CDHR in the News
The Investigative Project
May 28, 2008
The Saudi Design on Lebanon
In recent years, Hezbollah has been playing a dangerous game with the Lebanese government. By exploiting multiple pressure points simultaneously, Hezbollah is making remarkable advances in its radical Shia agenda. Earlier this month, Hezbollah seized the mostly-Sunni Muslim West Beirut by force. This ultimately forced the US-backed Lebanese government to join a new unity coalition that gives Hezbollah 11 seats out of 30 in the cabinet, giving them veto power over any decision of the Lebanese government. They were not pressured to disarm in return for this new political power. Additionally,they are allowed to keep their separate telecommunications network and surveillance equipment at Beirut’s airport, and are allowed to reinstall the airport security chief linked to the group.[1]
Understandably, Washington has and will continue to bet on its own horse, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Meanwhile, the West is exacerbating the situation by aiding autocratic Arab regimes outside Lebanon who are playing Washington for a fool.
More so than any other Arab regime, the Saudi ruling family knows full well that if Hezbollah takes over Lebanon completely, it could form a united front with Iran, Syria, Hamas and Muqtada Al-Sadr’s martyrs against Israel, the US and pro-American autocratic Arab regimes, especially the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance. In the long term, such an alliance poses a tremendous threat to Saudi Arabia and its traditional dominance of the Muslim world. But what would happen if this scenario actually played out, and who would inexorably benefit?
Despite the Saudi monarchy’s public criticism of Iran’s support for its proxies in Syria and Lebanon, a Hezbollah that controlled Lebanon both politically and militarily would further the ideological influence of Saudi Arabia’s ruling theocrats. In the short term, the fact that Hezbollah is Shia and the Saudis are Sunnis is largely irrelevant. In fact, the Saudi government would prefer to see the democratically elected (mostly Sunnis and Christians) Lebanese government deposed and replaced by a Islamic system, modeled perhaps on the Wahhabis in Riyadh, the Alawites in Damascus, or the Mullahs in Tehran.
Granted, it is no secret that the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia would like to see the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah alliance weakened or dismantled, but their favored method for weakening this alliance makes the Saudis a wild card, not a partner, in America’s push for democracy in the Middle East. Specifically, the Saudis know what the Americans fool themselves into ignoring — that only by force can extremist regimes and groups be countered.
In Saudi eyes, only after Hezbollah seizes all of Lebanon will the US abandon its fantasies of democratization in favor of military confrontation. The goal, then, is to ensure that such a confrontation between the West and the “Shia Crescent” is both imminent and ferocious. What’s more, as long as this battle does not spill over Lebanon’s borders, the Saudi royals can stoke and benefit from this battle without ever lifting a finger.
Given recent events, if Hezbollah uses the political gains made by its new unity government to consolidate a choke-hold over all of Lebanon (the northern half, as well), then the Saudis expect the Israelis (with US support) to react and, unlike in the summer of 2006, to deal Hezbollah and Syria a lasting, crippling defeat. Riyadh hopes to bait one enemy into fighting another, and in the process, the Saudi royals can ensure their security, survival and ideological reach. This became apparent as the Saudi government frankly blamed Hezbollah announcing that they should “bear the responsibility” for kidnapping two Israeli soldiers which initiated a military response by Israel in July 2006.[2] This is an unprecedented move by an Arab government, especially the Saudi government, which has always led anti-Israeli campaign. The Saudis wanted the Israelis to finish off Hezbollah, but that did not happen.
Now Hezbollah continues to seek the overthrow of Lebanon’s legitimate government. However, if Hezbollah continues making gains through its various military and political tactics, then Israel may be forced once again to shape Lebanon to ensure its security, as it tried to do in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Saudi royals are hoping that Israel will not make the same mistakes twice and thus eliminate Riyadh’s theocratic competition for them in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Either way, no one should be deluded by Saudi statements and public charades if and when Israel launches such an assault on Hezbollah’s infrastructure in Lebanon, Syria and takes out Iran’s nuclear installations. The Saudi royal family will undoubtedly condemn the “Zionists” and the US for supporting them; Riyadh will certainly call for an urgent meeting of the insignificant Arab League, the UN General Assembly and the European Union to condemn Israel, which they will do given historical precedence. The Saudi ruling family also will send massive shipments of food, medicine, tents, doctors and nurses to Lebanon to aid victims of the war, and ultimately, to steal the glory from Hezbollah’s remarkable social services programs.
But the real prize for Riyadh will come only after the dust settles. The Saudi government, directly and through prominent businessmen and Prince al-Waleed (the financier of Islamic study departments in prominent American and European universities), will invest heavily in the rebuilding of Lebanon’s infrastructure. In doing so, the Saudi government will also invest energy in exporting Wahhabism among the Lebanese Sunni population, headed by the Hariri family, to represent Saudi interests in Lebanon. As with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bosnia and other places, wherever Saudi largess goes, Wahhabism follows.
In the wake of Hezbollah’s temporary siege of Beirut, many Sunnis have lost faith in their leaders and are increasingly likely to turn to militant Sunni militias for “protection.” To put it lightly, however, the offensive nature of such “protection” is a Saudi specialty, and it seems unlikely that Washington has the same outcome in mind for Lebanon. Either way, the Saudi royal family and its Wahhabi religious extremists must not be trusted if anyone is serious about winning the “War on Terrorism.”
Ali H. Alyami
Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia
Washington, D.C
Looking for Allies
Reader Letters from Commentary Magazine
May 2008
Commentary Magazine
To the Editor: With all due respect to Joshua Muravchik (whom I know and admire) and Charles P. Szrom, their effort to identify Muslims who embrace pluralism and tolerance misses the big picture [“In Search of Moderate Muslims,” February]. There are such Muslims, to be sure, and their voices must be heard and promoted. But the authors’ focus on dissecting their authenticity is an implicit confession that Islam itself is a lost cause, and can only be changed by the people on its fringes.
Sadly, they completely ignore the primary driver of Islamic extremism: the destructive Wahhabi ideology that is nurtured and exported by the Saudi government. This ideology lies at the heart of the war on terror, yet it has been dangerously scanted by successive American administrations since 1948. President Bush did speak publicly about Saudi totalitarianism in his first term, but he has since reverted to the pre-9/11 policy of embracing the royal regime—despite the fact that its institutionalized intolerance is the source of bin-Ladenism. (The fact that al Qaeda threatens the Saudi royal family as much as it threatens America does not change this fact.)
What could a handful of moderate Muslims hope to accomplish in the name of pluralism if the same Western leaders who call for them to be brave endorse the likes of the Saudi monarchy, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf? If the U.S. and its European allies put dictators and democrats in the same grouping of “moderates,” what true reformer would want to belong to it?
One way to take religion from the hands of the autocrats in Saudi Arabia would be for the West to help authentically moderate Muslims create a representative Muslim Council that would re-visit Islamic teachings and draw out their pluralistic tendencies. But at the end of the day, the U.S. has to ask itself whether it has the political will to challenge the “friendly” dictators whose grip on power depends on the suppression of democratic values and individual liberties.
Ali H. Alyami
Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia
Washington, D.C
Suite101.com
April 7, 2008
Nepali Laborers in Saudi Arabia: Foreign Migrant Workers Face Abuse and Discrimination
By Bhumika Ghimire
Nepali laborers in Saudi Arabia face dismal working conditions and ill treatment by employers. Migrant laborers in the Kingdom are often treated less than equal. After the fall of Panchayati (essentially autocratic direct rule of the King) system in Nepal in 1989, the country’s skilled and semi-skilled work force began heading to the Gulf countries in search of work and better pay.Booming economy of oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE) were attractive destination for Nepalese workers who had suffered through years of economic slowdown, lack of opportunity and age old feudal system.
Over the years the number of Nepalese migrant workers steadily climbed. Government formed after the fall of King’s direct rule was unable to fulfill its promises of economic and social revival. Corruption, mismanagement of resources and sheer incompetence of various agencies added to the frustration of those who were desperately looking for a decent job.
Civil war, which erupted after the Maoists guerillas started armed struggle against the constitutional monarchy in 1996, exacerbated the situation.The rebels often threatned manufacturing facilities, businesses with dire consequences unless they provided them with financial and material help. In an atmosphere of fear and insecurity, slowly the factories began to shut down and umeployment number climbed up.
Migration to Saudi Arabia
Despite its poor record on human and minority rights, Saudi Arabia emerged as an attractive destination for migrant Nepalese laborers. According to NepalNews, approximately 200,000 Nepalese laborers, skilled and semi skilled, work in the Kingdom. This number does not include 10,000 women who, despite a ban by Nepalese government, work in Saudi Arabia, mostly as household maids.
Not Welcome Although laborers from South Asia-namely India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka play an important role in the Saudi economy, they like many foreign laborers are treated less than equal by most of Saudi citizens and the legal system. The country needs these workers to mainatian its growing manpower needs but due to long standing social and cultural norms, the Saudi society is unable to accept the migrant laborers’ contribution.
Dr. Ali Alyami, Executive Director of The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Sauid Arabia, a Washington DC based organization, said during an interview that Saudi Arabia has no legal framework or social system to insure that migrant laborers are treated equally and protected from various forms of abuse. Recently update labor law does not provide enough rights and protection to the migrant laborers.
He also pointed out to the horrible living and working conditions for migrant laborers. Saudi society, which itself is repressed and deprived of basic rights we enjoy in the Western world, is unable to treat the workers with respect
Dr. Alyami added that women who come to the Kingdom to work as maids are especially vulnerable to abuse. They are doubly victimized- as a woman and as a foreign laborer.
A Society Ill Equipped
Saudi Arabia’s conservative society and government which strictly controls almost every aspect of its citizen’s life is ill equipped to handle the unique social pressure created by the large number of foreign laborers.
Slow to accept changing ways of the world, the Kingdom is yet to come up with fair labor law that protects both the workers and the employers from abuse.Feudal mindset of its citizens is a barrier in creating a more hospitable environment for foreigners and even the Saudis.
Despite all of this, Nepalese laborers continue to flock Saudi job market in hopes of better future. Ongoing political and social turmoil keep pushing men and women to the Kindgom. Every year many die unable to take another day of hard labor, in humane working conditions and ill treatment by the employers but the migration continues.
Cybercast News Service
March 10, 2008
Women’s Day Makes Little Impact in Saudi Arabia
By Patrick Goodenough
(CNSNews.com) - As people around the world marked International Women’s Day on Saturday, a women’s rights advocate in Saudi Arabia did so by breaching a ban on women driving, and then posting a videoclip on the Internet.
Elsewhere in the Wahhabist-ruled kingdom, two low-key events were held to discuss women’s issues, while at an annual national heritage festival near the capital, organizers enforced a ban on men and women attending the event on the same day.
Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are not allowed to drive. They are also not allowed to travel without written permission from a male relative.
Other restrictions faced by Saudi women, according to rights groups, include the enforced wearing of a full-body “abaya,” a ban on voting or running for office and on mixing with men in public, and a prohibition on studying certain subjects at schools and taking part in school sports. A women’s testimony in court holds half the value of a man’s.
Although women reportedly do drive in remote parts of the country, they may not do so in urban areas, where the sight of black-clad women being chauffeured by hired drivers — often Filipinos — is commonplace. Women may use public transport, but in buses they must sit at the back, even if the bus is otherwise empty.
Rights activist Wajiha Huwaidar told the French AFP news wire that she had posted online a clip of herself driving on Saturday along a quiet road in the east of the country.
Huwaidar was one of several women who last September organized a petition calling on the government to lift the prohibition. The petition was handed to King Abdullah in January, and the campaign received a boost last month when a senior Islamic scholar said there was no religious justification for a driving ban.
Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al Obaikan, a member of the country’s Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, told the Arab News that the real problem was “social” constraints, such as safety concerns and the risk of women being harassed by men.
Nonetheless, the last time a group of Saudi women tested the driving ban, in 1990, almost 50 of them were arrested for driving in Riyadh.
Police reprimanded them and their male “guardians,” and in 1991 the kingdom’s top religious figure, mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, issued a fatwa prohibiting women from driving. Bin Baz has since died but the edict remains in force.
Arab News surveyed 400 women on the issue, and said 282 of them said they would drive alone if allowed to, 44 said they would continue to use drivers, 30 said they would drive, but only when accompanied by a male guardian, and 12 opposed the idea of women driving altogether.
Out of more than 600 events around the world advertised on the 2008 International Women’s Day Web site, only two were in Saudi Arabia, both in the city of Jeddah — a forum to discuss the role of women in the economy, and a discussion on “international participation” of Saudi women.
The U.S.-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia said that Saudi women were not able to hold public debates or peaceful demonstrations to mark Women’s Day.
“For decades, the Saudi government has ignored and severely violated women’s most basic human rights through discriminatory economic, political, and social policies,” it said in a statement.
“Even if ‘cultural heritage’ and ‘local traditions’ play a role in disenfranchising Saudi women, they simply do not justify or diminish the unacceptable violations of universally recognized basic human rights on the part of the government.”
Last week, Saudi Arabia’s most important cultural festival opened near Riyadh — but with no women allowed, in line with instructions from the kingdom’s religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
The government-sponsored Janadriya Culture and Heritage Festival runs for two weeks, and is expected to draw more than a million visitors. Organizers have set aside three days — March 17–19 — for families. For the rest of the time, women may not attend, although special programs for women are being provided in a separate venue.
The Institute for Gulf Affairs, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., was critical of international participation in the segregated festival, noting that foreign diplomats and U.N. officials are among the guests.
“International pressure is necessary to hold the Saudi government accountable to global standards of human rights,” it said. “Attendance or participation by international governments, groups, and individuals only legitimate the denial of women’s rights within the kingdom.”
‘Stereotype’
Abdullah came to power in 2005 and promised reforms. But municipal elections held earlier that year — when he was already de facto ruler — were closed to women, despite being hailed as the first election of their type in the kingdom.
Among small advances made in the area of women’s rights, the government recently eased a ban on women checking into hotels unless accompanied by a male guardian.
They may now do so but must show identification, and hotels are obliged to register female guests’ details with the police, local media reported.
“The stereotype of Muslim women, as uneducated, with no rights and no opportunities is a caricature born of ignorance or malevolence,” says the Saudi government ministry of information and culture. “The Holy Koran gave women economic and social rights long before such rights were attained by Western women.”
Government information services frequently highlight women working in civil service positions and in business sectors.
But according to the National Society for Human Rights, a state-sanctioned non-governmental organization, although 58 percent of Saudi university students are women, less than half a million women work. About five million women of the kingdom’s total population of 16.8 million are of working age.
The treatment of Saudi women made international headlines late last year when a young woman who had been abducted and gang raped was sentenced to a jail term and flogging, because she happened to be with an unrelated male at the time the assault occurred.
Amid international criticism, the government defended the verdict, saying the charges against the woman had been proven. Abdullah subsequently pardoned her.
Middle East Times
February 7, 2008
Saudis Pressured to Grant Women Rights
By Federica Narancio
The U.N. and human rights organizations are voicing concern over the lack of progress in women’s rights in Saudi Arabia as mounting pressure on the kingdom fails to stem violence against women.
Some rights activists believe that international exposure of abuses against women would be the most effective way to coerce Riyadh into introducing changes. Others caution that such international scrutiny could backfire and that deeply-rooted traditions within Saudi society need to be weighed when introducing progressive reforms.
Professor of Middle Eastern issues at the American University Kristin Diwan said the ultra-conservative kingdom, in which the strict Wahabi school of Islam is practiced, “is one of the least favorable [of Islamic countries] to women’s rights.”
Diwan said that, nevertheless, there have been signs of improvement under Saudi King Abdullah’s rule.
“We have seen a few changes with the king. This week there has been talk that they might allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia, which would be a historical change,” she said, adding, “It looks like the current government is hoping to move things that way. Yet they have always been very cautious, since they have to wait for society to be ready for this as well.”
A driving ban on women highly restricts their movement as Saudi Arabia has no public transportation, according to a U.N. report published last December. Lifting this restriction would be one way of giving women more independence, the report recommended.
A U.N. committee on women’s rights has offered other recommendations to the Saudi kingdom. They, too, are still pending.
On Jan. 17 the U.N. committee met in Geneva with a delegation of Saudi officials headed by Zeid Bin Abdul Muhsin al-Hussein, vice president of the Human Rights Commission of Saudi Arabia. A report drafted after the meeting said that one of their many concerns was that “neither the [Saudi] constitution, nor other legislation, embodies the principle of equality between women and men.”
It also pointed out that the government had made “limited efforts” to end cultural and stereotyped traditions that were discriminatory, such as the concept of male guardianship.
Under this practice, which according to Saudi officials has no legal basis, women have to be accompanied or authorized by a man to perform any task beyond her home. According to the report a women’s, “education, work, public activity, and movement are all relying on her male guardian, or mahram,” which they are dependent on throughout their lives.
The United Nations also recommended that the government authorities should ban the practice of polygamy, introduce a minimum age for marriage, improve women’s literary rate, and fight against domestic violence that is prevalent in the country.
The Middle East Times tried to reach Saudi officials at the embassy of Washington, D.C. to comment on the U.N. evaluation, but no one was available for comments.
Following the report, Yakin Erturk, a U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women, flew to Saudi Arabia to interview government officials, human rights’ experts and women victims of violence, AFP has reported.
The international exposure of women’s issues in Saudi Arabia is seen positively by Ali Alyami, Washington, D.C.-based director of the Center for Democracy and Human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Alyami, who consistently denounces human rights’ violations in his country, said that women would impose change whether the king liked it or not.
“They are talking loudly, they are writing, and becoming educated. It is difficult for the king and his family to silence them without being targeted,” Alyami said. “They know how sensitive women’s issues are globally and that everyone will demonstrate and protest if they do something. I believe that now they are paying more attention to the international community.”
According to Alyami, the Saudis will have to adapt to advances in the region and to global demands.
Diwan also said that there were economical and social changes in the Middle East that Riyadh would have to adapt to. Abdullah was attempting to adapt economic models from other regions, such as Asia, to liberalize his country, but without surrendering political power, she said. These changes might usher in reforms in the area of women’s rights.
“It looks like they are pushing for greater liberalism, and the way things are they have to open up to allow women to be involved in the economy,” Diwan said. However, she noted that there were “opposition forces” in Saudi Arabia that would resist such reforms. Lifting the driving ban would be an initial significant way of measuring their willingness to adapt, Diwan suggested.
Yvonne Haddad, professor of history of Islam at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said that the royal family had to maintain a political balance with the religious leaders and thinkers, and that is why long-term traditions could not be changed from one day to another.
“Sometimes outside intervention and pressure is counterproductive,” Haddad said. “They will change when they are ready to change.”
She added that while some women sought change, other “Saudi women said they wouldn’t have it any other way.”
International Relations and Security Network
December 12, 2007
Saudi Arabia’s Economic Liberalization
By Erlend Paasche
With political reform presenting an increasing challenge in Saudi Arabia, analysts wonder if the key to change lies in ongoing economic reform.
According to conventional wisdom, high oil prices would render economic reform in oil-rich countries a poor chance of success with increases in state income lessening the pressure for such change. In a time of sky-high oil prices, Saudi Arabia proves that conventional wisdom sometimes misses the mark.
Saudi oil export revenues constituted a meager US$34.3 billion in 1998, but rose to US$46.8 billion in 1999 and US$65.5 billion in 2002. SABB, one of the kingdom’s largest banks, projects oil revenues of US$165 billion this year.
Even though the Saudi state has thus gradually gained access to a greatly increased volume of external rent, it has somewhat paradoxically loosened its tight grip on the economy, opened up its markets for privatization and foreign investment and actively strengthened its private sector.
Non-oil portions of the private sector have grown more significantly in the last six years than oil-based. Export of non-oil-based products increased at a rate of 20 percent annually between 2000 and 2006. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is one of the many agencies that note the new Saudi business climate, in which diversification and privatization seem to be paramount.
The improved business climate is illustrated clearly by incoming foreign direct investment (FDI) related to the Saudi gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), a common macroeconomic indicator of business activity. The numbers from the World Investment Report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released in mid-October reveals a baffling development in this regard.
Inward flow of FDI as a percentage of the GFCF increased from a level of 1 percent in the period 1990–2000 to 4.5 percent in 2001, 24.0 percent in 2005, and a staggering 32.1 percent in 2006. Not only is that more than any other Gulf country, including the United Arab Emirates, it turns Saudi Arabia into the top FDI recipient of the Arab world with a staggering US$18 billion.
The ripple of liberalization The rise of incoming FDI is most likely related to the extensive economic liberalization in the kingdom that began in 2000.
Nevertheless, according to Professor F Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont, an expert on Saudi Arabia, it is hard to disentangle the effects of Saudi economic reforms from the upward trajectory of oil prices.
“In the end, I am sure that the oil price increase has more to do with the economic boom in Saudi Arabia than any policy steps,” Gause told ISN Security Watch. “However, it is interesting that, during this boom, private sector growth is exceeding state sector growth rates. That is at least one indication that the private sector in Saudi Arabia is more developed and sophisticated than it was during the oil boom of the 1970s and early 1980s.”
Another possible factor is the technical nature of the current boom, which started gradually and perhaps facilitated a strategic utilization of the growing oil revenues. Oil prices increased by 15 percent in 2003, 28 percent in 2004 and 40 percent in 2005. By comparison, prices rose by 400 percent in 1974 alone, and doubled in 1980.
Still, Saudi economic reforms do merit attention. The UNCTAD report came roughly two weeks after a World Bank report, Doing Business 2008, described Saudi Arabia as the world’s seventh fastest reforming economy. It also stated that the country had joined the ranks of the top 25 countries worldwide in terms of the ease of doing business.
Analysts have noted that the kingdom’s economic reforms resemble a waltz: slow, slow, quick, slow. In light of the recent reports, Saudi economic reforms seem to bear more resemblance to a quickstep.
Dr Steffen Hertog of Princeton University, another expert on Saudi Arabia, takes a more cautious stance, stressing the need to differentiate between different aspects of the economy when discussing the relative success of Saudi economic reforms.
“Privatization has moved slowly, FDI reform has improved but implementation can still be sluggish, and bureaucratic reforms have not worked out. Capital market reforms, on the other hand, were reasonably successful.
“The underlying pattern seems to be that reforms involving a limited number of institutional players and smaller bureaucracies are much easier to coordinate,” Hertog told ISN Security Watch.
However one chooses to assess the success of Saudi economic liberalization, the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year is an important breakthrough, coming after a decade of negotiations and propelling the Saudi state into international economic competition and expanding its market for petrochemical export articles. Gause said joining the WTO should help the kingdom improve financial transparency, but may not have a broad enough impact on shadowy practices.
“[I]t is so hard to get real data [on corruption]. The anecdotal data is that there have been efforts from the top to curb the more egregious corrupt behavior. But there is a whole range of behaviors by politically connected Saudis in the economic realm that those who live in more transparent economies would consider corrupt. I doubt they are going to change.”
Demographic prognosis fuels change King Abdullah, who ascended to the throne in 2005, understands the urgency of reform. Ten years ago as crown prince, he conceded that the Saudi lifestyle would have to change.
Demographic developments largely prompted the king’s decision, as Saudi birth rates are among the highest in the region. According to the UN, the current population tally of 27.7 million is expected to have risen 6 percent by 2015. The population projection for 2025 is 34.8 million. The UN further estimates that the number will have reached a mind-boggling 45 million by 2050.
Because of this, the creation of a dynamic economy and rapid job growth is a matter of utmost urgency. Current unemployment is an estimated 30 percent for men and 90 percent for women, and increasing at alarming rates. Forty percent of the population is younger than 15 years old.
Considering that the demographic pressure cooker is likely to cause cuts in welfare and play into the hands of recruiters from militant Islamist organizations, it becomes clear that economic reforms are not only economic. King Abdullah identified unemployment as the number one national security issue already at the turn of the millennium.
But the king’s view may be for naught. The fact that the Islamist insurgency intensified in 2003, the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq, during a time of relative wealth after decades of sinking per capita income levels, may mean that Saudi Arabia’s jihadist groups are driven more by pan-Islamic nationalism than domestic factors. If socioeconomic frustrations are not what motivate Saudi jihadists, economic reforms are not likely to affect this aspect of the security situation.
Not implementing economic reforms, however, will surely have a negative effect on the regime’s stability. In a country where demands for political reforms are exceedingly hard to make in public, calls for economic reforms, notably concerning financial transparency, are increasingly being heard.
Financial and economic reform: Potential dovetailing Discontent with royal corruption, often reaching baroque levels, has become a common denominator for an otherwise fragmented political opposition. “Financial transparency” additionally serves as a euphemism for political accountability, further blurring the distinction between politics and economics.
Dr Ali H Alyami, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, points to the lack of freedom.
“It is not easy to discuss anything in Saudi Arabia, because of the royal family’s total control over every aspect of the decision-making process and of people’s lives. However, discussing economic reform is less directed to the heart of the problem, which is the lack of freedom due to the stifling, absolute political nature of the system,” he told ISN Security Watch.
The activity of Islamist militant groups, however, represents one realm in to which the long arm of Saudi authorities does not always reach. As of today, Islam constitutes the regime’s most important source of legitimacy. It cultivates strong ties with prominent clerics, but its Islamic, ideological legitimacy is eroding continuously in the eyes of jihadist groups, largely on the grounds of the regime’s close ties with Washington.
Political reforms, especially if perceived by the masses as imported from and imposed by the US, would further erode the legitimacy of the al-Saud royal family and severely undermine the authority of the king. Gause believes that economic reform is more important than political reform in the case of Saudi Arabia.
“Political reform,” he observed, “if it involves real elections to a real parliament, could empower elements that are not in support of economic reform, liberalization or strong Saudi-American relations.”
Packaging political and social reforms as economic may thus be smart politics and may make it more difficult not only for the marginal extremists, but also for the mainstream religious establishment to intervene.
As the process of economic reform is guided from above, it remains an open question whether the political elite is embracing marked liberalism as a means to consolidate their power and upgrade their authoritarian regimes. Saudi Arabia’s record of economic reform may yet be most acutely important for the soon-to-be unemployed, the youth.
New York Times
December 1, 2007
Saudi Rape Case Spurs Calls for Reform
By Rasheed Abou-Alsamh
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 30 — The case of a 20-year-old woman who was sentenced to be lashed after pressing charges against seven men who raped her and a male companion has provoked a rare and angry public debate in Saudi Arabia, leading to renewed calls for reform of the Saudi judicial system.
The woman, known here only as the Qatif girl because she comes from the Eastern town of that name, was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone with a man to whom she was not married.
Her outspoken human rights lawyer appealed the sentence and brought down the wrath of the court, which doubled the woman’s sentence and stripped her lawyer of his license to practice.
The case is now being appealed to the kingdom’s highest court. Human rights activists said the treatment of the woman, the man who was raped with her and her lawyer calls into question Saudi justice and make a mockery of the courts’ claim to fairness.
“The system has to be transformed from top to bottom,” said Ali Alyami, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. “Judges in Saudi Arabia have no more power than the princes want them to have.”
The Saudi legal system is based on a strict Wahabi interpretation of Islamic law. Like all institutions here, it is subject to the absolute authority of the monarchy.
Saudi officials have faced a firestorm of embarrassing international publicity. American presidential candidates denounced the sentence on the campaign trail. During the Annapolis peace conference this week, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, faced a barrage of questions about the case and promised that the judiciary would review it.
The rape took place a year and a half ago in Qatif, a small Shiite town in the Eastern Province, center of the Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. Judges there provoked outrage in many quarters in the kingdom — and vociferous criticism abroad — when they increased the sentence on appeal in mid-November.
In the weeks since then, government authorities have ordered the woman’s lawyer, Abdulrahman al-Lahem, a well-known human rights activist, to stop talking to the news media, and issued similar orders to the woman and her husband.
The Ministry of Justice and two prominent judges have harshly criticized the woman, suggesting that she was engaged in immoral behavior at the time of the attack.
The Justice Ministry published two statements on its Web site in recent days, saying that the woman had confessed to engaging in illicit acts and was undressed in a car before the rape.
Mr. Lahem, her lawyer, denied these accusations and said neither she or her male friend had confessed to any such acts. The lawyer is now suing the Ministry of Information and Culture for having distributed the Justice Ministry’s statements to the news media through the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
Human Rights Watch issued a statement this week insisting that the Justice Ministry “stop publishing statements aimed at damaging the reputation of a young Saudi rape victim who spoke out publicly about her ordeal and her efforts to find justice.” The ministry stopped short of accusing the rape victim of adultery, or zina in Arabic, which could carry the death penalty, for being alone with the man whom she met in his car on the night of the rape in 2006.
Mr. Lahem has complained that the judges seem to have based their conclusions about the events on the night of the rape on testimony of the seven rapists, who have been sentenced to five to seven years in jail. Under Islamic law, two people can be accused of adultery only if caught in the act by four male witnesses of good character.
Ibrahim bin Salih al-Khudairi, a judge on the Riyadh Appeals Court, said in an interview in the newspaper Okaz on Nov. 27 that if he had been a judge in the Qatif court, he would have sentenced the woman, her male companion and the seven rapists to death, and that they were lucky not to get the death penalty.
The woman met with an Associated Press reporter in November, before the court ordered her and her lawyer to stop talking to reporters. Describing the sentence as a “big shock,” she said that she had trouble sleeping and that her hands were trembling, The A.P. reported.
Farida Deif, a Human Rights Watch researcher, interviewed the woman in December 2006. Her report directly contradicts the version of the events put forward by Saudi justice officials.
In her interview with the human rights group, the woman said she had given a photo of herself to a male friend. Years later, when she was 19 and engaged to another man, she asked for the photo back. She agreed to meet him in his car in downtown Qatif. Another car blocked their path when they were 15 minutes from her house, she said.
“Two people got out of their car and stood on either side of our car,” she said. “The man on my side had a knife. I screamed.”
She and her companion were taken to a building in Awwamiyah, a working-class neighborhood of Qatif, where they were raped repeatedly by seven men over several hours, she said.
Mr. Lahem, the lawyer, had his license suspended for “disrespecting” the court after he supposedly raised his voice in court. He faces a disciplinary hearing in Riyadh on Dec. 5.
He said that he had not wanted to make waves about the case but that the doubling of the punishment had forced him to go public. He had hoped to keep things quiet, he said, and then apply for a royal pardon from King Abdullah, who has pardoned convicted human rights advocates in the past. That may still happen.
Neither Mr. Lahem nor the woman’s husband has been given a copy of the verdict despite repeated requests, which has delayed filing of the appeal.
Yet a copy of it was apparently leaked to Alsaha, a conservative Saudi Web site.
International Herald Tribune
November 30, 2007
Rape Victim’s Sentence Spurs Calls for Saudi Reform
By Rasheed Abou-Alsamh
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia: The case of a 20-year-old woman who was sentenced to be lashed after pressing charges against seven men who raped her and a male companion has provoked a rare and angry public debate in Saudi Arabia, leading to renewed calls for reform of the Saudi judicial system.
The woman, known here only as “the Qatif girl, “ was initially subjected to 90 lashes for being alone with a man to whom she was not married.
Her outspoken human rights lawyer appealed the sentence and brought down the wrath of the court, which doubled the woman’s sentence and stripped her lawyer of his license to practice.
The case is now being appealed to the Kingdom’s highest court. Human rights activists and legal observers said the treatment of the woman from Qatif, the man who was raped with her, and her lawyer, call into question the consistency of Saudi justice and make a mockery of the court system’s commitment to openness and fairness.
The Saudi system still operates without a codified legal system and uses a strict Wahabi interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, to hand down verdicts. Like all institutions in Saudi Arabia, the court system is subject to the absolute authority of the monarchy.
“The system has to be transformed from top to bottom,” said Ali Alyami, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. “Judges in Saudi Arabia have no more power than the princes want them to have.”
Saudi officials have faced a firestorm of embarrassing international publicity. American presidential candidates decried the sentence on the campaign trail. During the Annapolis summit meeting, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, faced a barrage of questions about the kingdom’s handling of the case. “What is outraging about this case is that it is being used against the Saudi government and people,” he told reporters.
But the prince also said the judiciary would review the case.
The rape took place a year and a half ago in the town of Qatif, a small Shi’ite waterfront town in the Eastern Province, center of the Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. Judges in Qatif provoked outrage in many quarters in the Kingdom — and vociferous criticism from the United States — when they increased the sentence against the rape victim on appeal in mid-November.
In the weeks since the new sentence was announced, government authorities have ordered the rape victim’s lawyer, a well-known human rights activist named Abdulrahman Al-Lahem, to stop talking to the news media, and have also put gag orders on the victim and her husband.
The Saudi Ministry of Justice and two prominent Saudi judges have lashed out against the victim, suggesting that she was engaged in immoral behavior at the time of the assault.
The Justice Ministry published two statements on its Web site on Nov. 20 and 24, 2007, alleging that the rape victim had confessed to engaging in illicit acts and was undressed in a car prior to the rape.
Lahem, the woman’s lawyer, denied these accusations and said that neither she or her male friend had ever confessed to any such acts. The lawyer is now suing the Saudi Ministry of Information and Culture for having distributed the Justice Ministry’s statements to the news media through the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
“The Saudi Ministry of Justice should immediately stop publishing statements aimed at damaging the reputation of a young Saudi rape victim who spoke out publicly about her ordeal and her efforts to find justice,” New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Nov. 29.
The ministry released its statements after the doubling of the rape victim’s punishment by a Qatif court on Nov. 14 for having been illegally alone with an unrelated male just before the rape happened, from 90 lashes to 200 lashes and six months in jail.
But the ministry stopped short of accusing the rape victim of adultery, or “zina” in Arabic, which could carry the death penalty, with the man that she met in his car on the night of the rape in 2006. Al-Lahem has complained that the judges in the case appear to base their conclusions about the events on the night of the rape on testimony of the seven rapists, who have been sentenced to five to seven years in jail.
Under Islamic law, two people can be accused of adultery only if they are caught in the actual act of penetration by four male witnesses of good character.
“The Ministry of Justice’s response to criticism of its unjust verdict has been appalling,” said Farida Deif, a researcher in the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “First, they attempted to silence this young woman, and now they’re trying to demonize her in the eyes of the Saudi public.”
A Saudi judge, Ibrahim bin Salih Al-Khudairi of the Riyadh Appeals Court, said in an interview published in Okaz newspaper on Nov. 27 that if he were a judge in the Qatif court that he would have sentenced her, her male companion and the seven rapists to death and that they should be lucky that they did not get the death penalty.
The woman from Qatif met with an Associated Press reporter in November, before the court ordered her and her lawyer to stop talking to reporters. She has trouble sleeping, her hands tremble, and she described the sentence against her as a “big shock,” The Associated Press reported.
The Human Rights Watch researcher, Deif interviewed the woman from Qatif in December 2006. The testimony she gathered directly contradicts the narrative of events being put forward by Saudi justice officials.
In her testimony to the human rights group, the woman said she had given a photo of herself to a high school classmate. Years later, when she was 19 and engaged to another man, she asked for the photo back. She agreed to meet him in his car in central Qatif. Another car blocked their path when they were 15 minutes from her house, she said.
“Two people got out of their car and stood on either side of our car. The man on my side had a knife,” she said. “I screamed.”
She and her companion were taken to an isolated building in the working-class Awwamiyah neighborhood of Al-Qatif where they were both raped repeatedly by seven men over several hours.
The Qatif girl said that she was photographed during the rape by one of the men using his cell phone camera. The photos were later entered as evidence in the trial, but the judges refused to consider them.
The husband of Qatif girl, who also refuses to be identified publicly, found out about his wife’s rape only four months after it happened when the rapists were bragging about it in Qatif. He has not divorced her, which he could under Saudi law, instead choosing to help her fight her case in Saudi courts.
But he, too, has found the Saudi legal system reluctant to help a woman that it considers to be responsible for her own fate because of what it views as her fatal flaw of having gone out alone with an unrelated male.
Although she and her husband are technically married under Islamic law, they are still not living together because they have not had their wedding party yet.
A high school student when the rape occurred, Qatif girl has now stopped her studies. Qatif is a small town, and the identities of the rape victims are known locally.
Lahem has had trouble handling the Qatif girl’s case from the beginning. He got into several arguments with the three judges who originally handled the trial, and has since had his license suspended for “disrespecting” the court after he supposedly raised his voice in court. He faces a disciplinary hearing before a committee of the Ministry of Justice in Riyadh on Dec. 5.
Neither he nor the husband of the victim have been given a copy of the verdict despite repeated requests for it, which has delayed the filing of the appeal.
Yet a copy of it was apparently leaked to a conservative Saudi Web site called Alsaha (www.alsaha.com), according to Human Rights Watch.
Several Saudi human rights groups said that they were looking into various aspects of the case, but most are too afraid to get involved while the case is still in the courts.
Lahem said that he initially did not want to make waves about the Qatif girl’s case but that the doubling of her punishment in November forced him to go public. He said that he had hoped to keep things quiet and then apply for a royal pardon from King Abdullah, who has pardoned jailed convicted human rights activists in the past.
Alyami believes that this will still happen in the case of the Qatif girl.
“The international condemnation of this arbitrary and barbaric decision will force the king to pardon the woman or drastically reduce her prison sentence,” he said. “There will be no flogging.”
But Bander Alnogaithan, a Saudi who finished Harvard Law School, and lives in Boston, said he was sure her increased punishment would be overturned by a higher court because of a series of errors committed by the lower courts.
Judges violated a basic tenet of Islamic law which prevents harming anyone who files an appeal, an error that Alnogaithan said reflected the poor quality of the religious judges.
“We can’t blame the judges for not knowing the law, as they are picked from Shariah colleges where they mainly focus on general Islamic legal thought and history and don’t study ‘manmade’ laws,” he said.
Fox News
October 19, 2007
U.S. Commission Wants Saudi-Funded School Closed Until Textbooks Can Be Reviewed
By Greg Simmons
WASHINGTON — A congressionally mandated panel that promotes religious freedom is recommending the Bush administration close a Virginia-based Islamic school run by the Saudi government if school officials don’t comply with demands to turn over textbooks that may include lessons on jihad and intolerance toward other religions.
“Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the (school) promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States,” said a report released Thursday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Saudi embassy officials say the books long ago were cleaned up and made available to commission members, but the commissioners never bothered to go to The Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., to check them out for themselves.
“There’s nothing to hide. The books are there,” embassy spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir said.
Commission spokeswoman Judith Ingram said the panel did not request to speak to academy officials because that went beyond the commission’s mandate, but it has been trying to get a hold of the religious texts, written in Arabic and sanctioned by the Saudi government for use at the school, since this summer.
Without the books in hand, the school should be closed voluntarily until the State Department can determine exactly what the books say, reads the report.
The panel’s findings focuses on a number of areas of concern with Saudi Arabia, including a 2003 study showing that Saudi texts encouraged violence toward others, “misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the ‘other.’”
A separate study last year conducted by The Center for Religious Freedom, run by Freedom House, and the Institute for Gulf Affairs, found that a ninth-grade Saudi textbook “teaches teenagers in apocalyptic terms that violence towards Jews, Christians and other unbelievers is sanctioned by God,” the report reads.
“Because Saudi Arabia is a friend and ally of this country — our sincere hope is that the secretary of state will have a productive dialogue with the Saudi embassy, and that she will be able to secure the textbooks and curriculum that are used,” Commissioner Leonard Leo said in an interview with FOXNews.com after a news conference Thursday.
If the texts don’t promote violence and comply with accepted human rights standards, then everything is fine, Leo said.
“But if that doesn’t work, our hope is that the secretary will invoke the power that she has under the Foreign Missions Act to close the ISA,” Leo said. The Foreign Missions Act can be applied because the ISA is “an arm of the Saudi embassy,” and therefore can be shuttered by the State Department, commissioners explained.
Commission Deputy Director Tad Stahnke said Thursday commissioners made several official inquiries about the books when they visited Saudi Arabia in May and June, and in the United States through the Saudi embassy.
Specifically, Stahnke said, the commission sent an official request to Saudi Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir, the school board’s chairman and brother to the embassy spokesman. “There was no response from the ambassador,” Stahnke said.
The request, written in a June 27 letter, sought “copies of textbooks, which include curricula on Hadith (Islamic traditions), Fiqh (matters of religious law and ritual), Tawhid (matters of belief) and Arabic language and Saudi history used at all grade levels, kindergarten through 12th grade, for schools in Saudi Arabia.” The letter also asked for “copies of such textbooks used at all levels of study in the Islamic Saudi Academy’s two campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, Va.,” according to a description given to FOXNews.com.
The letter explained that the commission would reveal its findings in a report. Commissioners confirmed that the embassy did receive the fax.
Nail Al-Jubeir said that because the texts are school books, the embassy is the wrong place to look for them. The books the commission wants are printed yearly in paperback and regularly thrown out. The embassy had last year’s texts, but not the current year’s.
“They can get them from the academy. … I find that hard to believe that they were in Saudi Arabia and they could not get copies,” Al-Jubeir said, noting that because they are official religious school texts, they are widely available and distributed to roughly six million students in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Jubeir said the embassy has no plans to close the school. He added that while the ambassador is the board chairman, the embassy does not meddle in ISA’s academic programs.
Stahnke said that the commission was interested particularly in the texts in the United States. He added that because the school is on Saudi-owned or rented land, the commission’s protocol is to go directly through the Saudi embassy.
Commissioners said that without more legal authority, it’s up to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to negotiate with the Saudis to get the texts. They have called on Rice to immediately begin negotiations with the Saudis and report back within 90 days.
In the State Department’s daily briefing on Thursday, spokesman Tom Casey did not have an immediate response to the commission’s recommendations.
The commission says that Rice can close the school forcibly “on the ground that the non-diplomatic activities of the ISA cannot be conducted by and through an embassy, and because significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States.”
Commissioner Felice Gaer, who was the group’s chairwoman when members traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this year, said that because the commission’s recommendations are nonbinding, lawmakers may want to step in to turn the recommendations into law.
“We’re an advisory committee. We have no executive authority to tell them to do it. Should Congress wish to (enforce the recommendations), that’s — obviously that would be helpful. Should the State Department wish to do this voluntarily, that would be great,” Gaer said.
At least one congressman hopes to force the State Department to get moving. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., said he will introduce legislation to require the State Department to begin within 90 days of the law’s enactment the process of getting the documents and reporting back findings to Congress another 90 days later.
It was not clear Thursday if there would be any specific consequences in the bill should the State Department fail to meet the requirements.
The legislation may be unnecessary, said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., suggesting that despite his concerns over Saudi efforts to spread the Wahabbi brand of Islam, which Wolf and a number of critics call “extremist,” he thinks the U.S.-Saudi relationship will prevail.
“My sense is that reasonable people will get to the bottom of this,” said Wolf, a co-author of the bill that started the commission during the Clinton administration.
Wolf said that if the ISA does have textbooks that promote hate against Jews, Christians or Muslims, “it is unacceptable.”
One observer Thursday said that he doesn’t think the report went far enough.
“It reflects the present administration policy towards Saudi Arabia. The present administration policy at this time is retreating to its habits prior to 9/11,” said Ali Alyami, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia.
Alyami said the Bush administration in its second term has been embracing the Saudi government more.
“This is this same institution that is feeding terrorism, hate toward this country and democracy, and that hasn’t changed, regardless of what books have been — what language has been taken out from these books.
“The fact remains the same. Freedom, religious freedom, is non-existent” in Saudi Arabia, Alyami said.
Consortium News
August 17, 2007
Saudi Arabia’s Myth of Moderation
By Barbara Koeppel
Almost daily, the Bush administration ratchets up the war-like rhetoric about Iran’s alleged role in destabilizing Iraq. Eerily, like the pre-Iraq War drumbeat, the U.S. press repeats the accusations with little skepticism and Congress marches in lockstep, as a new Middle East villain is marked for punishment.
The administration asserts that with the “terrorist” tag, the elite 125,000-man Guard is no longer a legitimate part of Iran’s military, but a rogue unit ripe for attacking. The move pushes the United States dangerously close to a direct confrontation with Iran, even as the death toll and spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to spiral out of control.
Yet, the U.S. finger-pointing at Iran’s support for Iraqi Shiite militias, including alleged deliveries of armor-piercing explosive devices, obscures the fact that U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, is implicated by far more persuasive evidence in helping Iraqi Sunni militias with money, weapons and suicide bombers to kill both U.S. troops and Iraqi targets, including civilians.
On the Saudi role, however, the Bush administration and the U.S. press corps are remarkably silent.
By shifting the blame for Iraq’s chaos onto Iran, administration officials also divert attention from their own guilt in wrecking a once-functioning modern country through an unprovoked invasion and an inept occupation. As far as most of the U.S. press corps is concerned, Washington’s goal in Iraq is stability and democracy.
When Saudi Arabia is mentioned, the oil-rich nation usually is depicted as another force for moderation and reform, like in late July when administration officials leaked U.S. plans to sell $20 billion in sophisticated weaponry to Saudi Arabia, purportedly to counter Iranian aggression.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained this was to “give the forces of moderation and reform a chance.”
But unless Rice has been asleep for decades, she has to know the Saudis are neither moderate nor reform-minded. Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s combination of religious extremism and political repression made the country a perfect breeding ground for the likes of Osama bin Laden, most of the 9/11 hijackers – and many of the suicide bombers crossing the border into Iraq.
‘’‘Ali Alyami, director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, said the basis for the U.S.-Saudi alliance begins and ends with oil. The deal is simple: the Saudi royal family guarantees a steady supply of oil to the United States and the United States protects the security of the Saudi royal family.’‘’
Complicated Relationship
But the U.S. invasion of Iraq complicated the relationship. By installing pro-Iranian Shiites in charge of Iraq, the invasion caused the Saudis to rally to their fellow Sunnis in Iraq, who had slid from a position as the ruling elite under Saddam Hussein to a marginalized and embattled minority.
Further, the Saudis were alarmed by the prospect of a powerful Shiite crescent running from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The combined oil fields of Iraq and Iran also represented a challenge to the Saudis’ traditional dominance of OPEC and the world’s oil supply.
To counter these strategic and economic threats, Alyami said, the Saudi leaders had to play their hand discreetly. “The royal family are clever like desert foxes, and will do whatever they have to do, to meet their ends,” he told me in an interview.
The Bush administration also had its own geopolitical interest in ignoring the Saudi role in Iraq’s turmoil, since that would disrupt the desired narrative – that Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda were primarily responsible for the violence in Iraq.
The Bush administration has restricted its criticism of Saudi Arabia to the complaint that the Saudis could do more to help with Iraq’s reconciliation.
As for Saudi pledges to stop terrorism, Alayami said they are worthless: “They try, but only on their own turf. They have no interest in stopping it outside their borders.”
Alyami said the royal family’s only true concern is survival, which means maintaining its political control at home, its influence in the Persian Gulf, and its religious-ideological role as leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. Saudi Arabia is home to Islam’s two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.
For these reasons, Alyami said the royal family needs a government in Iraq with a dominant Sunni presence. But since Sunnis make up only about 20 percent of Iraq’s population, the United States has had to press Iraq’s Shiite leaders to give the Sunnis more representation than their numbers justify.
But that still is not enough for the Saudis, nor for Iraq‘s Sunni leadership, Alyami said.
Thus, despite their vehement denials, the Saudis send men and money to sustain the Sunni insurgency, which is the primary means to pressure Baghdad’s new power structure to grant the Sunnis greater shares of oil revenue and political influence.
According to media accounts, the Saudi cash delivery system to Iraq is primitive but effective. In December 2006, the Associated Press quoted truck drivers as saying they carried boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, headed for insurgents or the Sunni leadership. The ATM-on-wheels also relied on bus drivers and returning pilgrims from Mecca.
The AP article cited high-ranking Iraqi officials who said “Saudi money comes from private donations, called zaqat, collected for Islamic causes and charities.“ Some is given to clerics “who channel it to anti-coalition forces.“
One Iraqi official said “$25 million in Saudi money went to a top Sunni cleric in Iraq and was used to buy sophisticated weapons, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles,” the AP reported.
Saudi Role Confirmed
The Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, concurred, stating that Saudis “are funding Sunni Arab insurgents.”
Besides cash, Saudi manpower has been vital to the insurgents. Since the 2003 invasion, various press accounts have reported that the majority of non-Iraqi Arabs fighting alongside Iraqi insurgents or acting as suicide bombers are Saudis.
To rally recruits to the insurgents’ jihad (or holy war), Saudi clerics, all of whom are on the government payroll, have issued fatwas (religious directives) in Saudi mosques and through the media from 2003 to the present.
The clerics exhort the faithful to go to Iraq to fight infidels, a word that refers to Western military forces, Shiites and anyone who doesn‘t believe in the Salafi (or Wahabi) extreme branch of Islam. The most famous fatwa was signed by 26 senior Saudi clerics in November 2004.
Most Saudi clerics support jihad openly. “If suicide bombers target Saudi Arabia, the clerics call them terrorists,” said Ali Al-Ahmad, director of the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs. “If they target infidels in Iraq, the clerics say it’s the right thing to do.“
Rather than punish the 26 clerics, the government rewarded them, Ahmad said, promoting several and giving one cleric four weekly television shows on four different Saudi stations.
Alyami contends the government could silence the clerics if it wanted to. “Saudi Arabia is a country where the government controls every facet of life,” including religion, education, the justice system, military, police, economy and media, he said.
For those who criticize the government, retribution is swift, from losing jobs to bans against public speaking to arrest, torture and execution.
Just this year, for example, Amno Al-Faisal, a member of the royal family and columnist in the Saudi newspaper, Al-Watan, criticized the justice system. He was immediately banned from writing anything further.
Poet Ali Al-Domaini and two professors, Dr. Matrouk Al-Faleh and Dr. Abdullah Al-Al-Hamed, were imprisoned in 2004 for calling for elections and political reform. They were jailed for 18 months and when released, banned from travel, government work, political activities, writing, giving lectures and talking to the media.
So, critics say, it’s hard to believe that the Saudi government couldn’t muzzle radical clerics if it had the desire.
Direct Evidence
While the Bush administration has had trouble making a convincing case about Iran’s covert role in the Iraqi insurgency, Saudi dissidents point to direct evidence implicating powerful Saudis.
For instance, Ahmad cited a secret tape recording of Sheik Saleh-al-Luhaidan, chief of the Saudi judiciary, recruiting young people to join the Iraqi insurgents. On it, Luhaidan approves the transfer of men and money from Saudi Arabia to jihad leaders in Iraq, stating “he who wages jihad needs no permission … if his intention is to raise up the word of God. Then he is free to go.”
In 2005, Ahmad obtained a copy of the tape and gave it to NBC, which reported that it had confirmed the tape’s authenticity. Luhaidan remains chief of the Saudi Supreme Court.
As for stopping Islamic extremists at the border, Ahmad said, “Usually, Saudi border guards cooperate and look the other way.”
Though some jihadists are caught trying to enter Iraq and their arrests are publicized, the vast majority makes it across.
“The royal family doesn’t care how long the war in Iraq lasts or how many people are killed; it only care about its interests,“ Alyami said.
The number of Saudis who have been killed in Iraq varies depending on the source. Ahmad, who collects the names from terrorist groups’ communiqués and Internet sites, estimates the number could be as high as 2,000 to 3,000, though other estimates are lower.
An Israeli group, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA), reported in 2005 that during six months in 2004–2005, Jihadi-Salafi Web sites listed 154 Arabs as killed in Iraq. Of these, 94 (or 61 percent) were Saudis.
Of the 154 Arab deaths, 33 were suicide bombers, with 23 (or 70 percent) coming from Saudi Arabia, GLORIA reported.
Despite the evidence linking Saudi Arabia to the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Bush administration consistently downplays or ignores these reports. Conversely, it plays up every scrap of evidence implicating Iran, a longtime target that President George W. Bush famously counted in the “axis of evil” with Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea.
If the full story of Saudi interference in Iraq were ever told, however, the Bush administration would have a much harder time selling the American people on the $20 billion arms sale.
The Saudi connection to the Iraqi violence also would trash the administration’s favored narrative that blames outside forces – al-Qaeda, Iran and Syria – for most of the trouble.
To prevent any straying from the official story line, the U.S. government – and much of the U.S. news media – have put on blinders that focus American attention on the enemies Bush wants punished, not his friends.
Wall Street Journal
July 15, 2007
What About Muslim Moderates?
By R. James Woolsey and Nina Shea
Islamist terrorism has led the American and British governments in the past month to launch separate public diplomacy programs aimed at engaging Muslims at home and abroad. A quick comparison shows the two initiatives are headed in opposite directions. At least the Brits have finally got it right.
The Bush administration is building bridges to well-funded and self-publicized organizations that claim to speak for all Muslims, even though some of those groups espouse views inimical to American values and interests. After years of pursuing similar strategies — while seeing home-based terrorists proliferate — the Blair-Brown government is now more discerning about which Muslims it will partner with. Stating that “lip service for peace” is no longer sufficient, the British are identifying and elevating those who are willing to take clear stands against terrorism and its supporting ideology.
Thus, in a major address at a two-day government conference early last month (titled “Islam and Muslims in the World Today”), then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, with Gordon Brown in attendance and hosting a reception, vowed to correct an imbalance. He stated that, in Britain’s Muslim community, unrepresentative but well-funded groups are able to attract disproportionately large amounts of publicity, while moderate voices go unheard and unpublished.
Mr. Blair emphasized that Islam is not a “monolithic faith,” but one made up of a “rich pattern of diversity.” The principal purpose of the conference, Mr. Blair stressed, was to “let the authentic voices of Islam, in their various schools and manifestations, speak for themselves.” He was as good as his word.
Invitations to participate in the assembly were extended to the less-publicized, moderate groups, such as the Sufi Muslim Council, the British Muslim Foundation and Minhaj-ul-Quran. Notably absent from the program was the Muslim Council of Britain, a group that claims to represent that nation’s Muslims but is preoccupied with its self-described struggle against “Islamophobia” — a term it tries to use to shut down critical analysis of anything Islamic, whether legitimate or bigoted.
Also dropped from the speaking roster was the leading European Islamist Tariq Ramadan, who, while denied a visa by the United States, has been a fixture at official conferences on Muslims in Europe. The grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Ramadan is fuzzy on where he stands on specific acts of terror — and he infamously evaded a challenge by Nicolas Sarkozy to denounce stoning.
Mr. Blair committed funds to improve the teaching of Islamic studies in British universities; announced a new effort to develop “minimum standards” for imams in Britain; and, most significantly, declared that henceforth the government would be giving “priority, in its support and funding decisions, to those leadership organizations actively working to tackle violent extremism.” Routine but vague press releases against terrorism would no longer do.
A few days later, British backbone was demonstrated again with the knighting of novelist Salman Rushdie. Since 1989, when Iran’s mullahs pronounced one of his works “blasphemous,” Mr. Rushdie has lived under the shadow of a death threat, the first fatwa with universal jurisdiction against a Muslim living in the West. With the news that Britain would honor him, extremist Muslims rioted. But many Western Muslim reformers, increasingly threatened by death threats and murderous fatwas themselves, cheered the Brits. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch parliamentarian who was born a Muslim in Somalia, wrote: “The queen has honored the freedom of conscience and creativity cherished in the West.”
On the eve of his departure from office, Mr. Blair gave a television interview taking on those he once courted — British Islamists who have been quick to level charges of Islamophobia and oppression against Britain and the United States: “The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle [against terror] is that we’re not actually fighting it properly. We’re not actually standing up to these people and saying, ‘It’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.’ . . . Some of what is written on this is loopy-loo in its extremism.”
Contrast this with the Bush administration’s new approach. On June 27, President Bush delivered his “Muslim Initiative” address at the Washington Islamic Center in tribute to the 50th anniversary of that organization’s founding, by Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, and its extremist ideology often flows with the kingdom’s money. The Islamic Center is not an exception.
A few years ago when we were with Freedom House, concerned Muslims brought us Saudi educational material they collected from the Washington Islamic Center that instructed Muslims fundamentally to segregate themselves from other Americans. One such text stated: “To be dissociated from the infidels is to hate them for their religion, to leave them, never to rely on them for support, not to admire them, to be on one’s guard against them, never to imitate them, and to always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.”
Though Mr. Bush’s remarks were intended for all American Muslims, the administration left the invitation list to Washington Islamic Center’s authorities. Predictably, they excluded the truly moderate, who are not Saudi-founded or funded: the Islamic Supreme Council of America, the American Islamic Congress, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the Center for Eurasian Policy, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, the Islam and Democracy Project, the Institute for Gulf Affairs, the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia and many others.
These organizations are frequently shut out of U.S. government events and appointments on the basis that they are considered insignificant or “controversial” by the petro-dollar-funded groups. The administration makes a terrible mistake by making such Wahhabi-influenced institutions as the Washington Islamic Center the gate keepers for all American Muslims.
The actual substance of Mr. Bush’s mosque speech — particularly good on religious freedom — was overshadowed by the announcement of its single initiative: America is to send an envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference. Based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC was created explicitly to promote hostility to Israel, and its meetings largely consist of ritualistic Israel-bashing. At one last year, Iran’s president called for the “elimination of the Zionist regime.” It has no mechanism for discussing the human rights of its member states, and thus has never spoken out against Sudan’s genocide of Darfuri Muslims. It is advancing an effort to universalize Islamic blasphemy laws, which are applied as often against speech critical of the governments of OIC member states as against profanities. Last month the OIC council of foreign ministers termed Islamophobia “the worst form of terrorism.” Currently no Western power holds either member or observer status at the OIC.
The Bush administration is now actively considering whether its public diplomacy should reach out to Muslim Brotherhood groups. While such groups may pay lip service to peace, they do not denounce terror by Hamas, a Brotherhood offshoot. It keeps as its motto: “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” By choosing those whose definition of terror does not include the murder of Jews, honor killings and lethal fatwas against Muslim dissidents and reformers, the U.S. government makes them look strong — particularly in the shame-and-honor culture of the Middle East — and strengthens their hand against the real moderates and reformers.
Great Britain, as we were reminded over the past week, has much work ahead in defeating Muslim terror, as well as in overcoming the misguided form of multiculturalism of its recent past. Not all of Britain’s measures will be right for America, with our First Amendment. But the British Labour Party socialists appear to have done one major thing right that this American Republican administration has not: Reach out to Muslim leaders who are demonstrably moderate and share our values, even though they may not have petrodollar-funded publicity machines.
While we don’t have a Queen to dub knights, Americans do have distinct way of honoring our heroes. Mr. President, confer the Medal of Freedom on one of our own outstanding Muslim-American citizens. For a selection of honorees, look at who was not invited to your recent speech. If Islamists charge “Islamophobia,” repeat after Tony: “Loopy loo. Loopy loo.”
Christian Post
December 05, 2006
Experts Discuss Saudi Arabia Religious Freedom, Human Rights Reform
By Michelle Vu
WASHINGTON – The situation in Saudi Arabia, including the status of religious freedom and human rights reform in a country where religious freedom is nonexistent, was discussed at a conference on Monday.
“To be a Saudi citizen you have to be a Muslim. There is no choice. That is a fact,” said Dr. Dwight Bashir, senior policy analyst of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), during a conference held at American University.
As an example, Bashir made note of foreign guest workers who may have lived in Saudi Arabia for generations but cannot be Saudi citizen if they are non-Muslims.
Bashir spoke about an extensive USCIRF report on Saudi Arabia released in May 2003. He said that the commission had talked to enough people that had “clearly indicated beyond anecdotal evidence” to show support that Saudi ideology promoted “hate, intolerance, and violence against not only non-conforming Muslims but also non-Muslims.”
The USCIRF policy analyst also referred to a report released by Freedom House in May entitled Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance, which documented and analyzed a set of Saudi textbooks. The report concluded that the textbooks promote an ideology of hatred towards non-Wahhabi Muslims.
Bashir conceded that there has been some religious freedom progress in the country. However, he said an “objective observer” can see the country’s long list of reform initiative compared to the progress and conclude there has not been substantive improvement in recent years.
“Religious freedom could have been and still can be an important issue of common ground for the Saudi to respond to – something that is not only meaningful to the U.S. government but the American people…,” concluded Bashir.
Dr. Ali Alyami, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, spoke, among other topics, about the lack of woman’s right in the country. He said that 90–94 percent of women are not allowed to work, noting it has nothing to do with religion or tradition but rather the political system.
“It (Saudi Arabia) is the center of Islam. It is the center of religious incitement and hate. It is a country with a lot of money,” said Alyami. “If Saudi Arabia is democratized it will go a long way to minimize if not eradicate the causes of terrorism and extremism.”
FrontPage Magazine
January 11, 2006
Saudi Chains of Oppression
By Jamie Glazov
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Ali H. Alyami, Executive Director of The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC.
WordPress
December 6, 2005
Religious Freedom: A Taboo in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
By Manuela Paraipan
The State Department, in a report released in November, cites Saudi Arabia and a few other countries as restricting religious freedom. The situation has not improved too much since last year, when the State Department previously reported that religious freedom was lacking in the Kingdom.
The report stated, “Islam is the official religion and all citizens must be Muslims.” Moreover, the state is imposing the Sunni version of Islam on all citizens, be they Shia Muslims or non-Muslims. However, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the time refused to sanction Saudi Arabia, saying she wanted “to allow additional time for the continuation of discussions leading to progress on important religious freedom issues.”
Despite the Kingdom’s actions to thwart terrorism, in terms of religious freedoms and human rights the reality is still gloomy.
King Abdullah addressed women in his country saying that, “patience is beautiful,” in response to the issue of women driving cars in the Kingdom, but there are other challenges as important as this one he has to deal with, in the near future such as:
The internal conflicts within the royal family. The threat of terrorism. Creating new jobs. Religious freedom. Freedom of speech. Human rights reforms, especially for youths and women. Political challenges — will the Kingdom be able to allow political pluralism, minimize the Islamism threat and still survive? Dr. Mai Yamani wrote recently in The Independent that “Saudi Arabia has remained trapped in a state of suspended animation, its body politic sick and infirm. Now it is caught between two choices: progressive reform or continuing paralysis and decay.”
Micha van Waesberghe, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia recently wrote about the case of Samuel Daniel, a Christian of Indian nationality who lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for more than 20 years. But, being a Christian proves to be a ticking bomb in the Kingdom, regardless of how exemplary one’s life is.
The Saudi religious police, without any official mandate or explanation, arrested and detained Samuel Daniel for a period of 10 days. Presumably, since there was nothing wrong with his behavior other than his affiliation with the Christian faith, which was the reason why he was jailed and later deported.
Daniel has taken this matter to the Indian Ambassador, which asked for further explanations from the Saudi officials. Their response was that he was never arrested or detained, because there were no charges made against him, and that was the end of the story for the Saudis.
The practice of entering someone’s private home, and imprisoning him because of his religious affiliation should not only be considered as an act of moral injustice, but also of barbarism.
The only positive aspect of the story, if there is one, is the insight Samuel Daniel had into the manner in which the Saudis treat Christians, actually their mistreatment of all non-Muslims.
Because of his courage to alert and give his testimony to the Indian authorities, as well as to human rights N.G.O.’s, maybe others will not suffer the despair and injustice he had to suffer.
The conditions of imprisonment are hard to imagine — the indignity of 100 or 200 people being confined in a room of 20 on 25 feet without proper food, water or medication while being threatened, and verbally and physically abused.
The whole image is disturbing. People are jailed for months without knowing for what they have been accused, and are denied access to a lawyer and visits from official representatives.
It is a pity that Saudi Arabia, a country that hosts Islam’s two holiest cities — Mecca and Medina — has proven to be a place where tolerance, humanity and respect for another’s religious faith are not known.
In the end, if the Saudi royal family is looking to play a key role in stabilizing the region, it should first deal with its domestic issues.
The Boston Globe
July 17, 2005
Study Cites Seeds of Terror in Iraq
By Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON — New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank — both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States — have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.
The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush’s claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the ‘’central front” in a battle against the United States.
The terrorists know that the outcome [in Iraq] will leave them emboldened or defeated,” Bush said in his nationally televised address on the war at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month. So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction.” The US military is fighting the terrorists in Iraq, he repeated this month, ‘’so we do not have to face them here at home.”
However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.
A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ‘’the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq.”
‘’Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya,” the Israeli study says. Out of the 154 fighters analyzed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel.
American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: Prior to the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the United States, as Al Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from crusaders” and infidels.”
‘’The president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created,” said Peter Bergen, a terrorism specialist at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Foreign militants make up only a small percentage of the insurgents fighting in Iraq, as little as 10 percent, according to US military and intelligence officials. The top general in Iraq said late last month that about 600 foreign fighters have been captured or killed by coalition forces since the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. The wider insurgency, numbering in the tens of thousands, is believed to consist of former Iraqi soldiers, Saddam Hussein loyalists, and members of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority.
But the impact of the foreign fighters has been enormous. They are blamed for the almost daily suicide attacks against US and Iraqi forces and have killed thousands of civilians, mostly members of Iraq’s Shia Muslim majority. Their exploits have been responsible for much of the headline-grabbing carnage recently, contributing to the slide in American public support for the war.
There have been nearly 500 car bombings since the US-led coalition handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government one year ago, US military statistics indicate. In the last two months, car bombs and suicide attacks have killed nearly 1,400 people, according to the Associated Press.
Bush has cited foreign fighters as a reason for continued US military operations in Iraq. His argument, repeated often, is that ‘’the world’s terrorists” have chosen to make their stand in Iraq.
‘’Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror,” Bush said in a radio address last month.
Foreign fighters were found to be like Saud Bin Muhammad Bin Saud Al-Fuhaid, according to Obaid’s research, to be published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington this summer. Described as in his early 20s, Fuhaid blew himself up March 24, three days after he entered Iraq from Syria, according to newspaper accounts and interviews with his family.
Obaid found little evidence Fuhaid was an extremist before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Like many of the young men from Saudi Arabia who make up the majority of the foreign fighters, the student at Imam University in western Riyadh was not initially a radical jihadist, according to information gleaned from Saudi newspaper accounts and intelligence operations. In fact, he apparently almost changed his mind.
Fuhaid is believed to have traveled through Syria to fight in Iraq, but once he arrived told his family he would be coming home instead, according to a death notice published in Saudi newspapers and posted on the Internet. However, during that time he met some friends of his who were going to Iraq and told him they were going to declare Jihad with their brothers in Iraq,” the celebratory announcement said. It was at that moment that our martyr changed his mind and told them that he will go back to Iraq with them and called his parents to tell him he won’t be going home.”
Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that ‘’the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go.”
Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today,” said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world.”
Case studies of foreign fighters indicated they considered the Iraq war an attack on the Muslim religion and Arab culture, Paz said.
For example, while the unprovoked attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were largely condemned by clerics as violations of Muslim law, many religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have promulgated fatwas, or religious edicts, saying that waging jihad in Iraq is justified by the Koran because it is defensive in nature. Last October, 26 clerics in Saudi Arabia said it was the duty of every Muslim to go and fight in Iraq.
‘’These are people who did not get training in Pakistan or Chechnya, [and they] ended up going to Iraq because they considered defending Iraq a must for every Muslim to go and fight,” said Rita Katz, director of the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute in Washington and an Iraq native.
One indication that a heightened degree of Arab solidarity is a leading factor is that they are almost entirely Arabs and not Muslims from other countries, such as those who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. Another motivation, the studies and analysts contend, is the centuries-old struggle between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. All the foreign fighters are Sunnis, according to the analyses, and many of their targets are Iraq’s majority Shia Muslims, who have gained political power in Baghdad for the first time in hundreds of years.
Ali Alyami, director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, said he believes the deep-seated Sunni-Shia rift among the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims — about 1 billion of them Sunni — best explains the foreign-fighter phenomenon. He noted in an interview that US policy makers do not seem to grasp the historic conflicts within Islam that are playing out in the war in Iraq.
To say we must fight them in Baghdad so we don’t have to fight them in Boston implies there is a finite number of people, and if you pen them up in Iraq you can kill them all,” said Bergen. The truth is we increased the pool by what we did in Iraq.”
Intelligence officials worry that some of ‘’Iraq alumni” will use the relationships they build on the battlefields of Iraq and return to their home countries as hardened Islamic terrorists.
The CIA’s National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ‘’Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are ‘professionalized’ and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself.”