Page 2 of 2 Loose Saudi cannons in
Lebanon By Sami Moubayed
creating and
arming Sunni fundamentalist groups such as Fatah
al-Islam.
The purpose was to use them
against the Iran-backed all-Shi'ite group
Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Shi'ites have an armed
wing, the reasoning went, so why shouldn't the
Sunnis as well? In March, Hersh penned an
exceptionally detailed essay in The New Yorker
called "The redirection", saying that the US was
supporting Sunni
fanatic groups to
counterbalance the spread of Shi'ite Islam - and
the power of Iran - in the Arab world.
Part of the strategy was increased
US-Saudi planning to undermine Hezbollah in
Lebanon. Another way was to encourage Sunni
extremists in the region, who, although
anti-American, are equally anti-Shi'ite. Hersh
pointed out that this was identical to the
Saudi-US strategy of the 1980s, when they armed
and supported bin Laden to fight the Soviets in
Afghanistan.
The architects of this policy
are US Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National
Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, and former
ambassador and current Saudi National Security
Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan. They are
responsible for the "redirection" toward fostering
Sunni fanatics, and more recently for the creation
of Fatah al-Islam to combat Hezbollah.
Hersh said, "The idea [is] that the Saudis
promised they could control the jihadis, so we
[US] spent a lot of money and time ... using and
supporting the jihadis to help us beat the
Russians in Afghanistan, and they turned on us.
And we have the same pattern, not as if there's
any lessons learned. The same pattern, using the
Saudis again to support jihadis."
Fatah
al-Islam, and the Saudis within it, rebelled
against Siniora and the US, just as bin Laden did
after US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia in
1991. The Saudis, Hersh said, were telling the
Americans, "We've created this movement, we can
control it. It's not that we don't want the
Salafis to throw bombs, it's who they throw them
at - Hezbollah, [Iraqi Shi'ite cleric] Muqtada
al-Sadr and the Syrians, if they continue to work
with Hezbollah and Iran." In his CNN
interview, Hersh added, "The enemy of our enemy is
our friend, just as the jihadi groups in Lebanon
were also there to go after [Hezbollah leader
Hassan] Nasrallah. We're in the business of
creating in some places, Lebanon in particular,
sectarian violence."
All of this was
dismissed as something of Hersh's imagination in
March, but today, with the increasing number of
Saudis showing up in Lebanon - and Iraq - it seems
Hersh was not so wrong after all.
In Iraq,
it was revealed by US officials that 45% of all
foreign militants fighting the Americans come from
Saudi Arabia. Contrary to what has been said in
the past, only 15% come from Syria and Lebanon
combined, and a relatively high 10% from North
Africa. This was revealed in the Los Angeles
Times, quoting a senior US official whose name
remained anonymous.
He stressed that 50%
of all Saudi fighters in Iraq arrive as
ready-to-explode, indoctrinated suicide bombers,
claiming that in the past six months, 4,000 people
have been killed or injured in Iraq by these Saudi
jihadis.
These words were echoed by Sami
al-Askari, a senior adviser to Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He said, "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," claiming that clerics at Saudi mosques were
encouraging citizens to wage a holy war in Iraq
against Shi'ites.
The Saudi government
acknowledges some of these realities. General
Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Ministry of
Interior, commented: "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. If
we get good feedback from the Iraqi government
about Saudis being arrested in Iraq, probably we
can help."
It is a pity indeed for all
those familiar with contemporary Saudi history
that the terrorists in Lebanon and Iraq carry the
name "Saudi". This means that they are named after
the founder of the oil-rich kingdom, King
Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, a heroic Arabian Bedouin who
was anything but a terrorist, described often as a
gentleman who wanted to develop his country at any
cost.
He toyed with the idea of working
with the Nazis during World War II, then shifted
to the Americans during the era of president
Franklin Roosevelt. Since then, Saudi Arabia and
the US have worked together to combat a variety of
enemies: communism, Nasserism, Khomeinism and
terrorism. Hersh insists on portraying them as
silent partners once again in combating
Nassrallahism in Lebanon.
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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