(Excerpted from Chapter 13: USS Persian Gulf: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
The Carrot and the Big Stick
The Gulf War provided a golden opportunity for the US to find out who their friends were and, more importantly, who their enemies were.
President George Bush Sr., having served as CIA Director, knew he was serving up a geopolitical agent provocateur, which would drag out of the closet all enemies of the US for targeting. After the war countries that supported the effort were rewarded, often with Saudi and Kuwaiti funds. Those who sympathized with Iraq were isolated and cut off from the global financial grid.
Shortly after the Gulf War began Egypt, Syria and the GCC nations signed the Damascus Declaration at US urging. The agreement was a blueprint for post-war financial, political and military compensation for those who supported Operation Desert Storm. At the outset of the Gulf War, Egypt owed foreign creditors $35 billion. When President Hosni Mubarak consented to the use of Egyptian troops, the US announced plans to forgive $6.7 billion in Egyptian military debts. [1] The Saudis and Kuwaitis announced $7 billion in debt relief. As part of the deal 38,000 Egyptian troops remained on the Saudi Peninsula. Egypt received $2.2 billion in annual US military aid which it used to purchase Apaches, F-16s, and Hellfire, Stinger and Hawk missiles.
Israel’s military aid was bumped up to $3.1 billion/year. In 1993 Kuwait announced an end to its 42-year-old boycott of Israel, while the Saudis quit enforcing their boycott. [2] When Syria refused to negotiate with Israel, Saudi Prince Bandar intervened. Israel serves as a forward base for the Rothschild/Rockefeller oil combine and their European fondi banking pals. Ashqelon, Israel is crucial to the DeBeers diamond trade which is financed by Union Bank, a subsidiary of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest commercial bank.
Bank Leumi is controlled by the British Barclays, one of the four British banks that preside over Caribbean Silver Triangle drug money laundering. Bank Leumi chairman Ernst Israel Japhet’s family controls Charterhouse Japhet, of which Barclays also holds a large stake. Charterhouse monopolizes the Israel/Hong Kong diamond trade.
The Japhets are a German banking dynasty. They were involved in the Chinese Opium Wars with the Keswicks, Inchcapes and Swires. Bank Leumi Trustee Baron Stormont Bancroft, a former Lord in Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II and owner of Cunard Lines, is a member of the Samuel family that owns big chunks of Royal Dutch/Shell and Rio Tinto. The Bancroft family owns a big stake in the Wall Street Journal.
Japhet was director at Tibor Rosenbaum’s BCI, which was set up in 1951 after Israel’s creation to serve as Swiss money laundry for the Mossad. Rosenbaum was important to the Zionist creation of Israel, but he was no friend of the Jewish people. Tibor was an associate of Dr. Rudolph Kastner, whose good friend Adolf Eichmann sent 800,000 Jews to their death at Auschwitz. A 1967 Life magazine expose said BCI received $10 million in dirty money from Meyer Lansky’s World Commerce Bank in the Bahamas.
Israel’s second largest bank is Bank Hapoalim, whose founder and owner is British Viscount Erwin Herbert Samuel, another Royal Dutch/Shell insider. Samuel heads the Israeli Red Cross, an arm of British intelligence, and is a Knight of St. John Jerusalem. Bank Hapoalim was also affiliated with BCI. A third Israeli banking behemoth is Israel Discount Bank, which is 100%-owned by Barclays, controls the brunt of Israel’s financing and funds the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Sir Harry Oppenheimer, chairman of DeBeers’ parent Anglo-America, sits on the Barclay’s board, which contains five members of Queen Elizabeth’s Knights of St. John Jerusalem, the most of any firm in the world. [3]
Paz Oil holds a monopoly over Israel’s oil, petrochemical and shipping sectors. Paz is controlled by the Rothschild family, which was instrumental in founding Israel. Shareholders include Tibor Rosenbaum’s Swiss-Israeli Trade Bank, Detroit mob boss and United Brands insider Max Fischer, and Sir Isaac Wolfson, member of an old-money European dynasty and policy adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Swiss-Israeli Trade Bank board members include Permindex insider General Julius Klein, Argentine banker David Graiver and Carter Secretary of Commerce Phillip Klutznick. [4]
Syria sent troops to fight Iraq and received Saudi and Kuwaiti financing to purchase 48 MIG-29 fighters, 300 advanced tanks and a new air defense system. In February 1991, Syrian President Hafez Assad was given $2 billion in aid by the Saudis and Kuwaitis. Syria was allowed to seize territory in northern Lebanon during the war, crushing General Michele Aoun’s Christian militia in the process. On October 15, 1990 Syrian troops took Beirut.
Senegal had $42 million in debt canceled by the US for participating in Operation Desert Storm and for sending peacekeepers to Liberia where CIA puppet Samuel Doe was on the ropes vis-à-vis Charles Taylor’s revolutionaries. Doe, who was protecting Firestone rubber plantations and DeBeers diamond mines, was overthrown, charged with treason and executed.
In 2003, according to the Economist, the CIA funneled military aid to Guinea and used it to fund two Liberian counterrevolutionary groups to force now-President Charles Taylor into exile in Nigeria. The US then issued an Interpol warrant for Taylor, which Nigeria refused to recognize.
Morocco and Tunisia sent troops to the Gulf and were rewarded with Saudi and Kuwaiti aid. Fellow Mahgreb North African nations Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Libya all vehemently denounced the US bombing of Iraq. Yemen, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority did the same. In 1990, Saudi Arabia banned oil sales to Mauritania, Yemen, Sudan and Jordan. Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait canceled the $100 million which they were to give the Palestinian Authority, while continuing to fund the fundamentalist Hamas.
At a December 1991 Islamic Summit in Dakar, Senegal, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah responded to an attempted embrace by Yasser Arafat with a terse, “No kisses please”. Adbullah also refused to talk with Jordan’s King Hussein.
Security Council members who voted “yes” on Resolution 678 were also rewarded. China got a $140 million World Bank loan. Russia got $7 billion from the GCC nations. Congo had a big chunk of foreign debt forgiven and received military aid, while Columbia and Ethiopia received World Bank aid. The US promptly paid the $187 million in delinquent UN dues which it owed. [5]
The day after Yemen cast the lone “no” vote on Resolution 678, the US canceled a $42 million aid package to Yemen. The UN Ambassador from Yemen was told by a US diplomat the day Yemen cast the vote, “That’s the most expensive vote you ever cast”. The Saudis punished their southern neighbor by requiring thousands of Yemeni workers employed in the Kingdom to find Saudi sponsors or face expulsion.
After the war Yemeni, Palestinian and Jordanian workers were replaced en masse throughout the six GCC nations, who also canceled $28 million in aid to Yemen. [6] Jordan lost $200 million in Saudi aid, assistance which normally provides for 15% of Amman’s budget. The US canceled a $37 million aid package to Jordan which, as Iraq’s main trading partner, has suffered the additional economic consequences caused by the UN embargo. [7]
For some countries the consequences of criticizing US foreign policy were more drastic. In Ethiopia the government of Mengitsu Haile Mariam began denouncing the US war against Iraq despite its earlier UN “yes” vote. Mariam was overthrown by a coalition of Tigrean, Eritrean and Oromo rebels, who later guarded the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, where thousands of Ethiopians gathered to protest US involvement in the coup. [8]
In Algeria, where that country’s Oil Minister and OPEC President Sadek Boussena accused the US and energy futures traders of manipulating oil prices during the Gulf War, the fundamentalist Armed Islamic Group (AIG) launched a bloody terror campaign. Algeria was a leader of the OPEC price hawks and the Saudis wanted Boussena out as OPEC President. Algerian President Chadli Benjedid blamed the Saudis for funding AIG. Many Algerians saw the hand of the CIA. Algeria’s currency was devalued and in January 1992 Benjedid resigned.
The first order of business for the new government was to pass the Hydrocarbon Law, which opened Algeria’s oilfields to the Four Horsemen. Algeria’s oil, sought after due to its low sulphur content, was historically handled by the state-owned Sonatrech. Many members of AIG resurfaced to fight in the CIA war against Yugoslavia.[1] “Power, Poverty and Petrodollars: Arab Economies after the Gulf War”. Yahya Sadowski. Middle East Report. May-June, 1991. p.7
[2] “Report Says Bush’s Sons Lobbied for Kuwait Business”. AP. Joplin Globe. 8-30-93. p.3A
[3] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992. p.200
[4] Ibid
[5] “An Enemy of Mankind”. Storm Warning. Seattle. January 1992.
[6] Sadowski. p.10
[7] Morning Edition. National Public Radio. 6-20-91
[8] “Birth Pains of a New Ethiopia”. Gayle Smith. The Nation. 7-1-91. p.1
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