From the Los Angeles Times
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: SAUDI ROLE IN INSURGENCY
Saudis' role in Iraq insurgency
outlined
Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up
half the foreign fighters in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S.
official says.
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.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times