Category Archives: John Duke Anthony

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Sa’ud: In Memoriam

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King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Sa’ud passed away last week. Rahimahu Allah.

Aged ninety, the monarch had been in less than good health for some time. He is followed in accordance with a succession that was as consensually agreed to and as smoothly executed as any among ruling families in modern times. The position and role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and head of state passed to the Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister, and the late king’s half-brother, HRH Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, who had additionally served as the country’s Minister of Defense.

The new Crown Prince, also in accordance with a previously stipulated and agreed line of succession, is HRH Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz. Prince Muqrin is the youngest son of King Abdulaziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. He received his higher education in Great Britain and is an accomplished pilot as well as a former Minister of Intelligence. He is a half-brother of the late king and also of the new king.

One of King Salman’s most remarkable and groundbreaking initial acts was unprecedented: he introduced a member of the younger generation of princes to an official position in the direct line of succession to the future position of king. The new Deputy Crown Prince and Second Deputy Prime Minister is HRH Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, who is also the Minister of Interior. Prince Mohammad bin Nayef succeeded his father in that role when the latter passed away three years ago.

The following tribute is by National Council Founding President and CEO Dr. John Duke Anthony. Dr. Anthony met with and had the opportunity to observe the late king at close hand numerous times over the past half century. Included were more than thirty occasions when Abdullah either led or was a member of the Saudi Arabian delegation to the annual GCC Ministerial and Heads of State Summits that Dr. Anthony attended.

The following essay is the first of several that will be appearing from Dr. Anthony on various aspects of the impact of King Abdullah’s vision and leadership.

 

ABDULLAH BIN ABDULAZIZ BIN ABDULRAHMAN AL SA’UD: IN MEMORIAM

By Dr. John Duke Anthony

January 27, 2015

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Fi Thimat Allah.

King Abdullah was more than revered. He was widely respected. Above all, he long enjoyed and merited the trust, confidence, and loyalty of his people. Prominent public opinion surveys and poll after poll revealed the high regard in which his fellow citizens held him.

HRH Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Sa'ud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and King of Saudi Arabia. Seated behind him is HRH Saud bin Faisal Al Sa'ud, the kingdom's long-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs.

HRH Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Sa’ud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and King of Saudi Arabia. Seated behind him is HRH Saud bin Faisal Al Sa’ud, the kingdom’s long-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs. Photo by Dr. John Duke Anthony.

King Abdullah held the powerful positions of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Commander of the Faithful, head of state, and Shaykh of Shaykhs. Like few other leaders in the Arab countries, the Middle East, and the Islamic world, he was simultaneously one of the most beloved leaders of his time and in the region beyond Saudi Arabia’s borders.

Much of the reason had to do with the fact that, despite the trappings associated with his being a monarch, he was down to earth, modest, and approachable – forever relatable to Bedouins, city dwellers, and high-level dignitaries alike.

His tastes, like the tribal and once-Bedouin soldiers of the Saudi Arabian National Guard that he led the longest – from 1962 until he became ruler in 2005 – were simple. His manner was direct, his style unpretentious.

Not many heads of state have been known, as he was, for their association with bocce ball, an Italian game similar to bowling. In such leisure time as he had, Abdullah loved to play the game – not on grass or asphalt, as its aficionados are wont to do, but on the sand in the desert with his friends and others with whom he felt comfortable.

King Abdullah’s passing marks a serious event in the history of the kingdom that, thanks to him, became a pivotal actor in international affairs to a greater and more diverse extent than any would have imagined when he became king. As ruler, reformer, and foreign policy decision-maker, the late king provided the needed steady hand and firm direction to lead the kingdom through turbulent times. His domestic, regional, and international achievements during a period of great tensions and uncertainties will accord him a place among Saudi Arabia’s greatest leaders.

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Gulf Cooperation Council Establishes Unprecedented Joint Military Command

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Leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE meet for the Gulf Cooperation Council's 35th Ministerial and Heads of State Summit in Doha, Qatar.

Leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE meet for the Gulf Cooperation Council’s 35th Ministerial and Heads of State Summit in Doha, Qatar. Photo: Qatar News Agency.

In a significant development at the 35th Ministerial and Heads of State Summit in Doha, Qatar, all six Gulf Cooperation Council member-states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) agreed to the establishment of a unified armed forces command. This major breakthrough is not to be confused with the quite different Dir Al-Jazeerah (Peninsula Shield). That force, based at Hafr Al-Batin in northern Saudi Arabia and established in 1984 during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, is the one that dispatched several of the member-states’ defense units to Bahrain in 2011.

The new joint military command will, prudently, be based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The kingdom, beyond being the only GCC country with strategic geographic depth other than Oman, has the largest economy and armed forces as well as a populous citizenry numerically greater than all the citizens of the other five member-states combined. It is also the site of the GCC’s General Secretariat, the largest and oldest of the pan-GCC think tanks dedicated to precisely the kinds of greater cooperation that the member-states seek to achieve, sustain, and protect. 

Dir Al-Jazeerah in Context

Dir Al-Jazeerah presently consists of 4,000 land-based forces. All six countries, including those of Oman and Qatar – which over extended periods earlier had reservations regarding the force’s capabilities, readiness, overall effectiveness, and utility – are represented in the force.

Critics have frequently pointed out that the force lacks credibility. That is, one ought not to expect it to be able to protect against an invading force that is battle-hardened and better equipped, or of any significantly larger size. To view it from that prism, though, is a recipe for misunderstanding. The force’s real position and role can be likened to a neighborhood fire brigade – a metaphor, so to speak, for the kind of assistance it rendered Bahrain. It is also much more than that. Symbolically, strategically, and geopolitically it serves as an important linkage for all six countries not only to one another, but also to their friends, allies, and strategic partners further afield.

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Tenth Manama Dialogue and Regional Challenges

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By Dr. John Duke Anthony and Dr. Imad Kamel Harb

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High level delegates from about twenty countries will meet in the Bahraini capital Manama on December 5-7. They will convene to debate regional realities of defense and security. Among the unwelcome developments since last year’s gathering have been Israel’s heightened provocation, oppression, dis-possession, and ongoing denial of the rights of Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims among its citizens and those under its continuing illegal occupation. The participants are also faced with the further rise and sweep of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS); the Houthi advances in Yemen to the capital in Sanaa and beyond to the Red Sea and Hudeidah, the country’s second largest port; and the problematic and yet-again-extended negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

The Islamic State

F-16 Desert Falcons from the UAE Air Force

F-16 Desert Falcons from the UAE Air Force lined up during joint training with the U.S. in 2011. Photo: U.S. Air Force.

Few intelligence analysts and political and security watchers predicted that an extremist Islamist faction in Syria’s civil war would sweep with such force through northern Iraq, threaten Baghdad, and inch its way through the country’s western Anbar Province to within range of Saudi Arabia’s borders. Indeed, the confused and confusing battlefield in Syria has again proven that it can spawn the kinds of circumstances, events, and players that at once threaten to destabilize the Levant and pose what, a year ago, were then unforeseen challenges to the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf regions. Just as dangerous in the rise and advance of ISIS has become the lure, to many recruits to its ranks, of its millennial ideology and its promise to establish an unsullied Islamic Caliphate that would redress Muslim grievances.

One of the most difficult issues confronting the Manama Dialogue participants is how to address the multifaceted causative underpinnings of the threat that ISIS poses to regional stability and peace. Having the necessary military means to protect against real and imagined threats is one thing. Being able to mobilize, deploy, and effectively implement such means is another. Of the two, the latter is vexing as it is pinned to the hope of containing and countering, if not delivering a mighty body blow, to regional radicalism and violent extremism that would discredit and severely weaken the appeal of such phenomena for far into the future. That a small militant faction like ISIS, which was originally armed with only the most rudimentary weapons it had collected on the Syrian battlefield, was able to roll over a well-armed Iraqi army proved two interrelated facts that contained important lessons.

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New York Times Gets It Wrong on Qatar

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National Council Founding President Dr. John Duke Anthony, presently in Doha, Qatar, escorting a delegation of outstanding Model Arab League student leaders and their faculty advisers, wrote the following today.

I was saddened and disappointed to read about the unfortunate circumstances related to American couple Mathew and Grace Huang from Los Angeles, California. After having been imprisoned in Qatar for a year, the couple was acquitted by Qatar’s Appellate Court Judge, Abdul Rahman Al-Sharafi. In a story that appeared in the International Edition of the New York Times on December 1, 2014, the authors, in their account of what happened next, wrote, “their attempt to leave Qatar was thwarted hours later when immigration officials refused to allow them to depart Doha’s airport. In a roller-coaster day of legal ups and downs, the couple had their passports confiscated in the airport departure area.” The authors seemed to imply that the reason the American couple were not allowed to leave the country was due to either malfeasance or incompetence, or possibly both, on the part of Qatari officials. In fact, neither was the case.

It was brought to my attention that in such circumstances a minimum of bureaucratically required paperwork, which often can be processed within a matter of a few hours , must not only be completed. It must also be properly submitted, scrutinized, and verified by the appropriately designated authorities. It appears that in this case the necessary and required forms only needed to be completed and processed. This morning I was informed by a Qatari government official, whom I respect, that the needed forms are not complex, but simple and straight forward.

These important facts were omitted from the International Edition of the New York Times on December 1 and served to harm the image of the Qatar-U.S. mutually beneficial relationship. This detracts from the need to elucidate for the reader what Qatar and the United States are and have long been doing to cooperate with one another across a broad range of common needs, concerns, interests, and key foreign policy and defense objectives.

Not least among what the two allies have been addressing in a cooperative manner for quite some time is that which drives the engine of the world’s material wellbeing, namely energy; their allied hour-by-hour efforts to counter violent extremism; their extensive joint endeavors in defending the aerial and maritime arteries in the world’s most economically vital area; and their and the five other Gulf Cooperation Council countries’ geopolitically and strategically aligned efforts to achieve a secure, stable, and peaceful Gulf and nearby areas, without which there can be no prospects for sustained prosperity either in the immediate region of Qatar, its fellow GCC countries, and its neighbors, or countries further afield.

Add the one-of-a-kind range of educational and cultural ties between Qatar and the United States, and include the numerous mutually beneficial facets derived from this kind of cooperation. In the developing countries and in numerous among the industrialized countries, the benefits of these dimensions of the relationship are increasingly well known and, understandably, the envy of many. They are also hard to come by in either quite the same nature or to anywhere near the same extent elsewhere.

I was pleased to learn today in a tweet from U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Dana Shell Smith that the travel requirements have now been met and the couple can now return to the U.S. tomorrow. I hope a future International Edition of the New York Times will better explain this to its readership.

Arab-US Defense Cooperation – 2014 Arab-US Policymakers Conference

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The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 23rd Annual Arab U.S.-Policymakers Conference included a session on “Arab-U.S. Defense Cooperation” that featured Mr. Christopher Blanchard, The Honorable Mark T. Kimmitt, Dr. John Duke Anthony, Professor David Des Roches, Dr. Kenneth Katzman, and Dr. Imad Harb.

An audio and video recording of the session as well as a link to the transcript are available below. Videos of the entire 2014 conference are available on YouTube and podcasts of the conference are available through iTunes and FeedBurner.

 

 

Transcript

Audio only:

 

Gulf Cooperation Council: Role in Regional Dynamics – 2014 Arab-US Policymakers Conference

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The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 23rd Annual Arab U.S.-Policymakers Conference included a session on “The Gulf Cooperation Council: Role in Regional Dynamics” that featured Dr. John Duke Anthony, H.E. Dr. Abdullah I. El-Kuwaiz, Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, Ambassador (Ret.) Stephen A. Seche, Dr. Abdullah AlShayji, and Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla.

An audio and video recording of the session as well as a link to the transcript are available below. Videos of the entire 2014 conference are available on YouTube and podcasts of the conference are available through iTunes and FeedBurner.

 

 

Transcript

Audio only:

 

NCUSAR Rings NASDAQ Opening Bell w/ H.E. Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani & Mrs. Matilda Cuomo

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A delegation from the State of Qatar, led by Qatar’s Minister of Economy and Commerce His Excellency Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, joined Dr. John Duke Anthony and the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations along with Mrs. Matilda Cuomo to ring the NASDAQ Opening Bell on Friday, September 26, 2014. A video of the ceremony is available below and on YouTube.

Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup, shares a robust economic, defense, cultural, and educational relationship with the United States. The National Council is a Washington, DC-based non-profit, non-governmental, educational organization dedicated to improving American knowledge and understanding of the Arab world. Dr. John Duke Anthony is the Founding President & CEO of the Council. The delegation was joined by the former First Lady of New York State and longtime advocate on behalf of women, children and families, Mrs. Matilda Cuomo, to ring the Opening Bell.