Kerry And The Jarba Affair

By Hussein Alshimmary -

US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in a visit to Saudi Arabia late last month said this: “President Jarba represents a tribe that reaches right into Iraq. He knows people there, and his point of view and that of the Syrian opposition will be very important going forward.”

Kerry was referring to Ahmed Jarba the head of the “moderate” Syrian opposition group, officially the Syrian Opposition Coalition, which has been fighting the government of Syria since 2011. And the tribe that Mr. Kerry was referring to is the Shammar Arab tribal federation, which originated in northern Yemen and has over 6 million members in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and several other Arab countries.

It can be asserted that Kerry, who made the statement before meeting with the Saudi monarch made a mistake by saying that Jarba represents the Shammar tribe. As a member of the tribe, Jarba certainly does not represent me or the other 2 million members of the Shammar tribe in Iraq alone.

Kerry made the comments at a time when parts of Iraq have been taken over by the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIL which calls itself the Islamic state, for now, and declared itself an Islamic Caliphate with huge ambitions including bringing Rome and Spain into its rule.

The US secretary of State was probably ignorant of the fact that before there ever was a so called Saudi Arabia there was the Emirate of Jabal Shammar in which its capital was Hailed in central present day Saudi Arabia.

The Emirate of Shammar was destroyed by the al-Saud dynasty with the help of the British Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. But the family still thrives in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia. In fact, the mother of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Al Saud is from the tribe of Shammar, so is one of his wives.

It seems that Kerry’s ruling political party back in Washington has big plans for the region, including one that might see the reshuffling of the rulers of the region into more “moderate” ones like that of the Syrian Opposition Coalition which its military wing the Free Syrian Army as an umbrella group once included terrorists groups like al-Qaeda, or ISIL, and Jabhat al-Nusra.

Right now the Middle East is in turmoil not seen since before World War I, and developments are happening so fast, that one cannot but ponder; just what’s next.

Hussein Al Shimmary was an Iraqi political prisoner at the age of 4 during the reign of former Iraqi dictator Saddam. He is a writer, journalist, and a political analyst with with expertise in Middle Eastern Affairs, banking and significant knowledge in Arab tribal affairs.