Arabia have been a perfect conduit and funding source for U.S. wars, military adventures and secret agencies. At the same time, the U.S. State Department can claim that it knows nothing about who is funding terrorist groups from the Nicaraguan contras in 1983 to ISIS in 2015.
When Congress denied funding for the reactionary contras in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan covertly arranged for the Saudis to send them weapons to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Saudi money was a key component in the CIA’s war against the progressive Afghan regime that began in 1979. Working with Washington, it has also funded reactionary militias in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon that have metastasized into a viciously sectarian and destabilizing force throughout the Middle East.
The former Saudi ambassador to Washington from 1983 to 2005, prince Bandar bin Sultan, who then became the director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, was considered a mastermind of the Saudi terror network.
Syria
A report originally published in 2012 shed light on Saudi support for the jihadist terrorist insurgency in Syria including the Islamic State (ISIS).
The official and classified Saudi Arabian document revealed that the government of Saudi Arabia releases its most dangerous prisoners who were sentenced to death under the condition that they take part in the attempted subversion in Syria. Prior to their deployment to Syria the convicts are to be trained in unconventional warfare, terrorism, or in what is euphemistically described as Jihad.
Moreover, on August 29, 2013 Mint Press News headlined “Exclusive: Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack,” saying: “Rebels and local residents in Ghouta accuse Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaida linked rebel group.”
Prince Bandar bin Sultan was directly involved. He was Washington’s point man against Syria. In this regards a Russian source said: “Having analyzed information, which was received from a whole range of sources, we are getting a picture that confirms that the criminal provocation in Eastern Ghouta was committed by a specialized group that was sent by Saudi Arabia.”
Doing it involves arming and funding some of the most extremist elements. They’re cutthroat killers. They’re committing outrageous atrocities. They brag about them. Media scoundrels give them short shrift. Most often their crimes go unreported. They were based in Jordan. King Abdullah II ibn Al-Hussein’s Hashimite Kingdom is complicit.
Saudi-based Abdullah Mohammed Alloush is a Salafist cleric. His son Zahran heads it. He conducts joint operations with Jabhat al-Nusra. He rejects negotiations with Assad.
Yemen
The Saudi Arabian political repertoire continues to extend into the darkest depths. Yemen Voice reports that Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has launched an all out political offensive against the Ansar-Allah Movement who have taken over the north of the country. Saudi Arabia sees Ansar-Allah Movement as cat’s paws of Iran, but this point of view is a vast exaggeration. Zaidi Shiites in Yemen, about a third of the population, do not belong to the same branch of Shiite Islam as most Iranians, and they are a local Yemeni movement reacting against Sunni and secular dominance of politics.
Saudi Arabian interference in the domestic affairs of the Zaidi Shiite north of Yemen is widely held to have produced the militant Zaid movement as a local phenomenon. It began clashing with the nationalist government (which was allied with the Saudis) in 2004. After the 2011 revolution, which removed a president for life, the state institutions were weakened, including the Army, allowing the Ansar-Allah Movement to take over last fall.
Saudi Arabia is funding and supporting al Qaeda in Yemen, mainly in an attempt to remove the Ansar-Allah Movement who have just gained power.
Former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi was described as a Saudi ‘puppet‘, so this move to fund terrorism is a Saudi Arabian attempt to regain its hegemonic influence over the nation of Yemen.
A December 2009 classified memo from then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated donors in Saudi Arabia were "the most significant source" of funding to terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda.
Besides, the CIA is secretly using an airbase in Saudi Arabia to conduct its controversial drone assassination campaign in neighbouring Yemen, according to reports in the US media.
Press TV’s recent new report reveals that Saudi Arabia has used its fighter jets to carry out a number of attacks against Yemen on behalf of the United States. The report, published by The Times in 2013, cited a US intelligence source as saying that “some of the so-called drone missions are actually Saudi Air Force.”
Egypt
One of the Saudi wealth’s jobs was to keep military dictatorships in the region afloat. Back in 2013, Saudi Arabia said that its ready to step in if the United States or any other country cuts aid to Egypt in the wake of the military crackdown on protesters in the nation. Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Saud al-Faisal said that his country and others would “provide a helping hand” to Egypt if aid is withheld.
The unprecedented public assurance from Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz that the kingdom supports the coup that occurred in Egypt in the fight “against terrorism” – the military rulers’ term for Muslim Brotherhood resistance.
In addition, debkafile and DEBKA Weekly have been reporting since last 2013 that Saudi Arabia and the UAR stand firmly behind Egypt’s military strongman Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi.
The Saudis provided $1 billion to help General al-Sisi’s coup against the elected Morsi government. After the coup they pledged an immediate $8 billion to stabilize the military regime and have now committed more than $20 billion to maintaining that dictatorship.
Bahrain
A striking example of double standards by the western powers was the Saudi-backed suppression of peaceful democratic protests by the Shia majority in Bahrain in March 2011. Some 1,500 Saudi troops were sent across the causeway to the island kingdom as the demonstrations were ended with great brutality and Shia mosques and shrines were destroyed.
The Bahraini uprising in 2011 was, in terms of a percentage of population, by some estimates, the most popularly supported mass revolt of all Arab uprisings. It threatened not only the Khalifas, the royal family that has ruled the country for centuries but also the dynastic systems of other Persian Gulf nations. To keep the Khalifas on their throne, the Saudis sent in their national guard to patrol the borders of the small island nation. It has become clear that the foreign troops are in fact involved in putting down protests.
The fact that Saudi — not Bahrainis— are engaged in policing in Bahrain is disconcerting. Imagine German police being sent to quash a rebellion in Poland under the guise of NATO. Imagine Russian police patrolling the streets of Kiev at the behest of ousted President Viktor Yanukovich. We would hear no end of it. But the Saudi forces in Bahrain have largely stayed off the radar of the international media.
Palestine
It has become clear that the Saudi efforts mainly revolves around disarming the Palestinian Resistance at any cost; everything else is just for show. According to new information, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in coordination with the United States (US) and Israel have led efforts towards this goal.
Information indicates that Riyadh was putting together a shocking proposition for Abbas, namely, sending his soldiers to the Rafah crossing to pave the way for a new phase characterized by disarming Hamas and Islamic Jihad while Saudi Arabia will pay whatever it takes to accomplish this goal.
There are Israeli positions that match almost entirely the Saudi approach. An article by David Hearst in the World Post on July 20 titled Attack on Gaza by Saudi Royal Appointment might seem like incitement against the kingdom. But when considered alongside statements by major officials in Israel, it becomes reality and not fabrications. The article offers commentary on statements by Israel’s former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz and his successor David Ayalon. This royal warrant is “nothing less than an open secret in Israel, and both former and serving defense officials are relaxed when they talk about it,” according to Hearst.
Palestinian sources close to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are talking about generous offers by Gulf states to Abbas to do what it takes to disarm the Resistance in return for rebuilding the Gaza Strip, lifting the economic siege and devising a comprehensive development plan in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Iraq
Royal United Services Institute last week, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the Isis surge into Sunni areas of Iraq. One senior Qatari official stated, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.” Moreover, the kingdom does not get in the way of private Saudi financing of terrorist groups operating in Iraq and Syria, including ISIS.
In the end, Western governments traditionally play down the connection between Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabist faith, on the one hand, and jihadism, whether of the variety espoused by Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida or by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's ISIS. There is nothing conspiratorial or secret about these links: 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as was Bin Laden and most of the private donors who funded the operation. The West may have to pay a price for its alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, which have always found terrorism more attractive than democracy.
