Thursday, February 23, 2006

 

It Just Keeps Getting Better!

Did some digging at the local library this afternoon, and the following quotes are from a 3-page outline about the United Arab Emirates found in a book entitled Global Studies: The Middle East (8th ed., Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 2000), on pp. 154-155:

[The UAE is a] federation of emirates [which] came under British protection in the 1800s, and were given their independence of Great Britain by treaty in 1971. [. . . T]he Wahhabis, militant Islamic missionaries, spread over Arabia in the eighteenth century. Wahhabi agents incited the most powerful coastal group, the Qawasim, to interfere with European shipping. European ships were seized along with their cargoes, their crews held for ransom. To the European countries, this was piracy; to the Qawasim, however, it was defense of Islamic territory against the infidels. [ . . . S]oon the whole coast of the present-day UAE became known as the Pirate Coast. [. . . ] Under [a Defense Cooperation Agreement signed with the U.S. in 1994], a force of 300 U.S. military personnel is stationed in the emirates to supervise port facilities and air refueling for American planes patrolling the no-fly zone (the 36th parallel in northern Iraq). [ . . . ] Disagreements within the ruling families have sometimes led to violence or "palace coups," there being no rule of law or primogeniture.

So let me see if I've got this right: An unstable monarchial government with a long history of shipping piracy is considered so unstable, we made an agreement with them 12 years ago to have OUR military run THEIR ports, at least with respect to our military's duties out of those ports. And now, we're going to let THEM run OUR ports. Uh huh.

posted by Michael 4:34 PM