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2 Saudis quietly go about 'business'
in Iraq By Dahr Jamail
Reporting on Iraqi benchmarks in
mid-September, US President George W Bush and his
team of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan
Crocker sought to pin some of the blame on Iran.
Eschewing diplomatic language during his
testimony, Crocker boldly said, "Iran plays a
harmful role in Iraq." Petraeus added that Iran is
fighting a "proxy war" in Iraq by aiding Shi'ite
extremists and providing weapons that are killing
US troops.
Anyone doubting that Bush is
not serious about taking on Tehran
should note his words from
last month: "We will confront this danger before
it is too late." On September 17, The Daily
Telegraph in London reported that the Pentagon has
already drawn up plans for massive air strikes
against 2,000 targets across Iran.
The
great irony is that while these accusations toward
Tehran are supported by thin evidence, plenty of
evidence does exist that another of Iraq's
neighbors, US ally Saudi Arabia, is supporting
resistance groups in Iraq, and intends to continue
to do so.
A neighborly mess: Iraq,
Iran, Saudi Arabia "Saudi Arabia has both
the means and the religious responsibility to
intervene" in Iraq, wrote Nawaf Obaid,
neo-conservative ally and a former security
adviser to the Saudi government, in a shockingly
frank editorial for the Washington Post last
November.
He warned the Bush
administration, sinking ever deeper into the
quagmire of Iraq: "America must not ignore the
counsel of Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's
ambassador to the United States. If it does, one
of the first consequences will be massive Saudi
intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shi'ite
militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."
Obaid's warning, in response to talk of a
possible US withdrawal from Iraq, noted the
current Saudi political stance of "I am my
brother's keeper" toward fellow Sunni Arabs in
Iraq. Clearly, the Saudis do not consider all
Iraqis their brothers, particularly the Shi'ites.
The editorial said, "As the economic
powerhouse of the Middle East, the birthplace of
Islam and the de facto leader of the world's Sunni
community, constituting 85% of all Muslims, [Saudi
Arabia's] options are to provide Sunni military
leaders [primarily members of the former Iraqi
officer corps, who make up the backbone of the
insurgency] with the same types of assistance -
funding, arms and logistical support - that Iran
has been giving to Shi'ite armed groups for years
or to help establish new Sunni brigades to combat
the Iranian-backed militias."
Obaid
admitted that Saudi involvement in Iraq carried
great risk and "could spark a regional war, but
the consequences of inaction are far worse", and
that his country had "pressed other members of the
Gulf Cooperation Council ... Qatar, the United
Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman - to give
financial support to Sunnis in Iraq".
Arming the neighborhood Last
month, the Bush administration announced new arms
packages for Israel and seven Arab nations
comprising military equipment worth US$20 billion
to Saudi Arabia, more than $30 billion in military
assistance to Israel and $13 billion to Egypt.
To some extent, the arms packages are an
extension of US policies that have been in place
for years in the Middle East. For example, since
1998, Saudi Arabia alone has received more than
$15 billion in US weapons.
But these sales
have had little impact in the region other than
arming everyone to the teeth. In her article "The
Saudi arms deal: Congressional opposition grows",
Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for
Defense Information in Washington, points out,
"The United States has had little success in the
past using arms sales to buy leverage in the
region."
From Washington's viewpoint, the
sale has two objectives: bucking up the
Saudi-dominated six-member Gulf Cooperation
Council and countering Iran's influence. But the
sales will likely cause Iran to respond by
boosting its arms caches.
A dangerous
side-effect of the sales is the addition of more
arms into a region where each country has distinct
objectives in the region and inside Iraq. The
sales set the stage for Iraq to be the flashpoint
for a potential proxy and/or regional war.
But most dangerous for Iraqis and US
troops, the sales reward a country that is
providing an estimated 45% of all foreigners
fighting US troops and Iraqi government forces.
Destabilizing Iraq: The Saudi role A "clear" view of Iraq is now visible only
through a blood-soaked kaleidoscope of
contradictory and conflicting US policies. While
the Bush administration regularly lashes out at
Syria and Iran for aiding militias and foreign
fighters in Iraq, according to official US
military figures reported in the Los Angeles Times
on July 15, about 45% of all foreign militants
targeting US troops and Iraqi civilians and
security forces are from Saudi Arabia. Fighters
from the kingdom are believed to have carried out
the majority of suicide bombings in Iraq.
Who is to blame for the influx of
fighters? General Mansour Turki, a spokesman for
the Saudi Interior Ministry, blames forces inside
Iraq for the flow of Saudi human bombs into Iraq.
If he is to be believed, "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."
But Iraqis are quick to point the finger
across the border. Lawmaker Sami Askari, an
adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, accuses
Saudi officials of following a deliberate policy
of sowing chaos in Baghdad: "The fact 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."
Askari claims
that imams at Saudi mosques regularly call for
jihad against Iraq's Shi'ites and that the Saudi
government has funded groups to cause chaos and
bloodshed in Iraq's predominantly Shi'ite south.
But in large part this continues to be
conveniently overlooked by the Bush administration
so that massive arms packages can be sold to Saudi
Arabia, access to the vast oil reserves continues
unabated, and the Saudi royal family's
long-standing connections to the Bush family
remain unmentioned in mainstream circles.
There are rare days, however, when the
boat does get rocked. Just days before the $20
billion arms package was handed to the Saudi
monarchy, Bush administration officials voiced
their anger at the "counterproductive" role of
Saudi Arabia in Iraq. They accused the kingdom of
regarding Maliki as an Iranian agent and
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