Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-46-1

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-46-1

“The war is not over yet,”

It might be assumed that governments are terrorists’ main enemies. In a sense, this is correct, but often terrorists act on behalf of other governments; or they are protected, supported, even created by governments. They can act as "fifth columns" or "proxies"; or they can be used as scapegoats, in sometimes complex political games. At other times governments simply close their eyes. Hillary Clinton (not an outspoken critic of the Gulf monarchies) once said: "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." She continued: "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar e Taiba] and other terrorist groups." It is now widely acknowledged that in the 1980s - the height of the "second cold war" - Saudi Arabia, with the support of Pakistani intelligence, helped the rise of fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

International terrorism remains a serious and ongoing threat. According to the UK Security Service (MI5), Islamist extremists continue to pose a significant terrorist threat to the UK, and to UK interests and nationals abroad. Al Qaida in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, provides the ideological lead for the global Islamist extremist movement. A number of significant terrorist attack plots against the UK originated from Al Qaida in the FATA and they continue to provide training and motivation for extremists -i-.

Dec 8 When President Barack Obama told the people of America on Monday that “it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization,” he was stating what should have been obvious: Americans and Europeans cannot purge Islam of the poisonous ideology that has taken root within the faith.

The United States, France and Russia can drop all the bombs they want on Iraq and Syria, but they cannot defeat the Islamic State by destroying buildings and trucks.

If they wished, they have the power to send thousands of ground troops, armed with heavy weapons, to occupy both countries, wipe out ISIS forces, and then stay there to keep order. That still would not result in the elimination of ISIS. Its followers would simply go underground and bide their time.

We should have learned that Western powers cannot permanently impose their will by force on insurgent movements whose adherents have long-term ideological commitments. If ISIS is to be extirpated from the Muslim world, it will have to be done by Sunni Muslims, not by outsiders. Their mentors and sympathizers, primarily in the Gulf, will have to undertake a serious effort to uproot the ideas and beliefs that are the foundation of the Islamic State. Doing that will be especially difficult for Saudi Arabia, which spent two

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.–Winston Churchill

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decades and billions of dollars to spread worldwide a version of Islam that is uncomfortably similar to that of the Islamic State.It’s hard to argue with Richard Bulliett of Columbia University, who wrote: “King Salman faces a difficult choice. Does he do what President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many Republican presidential hopefuls want him to do, namely, lead a Sunni alliance against the Islamic State? Or does he continue to ignore Syria, attack Shi‘ites in Yemen, and allow his subjects to volunteer money and lives to the ISIS caliph’s war against Shi‘ism?” He predicted that “In five years time, Saudi Arabia will either help defeat the Islamic State, or become it.”

Dec 15, WASHINGTON - A Saudi-led 34-state Islamic military coalition against militants such as Islamic State is in line with what the United States has been saying its allies in the region should do, State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday. He told reporters the United States needed to "learn a little bit more" about the coalition announced by Saudi Arabia, but added it welcomed any intensification of the effort against Islamic State.

Dec 12, US Secretary of State John Kerry will hold meetings with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his visit to Moscow next week, State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner announced in a release on Friday. The proposals on offer range from a measure that would give the president pretty much unfettered, open-ended authority to fight the Islamic State, to a measure that would end all existing authorizations the administration has been using to justify current operations against the Islamic State, and replace them with one, three-year authorization to fight al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Taliban.Dec 14, MOSCOW - Russia stepped up its criticism of US policy on Syria on the eve of a visit to Moscow by US Secretary of State John Kerry, saying the United States had not shown it was ready to cooperate fully in the struggle against Islamic State militants. Russia would continue to urge Washington to rethink its policy of "dividing terrorists into good and bad ones," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday, ahead of Kerry's visit to Moscow, which is scheduled for Dec. 15

As part of its global war against terrorism, the US has deployed combat forces in over a dozen countries to enhance counter-terrorism capabilities and support the operations. America has deployed combat-equipped forces in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Yemen, Dijibouti, Libya, Niger, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Jordan and Kosovo, according to a report submitted to the Congress yesterday by President Barack Obama. The combat-equipped forces have been deployed to enhance counter-terrorism capabilities and support the operations.

Via The Intercept comes this immensely clarifying and depressing breakdown of just how many people are in the government's "Terrorist Screening Database," the master list of "known or suspected terrorists" that's shared with state and local law enforcement, government contractors, and foreign states. It also presumably supplies at least the first cut of the 47,000 people unluckly enough to be on the country's "no-fly list" (more on that in a moment). Stunningly, 40 percent of the people in database—280,000—have "no recognized terrorist group affiliation." And dig this: Although the Obama administration has repeatedly asserted that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses the most significant external terrorist threat to the United States, the 8,211 people identified as being tied to the





group actually represent the smallest category on the list of the top ten recognized terrorist organizations. AQAP is outnumbered by people suspected of ties to the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network (12,491), the Colombia-based FARC (11,275,) and the Somalia-based al-Shabab (11,547).

Tashfeen Malik: From Madrassa to Jihad Dec 08 For years Islamists have argued that there is no evidence private Islamic schools – madrassas – are churning out radical jihadis willing to lay down their lives for Islam, fighting the supposed "kaafirs" (Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists). Despite the fact that most of the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Shabab and al-Qaida jihadis came from such institutions, Canadian Islamists and most of the media have dismissed my warnings and those of others on this issue as "fear mongering" and "Islamophobia."

But now, Pakistani jihadi Tashfeen Malik, a student of a madrassa, has helped to carry out the San Bernardino massacre. For two years, Malik attended the world's leading female Muslim madrassa, the Al-Huda Institute In Multan, Pakistan, which has a Canadian branch in Mississauga. The founder of this international network of Islamist schools is Dr. Farhat Hashmi.Who is she? I've only met her once. But I have childhood friends who say they have lost their wives and, at times, daughters and sisters to what they describe as a form of brainwashing that turns Muslim women from educated, working, liberal mothers into stay-at-home moms, who celebrate misogyny as Islamic women's lib. One friend, a wealthy businessman, ended up losing a considerable part of his family's wealth after his wife donated millions to the school's worldwide network. Dr. Hashmi has said Malik did not understand the peaceful message of Islam, that her school abhors violence, and that it cannot be held responsible for the personal acts of one student. But she has been a controversial figure in Canada as well as around the world.In July, 2006 writing in Maclean's magazine, Nicholas Kohler citing federal court





documents, reported Hashmi was still in Canada despite demands from immigration officials that she leave the country after her application seeking permission to teach her conservative interpretation of Islam in Canada, was denied. Nevertheless, Maclean's noted, "she established a school where she started lecturing to mostly young, middle-class Muslim" women. (Dr. Hashmi no longer lives in Canada, according to a spokesperson for the Mississauga school.)Dr. Hashmi preaches a conservative version of Islam as it applies to women, including how to segregate themselves from infidels by wearing burkas, not working outside their homes, and being subservient to their husbands. She has also been accused of supporting polygamy, which she denies. Most of her students do not exhibit Islamic militancy and the school has never been connected to any known terrorist group. But even those who turn to Islamic orthodoxy, rather than militancy, can be a cause for concern.In October, 2005, the academy-award winning Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was able to spend a day inside her Islamic school. Writing for the Globe and Mail, she recorded the words of one Muslim teen who defended polygamy, arguing that Western society accords less respect to women, allowing men to have affairs without taking any responsibility. "There are more women than men in this world", the student noted. "Who will take care of these women? It is better for a man to do things legally by taking a second wife, rather than having an affair." Small wonder Republican presidential contender Donald Trump keeps getting more popular as he denigrates Muslims and calls for them to be banned from the United States, even while his political opponents hurl epithets at him.Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

To be a terrorist nowERNESTO GALLO and GIOVANNI BIAVA 16 December 2015 When writing about terrorism it is difficult to avoid biases, cliches, or moral judgments. Among the traps is to blame religions (Islam in particular) and to fantasise about a "conflict of civilisations" without realising that, for example, so-called "radical Islamists" kill more Muslims than Christians. If anything, terrorism in the 21st century seems to be void of any ideas, be they political, religious, or other; in the late 20th century, by contrast, ideas played a role, if often questionable (in Europe, examples include the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and pro-independence movements). Today's highly materialist world is challenged by a highly materialist form of terrorism – brutal, mercenary, and not by chance, nihilistic and suicidal. Much talk about "terrorism" is unavoidably generic. Clarity may be gained by identifying three levels of involvement in it: governments, leaders, and fighters.

The key agents It might be assumed that governments are terrorists’ main enemies. In a sense, this

is correct, but often terrorists act on behalf of other governments; or they are protected, supported, even created by governments. They can act as "fifth columns" or "proxies"; or they can be used as scapegoats, in sometimes complex political games. At other times governments simply close their eyes. Russia (and Iran) claim to have exposed the links of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's family with the oil trade involving ISIS, something Turkey contests; but it would be naïve to assume that cooperation with ISIS on oil does not involve regional governments.

After all, who bought that oil: western companies, by any chance? Even without moving far from Syria and Iraq, other donors "beyond suspicion" might be found. The Wikileaks





files found that Hillary Clinton (not an outspoken critic of the Gulf monarchies) once said: "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." She continued: "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar e Taiba] and other terrorist groups." It is now widely acknowledged that in the 1980s - the height of the "second cold war" - Saudi Arabia, with the support of Pakistani intelligence, helped the rise of fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But what kind of war is now unfolding? Is it a Saudi-Iranian contest for supremacy in the Middle East, in which ISIS would be a Sunni proxy against Iran, Iraq, and Syria’s Assad? What role is played by the other Gulf monarchies - such as Qatar, the Emirates, and Kuwait - which have massive investments in western capitals and thus enjoy high power of blackmail?

Patrick Cockburn, in his book The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution, goes much further: "The 9/11 Commission report identified Saudi Arabia as the main source of al-Qaida financing but no action was taken on the basis of it". In military terms, ISIS grew out of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI). But whoever helped its rise and for whatever reasons, it is now time to cut the movement's financing as well to understand who its leaders are.

Terrorist leaders are usually political entrepreneurs. In many ways they resemble businessmen, intelligence chiefs or the heads of organised crime - in, for example, their use of the media, ability to shape opinions and provide rewards to followers, and facility in switching from one allegiance to another. Terrorist "warlords" such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (a Sunni Iraqi) or Doka Umarov (a Chechen) had a criminal past. Afghan mujahideen leaders included warlords, mercenary fighters, and smugglers.

Overall, it is striking that the "lords of terror" are rational and pragmatic, far from the previlaing caricature of dogmatism and fundamentalist "irrationality". ISIS’s magazine, Dabiq, is designed as an elegant, full-colour, modern, and functional instrument - a clever piece of propaganda whose primary aim is to entice young followers to join the fight in Iraq and Syria.

Who then are the followers, the "rank-and-file" of terrorist organisations? Very often they have little to do with a religious or any other big "cause". Sometimes they are petty criminals, sometimes unemployed (the Provisional IRA recruited in Belfast’s deprived districts); they might come from the ranks of football hooliganism (as happened in Serbia and Ukraine) as well as from among the angry and disaffected. Detecting a common pattern is difficult. Alan B Krueger, among other authors, has shown that "terrorists" are usually better educated than is often assumed. The point also fits the Red Brigades and many of al-Qaida’s recruits.About Islamic State’s cadres and fighters, less is known. The majority may come from the Middle East or other Muslim-majority countries; but thousands (perhaps, 25,000, according to a United Nations report of a May 2015) have travelled from western Europe, and even as far as Chile. There might be myriad reasons why people from all over the world have chosen to join ISIS. It might be the resentment of Muslims in France's banlieues, the anger of those in the region against corrupt rulers (who maintain friendly relations with western leaders), or simply the opportunity for a better or more exciting life.

Time to changeA successful response to terrorism has to address all three levels. Cutting ties with





governments that finance terrorism, and enforcing law against leaders, are a part of the solution. Western capitals, which have contributed to the growth of terrorism, seem now unable to agree on a strategy against it. Russia has taken the lead against ISIS in Syria and unveiled the Turkish leadership’s double-dealing. Perhaps the real winner will be China, which is silently opening a naval base in Djibouti, very close to crucial areas (for terror as well as for oil) such as Saudi Arabia and SudanThe west, however, has also to change at a "micro" level. Unemployment and disaffection with politics are at a high pitch in Europe and America, where younger generations lack either inspiring political values or (in many cases) reasonably paid jobs. It is perhaps no wonder that some flee to a horrific adventure of destruction and self-destruction. Western governments should reflect and ultimately act on this.

The Smile on the Face of the Tigerby James Spencer Dec 11, It seems that there has been a rapidly building expression of international disquiet about the relationship between the ideology of Salafi Jihadism and Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia (and—less well-known—of Qatar.) As Gideon Rachman recently put it in an archetypal Financial Times op-ed “The sudden increase in concern about Saudi Arabia is driven, in large part, by the rise of Isis.”In fact, the concern over the apparent linkage began shortly after the shocking expansion of the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) in western Iraq and eastern Syria. Alastair Crooke—a former MI-6 officer—wrote “You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia” in August 2014, and in the same month Patrick Cockburn revealed “Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country.” Possibly as a result of this negative publicity, “Saudi Arabia Continues Hiring Spree of American Lobbyists, Public Relations Experts” to paper over the cracks.There was also much concern expressed at the time over the nationalities of 15 of 19 hijackers in the eastern US on September 11, 2001, and over the nationality and ideology of the architect of the attacks on the US embassies in East Africa. Yet, “the Saudis have paid about $100 million to lobbyists, consultants and public relations specialists over the past ten years” since 2001, papering over the cracks, again.

It’s not as if various national intelligence agencies haven’t become aware of the capability of Salafi jihadism only in the last year or so: in its current version, it’s been around for the last 30 years and more. Indeed, the West rode the Salafi jihadi tiger to defeat the Soviet drive to seize Afghanistan.

Once oil brought enormous revenues, Saudi Arabia exported Wahhabism through formal and informal means, spreading first across the Middle East, the subcontinent, and into Central Asia, at the same time, pushing across the Maghreb, the Sahel, and into West Africa; and from Somalia down the Swahili coast of East Africa toward South Africa. This intolerant Salafi Jihadism is steadily extending into Europe and the US. Al-Qaeda has attacked all the P5 (except China) in the past 15 years. IS has attacked US, France, and Russia in the last six weeks, has the UK firmly in its sights, and has just issued its first propaganda piece in Mandarin.

In the face of such a violent puritanical ideology, one might have hoped that politicians would do something. Thus far, the main thing that they have done is to continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the UK is alleged to have targeted Saudi Arabia specifically for an export drive. Bizarrely, the UK also withdrew from bidding on a small contract to provide training for prison guards in Saudi Arabia on human rights grounds—yet the training would have improved professionalisation and human rights compliance. Politicians at home and abroad have talked a lot, rather than doing anything. Their





explanations, excuses, and hand wringing are amplified by sympathetic journalists. The line generally follows two strands: fear of worse to come and non-interference in internal affairs.

Gideon Rachman illustrates the former: “The past five years have demonstrated that when bad governments fall in the Middle East, they are often replaced by something far worse.” Yet in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood showed themselves to be just another bunch of power-hungry politicians who broke their promises and showed themselves to be administratively incompetent. (If the counter-revolution hadn’t occurred, the Muslim Brotherhood would probably have discredited themselves in the eyes of the Egyptians forever.) The military junta that seized power is backed by the Sunni Arab monarchies and can hardly be called a beacon of democracy, nor has it brought peace and security to the land. In Yemen, the GCC Initiative/counter-revolution tried to perpetuate the cronyism that the “Arab Street” had demonstrated against. The Sunni Arab monarchies had to intervene physically to prop up their client. In Syria, the alternative to the Ba’ath seems to be IS: secular violence or sectarian violence.

Then there is the “we’re-all-in-it-together” excuse: “But it is also true that the Saudi royal family itself has been targeted by both Isis and al-Qaeda.” IS and al-Qaeda reject the Al Sa’ud dominion in the symbiotic founding pact between the Al Sa’ud and the Al al-Shaykh (that Al Sa’ud will support Al al-Shaykh temporally, so Al al-Shaykh will legitimate Al Sa’ud religiously.) Otherwise, IS and al-Qaeda are Wahhabis (albeit at the extreme, violent end of the movement.)

Nor is this the first time an IS schism has occurred among Wahhabis: in 1928, Ibn Sa’ud had to destroy the Ikhwan at the Battle of Sabilla to stop the Islamists from extending the state into…Iraq and al-Sham (literally, the “north”).Yet “the most powerful internal critics of the Saudi monarchy are not liberals but hardline Islamists,” Rachman continues. “The fear that Saudi Arabia could become yet another failed state haunts the west.” Thus there seems to be an impasse, with suggestions limited and cosmetic:The Europeans and Americans have accepted a blatant double standard, in which the Saudis are allowed to fund their own brand of religious intolerance while banning the organised practice of other religions inside Saudi Arabia. Perhaps it is time to give the Saudis a choice: agree to allow churches, Hindu temples and synagogues to open in Saudi Arabia, or face the end of Saudi funding for mosques in the west.

Were such an agreement to occur, the Saudis would merely be allowing soft targets for terrorists to open in Saudi Arabia, while the Saudis will continue to be “allowed to fund their own brand of religious intolerance”!There is a way out of this seeming impasse, rather than papering over the cracks yet again. As part of the current reform programme, the Al Sa’ud could establish a constitutional monarchy, which could thus be divorced from the need for religious affirmation. The excesses of modern Saudi Wahhabism could then be curbed; such an arrangement would need a version of Queen Anne’s Bounty to provide for the Al al-Shaykh in Saudi Arabia. (Interestingly, Qatar has not tended to export the same puritanical violence, possibly because it’s always been a more cosmopolitan environment, or because it came into its money later, or because of the descent from Al al-Shaykh obviates the need for the pact.) The Economist ran a recent article “In Shia Muslims’ holiest site, a new openness to other faiths,” which seemed to describe a similar transformation, from a starting point when “a century ago, the country’s Shia clergy considered it sacrilege to shake hands or sit at table with non-Muslims, on grounds that the presence of non-believers would render their food impure” (behaviour remarkably reminiscent of Acts 10: 28!)





Neither evolution is revolutionary, even within the region: Qatar and Jordan are already each working on the religious issue from their different starting points. There is also some evidence that modern Saudi Wahhabism is—ironically—more intolerant than that advocated by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Politically, Qatar is formally already a constitutional monarchy, as is the Kingdom of Morocco (ruled by a descendant of the Prophet), while the King of Jordan (descendant of the Sharifs of Hijaz) has expressed his openness to consideration.

To some extent, this form of Salafism now has a life of its own and has survived formal crackdowns, but official sponsorship of a more tolerant, worldly form of Wahhabism would in time replace the current insular version. Such a process would be accelerated if those who were found to be propagating terrorist ideology were dealt with severely—something easier to do once the constitutional position of the monarchy is established.Riding the tiger is exciting; it’s when you can see the tiger smile that life usually becomes bloody. It’s past time to draw in the tiger’s fangs before anyone else gets hurt. James Spencer is a retired British infantry commander who specialized in low-intensity conflict. He is an independent strategic analyst on political, security and trade issues of the Middle East and North Africa and a specialist on Yemen.

ISIS, al Qaeda are ‘winning’: Study ii Dec 07 The U.S. should engage in a dramatic revamping of the post-9/11 global war on terror, according to a new study published Monday in Washington that says major gains during recent years by both al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and South Asia indicate the “extremists are no longer on the run and arguably are winning.”“Al Qaeda, in particular, has expanded its control and influence in the past few years, with affiliates and linked groups present in more than 20 countries,” states the study, authored by a team of nine high-level national security and counterterrorism analysts through the politically center-right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.





Regards Cees*** No Comments.

Saudi Arabia was founded in 1744 by an oath between Saud and Wahhab to exterminate Shiites and then take over the world. The Saudi royal family were the main funders of Al Qaeda: that group’s bookkeeper and bagman who personally collected in cash each one of the many million-dollar-plus donations to Al Qaeda, said that, “Without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.”

by Eric Zuesse ( December 16, 2015, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) An official announcement from the world’s leading, and most fundamentalistic, Sunni Islamic nation, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday December 15th, has introduced a Sunni-Islamic counterpart to NATO, and it includes one NATO member, Turkey, which is already at war against NATO’s enemy Russia, and against Russia’s ally the non-sectarian, secular Shiite, Bashar al-Assad, who runs Syria. The Sauds’ “Joint Statement on Formation of Islamic Military Alliance” has been signed by 34 Sunni-led nations, with “more than ten other Islamic countries” that “have expressed their support for this … alliance and will take the necessary measures” to join, “including Indonesia” (the highest-population Islamic-majority nation). All of those “Islamic countries” are specifically Sunni-led, not Shiite-led.The two top importers of U.S. weapons are #1 Saudi Arabia, and #2 Turkey. Both are Sunni, and no Shiite nation is even on the list. The new, 34-nation-plus military alliance could cause U.S. military producers to soar. And the figures shown there for Saudi Arabia grossly understate the reality. For example, on 13 September 2010, Britain’s Telegraph bannered “US secures record $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia,” and other lesser arms bonanzas to the U.S. from the Sauds came in the years after, so that a figure of only “$1,199,000,000” for the year 2014 (given in the first of those two links) is no fair indication of the reality, which is that the Saud family dwarfs any other buyer of U.S. armaments. And, U.S. ‘news’ media refuse to allow their reporters to cover the ugly reality of how those weapons are being used — and they fire any who publicly object.Saudi Arabia is owned by King Salman al-Saud, the world’s wealthiest person, who might now be on his way to becoming the Sunni faith’s globe-spanning “Caliph,” or Islamic Emperor — an aspiration of his family ever since his ancestor Muhammad Ibn Saud in 1744 swore an anti-Shiite oath, along with the fundamentalistic anti-Shiite cleric Muhammad Ibn Wahhab, who agreed that his followers would endorse Saud’s descendants to rule Arabia if the Saud clan would impose Wahhab’s extremist interpretation of the Quran. In fact, an official of the U.S.-backed Syrian ‘moderates’ called recently for exterminating Shiites, and the Saud family supports those ‘moderates.’ Furthermore, a recent poll showed that 92% of the Saudi public support ISIS, which is only natural since ISIS is only enforcing the laws that the Saud family have already long been imposing upon their own public.However, ISIS claims that the Saud family are impostors, who must be replaced by the leaders of ISIS, who won’t ‘cooperate’ with ‘the infidels.’ And, so, the Sauds now are arming not only against Shiite-led nations, and against those nations’ major ally Russia, but also against groups that, even inside the Sauds’ own country, are more popular than the Sauds themselves are (which probably isn’t very popular, since the Sauds refuse to allow so important a matter to be polled — any honest poll of it would expose to Western publics the total fraudulence of the aristocracies’ rationalizations for their wars to replace the Syrian government and for the rest of the West’s geopolitics).The alleged purpose of this newly formed military alliance is “to fight terrorism”





(something that all nations claim to be doing), an ambiguous phrase (something that aristocrats specialize in). It might include even the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and the anti-Israeli attacks by the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon, but this “terrorism” might (far more feasibly) instead refer only to the “terrorism” practiced by Sunni groups, such as ISIS and Al Qaeda — the groups that, like Saudi Arabia itself, are famous specifically for beheading people they don’t approve. (Shiite nations, even the most fundamentalistic one, Iran, prefer other methods of execution, if they use any at all — typically, such as in Iran, hanging.)Saudi Arabia was founded in 1744 by an oath between Saud and Wahhab to exterminate Shiites and then take over the world. The Saudi royal family were the main funders of Al Qaeda: that group’s bookkeeper and bagman who personally collected in cash each one of the many million-dollar-plus donations to Al Qaeda, said that, “Without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.” He listed almost all of the top Sauds as people from whom he had been collecting. There also is evidence suggesting that the Saud family’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud (who was on that list), a longtime buddy of both President Bushes, might have communicated to George W. Bush in private, well prior to 11 September 2001, that Al Qaeda was planning and soon would perpetrate a massive attack in the United States, and that Bush shouldn’t let the CIA chief or his anti-terrorism specialists into his presence to provide him the details privately and, because “We don’t want the clock to start ticking.” The now-standard cover-story, that the U.S. couldn’t have been protected from that attack, was already planned, even as the attack itself was being organized. Furthermore, it’s widely suspected that the missing 28 pages from the Senate’s investigation into the pre-9/11 intelligence, addresses this “highly sensitive” (meaning: the public isn’t supposed to know it) matter. All that’s been publicly released is that, “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” The Obama Administration is hiding those 28 pages from the public.The Sauds privately agreed to an alliance in 1945 with the United States to continue sharing with U.S. oil companies, if the U.S. would protect them from the Saudi public. Thus, the Sauds receive favorable press coverage in the U.S. press, which are owned by members of the same U.S.-and-allied aristocracy that control the U.S. Government (via the press, lobbyists, etc., all of which they hire if not own). Consequently, too, the Sauds’ foreign invasions to impose Sunni rulers even in majority-Shiite lands are hidden by the U.S. press. This is a bipartisan hiding: not only mainstream ‘news’ media such as CNN and The New York Times and Salon are part of it, but the clearly partisan (i.e., Republican) conservative ’news’ media, such as those of Rupert Murdoch (Fox, WSJ, N.Y. Post, etc.) also are. (In fact, when the Saudi Prince who was the second-largest stockholder in Murdoch’s News Corp. sold most of his holding of that stock in 2014, Forbes noted that he “also has a substantial shareholding in Time Warner,” which includes CNN.)The Sauds’ imperial announcement, which provided no details on what is to be meant by the phrase “to fight terrorism,” stated:The countries participating in the alliance along with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are: Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Turkey, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Djibouti, Senegal, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Gabon, Guinea, Palestine, Comoros, Qatar, Cote d’Ivoire, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Malaysia, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, .Yemen(The dot before “Yemen” is a typographical error in the Saudi announcement, one that the Saudi Press Agency commonly makes — it means nothing at all, except that the Saud family place low priority on editing “typos” out of English translations of their official





pronouncements.)Turkey is the only NATO member in this group. Turkey (after shooting down a Russian plane over Syria) is at war against Russia, because Turkey is trying to defeat the military campaign by Russia to destroy the many fundamentalist Sunni groups, jihadist groups including Al Qaeda and ISIS, that are trying to take over Syria. Turkey’s virtual dictator, the fundamentalist Sunni Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, wants to sell Syria’s oil on global markets — he’s already doing it illegally, and wants to be doing it legally, such as by installing (with U.S. and Saudi help) a fellow-fundamentalist Sunni as Syria’s leader.Tha Saudi announcement says nothing about what relationship (other than already including one NATO member) the new, Saudi-led, military alliance will have with NATO, which is America’s alliance against Russia. (It used to be America’s anti-communist alliance; but, once communism ended, the U.S. aristocracy kept NATO going, in order to take over Russia itself, such as by surrounding it with NATO nations and ultimately forcing out and replacing the current independent Russian government.)Outside NATO, the United States has additional major military bases in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and longstanding alliances also with Pakistan and Egypt, as well as extensive military cooperation with Jordan, UAE, and Kuwait.The U.S. has been trying to conquer Russia ever since the negotiations in 1990 for the end (which occurred in 1991) of the Soviet Union and of its Warsaw Pact (the Soviets’ counterpart to NATO). And, like the Saudis, the U.S. is also hostile toward the world’s leading, and coincidentally its most fundamentalistically led, Shiite nation: Iran. Moreover, both of these military alliances are also very much against Russia. So: NATO and the newly formed, Saudi-led, Sunni military alliance might ultimately join into one.A conference had been expected to meet on December 15th in Riyadh to select which jihadist groups would receive the backing of the Sauds to take over Syria; however, that was cancelled when the Sauds announced that only a single jihadist group that’s actually fighting in Syria would be allowed to attend. Most of the jihadist groups still want to overthrow the Sauds for working with ‘infidels.’ Consequently that meeting is not being held, after all.No Shiite nation was mentioned in the Saudi announcement of the new military alliance, and the possibility therefore exists that the reason why the Saud family created this alliance was as part of that family’s intense hostility, ever since at least 1744, against Shiites.The response of the U.S. regime to the Sauds’ war against Shiia has been twofold: to condemn it verbally, while participating in (and even leading it) in the real world, the anti-Shiia operations against Syria and Iran (both of them because they’re allied with Russia).Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close:




i http://www.eurasiareview.com/15122015-the-inevitable-conflict-empowerment-of-terrorism-through-appeasement-analysis/ii http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/7/isis-al-qaeda-are-winning-study/

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 19-138-Caliphate- The State of al-Qaida-46-1