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Topic: What Are The Saudis Up To?
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| Iron Eagle | Posted – 7/16/2007 12:03:04 AM | show profile About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said. LA TIMES |
| chucho | Posted – 7/16/2007 5:18:43 AM | show profile The answer to the question seems to me to be complicated. I think it has a lot to do with the radicalization of the Saudi educational system since the 70s. There's a misconception that Saudi has always been they way it is today. Most Americans forget that in 1975 King Faisal was assassinated by a religious nutter from within the family. Then a few years later religious nutters took over the Prophet's Mosque in Makkah. '"Normal" Saudis are essentially being held hostage by the "crazy" Saudis and the "average Saudi" (per-capita income is $14,000 right now, which is actually a peak due to the current oil prices -- it's usually around $10,000) realizes that the situation is tenuous -- on one side an astoundingly corrupt royal family (that nevertheless provides universal health coverage, good highways, and security against religious extremism inside the country) and on the other the Salafist nut jobs that want to roll the country back to the 7th Century. Out of fear for their own ability to control the nutters, the royals handed the educational system to the religious "poets" as a concession (just as coddling the religious police and women not driving are concessions) who then proceeded to create two generations of Saudis that have jihadist principles. And Iraq to its neighbor is not unlike how a lot of Americans viewed the Spanish Civil war and ran off to fight fascism. Except in this case, they feel like they're fighting not just what they see as Western secular imperialism but, more importantly, the perpetual concern about Iran and Shiiah radicalism. The Saudis are more than happy to look the other way as these guys leave their country to go fight in another country because you might no be aware of this but there's a underlying tension about Shities inside Saudi Arabia, particularly in the South by Yemen and the area bordering the Arabian Gulf. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/16/2007 8:19:05 AM | show profile It's the oil ... naturally We Americans are funding both sides of the war on terror through our oil gluttony. And it's only going to get worse as we increasingly rely on oil from the middle east (since our oil production has been on the decline since 1970). See example below... *** ...Take Saudi Arabia for example. This Gulf monarchy is a rentier state in which no taxes are imposed on the population. Instead, Saudis have a religious tax, the zakat, requiring all Muslims to give at least 2.5 percent of their income to charities. Many of the charities are truly dedicated to good causes, but others merely serve as money laundering and terrorist financing apparatuses. While many Saudis contribute to those charities in good faith believing their money goes toward good causes, others know full well the terrorist purposes to which their money will be funneled. What makes penetration and control of money transactions in the Arab world especially difficult is the Hawala system--the unofficial method of transferring money and one of the key elements in the financing of global terrorism. The system has been going for generations and is deeply embedded in the Arab culture. Hawala transactions are based on trust; they are carried out verbally leaving no paper trail. The Saudi regime has been complicit in its people's actions and has turned a blind eye to the phenomenon of wealthy citizens sending money to charities that in turn route it to terror organizations. Furthermore, Saudi government money funneled into madrassas where radical anti-Americanism is propagated has been instrumental in creating an ideological climate which generates terrorism. Former CIA director James Woolsey described the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism and Islamist extremism as "the soil in which Al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing." ... Barrels and bombs It is no coincidence that so much of the cash filling terrorists' coffers come from the oil monarchies in the Persian Gulf. It is also no coincidence that those countries holding the world's largest oil reserves and those generating most of their income from oil exports, are also those with the strongest support for radical Islam. In fact, oil and terrorism are entangled. If not for the West's oil money, most Gulf states would not have had the wealth that allowed them to invest so much in arms procurement and sponsor terrorists organizations. Consider Saudi Arabia. Oil revenues make up around 90-95% of total Saudi export earnings, 70%-80% of state revenues, and around 40% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2002 alone, Saudi Arabia earned nearly $55 billion in crude oil export revenues. Most wealthy Saudis who sponsor charities and educational foundations that preach religious intolerance and hate toward the Western values have made their money from the petroleum industry or its subsidiaries. Osama bin Laden's wealth comes from the family's construction company that made its fortune from government contracts financed by oil money. It is also oil money that enables Saudi Arabia to invest approximately 40% of its income on weapons procurement. In July 2005 undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey testifying in the Senate noted ?Wealthy Saudi financiers and charities have funded terrorist organizations and causes that support terrorism and the ideology that fuels the terrorists' agenda. Even today, we believe that Saudi donors may still be a significant source of terrorist financing, including for the insurgency in Iraq." ...The line between the barrel and the bomb is clear. It is oil wealth that enables dictatorial regimes to sustain themselves, resisting openness, progress and power sharing. Some semi-feudal royal families in the Gulf buy their legitimacy from the Muslim religious establishment. This establishment uses oil money to globally propagate hostility to the West, modernity, non-Muslims, and women. This trend is likely to continue. Both the International Energy Agency and the Energy Information Agency of the U.S. Department of Energy currently project a steady increase in world demand for oil through at least 2020. This means further enrichment of the oil-producing countries and continued access of terrorist groups to a viable financial network which allow then remain a lethal threat to the U.S. and its allies. ... http://www.iags.org/fuelingterror.html |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 7/16/2007 8:23:54 AM | show profile It's with interest we could have avoided all of this homeland security nonsense if we just kept an eye on the Saudis - saved gobs of money and spared our civil liberties. Look at the mess these guys cause at every airport. |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/16/2007 8:41:48 AM | show profile | email poster airports crimedog - watch that doco posted in the other thread on al Qaeda. Saudi isn't mentioned.... not sure why. The airport game is just that -- a game. It strikes fear into the masses and for good reason. That fear plays into the game the so called NeoCons cooked up to keep control. While I'm mobile... I do have to enter a high security building from time to time. You empty your pockets into a little box, walk through a special surround WITHOUT disrobing and that is that. I have no issue with some form of protection. Why the airports here though hassle the average traveler is one of the most ridiculous inventions to date. We fall for it -- because they have us by our pubic hairs. One false move and you miss your plane, get in trouble with the boss, get on a watch list, and endure the humiliating probing eyes of some lackey security staff. I can also say -- the airports are not all alike. Some worse than others. But I'll fall for the little control game... and not mention in public which airport in California allowed several of us through without doing a check.... it was in Nov 2006 while the security staff went off to take a lunch break. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/16/2007 9:51:56 AM | show profile Actually the Hawala system was shut down years ago, partly because of US pressure but mostly because the powers that be realized the no-fee money transactions wasn't something you could make money at. Hawala was actually good for the millions of impoverished foreign workers, especially in the Gulf region, that now have to pay fees Western Union and local banks to send money home to their families as remittances what they used to be able to do for almost free. I think it's actually kinda crappy that not these people who make shit wages (usually between $150 to $200 a month for basic laborer, with domitory housing, sometimes in trailers on construction sites with no A/C and some food expense provided) and are exploited now have to pay Western bankings and financial services companies a good chunk of change to send money home to feed their children in rural India, but whatever lets Americans monitor the world's transactions I guess is more important. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/16/2007 9:59:00 AM | show profile When I say "western banking systems" I mean that most local banks have partnerships or are essentially foreign-owned banks, or banks with JVs with European and American banks. However, that is misleading, the banks in counties like Saudi Arabia and India have no problem reaping profits off remittances, so, actually, the Saudi government was more than happy to abolish the Hawala system. And, yes, people should understand that Islam places a very high emphasis on giving to charity. If a the rich and middle class of of 1.2 billion people feel religiously compelled to give to charity, some are bound to be giving to bad causes (willfully or by being duped). Yes, we should do more to cut off money to religious militant nut jobs, but, yeah, it's sad that this comes at the expense of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Filipino, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, etc. workers who earn dirt wages and are exploited horribly now have to pay Western Union to send home money their families depend on when before they could do it for almost free just so we can monitor those transaction. (Hey, here's a great idea: Instead of charging workers for the privilege of monitoring their transactions, how about paying for this "service" yourself?) |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/16/2007 11:00:57 AM | show profile | email poster Chucho, I question the so called dirt wages. I'm not saying there aren't poor or starving people...I just do not think wage comparisons work for an argument. I sure would however like to know what the equivalent of $14,000 a year in Saudi buys.... That is more important than defining a wage by low or high. If $14k equivalent affords a family a home in Arabia - they are doing better than we are here on an ave of $45k. (Ave cost of home here $240? that means minimum ave salary of $90K or twice the ave.) |
| chucho | Posted – 7/16/2007 11:42:28 AM | show profile You make a very good point. I wasn't saying Saudi are poor (there are a lot of poor Saudis, though -- if $14,000 is the average per-capita GDP, that means there are a lot of people subsidizing on far less to compensate for the Bin Waleeds and Binladens (they changed the spelling of their name a few years prior to 9/11). I've actually been to Saudi Arabia and seem a lot of poverty, even among the Saudis. I recall one village north of Jeddah where everyone drank out of a dirty cistern because there was no piped water within 10 kms. Ignorance and poverty are a highly caustic mix, especially in the Middle East. But, you are absolutely right: universal health coverage medicine and no taxes makes for a lower cost of living. But do not confuse the Saudis with the seven million guest workers, most of whom would be considered dirt poor by any standard. And I'm not sure anyone knows how many undocumented migrants live there. One other thing: the country was essentially created by British mandate, squishing together two Kingdoms (Hejaz and Nadj) and giving the Najis control (Lawrence of Arabia is a good primer on British favoritism toward the Abdul Aziz clan against the Rasheeds). This country is very young and it's culture is very old. Then it went through a major series of crises in the 70's and is essentially fighting a significant battle within between liberals and conservatives. I feel weird calling my "Saudi" friends "Saudi", to be frank, and many of them balk at the term, preferring to be called by their traditional ethnic nomenclatures. I don't think many Americans appreciate what's going on in the Khaleej (the term for the Arabian Peninsula, comprising Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Yemen and KSA), nor does it seem they understand the regional conflicts. It's a very complicated and difficult situation. (One example of not completely understadning what's going on: American's obsession with the wwomen driving issue but complete ignorance about the so-called "Right to Citizenship" which is far more damaging to women's rights (children of women married to foreigners aren't citizens of the country their mothers are from) and is apparent in other Arab countries. My point is American should just stop trying to engineer a Middle East it would like to see until it has more than a "few dozen" Arab speakers in the entire State Department (not to mention an inability to accurately describe the sectarian differences). |
| keltoi2 | Posted – 7/16/2007 12:31:28 PM | show profile What's interesting is that BushCo's enemy du jour, Iran, doesn't seem to be a big contributor to the suicide squads in Iraq, yet Bush's pal, Saudi Arabia, is. Yet every other briefing out of Iraq and the White House this year has talked darkly about Iranian involvement in attacks, and the lapdog media has dutifully parroted the claims, however bogus, doing Dick's work for Operation Bomb bomb bomb Iran. But where is all the BushCo discussion of who is and has been arming and financing the Sunni insurgents in Iraq since 2003? They and Al Qaeda Mesopotamia elements are responsible for the vast bulk of the car, truck, and walking suicide bombings as well as most of the roadside bombs since the US invaded, killing the vast majority of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians. It's surely not Shi'ite Iran. Yet BushCo and the US nooz media have a stunning lack of interest in getting to the sources of their finances and explosives. Why is that? |
| chucho | Posted – 7/16/2007 1:29:26 PM | show profile That's a very good question. I think, though am not sure, it has something to do with this fundamentalist Salafists (aka Wahabbist, aka extremely fundamentalist Sunni) being more prone to the 72 virgins, dying-for-jihad-is-good horse shit. You might have noticed that Hezbollah fighters (Shiite, aligned with Iran and Syria) aren't really keen on blowing themselves up, either. They're much more into IEDs and rockets and kidnapping Israeli soldiers, stuff like that. The Shiite insurgents tend to be more "progressive", if you will, more into social winning the hearts & minds Hugo Chavez kind of thing, whereas the radical Sunnis (the Arabs, not so much the Afghans) are more into loner, "Army of One" personal quest to divinity thing, which is more likely to be a matter of taking yourself out along with as many of your enemy as possible. The Afghan Taliban, which are Sunni? I don't know. Those guys are just very war-hardened and bat-shit loco. They seem to embrace both, but it does seem that they're less likely to perfrm suicide attacks. And, except for Israel, none of these guys are blowing up trains in London. These Brit-born locos are, to me, the most uterly annoying of the bunch. How dare they benefit from living in a liberal Western democracy and then plot acts of murder. Fuckers. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/16/2007 1:36:43 PM | show profile Er, I mean except for a few cases (anything to do with Israel, 9/11) the attacks in places like London, Madrid, Bali, seem to be perpetuated by persons that "drank he Kool Aide" at some point in their lives, but grew up in places outside of the Middle east. And that indeed has a lot to do with Saudi-funded Dawa (Islamic propagation). I do not think Dawa is bad (well, I think all religion is bad, but Dawa in general isn't any worse that Christian evangelizing -- one thing Muslims and Christians share apart from all other faiths, including Judaism, is this desire to evangelize and convert the world as a matter of righteousness), but the same sorry system that ruined Saudi education is being exported, mainly to poor, uneducated regions in Asia. It's kind of ironic that Sauid-funded Dawa is essentially being paid for by oil consumption from industrialized nations. (Europe, Japan, China, only 7% of US oil comes from the KSA). |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/16/2007 1:58:47 PM | show profile Chucho to say that only 7% of US oil consumption comes from SA is totally irrelevant. Oil is traded on the world market. If our consumption of oil halved, the price of oil, globally, would come down dramatically. That, however, won't happen. As a country we are by far the largest consumers of oil, and bear much responsibility for keeping the price of oil high. People complain about Exxon, etc. (I know I do too) but the money they make is a fraction of what SA, Russia, etc. are making. Think about how much more money will be going to all our friends (SA, Russia, Iran, etc.) when the coming oil shortage results in a bidding war by the richer countries of the world? So far, global oil production reached a peak in 2005. Is that the final peak? Right now poorer countries are simply being priced out... once oil production further declines the real oil bidding war will begin... then we'll really see the geopolitical changes as Russia and the middle east continue their rise. |
| foto | Posted – 7/16/2007 10:50:01 PM | show profile Get the Saudis to shut down all those sleazy madrasses and tell those dirtbag wahabi mullahs to wake up, we're in the twenty first century, not the twelfth. Tell 'em martyrdom doesn't pay well and careers tend to be short. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/17/2007 5:14:30 AM | show profile Ugo: you're right, mostly, but the 7% thing is relevant insofar as there is a popular misconception that the US depends heavily on Saudi oil. I was just making a point that Saudi Dawa is funded by oil revenue, but that the US doesn't contribute a huge chunk of Saudi oil revenue. (On the other hand, the oil companies engage in a lot of JVs with Aramco, and the US is essentially the wizard behind the curtain of internal Saudi security operations, though nobody will openly say that. (The 15,000 soldiers they just deployed specifically to guard oil infrastructure in the KSA were US trained.) Foto: Amen. And I don't think it's "Islamophobic" to oppsed radical recruitment for jiihad through the Dawa system -- which, to be fair, is not the status quo of Dawa -- remember that Islam is a self-righteous evangelical religion just like the ones followed by Jesus-freaks -- that places a high emphasis on charity to the poor, it just so happens that the ponds that "the poor" swim in in the Third World also happens to be a breeding ground for jihad and radical militancy (just like militant Marxism emerged in poor regions in Latin America). Here are two thing I do not consider "Islamophobic": 1.) Opposing the niqab (the Islamic ninja mask) in most work places (bank guards, public school teachers, airline pilots, in banks, in malls, in movie theaters, or anywhere nobody else would be allowed to wear masks). The niqab is NOT mentioned in the Quran but is derived from the Hadiths (those correlating second- and third-person accounts of day-to-day life during the time of the prophet Muhammad, written down and over 100 years after the fact, just like the Bible: "My cousin's neighbor saw Muhammad performing ablutions after eating lamb!") To hell with that, man. Why should society give special clearance to Muslim women that choose the most extreme and NON-COMPULSORY mode of expression. If the point is to be shadows, stay the fuck in the shadows then and stop demanding that you teach school kids in a mask! (Hijab? Different thing altogether. If I, Mennonites, Orthodox Jewish women, and little old Italian ladies are allowed to wear head scarves, so are Muslim women. (And, thank the gods, America has not been extremely anti-Hijab, unlike Europe, which is something we should be proud of.) #2.) Recruitment of radical Islamic militants through the Dawa system. This is not a big problem in the West. (Look at the assholes that have been caught or are still out there: white kids playing "jihadi" just like white kids in the 80s ran off to South America to play "che" (like Lori Berentson, who I beleive is still in a prison in Peru). For example, one of the largest mosques in Spain was Saudi-funded but is, like the mosque in Paris, a peaceful place with a cafe and Friday sermons in a lively area. On the other hand, the Dawa program in the Third world are in some cases just tools for recruitment, particularly to Salafist Sunni ideology (what many call "Whabbism"). It is not "Islamophobic" to oppose these things. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/17/2007 5:21:14 AM | show profile >> Look at the assholes that have been caught or are still out there: white kids playing << Uh, let me clarify: I mean the radicals that emerged inside the US, like John Walkker Lindh and the former surfer dude who produces video for Al-Qaeda, probably in Pakistan. And I guess I shouldn't say "white kids" 'cause some of these idiots are also black and Hispanic, but my point is that they're not the real deal, but rather posers and loners who embraced Islamic militant dealing with personal issues, and not necessarily products of a systematic radical Dawa recruitment system in the US (which I'm fairly certain doesn't exist in the US). |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/17/2007 9:07:54 AM | show profile OK, here's another misconception on oil, Russia is actually the number one oil producer right now. And in the past few years there's been a huge change in relations with Russia... and oil (and natural gas) has a lot to do with it. |
