-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 15, 2007 4:10:36 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: "The Same Ones Responsible for 9-11" -- Invade & Conquer
SAUDI ARABIA, Not Iran
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
saudi15jul15,0,3132262.story?coll=la-home-center
From the Los Angeles Times
Saudis' role in Iraq insurgency outlined
HALF the foreign ["Al Qaeda"] fighters in Iraq are Sunnis from
Saudi Arabia
By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer
July 15, 2007
BAGHDAD — Although Bush administration officials have frequently
lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and
militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide
bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according
to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.
About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi
civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from
Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to
official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the
senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention
facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.
Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more
suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the
senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of
the subject's sensitivity. It is apparently 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.
He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide
bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or
injured 4,000 Iraqis.
The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of
battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key
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 extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi
civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
The problem casts a spotlight on the tangled web of alliances and
enmities that underlie the political relations between Muslim
nations and the U.S.
Complicated past
In the 1980s, the Saudi intelligence service sponsored Sunni Muslim
fighters for the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedin battling Soviet
troops in Afghanistan. At the time, Saudi intelligence cultivated
another man helping the Afghan fighters, Osama bin Laden, the
future leader of Al Qaeda who would one day turn against the Saudi
royal family and mastermind the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and
the Pentagon. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has long been a source of a good
portion of the money and manpower for Al Qaeda: 15 of the 19
hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were Saudi.
Now, a group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq is the greatest
short-term threat to Iraq's security, U.S. military spokesman Brig.
Gen. Kevin Bergner said Wednesday.
The group, one of several Sunni Muslim insurgent groups operating
in Baghdad and beyond, relies on foreigners to carry out suicide
attacks because Iraqis are less likely to undertake such strikes,
which the movement hopes will provoke sectarian violence, Bergner
said. Despite its name, the extent of the group's links to Bin
Laden's network, based along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, is
unclear.
The Saudi government does not dispute that some of its youths are
ending up as suicide bombers in Iraq, but says it has done
everything it can to stop the bloodshed.
"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 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," he said.
Defenders of Saudi Arabia pointed out that it has sought to control
its lengthy border with Iraq and has fought a bruising domestic war
against Al Qaeda 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?"
Deep suspicions
Others contend that Saudi Arabia is allowing fighters sympathetic
to Al Qaeda to go to Iraq so they won't create havoc at home.
Iraqi Shiite lawmaker Sami Askari, an advisor to Prime Minister
Nouri Maliki, accused Saudi officials of a deliberate policy to sow
chaos in 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 alleged 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 largely Shiite south. Sunni
extremists regard Shiites as unbelievers.
Other Iraqi officials said that though they believed Saudi Arabia,
a Sunni fundamentalist regime, had no interest in helping Shiite-
ruled Iraq, it was not helping militants either. But some Iraqi
Shiite leaders say the Saudi royal family sees the Baghdad
government as a proxy for its regional rival, Shiite-ruled Iran,
and wants to unseat it.
With its own border with Iraq largely closed, Saudi fighters take
what is now an established route by bus or plane to Syria, where
they meet handlers who help them cross into Iraq's western deserts,
the senior U.S. military officer said.
He suggested it was here that Saudi Arabia could do more, by
implementing rigorous travel screenings for young Saudi males.
Iraqi officials agreed.
"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."
Both the White House and State Department declined to comment for
this article.
Turki, the Saudi spokesman, defended the right of his citizens to
travel without restriction.
"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. He added that security officials could stop
people from leaving the kingdom only if they had information on them.
U.S. officials had not shared with Iraqi officials information
gleaned from Saudi detainees, but this has started to change, said
an Iraqi source, who asked not to be identified. For example, U.S.
officials provided information about Saudi fighters and suicide
bombers to Iraqi security officials who traveled to Saudi Arabia
last week.
Iraqi advisor Askari asserted that Vice President Dick Cheney, in a
visit to Saudi Arabia in May, pressured officials to crack down on
militant traffic to Iraq. But that message has not yet produced
results, Askari said.
The close relationship between the U.S. and oil-rich Saudi Arabia
has become increasingly difficult.
Saudi leaders in early February undercut U.S. diplomacy in the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute by brokering, in Mecca, an agreement to
form a Fatah-Hamas "unity" government in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. And King Abdullah took Americans by surprise by declaring at
an Arab League gathering that the U.S. presence in Iraq was
illegitimate.
U.S. officials remain sensitive about the relationship. Asked why
U.S. officials in Iraq had 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."
Last week when U.S. military spokesman Bergner declared Al Qaeda in
Iraq the country's No. 1 threat, he released a profile of a
thwarted suicide bomber, but said he had not received clearance to
reveal his nationality. The bomber was a Saudi national, the senior
military officer said Saturday.
Would-be suicide bomber
The fighter, a young college graduate whose mother was a teacher
and father a professor, had been recruited in a mosque to join Al
Qaeda in Iraq. He was given money for a bus ticket and a phone
number to call in Syria to contact a handler who would smuggle him
into Iraq.
Once the young Saudi made it in, he was under the care of Iraqis
who gave him his final training and indoctrination. At the very
last minute, the bomber decided he didn't want to blow himself up.
He was supposed to have been one of two truck bombers on a bridge
outside Ramadi. When the first truck exploded, he panicked and
chose not to trigger his own detonator, and Iraqi police arrested him.
Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliate groups number anywhere from
5,000 to 10,000 individuals, the senior U.S. military officer said.
Iraqis make up the majority of members, facilitating attacks,
indoctrinating, fighting, but generally not blowing themselves up.
Iraqis account for roughly 10% of suicide bombers, according to the
U.S. military.
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