attack U.S.-led coalition forces? Credible sources from inside the kingdom say no. Rather, they point out that an anti-reform clique in the royal family opposes King Abdullah's efforts for peace in Iraq. Nawaf Obaid allegedly published his screed in the Post as a trial balloon for these ultra-reactionaries. Post columnist David Ignatius called it a "bargaining chip" [note: the italics appeared in Ignatius' column]. But Ambassador Turki reported to King Abdullah, and Obaid was supposed to work for Turki. Obaid overstepped his bounds, as a pawn in an anti-Abdullah conspiracy... or so it appeared.
But then Prince Turki abruptly resigned and flew home. Was he a victim of Obaid's intrigues, or a participant in them? Following on his hilarious explanation for Obaid's firing, Turki had recourse to the oldest excuse known in Washington: he suddenly "wanted to spend more time with his family."
If it is not beyond imagining that Wahhabi maniacs could try to bring about a Saudi invasion of Iraq, it is much more realistic to think that the moment is coming, and soon, when Abdullah will consolidate his power and may strike decisively against the Wahhabis. While Nawaf Obaid lost his job, some of those who share his dreams of aggravated meddling in Iraq may lose their heads.
Another question remains: how did Obaid's manifesto make into the pages of the Post? The newspaper reported on Obaid's firing from Saudi service in a diffident manner, merely reprinting a wire service account but inserting the following novel comment: "[Fred Hiatt, The Post's editorial page editor, declined to comment on Turki's announcement.]"
As a former op-ed editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, I see more issues here: will the Post now publish columns by Saudi dissidents and their supporters, to provide balance? Did Obaid himself submit his text, was it offered by Turki's embassy, or was it solicited by someone at the Post who shares the crazed view that the Saudis must be appeased at any price?
The curiosities that accompany Saudi actions in the West will get more, rather than less, common. Nawaf Obaid may have revealed, and prevented, a major change for the worse. Don't believe the Saudi hype, and watch this space!