The Saudi Origins of the Terror Attacks in Brussels

Republican demagogues and the right wing pundit class are foaming at the mouth over the ISIS terror attacks in Brussels and going to great lengths to blame the attacks and/or the rise of ISIS on Barack Obama and by extension, Hillary Clinton.  Few of their vitriolic tirades, however, focus on the true ultimate root cause of the attacks not only in Brussels and Paris - and San Bernadino: Saudi Arabia. Similarly, not a single GOP presidential candidate has spoken out about the Saudi funding of Islamic fundamentalism worldwide.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the Saudi origins of the death and terror being wrought by ISIS and its co-conspirators and murderers.  If one wants to truly strike at the heart of Islamic extremism, the first place to strike is against Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family which turns a blind eye to the funding of extremism and then issues mealy mouthed statements of sadness and/or condemnation when the seeds that they have sown result in terror attacks and death.  American needs to have a blunt conversation with the Saudi royals and make it clear that either Saudi funding of extremism ceases immediately or else Saudi Arabia will be categorized as an enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism.  Here are excerpts:

A lot of ink has already been spilled on the complexity of the jihadist networks operating in Belgium, as well as the social factors — discrimination and alienation — luring some Belgian youths toward groups such as the Islamic State. It’s also worth considering, though, an older history.

Analysts point to the inroads made in Belgium by the more conservative, orthodox brand of Islam espoused by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is the consequence of actual policy. In 1978, the Saudi-backed Great Mosque of Brussels opened its doors; the elegant building and land where it sat had been a gift by Belgium’s then-king to his Saudi counterpart a decade prior.

It became the seat of Islamic activity in Belgium. A 2007 leaked U.S. diplomatic cable, published by the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks, detailed how the Saudi Embassy in Brussels has continued to provide Korans to myriad mosques in the country and help pay for the upkeep of the structures. Saudi Arabia also invested in training the imams who would preach to a growing Muslim diaspora in European countries, including in Belgium.

Observers say the Salafist dogma of the Saudi-funded clerics active in many mosques in Belgium stood in contrast to the traditional beliefs of the mostly working-class Moroccan and Turkish immigrants who first arrived in the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The Moroccan community comes from mountainous regions and rift valleys, not the desert. They come from the Maliki school of Islam, and are a lot more tolerant and open than the Muslims from other regions like Saudi Arabia,” George Dallemagne, a Belgian politician, told the Independent last year. “However, many of them were re-Islamified by the Salafist clerics and teachers from the Great Mosque. Some Moroccans were even given scholarships to study in Medina, in Saudi Arabia.”

A separate WikiLeaks disclosure — this time of classified Saudi documents —found that in April 2012 the Belgian government quietly forced Saudi authorities to remove the main director of the Great Mosque, Khalid Alabri, a Saudi Embassy employee suspected of propagating the intolerant Sunni radicalism that is shared by the extremists of the Islamic State.

“Today, in Brussels, 95 percent of the courses offered on Islam for Muslims are operated by young preachers trained in Saudi Arabia,” Michael Privot, director of the Brussels-based European Network Against Racism, said in an interview with an Italian journalist. “There is a huge demand within Muslim communities to know about their religion, but most of the offer is filled by a very conservative Salafi type of Islam sponsored by Saudi Arabia.

[T]he wider legacy of Saudi policies has been increasingly noticed and criticized, particularly in Europe.

“Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities,” Sigmar Gabriel, a leading German politician, said in December. An unusually blunt memo, circulated around the same time, from Germany’s chief intelligence agency attacked the Saudis for the supposedly destabilizing role they play in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Doubts About Saudi Arabia’s Antiterrorism Efforts

As noted in a recent post, one of the flaws in America's Middle East policy is that it relies in part on a false ally: Saudi Arabia, the number one financier of Islamic extremism across the globe.  Until Saudi Arabia is forced to take action to stop the export of extremism and to forcefully condemn Islamic fundamentalists - including sending troops to defeat ISIS - America will have a traitor in its coalition. To date no one, Democrat or Republican - seems willing to have a very blunt conversation with the Saudi royals.  With America now largely independent form Saudi blackmail through oil dependence, this conversation needs to happen.  Europe may be still subject to Saudi blackmail, so America needs to lead the way on the effort.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at Saudi Arabia's dubious efforts to fight Islamic terrorism.  Here are excerpts:

One of the greatest weaknesses in the American-led fight against the Islamic State is the lack of competent regional forces to join in defeating the militants, especially on the ground. Saudi Arabia’s plans to organize a military coalition of 34 Islamic nations against terrorism could be a breakthrough, though there are many reasons to doubt how effective the plan will be.

As for the coalition, there is no clarity about what the group will actually do. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s inexperienced defense minister, said the coalition’s efforts would not be limited to fighting the Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group, but would include a joint operations center established in Riyadh to “coordinate and support military operations to fight terrorism” across the Muslim world. Just what that means is unclear, but it could be a license to find enemies everywhere.

[I]t is hard to see Saudi Arabia, a Sunni-led state, as a serious partner against the Islamic State unless it stops financing the Wahhabi religious schools and clerics that are spreading the kind of extremist doctrine that is at the heart of the Islamic State’s ideology. Although the Islamic State has pledged to destroy Saudi Arabia, Saudi leaders have so far been more concerned with opposing Shia-led Iran, which they consider their greatest adversary.

It’s also not clear which nations will be involved in the coalition. When the deputy crown prince announced the initiative on Tuesday, he identified some states, like Pakistan and Malaysia, as members, though they said they were unaware of the plans. Yet several key Muslim countries have been excluded, namely Iran and Iraq, another Shia-majority country, which Saudi Arabia views as an Iranian puppet. Also absent are Oman, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia that brokered the shaky cease-fire in Yemen that started this week, and Algeria, the largest Muslim country in Africa. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority nation, is not on the list. . . . . 

Saudi Arabia, with one of the most modern arsenals in the region, has not been seriously committed to fighting the Islamic State. The proposal is at least partly a response to pressure from President Obama, who has argued that it and other Sunni states have done far too little to defeat a force that threatens them more than anyone else. It shouldn’t take long to see whether the proposal has substance or is just an attempt to divert attention from Saudi Arabia’s disastrous military intervention in Yemen and defer an overdue reckoning for its own role in spawning the kinds of extremists the coalition is supposed to counter.

If Republicans are really serious about national security, expanding alternative fuel sources, solar and wind power should be a priority.  Only then will oil, the sole support for Saudi Arabia influence, lose its value and that nation can slide back into being a worthless desert.