Saudis in Iraq

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Interesting stat here, that nearly half of the insurgents in Iraq appear to be Saudi. I just finished reading Stephen Schwartz' Two Faces of Islam, and while it's sometimes annoyingly polemical, he goes to good lengths to criticise both the Wahhabi strain of Islam and the way that it's been so whitewashed over the last century (it doesn't help that the Saudis have put countless money and effort into spreading that sect around the world to make it appear normative, or that Western business has helped so much with that image-making).

As Michael Moore once said, "Fifteen of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia - but we bombed Afghanistan. Did we miss? I know that we're geographically challenged as Americans."

Saudi Fighters Pose Special Problem

By Ned Parker

Los Angeles Times

July 16. 2007 6:31AM

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran for helping the insurgents and militias attacking U.S. troops and civilians in Iraq, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third next-door neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

The U.S. military believes 45 percent of all foreign militants are Saudi, 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon, and 10 percent from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures released to the Los Angeles Times by the officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners held in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudi.

Saudi fighters are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than any other nationality, said the senior American military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity for the U.S. government. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the pivotal role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.

He added that 50 percent of all Saudi fighters in Iraq are suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis. The situation has left the American military in the awkward position of facing an enemy whose top source of fighters is a key regional ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending jihadists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, civilians and Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government.

The situation also casts a spotlight on the tangled web of alliances and enemies that often swirl just below the surface in the political relationships between Muslim nations and with the U.S. government.

In the 1980s, the Saudi intelligence service sponsored Sunni Muslim jihadists for the U.S.-backed fight against the then-Soviet Union in Afghanistan. At the time, Saudi intelligence cultivated Osama bin Laden, the future leader of al-Qaida, who would one day pose a threat to the Saudi royal family and mastermind the Sept. 11 attacks on America. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has long provided a good portion of the money and manpower for al-Qaida and was the home of 15 of the 19 skyjackers in the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Now, the threat of suicide attacks by a Sunni Muslim insurgent group that calls itself al-Qaida in Iraq is the greatest short-term threat to Iraq's security, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner warned last Wednesday.

The group, one of several Sunni Muslim insurgent groups fighting in Baghdad and beyond, relies on foreigners to carry out its lethal bomb attacks because Iraqis are less likely to undertake such strikes, which the movement hopes will provoke sectarian violence, Bergner said. The extent of the connection between the group in Iraq and Bin Laden's network, based along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, is unclear.

The Saudi government does not dispute that some of its youth are ending up as suicide bombers in Iraq but says it has done everything it currently can to stop the bloodshed. The bombings in Iraq mainly target Iraq's Shiite majority whom Sunni Arab extremists consider unbelievers.

"Saudis are actually being misused. Someone is helping them come to Iraq, someone is helping them inside Iraq, someone is recruiting them to be suicide bombers. We have no idea who these people are. We aren't getting any formal information from the Iraqi government," said Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry.

"If we get good feedback from the Iraqi government about Saudis being arrested in Iraq, probably we can help."

Defenders of Saudi Arabia also point to the fact that its government has sought to control its lengthy border with Iraq and has fought a bruising domestic war against al-Qaida since Sept. 11.

"To suggest they've done nothing to stem the flow of people into Iraq is wrong," said a U.S. intelligence official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "People do get across that border. You can always ask, 'Could more be done?' But what are they supposed to do, post a guard every 15 or 20 paces?"

Others contend Saudi Arabia is allowing fighters, sympathetic to al-Qaida, to go to Iraq through Syria rather than stir havoc at home.

Iraqi parliament member Sami Askari, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, accused Saudi officials of a deliberate policy to sow chaos in Shiite-led Baghdad.

"The fact of the matter is that Saudi Arabia has strong intelligence resources, and it would be hard to think that they are not aware of what is going on," he said.

Askari also claimed Saudi mosques actively call for jihad against Iraq's Shiites and the government had funded groups causing unrest in Iraq's largely Shiite south.

With its own border to Iraq closed, Saudi fighters take what is now an established route by bus or plane to Syria, where they meet their handlers who facilitate their passage into Iraq's western deserts, the senior U.S. military officer said.

He suggested it was in this area that Saudi Arabia could do more, by implementing rigorous travel screenings for young Saudi males. Iraqi officials agreed. An estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters cross into Iraq each month, according to the U.S. military.

"Are the Saudis using all means possible? Of course not. . . . And we think they need to do more as does Syria, as does Iran, as does Jordan," the senior US military officer said.

Both the White House and State Department declined to comment for this article.

The long-close relationship between the U.S. and oil-rich Saudi Arabia has become increasingly difficult in recent times. Saudi leaders undercut U.S. diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute by brokering, in Mecca, an agreement to form a Fatah-Hamas "unity" government in the Palestinian territories. And King Abdullah took Americans by surprise by declaring at an Arab League gathering that the U.S. presence in Iraq was illegitimate.

Even now, U.S. officials are sensitive about the relationship. Asked why U.S. officials in Iraq have not publicly criticized Saudi Arabia the way they had Iran or Syria, the senior military officer said: "Ask the State Department. This is a political juggernaut."