The Saudi war in Iraq and lessons for Pakistan

[TalibanSwatter]

Saudi Arabia funds and support extremism

Ben Norton
Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.” So advised world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited thinkers in human history.


The counsel may sound simple and intuitive — that’s because it is. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. ignores it.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading sponsor of Islamic extremism. It is also a close U.S. ally. This contradiction, although responsible for a lot of human suffering, is frequently ignored. Yet it recently plunged back into the limelight with the Saudi monarchy’s largest mass execution in decades.

On Jan. 2, Saudi Arabia beheaded 47 people across 13 cities. Among the executed was cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a leader from the country’s Shia religious minority who was arrested for leading peaceful protests against the regime in 2011-12.

Saudi support for extremism
Saudi Arabia is a theocratic absolute monarchy that governs based on an extreme interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law). It is so extreme, it has been widely compared to ISIS. Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud characterized Saudi Arabia in an op-ed in The New York Times as “an ISIS that has made it.”

“Black Daesh, white Daesh,” Daoud wrote, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia.”

“In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other,” Daoud continued. “This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.”

Since the November Paris attacks, in which 130 people were massacred in a series of bombings and shootings for which ISIS claimed responsibility, the West has constantly spoken of the importance of fighting extremism. At the same time, however, the U.S., U.K., France, and other Western nations have continued supporting the Saudi regime that fuels such extremism.

Saudi political dissidents like Turki al-Hamad have constantly argued this point. In a TV interview, al-Hamad insisted the religious extremism propagated by the Saudi monarchy “serves as fuel for ISIS.” “You can see [in ISIS videos] the volunteers in Syria ripping up their Saudi passports,” al-Hamad said.

“In order to stop ISIS, you must first dry up this ideology at the source. Otherwise you are cutting the grass, but leaving the roots. You have to take out the roots,” he added.

In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks, scholar Yousaf Butt stressed that “the fountainhead of Islamic extremism that promotes and legitimizes such violence lies with the fanatical ‘Wahhabi’ strain of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia.”

“If the world wants to tamp down and eliminate such violent extremism, it must confront this primary host and facilitator,” Butt warned.

In the past few decades, the Saudi regime has spent an estimated $100 billion exporting its extremist interpretation of Islam worldwide. It infuses its fundamentalist ideology in the ostensible charity work it performs, often targeting poor Muslim communities in countries like Pakistan or places like refugee camps, where uneducated, indigent, oppressed people are more susceptible to it.

U.S. government cables leaked by WikiLeaks admit “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

“It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,” wrote former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2009 cable.

Supporters of the Saudi monarchy resist comparisons to ISIS. The regime itselfthreatened to sue social media users who compared it to ISIS. Apologists point out that ISIS and Saudi Arabia are enemies. This is indeed true. But this is not necessarily because they are ideologically different (they are similar) but rather because they threaten each other’s power.

There can only be one autocrat in an autocratic system; ISIS’ self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuses to kowtow to present Saudi King Salman, and vice-versa. After all, the Saudi absolute monarch partially justifies his rule through claiming that it has been blessed and ordained by God, and if ISIS’ caliph insists the same, they can’t both be right.

Some American politicians have criticized the U.S.-Saudi relationship for these very reasons. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has been perhaps the most outspoken critic. Graham has called extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda “a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support.”

Sen. Graham served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a decade, and chaired the committee during and after the 9/11 attacks. He condemned the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, which he deemed a “distraction” from the U.S.’s real problems, and has warned that Saudi Arabia may have played a role in the 9/11 attacks that left almost 3,000 Americans dead.Of the 19 Sept. 11 attackers, 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia. Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted 9/11 plotter, confessed in sworn testimony to U.S. authorities that members of the Saudi royal family funded al-Qaeda before the attacks. The Saudi government strongly denies this.

During the Cold War — and particularly during the Soviet war in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s — the U.S., hand-in-hand with Saudi Arabia, actively encouraged religious extremism. They stressed that socialist and communist movements were often atheistic, and pitted far-right religious fundamentalists against the secular leftists. The remnants of this policy are the extremist salafi jihadist movements we see throughout the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia today.

In order to decimate the left in the Cold War, the U.S. emboldened, armed and trained the Saudi-led extreme-right. The Frankenstein’s monsters it created in the pursuit of this policy are the al-Qaedas and ISISes of the world.

 

[aamerjamal]

for me the solution is simple eliminate suadia and Iran (almost impossible) but reality is these two countries always create the problem for rest of Islamic world.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Financial Times

APRIL 20, 2016
by: David Gardner

In February 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt, on his way home from the Yalta summit with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, met King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy, anchored in the Great Bitter Lake midway up the Suez Canal. Having settled the dispositions of postwar Europe, Roosevelt laid a foundation stone of the postwar Middle East. The US, in essence, would guarantee the security and integrity of Ibn Saud’s Arabian kingdom — united by the sword in 52 battles over 30 years — while the Saudis would guarantee the free flow of oil at reasonable prices.

As US President Barack Obama arrives on a valedictory visit to Saudi Arabia this week, that 70-year-old bargain looks frayed by fractious relations with a ruling House of Saud that is coming under unpredictable new management.

The shale-based energy revolution meanwhile shows the potential to liberate the US from dependence on Saudi and Gulf oil. Mr Obama’s main foreign policy achievement, the nuclear deal struck last year between international powers and Iran, is abhorrent to Saudi Arabia, whose virulently sectarian Wahhabi/ Salafi interpretation of Islam abominates the Shia Islam of Iran and its Arab network of co-religionists from Baghdad to Beirut.

Even when the Iran deal was only at an interim and fragile stage in 2013, the Saudis were so affronted they rejected a seat for which they had vigorously lobbied on the UN Security Council. But differences between Washington and Riyadh had been steadily accumulating — starting with the fact that it was mainly Saudi terrorists, on orders of the Saudi Osama bin Laden, who struck America on 9/11.

The Saudis could never reconcile themselves to the US-led invasion of Iraq, not because it toppled Saddam Hussein but because it led to Shia majority rule in an Arab country. When Hosni Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s popular revolt in 2011, Riyadh accused Mr Obama of betraying a US ally. Saudi perceptions of US complacency in the face of Iran’s advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are a grievance far outweighing western perceptions of ISIS jihadism as the main threat in and from the Middle East.

After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq.

Mr Obama’s never-enthusiastic sentiments about the US-Saudi alliance, meanwhile, have become clearer after The Atlantic magazine published his candid thoughts last month. Obviously he sees Wahhabism as an ideology that fuels Islamist extremism worldwide and as a barrier blocking the Arab rendezvous with modernity.

Alongside the international rapprochement with Iran, Mr Obama has long argued for a regional thaw and self-regulating balance of power between the Saudi and Iranian rivals.

But any such regional détente remains anathema to Saudi Arabia, in which real power is now wielded by Mohammed bin Salman, deputy crown prince and 30-year-old son of the ageing King Salman — the first time the reins have passed from the sons of Ibn Saud to the third generation.

However fulsome and emollient Mr Obama manages to be on this visit, and however much he summons up the bonds uniting the US and the Wahhabi kingdom, all the way back to Roosevelt and Ibn Saud, the Saudis are simply waiting for him to leave office — albeit as anxious as anyone about the bewildering contest to replace him.

 

[Sage]

Saudia has always meddled in pakistan's internal affairs. The saudi sponsored funding to terrorist groups in pakistan is a big concern for pakistanis---.

They never meddled in our affairs until asked so ....no country can interfere in another country affairs if it is not invited so ...KSA has helped a great deal ....at every stage ...their role is more positive as compared to Iran ...It is our weakness if KSA meddles in our affairs ...it's our diplomatic failure ...our previous FM was a mod-girl turned diplomat chick ...and nowadays we don't have any FM ....or so to say ...what do you expect to happen in such a scenario ?

 

[khanmubashir]

the existence of Isis is due to unlawful invasion of Iraq by usa % further strengthened by the funding to Syrian rebels who latter joined isis again by usa & its ME allies pak up til now has played cautiously when last yr saudia & uae demanded pak to join their campaign in yemen our military declined nawaz seemed to be budging but such matters r i hands of military & bureaucracy and looking at the cadre of our politicians it should

 

[TalibanSwatter]

The Istanbul attack has shown the chaos unleashed in the Middle East has no borders. Perhaps western powers will now learn the important lesson:: Don't rely on pseudo-religious Salafi-inspired thugs to further geo-political agendas. Thankfully our establishment has learnt this lesson well. The Al Saud need the Wahabi/Salafi establishment for political legitimacy.We don't have that problem.

Speaking of pseudo-religious Salafi marauders, ISIS is Saudi's "gift" to the muslim world and beyond. A network that now poses the biggest threat of the 21st century to the muslim and western world. In a bid to oust Assad with a focus on shortsighted geo-political gains, western powers turned a blind eye to ISIS and other like minded groups wreaking havoc across Syria and Iraq.The US and UK sat on the sidelines quietly supporting the chaos in Syria and to a lesser extent in Iraq, as the Saudis midwifed ISIS pumping money, weapons, and resources, with Turkey buying oil from ISIS and providing the logistics and supply lines through its Syrian border. In 2013 John McCain thanked " our Saudi and Qatari friends" for funding the fight in Syria. In a war where the moderate militant has become rarer than the mythical unicorn, the Salafi jihadists led by ISIS and Al Nusra now rule the roost. While Al Nusra was heavily supported by Qatar, ISIS was entirely a Saudi project. General Dempsey admitted as much during a Senate hearing last year. And that is no surprise.

The Al Saud have historically consistently relied on their Wahabi/Salafi foot soldiers/allies to achieve geo-political aims, reflected in their 200 year old alliance with the followers of Abdel Wahab. The Karbala massacre in 1801, the Ikhwan raping and pillaging entire communities across Hijaz in the early 1900s, the latest creation in the form of ISIS wreaking havoc across Iraq and Syria, are only a few examples of this enduring unholy alliance nurtured in the sands of Nejd. As always, the proxies have increasingly spun out of control and ISIS is simply the latest manifestation of chickens coming home to roost. The latest attacks in Medina and Qatif reflect that dynamic.

The US and UK are now targeting ISIS and other Salafi-funded militant groups in Iraq and Syria. However the ambiguous and half hearted approach by the US-led coalition has been fully revealed ever since the Russians joined the fight - doing just enough to keep ISIS in check but not enough to cripple it. The US policy of "having your cake and eating it too" has not worked. After the Paris attack, the Europeans belatedly got the memo as the chaos unleashed in the Middle East came knocking on their doors. Turkey, till recently an ISIS supporter, has realized its folly and looking to mend fences with Russia in an effort to tackle Daesh.

Unfortunately, Uncle Sam continues to live in fantasy land.The US believes regime change in Syria is more important than destroying ISIS. Turning a blind eye to the chaos unleashed in Syria and Iraq has proved to be a dangerous game. If anything the rise of ISIS has made Assad look like one of the good guys - and that is no easy feat. At the the end of the day, the Salafi jihadist movement now led by ISIS is as much a threat to the US, as it is to Europe and the rest of the Muslim world.

When will the US stop propping up the state that spawned ISIS, Lashkar e Jhangvi, Boko Haram among others, and the Wahabi/Salafi ideology driving it? When will it stop using Saudi-funded extremists to fuel sectarian conflict in the region in its pursuit of narrow geo-political interests? When will the US and UK stop chasing dubious arms deals with the fountainhead of the salafi jihadi movement and hold it accountable? To destroy ISIS, the ideology and support network fueling it must be dismantled in Saudi. Of course given the Al Saud's symbiotic and long-standing bond with their Wahabi brethren, it is not clear if they will course correct voluntarily.

What the Saudis sowed the world is reaping today. But the US must shoulder the blame, for empowering the Saudi regime to promote its toxic salafi ideology while nurturing salafi jihadist groups around the world. Whether the US and Europe will wake up from their slumber and end their self-defeating alliance with the Saudis is anybody's guess.

Don't just fight the symptoms, treat the disease. Until that happens, the dark salafi jihadist storm will keep ravaging communities across the middle east, europe and beyond. And no one will be immune.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Reuters

German police have searched a mosque and eight apartments in Hildesheim that are believed to be a hotbed of a radical Salafist community, the interior minister of the northern state of Lower Saxony said on Thursday.

Germany is on high alert after a spate of attacks since July 18 left 15 people dead - including four attackers - and dozens injured.

Interior Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement that up to 400 police - including mobile squads and a special forces police commando - were involved in the raids on Wednesday in the Hildesheim area, which is a short drive south of Hanover.

"The German-speaking Islamic circle (DIK) in Hildesheim is a nationwide hot-spot of the radical Salafist scene that Lower Saxony security authorities have been monitoring for a long time," the state official said.

Pistorius said the search followed months of planning and was an important step toward banning the association, which security authorities say has radicalized Muslims and encouraged them to take part in jihad in combat zones.

Numerous members of the mosque have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, while sermons, seminars and speeches call for "hate against non-believers," the ministry said.

Germany has seen sharp increases in the number of ultra-conservative Islamists known as Salafists in recent years, with the total number of sympathizers now seen at 8,900, up from 7,000 at the end of 2014, German officials have said.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

By KAMEL DAOUD
NOVEMBER 20, 2015


Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other.

This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it.

The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Salafi jihadist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns.

One might counter: Isn’t Saudi Arabia itself a possible target of Daesh? Yes, but to focus on that would be to overlook the strength of the ties between the reigning family and the clergy that accounts for its stability — and also, increasingly, for its precariousness. The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces radicalism which both threatens the country and gives legitimacy to the regime.

One has to live in the Muslim world to understand the immense transformative influence of religious television channels on society by accessing its weak links: households, women, rural areas. Islamist culture is widespread in many countries — Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Mauritania. There are thousands of Islamist newspapers and clergies that impose a unitary vision of the world, tradition and clothing on the public space, on the wording of the government’s laws and on the rituals of a society they deem to be contaminated.
It is worth reading certain Islamist newspapers to see their reactions to the attacks in Paris. The West is cast as a land of “infidels.” The attacks were the result of the onslaught against Islam. Muslims and Arabs have become the enemies of the secular and the Jews. The Palestinian question is invoked along with the rape of Iraq and the memory of colonial trauma, and packaged into a messianic discourse meant to seduce the masses. Such talk spreads in the social spaces below, while up above, political leaders send their condolences to France and denounce a crime against humanity. This totally schizophrenic situation parallels the West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia.

All of which leaves one skeptical of Western democracies’ thunderous declarations regarding the necessity of fighting terrorism. Their war can only be myopic, for it targets the effect rather than the cause. Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not a militia, how do you prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when the influence of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense editorial industry remains intact?
Is curing the disease therefore a simple matter? Hardly. Saudi Arabia remains an ally of the West in the many chess games playing out in the Middle East. It is preferred to Iran, that gray Daesh. And there’s the trap. Denial creates the illusion of equilibrium. Jihadism is denounced as the scourge of the century but no consideration is given to what created it or supports it. This may allow saving face, but not saving lives.

Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books.

The attacks in Paris have exposed this contradiction again, but as happened after 9/11, it risks being erased from our analyses and our consciences.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

 

[TalibanSwatter]

AP

On Aug. 17, 2014 — eight months before she declared her candidacy for president — Clinton sent a detailed strategy for combating the Islamic State, which she referred to as ISIS in an email to John Podesta, then a White House counselor and now her campaign chairman.

Along with a military campaign to roll back the terror group in Iraq, the Clinton email talks about confronting the Saudis and the Qataris, both key U.S. allies, over what she refers to as governmental backing of ISIS.

The Clinton email states: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical Salafi groups in the region.”

As a basis for the assertions, Clinton in the email cites “Western intelligence, U.S. intelligence and sources in the region.” The email was among thousands hacked from Podesta’s private Gmail account and released this week by WikiLeaks in what appears to be an attempt to embarrass the Clinton campaign.

At the same time, a campaign aide also argued that the sentiment expressed in the email “isn’t new.” Clinton “has repeatedly called out the Saudis and Qataris for supporting terrorism,” said the aide, declining to be named. As evidence, the aide pointed to Clinton’s remarks in a speech last November. “And, once and for all, the Saudis, the Qataris, need to stop their citizens from directly funding Salafi extremist organizations, as well as schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path toward radicalization,” she said then.

In yet another instance cited by the aide, Clinton asserted in a September 2015 speech at the Brookings Institution that “nobody can deny that much of the extremism in the world today is a direct result of policies and funding undertaken by the Saudi government and individuals. We would be foolish not to recognize that. “

But in that and other remarks, Clinton appeared to be referring to general Saudi support for Islamic mosques that have been accused of spreading extremist ideology while calling out its government for not cracking down on private citizens sending money to terror organizations.

In her email to Podesta, she goes beyond this, saying the Saudi government themselves are funding ISIS — a far more serious allegation with potentially more dramatic diplomatic implications. And one that has riled up critics of Saudi Arabia here in the U.S.

“Clearly, this Clinton email shows the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is continuing to covertly fund and logically support terrorist groups that kill Americans,” said Kristen Breitweiser, one of the leaders of the 9/11 family members who have been lobbying for recently enacted legislation — opposed by the Obama administration — that would allow them to sue the Saudis in federal court over their support for al-Qaeda.

“Apparently, everybody in Washington knows that the Saudis are doing this, yet the White House and the State Department are against holding them accountable.”

Breitweiser added about the contents of the email: “This is a clear example of the difference between how people speak to each other privately compared to what they say publicly.”

Clinton broke with Obama over the legislation Breitweiser lobbied for; her campaign said she would have signed the bill allowing U.S. citizens to sue countries that sponsored terrorism into law.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

61 killed in twin suicide attacks
AFP | DAWN.COM | REUTERS
Heavily-armed militants wearing suicide vests stormed a police academy in Quetta, killing at least 61 people and wounding at least 117, Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said Tuesday, in the deadliest attack on a security installation in the country's history.

Three gunmen burst into the sprawling academy, targeting sleeping quarters home to some 700 recruits, and sent terrified young men aged between 15 and 25 fleeing.

Communication intercepts showed the attack was carried out Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) militant group, IG Frontier Corps (FC) Major General Sher Afgan said.

Separately, the militant Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the group's Amaq news agency.

Most of the deaths were caused when two of the attackers blew themselves up. The third was shot dead by Frontier Corps (FC) troops. At least 117 people were injured.

“I saw three men carrying Kalashnikovs… they were in camouflage and their faces were hidden,” one cadet told reporters. “They started firing and entered the dormitory but I managed to escape by climbing over a wall.”

Bugti confirmed to reporters that there had been three attackers.

“They first targeted the watch tower sentry, and after exchanging fire, killed him and were able to enter the academy grounds,” he said.

"We have taken one of the suicide bombers' bodies into custody," Bugti told DawnNews.

The attack on the Balochistan Police College, around 20 kilometres east of Quetta, began at around 11:10pm Monday, with gunfire continuing to ring out at the site for several hours.

Major General Sher Afgan, chief of the paramilitary FC in Balochistan, which led the counter-operation, said “the attack was over in around three hours after we arrived”.

"The operation needed to be conducted with precision therefore it took us four hours to clear the area completely."

“There were three terrorists and all of them were wearing suicide vests,” he said. “Two suicide attackers blew themselves up, which resulted in casualties, while the third one was shot dead by our troops.”

He added that the militants had been communicating with their handlers in Afghanistan.

Afgan said communication intercepts showed the attackers belonged to LJ's Al-Alimi faction, which is affiliated with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group itself, however, has not claimed the attack.

The area was plunged into darkness when a counter-offensive was launched, and security personnel threw up a cordon while ambulances zoomed in and out, taking the injured to hospitals. Military helicopters circled overhead.

The cadets were rescued from the college following an operation carried out by Special Services Group (SSG) commandos.

 

[PeaceGen]

With Nawaz Sharif a brain slave of the House of Saud at the helm, good luck with that Pakistan.

If we do not keep our noses out of this, we are going to burn like Iraq and Syria. This is a racist war Pakistan must not be a part of. We are not Arabs nor Persians.

Let them kill each other.They learned nothing from the Iraq Iran war leading to a million deaths. They'll perhaps kill another million.

For Pakistan, its stay out or die! - We must bolster our internal security, look away and wait till Arabs and Persians have gotten tired of butchering each other to prove 'who's the superior race'.

Absolutely..

 

[TalibanSwatter]

DAWN
A flawed alliance
Dec 2015


ARE we or are we not a part of the newly formed Saudi-led ‘Islamic military alliance’? The contradictory statements emanating from the foreign ministry have deepened the puzzle. First, there was an appearance of surprise when the Saudi deputy crown prince named Pakistan among the 34 countries in the alliance. ‘We were not consulted’ was the reaction from the foreign secretary. A day later, the Foreign Office endorsed the Saudi move. What caused this sudden turnaround is anyone’s guess.

It is yet another foreign policy disaster in the making. The confusion exposes the complete disarray in our decision-making process on a critical foreign policy issue that has direct bearing on our national security. Sartaj Aziz, the adviser on foreign affairs, told the Senate that he was still unaware of the full details of the new alliance.

How come we have committed ourselves to a coalition in whose formation we had no role? We are not even clear about its tasks. Is it not bizarre that the adviser had no clue about the assurance of support we might already have given to the Saudi rulers?

The Saudi role in fighting ISIS that has established its brutal rule in parts of Iraq and Syria has remained dubious.

The Saudi move seems to have taken many other Muslim countries, supposedly part of the alliance, by surprise. Except for Turkey and some Gulf countries, that are already part of the Saudi-led military coalition against Yemen, no other Muslim country has endorsed the ‘Sunni’ alliance.

Although the declared objective of the proposed military alliance is to fight global terrorism, it is largely seen as a means of promoting the Saudi agenda of dividing Muslim nations along sectarian lines and solidifying an anti-Iran coalition. The Saudi role in fanning the Middle East civil war has hugely contributed to the rise of the militant Islamic State group that the alliance is supposed to counter.

Unsurprisingly, the announcement of the formation of the alliance came from none other than the young Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman who is believed to be responsible for his country’s disastrous military entanglement in the Yemeni civil war. The detail of what task the new alliance would undertake has deliberately been left vague. Saudi officials maintain that the modalities of how to move forward remain to be worked out. Predictably, Iran has been excluded from the list of the members.

One of the objectives of the new alliance is to fight ISIS. But the Saudi role in fighting the militant group that has established its brutal rule in parts of Iraq and Syria has remained dubious. The kingdom has been actively backing some of the extremist Islamist groups the elements of which later became a part of ISIS.

The power struggle in Syria that has left millions of people dead or homeless has largely turned into a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia with other countries on one side or the other too. While Iran backed the government of Bashar al-Assad, the Saudis provided financial support to rebel groups that also included ISIS and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat-al Nusra.

Furthermore, the Saudis are actively supporting some of the Salafi rebel groups fighting the Iranian-backed Baghdad government. The kingdom has actually played no role in fighting ISIS so far. Instead, its focus has been diverted to Yemen, where it is combating what it says are Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Meanwhile, the role of Turkey, one of the main sponsors of the alliance, also raises questions about Ankara’s commitment to fighting ISIS. It is not only Russia that has accused Turkey of buying oil from ISIS that helps the terrorist group finance its war. Some other reports also confirm the allegation of Turkey looking the other way as foreign ISIS fighters cross into Syria.

Turkey has also been actively involved in the Syrian civil war supporting some of the Saudi-backed Salafi jihadist groups. Its Kurdish separatist movement that has roots across the border in Iraq and Syria dictates Turkey’s position on the Syrian war. For Ankara, perhaps, ISIS presents a counterweight to the Kurds in both Iraq and Syria.

Interestingly, Saudi officials maintain that one objective of the alliance is to fight the scourge of terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. But the names of three of them — Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan — are absent from the list of alliance member countries. Iraq is obviously left out because of its closeness to Iran. So, how is the military alliance going to fight terrorism in those countries without their participation?

In this situation, the proposed military alliance would only sharpen the polarisation in the Middle East along sectarian lines, further worsening the civil war and making it more difficult to counter IS. For sure, there is an urgent need for uniting Muslim countries to fight terrorism, but a Saudi-sponsored military alliance with its headquarters in Riyadh can hardly bring together a Muslim world that is divided along sectarian lines. How can any counterterrorism alliance work with some member countries directly or indirectly supporting some of the militant groups?

In fact, it is hard to see a country that itself has long been seen as the sponsor of extremism and radical Salafi Islam — that is a major source of militancy in various countries, particularly in Pakistan — as a leader of the alliance.

The funding for radical madressahs involved in the sectarian conflict is believed to be coming from Saudi charities.

Surely, terrorism in all its shapes cannot be eradicated without countering extremism. It does not require a military alliance; rather it is the end of the sectarian-based proxy war in the Middle East that should be on the decision table.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

DAWN

The Sindh Rangers and Police, during their separate encounters, gunned down 27 terrorists belonging to banned outfits, including ISIS, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Jamaat Ul Ahrar.

Spokesman for the Sindh Rangers said that in the early hours of Friday, soldiers returning from Lal Shahbaz Qalander's shrine from security duty were attacked on the Super Highway by armed terrorists. One soldier was injured in the attack.

The paramilitary force took positions and had an encounter with the terrorists. In the retaliatory firing by the Rangers, seven terrorists were killed. The Rangers also recovered sophisticated weapons from them. The encounter with the terrorists continued for 35 minutes.

The spokesman added that of the killed terrorists, three were identified while the identity of the remaining four was yet to be ascertained. The killed terrorists belonged to banned ISIS Mufti Abu Zar Burmi group.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for a bomb blast that killed at least 70 people and injured about 150 at a crowded shrine in southern Pakistan on Thursday. Officials said a suicide bomber detonated the bomb among crowds gathered for the busiest day of the week at the shrine to Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan, a town in Sindh province.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Isis, claimed the jihadi group had carried out the attack, which was the deadliest in Pakistan so far this year. It was also the latest such attack on devotees of Sufism, a mystical and generally moderate form of Islam despised by radical Salafi fundamentalists.

Pakistan has seen a rise in terrorist attacks in recent days, including an attack on peaceful protesters in the heart of Lahore, a bombing in Quetta that killed two police officers and an explosion in the frontier city of Peshawar.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, issued a statement saying an attack on Sufis was considered a “direct threat”.

A state-run television station quoted the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, as saying that the country’s military and other security forces would use all their resources to track down and arrest the culprits. The military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa appealed for calm, telling Pakistanis: “Your security forces shall not allow hostile powers to succeed.”

The army spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said acts of terrorism were being carried out “from hostile powers and from sanctuaries in Afghanistan”. Without providing any further details, he said: “We shall defend and respond.”

ISIS has claimed a handful of previous attacks in Pakistan, including one on a Sufi shrine in November in Balochistan province. The militant group is not thought to have an extensive organisation in Pakistan, but has forged close ties with local terror franchises including a faction of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a long-established Saudi-funded sectarian outfit.