{"id":1386,"date":"2006-08-01T16:41:42","date_gmt":"2006-08-01T16:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2006-08-01T16:41:42","modified_gmt":"2006-08-01T16:41:42","slug":"2006-8-1-castro-and-the-middle-east-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1386","title":{"rendered":"Castro and the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"
Since Fidel Castro may be on his last throes<\/a>, it might be worth wondering what impact his death could have on the Middle East. For instance, Castro was a major supporter of Sahrawi independence and many Polisario Front members have trained there (and continue to do so.) Like the Western Sahara conflict itself, it’s partly a holdover of the Cold War whereby Soviet proxy Cuba would back the Polisario against the Moroccan monarchy, a US client with very, very close ties to the CIA. (Read about the Safari Club<\/a> if you ever<\/a> get the chance<\/a> — it was a French-US–Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian-Moroccan-Iranian (pre-1979) outfit that fought communism in Africa through special ops; a lot of the muscle used was Moroccan, much like in Al Qaeda today.)<\/p>\n

I can’t claim to offer any particular insight here, but a more pro-US bent to Cuban foreign policy post-Castro could signal a change in a lot of other policies, including towards the Polisario. Currently the pro-Morocco lobby in the US Congress essentially consists of anti-Castro Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats. Post-Castro, would the former really care anymore about Morocco’s forgotten conflict?<\/p>\n

Also, there might be other Castro-Middle East links I’m forgetting about. Can anyone think of any?<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Fidel Castro may be on his last throes<\/a>, it might be worth wondering what impact his death could have on the Middle East. For instance, Castro was a major supporter of Sahrawi independence and many Polisario Front members have trained there (and continue to do so.) Like the Western Sahara conflict itself, it’s partly a holdover of the Cold War whereby Soviet proxy Cuba would back the Polisario against the Moroccan monarchy, a US client with very, very close ties to the CIA. (Read about the Safari Club<\/a> if you ever<\/a> get the chance<\/a> — it was a French-US–Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian-Moroccan-Iranian (pre-1979) outfit that fought communism in Africa through special ops; a lot of the muscle used was Moroccan, much like in Al Qaeda today.)
\nI can’t claim to offer any particular insight here, but a more pro-US bent to Cuban foreign policy post-Castro could signal a change in a lot of other policies, including towards the Polisario. Currently the pro-Morocco lobby in the US Congress essentially consists of anti-Castro Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats. Post-Castro, would the former really care anymore about Morocco’s forgotten conflict?
\nAlso, there might be other Castro-Middle East links I’m forgetting about. Can anyone think of any?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}