The Last Enemy - Parts 1,2 & 3 - 1934-2054
Page 63
Chapter 17
The Boeing 777 of the Abu Dhabi Air Force taxied and eventually stopped in front of the Royal Terminal of King Salman Air Base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The attendees from the Emirates disembarked and quickly boarded the vans that took them to the Royal Saudi Air Force building where the meeting was to take place. As Tarek entered the room, he noticed all the other delegations from the Gulf Cooperation Council had already arrived and where seated around the huge table. He was with the United Arab Emirates Army Chief of Staff and the Ministry of Defense. The three of them were using the chairs reserved for each delegation. The rest of the team, around ten officers per country, was sitting behind the fronting trio.
Tarek exchanged greetings with the other delegates, whom he had known for several years and could therefore address on a first-name basis.
The room was buzzing with chatter, when the Saudi Crown Prince and Minister of Defense, Mohammed bin Salman, entered the room. A wave of silence swept over the room and everybody took their seats. Tarek could not help but notice that, despite being now almost fifty, he looked still very much like a man in his late thirties. He did not seem to have exaggerated too much with Telomerax.
The Crown Prince glanced at the thick, intricately decorated green curtains that blocked the windows, then nodded to his Chief of Staff, General Khalid Al-Azzam, to start his presentation.
There was a single point on the agenda, which was how to contain the Iranian threat when the US Navy would leave its base in Manama, Bahrain, in six months, at the end of June 2033.
The presentation lasted half an hour, and was followed by one from Qatar and Kuwait. Tarek noted that, among the various proposals, all speakers never forgot to blame the isolationist foreign policy of the new President. The unanimous judgment was that Strickland was downsizing all presence abroad too much to focus on the domestic issues. However, this left allies in the cold.
It was then the United Arab Emirates’ turn. To the surprise of the audience, it was Tarek and not the military who stood up and turned on his microphone.
“Dear Gentlemen,” he spoke softly, glancing towards the Crown Prince, “I do appreciate all the good analysis heard so far, nonetheless we have a somewhat different assessment of the threat. We believe the danger is coming from Pakistan and India, and I will show you why.”
He then showed a graph of social media patterns from the last several months on Indian and Pakistani websites. Anti-Arabic themes were constantly on the rise, sparked by immigrant labor exploitation episodes that were still too common. The problem was, many of the episodes were made up and most of them came from servers based in South Asia.
“You see, the hate machine has always been running for the last five years, but it became more aggravated after the Rome events. Then, we have a huge increase in spying activity,” he said, waving through the slide holograms with his hands. “The scheme is rather simple, and based on several low-skilled informants, like janitors or truck drivers. These people are equipped with inexpensive smartphones and cameras and simply take pictures of whatever they find around them. Last year, we uncovered a plot that was basically feeding the content of the rooms of the Abu Dhabi power utility company back to India. Because of this, similar activities were uncovered in Oman and Bahrain.” Tarek paused, sipped some water and continued, “Finally, we have the military intelligence. It also shows a change of pattern, with the Pakistanis slowly but consistently relocating troops from the Indian border to the Iranian one, in order to gain better control of the troublesome tribal areas of Waziristan. India, which is public domain keep in mind, has tripled her fleet over the last twelve years and can land two divisions on the Strait of Hormuz, with little opposition. This is all thanks to the fact that now the US Navy is reducing its Indian Ocean force to a couple of destroyers and repositioning them to Diego Garcia, in the southern part of the Indian Ocean.”
Tarek could hear the increasing volume of chatter, until the Crown Prince switched on his microphone, showing he wanted to speak. Everyone fell silent immediately. He then motioned to Nayef bin Bandar, the head of the Saudi secret service sitting next to him, who took the word,
“It is an interesting picture you are drawing, Mr. Tantawy,” Nayef said, “I wonder how much of it is true, and how much is a favor you are doing for your good friend Alireza, in Teheran.”
Tarek was expecting criticism, but this was very close to accusing him of being an outright Iran ally. He kept calm, let some time pass after the end of the sentence, and replied.
“You know that the information is accurate, it has been shared and validated by your teams at the working group level. We are ready to restart the process anyway, if this helps. As for our connection with Iran, we made no secret of it to hide from you. We are cooperating to help them against the Israeli biodrones program, that is, against a common, hostile enemy. If the information we are showing to you today is correct, it just means we will soon have a bigger, more dangerous, mutual enemy in the region.”
The Crown Prince turned his eyes toward his Chief of Staff, who promptly turned his microphone on.
“Assuming we buy this story, what exactly would you need us to do?”
This time it was up to the Arab Emirates Chief of Staff to answer. Tarek sat back.
“We need you to redeploy half of the Eastern Province forces from the Dammam area, where they are based right now, to the Qatar border. We are talking about seventy-five thousands troops, including the Saudi National Guard. This way, in case of invasion from the Arabic Sea, the force could be readily used to quickly fight any landing bridgehead. If we let Indians establish a solid presence on the Arabian Peninsula, we will be taken over.”
“This would, however, drastically undermine Saudi control over the Eastern region,” the Kuwaiti military delegate spoke without waiting for his colleague to finish his reasoning. “Not to mention to support their allies in the area.”
“That is,” Tarek thought, “you and the Bahrainis.” He looked to the Bahraini delegation, who were all nodding in agreement with the Kuwaitis. Tarek looked at his colleague, then took the word again.
“Dear colleagues, this is the bet we are making. We have to leave enough forces on the Eastern Province just to ensure protection of the oil wells infrastructure; momentarily withdrawing surveillance on some cities, to then be ready prevent a much worse risk.
“The fact is,” the Bahraini delegate intervened, “the risk already materialized on our side, way back in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait, while this Indian invasion is included only in your slides.”
Tarek was getting impatient.
“Saddam is no longer there. This time, there will be no American cavalry coming to the rescue, like in 1990. That’s why we have to take a well thought out risk based on our strengths. Iraq no longer has the military capability to challenge us, and Iran will be busy with Pakistan.”
The delegations started to discuss between each other, so Tarek stood up and moved his eyes back to the Crown Prince Mohammed. He was the one to make the final decision. Mohammed gave Tarek a long look, then switched on his microphone. The chatter subsided, but Mohammed did not speak and turned to Nayef again.
“You seem to really believe in this scenario, Mr. Tantawy. Allow me to ask just one last question; is this the reason why you also send some of your weapons of mass destruction to the Iranians? Something your country always refused to do with us and any other one present at this table?”
The chatter erupted again, filling the vast room with noise. He was scrambling for an answer when the Crown Prince finally spoke, bringing the room back under control.
“The mission of the Saudi Defense Forces is to protect all Saudi people and support all their allies of the Gulf Cooperation Council. I believe that the current setup still fulfills this mandate in the best possible way, however, we will revise as needed. So far, I have not seen enough reasons to change anything.”
He then stood up, made a slight bow toward the audience, and walked a
way.
As he disappeared out of the doorway, Tarek thought to himself, “The only certain thing is that I won’t be attending the next meeting.”