The LA Times and a few other outlets are carrying a story about the role of our `allies' the Saudis in suicide bombings and in fighting as part of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.
According to this estimate, about 45% of all foreign fighters targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures. About half of the 135 foreign jihadis in U.S. custody in Iraq are Saudis.
Part of what's going on, of course, is the Saudi reaction to the Bush Administration's Shiite empowerment in Iraq, something the Saudis never dreamed we would do when we invaded and toppled Saddam Hussein. Jihadis from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, according to a senior U.S. officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. It's the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.
According to the source, 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, those bombings have accounted for 4,000 Iraqi casualties alone, let alone American ones.
The Saudis,with their wahabi hard line Islam have always been major facilitators of jihad.In the 1980s, the Saudi intelligence service sponsored Sunni Muslim fighters for the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedin battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan...and one of the men who helped bring Saudi aid to the mujahadins, who theKingdom cultivated was none other than, Osama bin Laden. Saudi Arabia has long been a major source of financing and manpower for Al Qaeda: 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were Saudi.
After the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Saudis, like Iran, freely allowed fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, a number of whom were Saudis to transit their territory. The only time the Saudi royals have ever fought al-Qaeda was when they tried to operate on Saudi soil, and bin-Laden and al-Qaeda still enjoy a lot of support in the Kingdom.
The Saudis admit that some of its citizens are fighting inIraq, but continues to say that there's nothing they can do about it.
"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 General Mansour Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry.
Others say that the Saudis are allowing fighters sympathetic to Al Qaeda to go to Iraq so they won't cause trouble at home.
Iraqi Shiite lawmaker Sami Askari, an advisor to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said that the Saudis are deliberately creating violence in Iraq.
"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 said that imams at Saudi mosques call for jihad, or holy war, against Iraq's Shiites and that the government had funded groups causing unrest in Iraq's mostly Shiite south.
Of course, part of that has to do with Saudi Arabia's own Shiite problem. While the West Saudi Arabia, the part on the Red Sea with the major population centers is almost entirely Sunni, the Eastern part, on the Persian Gulf is almost all populated by a Shiite underclass and was forcibly occupied by the House of Saud early in the last century....and that's where the oil is. The last thing the Saudis want is to see another Shiite government close at hand to possibly rile up the natives.
Saudi fighters take an established route by bus or plane to Syria, where they meet handlers who help them cross into Iraq's western deserts, the unnamed senior U.S. military officer said. One way the Saudis could help combat this, if they were serious would be to impose travel restrictions and screen for potential jihadis.
"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 officer said. An estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters cross into Iraq each month, according to the U.S. military.
"It needs to be addressed by the government of Iraq head on. They have every right to stand up to a country like Saudi Arabia and say, 'Hey, you are killing thousands of people by allowing your young jihadists to come here and associate themselves with an illegal worldwide network called Al Qaeda."
So what do the Saudis say? Listen to General Mansour Turki again:
"If you leave Saudi Arabia and go to other places and find somebody who drags them to Iraq, that is a problem we can't do anything about," Turki said.
I wonder..if American Christians were sneaking into Saudi Arabia and blowing up mosques and civilians, do you think the Saudis would have something to say about it?
According to Iraqi advisor Sami Askari, Vice President Dick Cheney had some strong words withthe Saudis about cracking down on jihadi traffic to Iraq. It looks to have been about as effective as Karen Hughes and Condi Rice's request to the Saudis that they cut down on exporting radical Islam to the US.
But, as always,there's real reluctance on the part of the administration to actually criticize the nation President Bush constantly refers to as `our eternal friends.'
Asked why U.S. officials in Iraq had not publicly criticized Saudi Arabia the way they had Iran or Syria, the senior military officer who was the source for this article said, "Ask the State Department. This is a political juggernaut."
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