U.S. 'ALLIES' BACK TERROR
TIME FOR W TO REIN IN SAUDIS & THE REST
by Ali Al-Ahmed
New York Post
July 26, 2006

July 26, 2006 -- IRAQI Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to Washington this week could be more than symbolism, however potent. It should be a turning point against the chief source of violence and instability in Iraq - the Sunni Arab insurgency, which has not let up despite full Sunni participation in the political process.

Ending or significantly curtailing the daily carnage is vital to Iraq's stability. To achieve this, President Bush should help Maliki rein in governments that are allied with the United States but are providing the insurgency with political, financial and material support that enable it to stay vigorous three years after the invasion.

Indeed, winning the entire War on Terror requires shutting down the financial and ideological sources of terrorism - many of which are cultivated by America's Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt. All these governments have given vital direct or tacit support to the region's terror networks.

For example, sympathetic officials from these countries helped Abu Musab al-Zarqawi gain his following: thousands of terrorists and suicide bombers who enthusiastically joined his organization from the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Jordan - and from Saudi Arabia, Syria and Qatar, where the insurgency associates are openly active. The governments of these countries willfully cast a blind eye to the networks growing in their midst and making the exodus to Iraq.

Zarqawi's and other Sunni Arab insurgency groups have relied on Saudi money and manpower for the past three years. Yet not a single person has been held accountable for facilitating this river of terror. Those who aid the network in Qatar also seem immune to questioning or reprimand, let alone prosecution.

In fact, there is credible evidence that both Saudi and Qatari officials assisted Zarqawi in one way or another.

Senior Saudi officials such as Sheik Saleh al-Luhaidan, the chief of the Saudi judiciary, approved the transfer of men and money to Zarqawi from Saudi Arabia. Luhaidan's job is to prosecute terrorists - but he was caught encouraging them.

In April 2005, the Institute for Gulf Affairs (then called the Saudi Institute) gave NBC a tape of Luhaidan instructing Saudis to send money and men to Iraq in order to aid Zarqawi. NBC confirmed the authenticity of the tape by calling Luhaidan. Yet Luhaidan remains at his position to date.

Other Saudis who recruit and raise funds for al Qaeda insurgents in Iraq are rewarded generously. Consider Sheik Salman al-Odeh, a Wahhabi cleric who led the famous fatwa of 26 clerics in November 2004 encouraging Saudis and others to join the Iraqi insurgency - and then was given four weekly TV shows on four different Saudi stations by the Saudi government.

While Zarqawi was murdering women and children in Iraq, Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, a close associate of the Qatari ruler, rallied the Sunni masses through Al-Jazeera to Zarqawi's cause. He did so a stone's throw from the American airbase housing the Central Command. Neither U.S. nor Qatari officials held him accountable for his role in brainwashing new Zarqawi recruits.

U.S. officials have justifiably blasted Iran and Syria for their role in fueling the violence in Iraq, but have ignored the far more damaging Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari roles.

The leading foreign terrorists in Iraq are Saudis and Jordanians. Zarqawi was Jordanian; so too the former head of his religious committee (Omar Yousf) and the commander of his suicide brigade (Abo Dujanah).

The Jordanian government has excellent ties with the United States and the western world at large, but that did not stop it from allowing anti-American forces to flourish and operate in its territories. A stark example: Key members of the insurgency's Baathist faction reside in Amman; U.S. officials have traveled there to negotiate with them.

Jordan's government bans any public criticism of the Saudi government and leaders - but not those organizing "resistance" against U.S. troops and their "Iraqi agents."

It is time for the Bush administration to hold its allies accountable - to ensure that tacit or overt government support of terror is dealt with at the highest level.

The price of the administration's inaction has been billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. If the administration can't get its own allies to stop their support of terror against the United States, then America has already lost the War on Terror.

Ali Al-Ahmed is director of The Institute of Gulf Affairs, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to fostering freedom and democracy in the Gulf region.

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