USA emphatic support to Saudi Arabia

USA emphatic support to Saudi Arabia is music to Al-Qaeda’s ears

By Zayd Alisa

The Saudi Regime gave refuge to, Ben Ali, Tunisia’s dictator. It not only gave its ringing endorsement to, Mubarek, Egypt’s dictator, but threatened to finance him. The Saudi Regime is currently mediating to save, Saleh, Yemen’s dictator. But, more ominously, the king of Saudi Arabia made good on his unveiled threat to send his forces to crush the popular uprising in Bahrain, if the dictator of Bahrain, king Hamad, failed to do so.

The Saudi forces invaded Bahrain unleashing the most ferocious and murderous onslaught against the peaceful Protesters using massive disproportionate force. The Saudi king’s trigger happy forces were driven by a deep seated hatred to the Shias, who constitute 70% of Bahrain’s population. It was a desperate attempt to scare off its own deeply disgruntled population, including the Shias, who make up the overwhelming majority in its oil rich eastern province. The Saudi regime made a concerted effort to stir up sectarian rifts to cover up its ultimate goal of quashing the popular movement in Bahrain. Both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia claim that the Saudi forces are there according to GCC agreements. However, these agreements emphasise that intervention is acceptable if there is an external threat, which is definitely not the case in Bahrain. But, even having a UN authorisation does not give a free licence to perpetrate genocide. Given that Bahrain is the home of the USA fifth fleet and a visit by, Gates, the USA defence secretary before the Saudi invasion, it is inconceivable that the Saudi Regime did not get a green light from the USA. Although the blood of the peaceful protesters is on the hands of the Saudi king and the Bahraini king, the USA is morally culpable. The USA declaration that Saudi involvement is not an invasion added insult to injury.

To establish a protest free zone in its backyard garden, the Saudi regime pushed the Yemeni dictator to slaughter his own people and to impose emergency rules. These brutal crackdowns perpetrated by the USA’s staunch allies Saudi Arabia and Yemen made a mockery of the USA pretension of defending people’s universal rights.

One day after the atrocities in Yemen the USA had a major change of heart about imposing a no-fly-zone in Libya after weeks of dragging its feet. This shifted the attention away from Saudi Arabia to firmly focus on Libya. The USA deliberately delayed the intervention in Libya to weaken the rebels in order to be able to manage the inevitable change. A swift victory by the popular uprising in Libya would have given a dramatic boost to similar uprisings, thus severely undermining crucial allies in the region. But, allowing Gaddafie to prevail is indefensible.

The Saudi king issued a stern warning to his own people asserting that protests are strictly prohibited. The religious institution declared that protests are un-Islamic. The Saudi regime used brutal force to crush those who dared to protest. This was not met with an uproar or outright condemnation from the USA, therefore, encouraging the regime to act with impunity. While the religious institution provides the regime with the religious endorsement and legitimacy, the regime provides it with vast amounts of funding to propagate and export its hard-line and extremist Wahhabie or Salafi ideology.

According to a secret memo published by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton said Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funding for Islamic extremism and Saudi Arabia is a critical financial support base for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist groups. Clinton complained of the refusal of Saudi officials to treat terrorist funding as a strategic priority. The Madrassas created and funded by the Saudi regime in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the birth place of Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. They provide them with an endless flow of suicide bombers and serve as centres for radicalisation. The fatwa’s giving religious legitimacy and justification to suicide bombings emanate entirely from Saudi clerics, who are mostly government employees.

The brutal tyrannical Saudi regime combined with its strict and extremist religious institution facilitates an ideal environment for Al-Qaeda to flourish. As a result, USA emphatic support to the Saudi regime is music to Al-Qaeda ears. Al-Qaeda claimed in comments on the popular uprising in Libya that its overriding priority was defending people from the brutality and corruption of dictatorships. Al-Qaeda justifies instigating and executing terrorist attacks against the USA and the west by blaming them for propping up those entrenched dictatorships. To guarantee continued USA backing, Saudi Arabia ensures Al-Qaeda is too weak to destabilise its regime, but remain a viable external threat.

The misguided USA strategies implemented for nearly a decade in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the war on terror have not only emphatically failed to turn the tide against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but were instrumental in enabling Al-Qaeda to spread its wings to Somalia, Yemen and north Africa A strategy that does not have at its heart tackling head-on the major source of funding, ideology, fatwa’s, fighters and dictatorship is definitely futile. The USA faces a stark choice either supporting regime change in Saudi Arabia which leads to democracy and human rights, or dealing with an emboldened and more vicious Al-Qaeda hell bent on spreading further. The USA unequivocal support to Saudi Arabia would leave it standing on the wrong side of the present and the future in the Arab region.

ENDS

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