August 24, 2007
Saudi Embassy Protest Highlights Role In Iraq
UPDATED.
About a hundred Iraqi-Americans rallied this morning outside the Saudi Embassy -- and across the street from The Gate -- in protest of the kingdom's support for Sunni insurgents and terrorists in their home country. Bearing signs and banners that read "Saudi Are Behind 9/11 And Iraqi Suiside Bombing [sic]" and "Wahhabi Saudi Money Kill Our Children," the protesters traveled from across the country to send Saudi Arabia a message.
(Click here, here and here for photos of the protest.)
"The muftis of Saudi Arabia send fighters to kill the Iraqi people for their religion," said Abdul al-Mayahi of New Orleans. With protesters shouting "No bomb!" and "Down with Wahhabi!" in Arabic behind him, he continued, "We ask Saudi Arabia to act against those people who import terrorism, who come to Iraq. They need to live in peace."
But aren't the Saudis our allies in the war on terror, you ask?
Not quite.
The only thing keeping the Saudi royal family in power is its unholy alliance with the kingdom's powerful and fanatical Wahhabist leaders. Wahhabi, a particularly virulent strain of Sunni Islam, is the national religion of Saudi Arabia. It pronounces all other faiths heretical, and reserves special contempt for Shiites. Not all Wahhabists are terrorists, but most Islamic terrorists are inspired by Wahhabi.
The Saudi royal family is famously close with the Bush clan. But any other administration, even a Democratic one, would probably turn a blind eye to the fomentation of radicalism in the oil-rich kingdom.
Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates visited with Saudi officials earlier this month to massage them on what the New York Times diplomatically termed (subscription) a "counterproductive" role in Iraq. Ahead of the visit, the White House announced a pricey arms deal with Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, possibly to sweeten the pot.
Whether the Saudis agreed to check the clerics calling for the slaughter of Iraqi Shiites and financing Sunni fighters remains to be seen. U.S. officials generally won't go on the record when discussing the Saudis' role in Iraq, even as half the foreign fighters found in that war zone are believed to come from Saudi Arabia. The reason being that the Bush administration won't openly criticize its so-called ally.
Neither, apparently, will the intelligence community. In the National Intelligence Estimate update [PDF] released yesterday, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that "the reluctance of the Sunni states that are generally supportive of U.S. regional goals to offer support to the Iraqi government probably bolsters Iraqi Sunni Arabs' rejection of the government's legitimacy."
It's a safe guess who one of those unnamed neighbors is. In that same sentence, Iran is called out for its "assistance to armed groups" that "exacerbates the violence inside Iraq." There is little the White House can realistically do short of U.N. sanctions to get Iran to stand down. But as a friend and key trading ally, it's a mystery why Saudi Arabia hasn't been significantly pressured to clamp down on its Sunni radicals.
The Economist noted this contradiction late last month. Conservative Stephen Schwartz has been ringing alarms on the Saudis' unhelpful role in the war on terror for years. Here's his latest on how what's happening in the kingdom is directly provoking violence in Iraq. "Frontline" has also examined how Wahhabism is indoctrinated in Saudis and exported elsewhere. And in this month's Mideast Monitor, former Ambassador Curtin Winsor neatly explains why the Saudi royals' tolerance of Wahhabism threatens the world, and what the Bush administration ought to be doing about it.
Posted at 2:30 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Robert Gates, Saudi Arabia
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