FibrillatorD

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


In Saudi Arabia

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.

ned.parker@latimes.com

--

Times staff writers Paul Richter and Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

FibrillatorD

The history between SA and AQ is undeniable. But I have to wonder how much control the Saudis have over their own border, seeing as we in the US can't completely control our own. Still, these quotes from the Saudi officials paint them to be pretty incompetent. I wonder if there is anything to the 45% figure and the revelation last month that the Saudis want the US out of Iraq, like the article implies?

Given that the usual route seems to be to enter through the Syrian border, it would appear that the Syrians have been even more complacent about the situation - maybe even encouraging the traffic?

Stan187

Why wouldn't they. It's pretty clear the US is threatening to them, and so is the US's ally, Israel. As long as they can keep the US occupied (pun intended), the US is less likely to invade them.

__________________
In Iran people belive pepsi stands for pay each penny save israel. -urmomma158
The Russian Navy is still a threat, but only to those unlucky enough to be Russian sailors.-highsea

Ray

It is the hotbed of all the malcontent.

If the Shias of Eastern Saudi Arabia start exerting their , things will be in such a chaos that the Saudis will come to their senses.

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

S-2

I invite you to join the "Swift Sword" camp of dissemblance. That salafism/wahabbism run rife in S.A. is of little doubt. That the S.A. extended royal family may have had a "hidden" hand in the development and distraction of Saudi-based extremist ideology, particularly during the Soviet-Afghan war is clear.

But despite the reasonable assumption that the S.A. royal family may have over-played their desire to project these radical undesirables elsewhere, I've yet to see any indication by Swift Sword, you, or anybody else of the active participation of agencies of the Saudi kingdom in the recruiting, arming, training, and facilitation of movement to the Iraqi war-zone with the expressed intent of engaging our forces.

Care to weigh your patchwork quilt of innuendo against the amassed evidence directly pointed at the al-Quds elements within Pasdaran? I reinterate that both of you need to explicitly separate the effect of a trans-national pan-Islamic movement from the activities of state-sponsored terrorism. To date I've not seen the same compelling linkages which are so readily apparent with Iran.

Finally, your article fails to account for fully 30% of the foreign insurgents within Iraq. Who are they-Americans, Brits, and others from the west? If so, are these nations (including my own) encouraging aspiring irhabists citizens to the Iraqi killing fields?

Hmmm...Didn't GWB say something about fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here? Seems like everybody agrees, including the Saudis, and are donating their resident miscreants to the slaughterhouse. I guess that must be working, eh?

__________________
"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski

FibrillatorD

I don't have any facts to lump SA and the AQ fighters into that kind of relationship today, with respect to Saudis in Iraq; I was hoping someone here might have an enlightening article or reference or knowledge some kind about the situation. The LATimes article above definitely implies a relationship, noting past SA-mujahedin relations, for example. But that there exists a "tangled web of alliances and enmities that underlie the political relations between Muslim nations and the U.S." I think is probably a fair assumption, and because of this its worth questioning SA's efforts to keep its people from causing trouble for Americans and Iraqis. There's been a big hubbub about Iranians in Iraq, but more of them are Saudis. Still, the US can't control its own borders, so I can't assume complacency or mal-intent.

However the recent events with Saudi endorsement of the unity government in Palestine, its condemnation of the US occupation, and its problems at home, all of these make the picture even more fuzzy. The Americans say "The Saudis are doing a great deal" to stop fighters from heading to Iraq, the Iraqis say "The Saudis aren't doing jack-squat." Meanwhile the Saudis appear most sheepish (or is it guilty? incompetent?) and say "Who's helping Saudis into Iraq?"