By PHK
Fraying at the Seams?
On July 15, Ned Parker of the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the American military’s first time willingness to name names and provide numbers as a result of its exasperation with Saudi Arabia’s multi-pronged support for the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
According to Parker, “the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq” come from Saudi Arabia – not US archenemies Syria or Iran. The figures – obtained from a senior U.S. military officer were apparently the first of their kind released. They indicate that about 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia. 15 percent come from Syria and Lebanon and 10 percent from North Africa. The origins of the other 30 percent are left to our imagination.
The U.S. senior military officer also told Parker that about 50 percent of Saudi belligerents who went to Iraq were suicide bombers and that “nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis.”
The Saudi government, expectedly, responded that its citizens are free to go wherever they want and that regardless, the Saudi-Iraqi border is far too long to patrol effectively so Saudi border patrol couldn’t stop individuals from crossing it if they wanted to do so.
The “hear no evil speak no evil” Bush administration, also expectedly, refused to comment on the Saudi funding of Iraqi Sunni insurgents report but stories have been circulating of strains in the US-Saudi relationship at least since King Abdullah publicly called the U.S. invasion of Iraq an “illegal foreign occupation” earlier this year.
Since then, not only has the U.S. accused the Saudis of undermining the Maliki government in various ways but a lengthy front page feature appeared in Thursday’s (July 26) Wall Street Journal that recounts US government anxieties about the possible Al Rajhi Bank’s complicity in the transfer of funds to organizations that are known to have supported or support terrorism.
True, the Kingdom’s largest Islamic bank is privately owned – but one would also expect that the Saudi government would exercise greater control over a Saudi bank’s activities. Most likely, however, as the WSJ suggests, the House of Saud, has turned a blind eye for domestic political reasons: a close partnership that has developed between the bank’s powerful owners who are no friends of the Saudi royal family and the powerful Wahhabi clerical establishment.
Arms for Oil, Influence – and what else – containment of Iran? Buying off AIPAC?
Meanwhile, the Bush administration will announce Monday a “series of new arms deals worth at least $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and five other oil-rich Persian Gulf states as well as a new 10-year military packages to Israel ($30.4 billion in new US aid, an increase in nearly 43 percent) and Egypt ($13 billion).
The administration claims that most but not all of the weapons to the Gulf will be defensive. Well, what about to Israel? Or how many, the skeptic in me wonders, are in reality “dual use?” This is a question not answered in the news reports I’ve read. I don’t pretend to be a weapons expert so perhaps someone would fill in the blanks.
Since The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times have already reported the new Middle East arms package story, it seems to me the administration has, in fact, already made the announcement public. But why on a weekend at the end of July? To avoid scrutiny in the hope that the story will slip below the radar screen while people are sipping margaritas by the pool?
Nevertheless, what more could one want when the announcement is made to all the media except more specific facts and figures - and which US defense contractors will profit the most?
Why Now?
Just as with the timing of so many recently leaked U.S. government stories on Saudi Arabia’s activities in neighboring Iraq one has to wonder about the timing of the arms package sales story. According to the New York Times the “why now” with respect to the arms package is supplier competition. “If the packages offered to them by the U.S. are blocked or come with too many conditions, the officials said, the Persian Gulf countries could turn elsewhere for similar equipment, reducing American influence in the region.”
Since the Bush administration has already performed such wonders in expanding US influence in the region, the price of oil is now at record highs in a sellers market with no downturn in sight, and the Saudis have already demonstrated they are so amenable to US pressure, what difference will an arms deal make?
Regardless, it is probably the latest “chocolate cake” offering in an attempt to buy Saudi cooperation in Iraq and to let the multi-billion dollar arms sale package to Israel slip by unnoticed during Condoleezza Rice and Bob Gates' trip to the Middle East next week.
And the $30.4 billion for Israel to restock its weapons caches after its disastrous invasion of Lebanon last summer? AIPAC, after all, remains alive, well and its coffers and voters are just a handshake away.