RNA - The crown prince, who is also defense minister, created the so-called Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition in 2015 in response to the growing threat of ISIL and international criticism that it was not doing enough to counter religious extremism. The first meeting this week comes after the allied forces of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Russia, Hezbollah and Popular Mobilization Units ended ISIL’s medieval caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
That says why the international civil society does not believe a word of this so-called anti-terror group:
A- Countries involved in the Saudi coalition include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Uganda, Somalia, Mauritania, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen and Turkey. Strange enough, some of these countries are the same allies that have been helping Saudi Arabia to bomb the people of Yemen and trigger the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world since March 2015 – as a result of which the Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula has managed to capture territory after territory in the poorest country in the Arab world.
B- Iran is not included in the group. Syria and Iraq, whose governments played a key role in helping Iran to defeat and end the rule of ISIL, are also not part of the alliance. While the alliance officially includes Qatar, the target of a six-month boycott led by Saudi Arabia, organizers in Riyadh said no Qatari officials were present.
The move is designed to help Riyadh distract attention and save face in the face of ISIL’s defeat – a Saudi-American-Israeli creation – in Iraq and Syria plus the fact that the regime changers failed to partition Iraq and Syria to their liking. Perhaps, the move is also designed to help Salman consolidate his power, after more than 200 members of the Saudi elite, among them princes and business tycoons, were arrested in a crackdown on corruption charges. But that’s not the main discussion here.
C- Even sophisticated observers admit to the confusion that Saudi Arabia and some of its neighbors decide to punish Qatar and some of its citizens, ostensibly for fostering and financing terrorism. But Saudi Arabia itself has been underwriting extremists and terrorists. The idea of a united front among Arab states against ISIL, therefore, all but evaporates, and hypocrisies and contradictions abound.
D- Saudi Arabia would like to tell the world it has become more serious about extremism; that it has taken a zero-tolerance approach to ISIL and joined the American-led coalition fighting the group. Even so, American government reports say financial support for terrorism from Saudis “remains a threat to the kingdom and the international community.” And while this has been ignored by President Trump, Saudi Arabia continues to spend billions of dollars spreading Wahhabism, its ultraconservative brand of Islam - which in turn inspires ISIL, Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists - through a network of clergies, mosques, and lobbies in Europe and Asia.
E- There needs to be clarity and honesty about the various sources of the terrorism problem, and the various contributions some members of the Saudi-led anti-terror group can make to the struggle. In the meantime, misrepresenting the great contributions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah or the Popular Mobilization Units to the Real War on Terror, while giving the Saudis, the main sponsors of ISIL and Al Qaeda, a free pass, will only benefit Saudi Arabia’s efforts to expand its destructive influence in the region at the expense of regional peace and security – something the Trump White House is openly and publicly after.
Even President Trump knows what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew all along – that US ally Saudi Arabia and the mere extras are funding ISIL and Al Qaeda. He just doesn’t care. In a leaked memo by WikiLeaks, then Secretary of State Clinton makes no secret of the fact that when ISIL forces were sweeping through northern Iraq and eastern Syria, at the time, the US government was not admitting that Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies were supporting the terrorist group. The leaked memo says that it draws on “Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” that there is no ambivalence about who is backing ISIL.
The memo says: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical groups in the region.” Later, Vice-President Joe Biden openly admitted that US allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE and Qatar created and backed up the Takfiri-Salafi terrorist groups in Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, but he was forced to apologize for the confession because Washington believed to antagonize Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Pakistan would fatally undermine US power in the Middle East and South Asia.
But all these so-called confessions are no more than a diversion to pretend to these small US allies acted on their own and without Washington's knowledge. But the United States' so-called fight against ISIL which has by the way been only a mockery of war on terrorism, alongside many other proofs disclosed that this has been well-plotted scheme to no just regime change, but crush and annihilate the countries that have allied with Iran, known as the Resistance Front.
Per usual, the US foreign policy orthodoxy will once again do the bidding of their Saudi and pro-Israel funders, treat Riyadh as an ally, take for granted that Saudi Arabia and company are funding ISIL, and bring on side compliant “fakestream” media, politicians and self-declared academic experts willing to give overt or covert support to the brand new Saudi-led anti-terror group.
847/940