Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.Islamists from both sides of the Sunni and Shia divide are looking to Iraq as the field of battle. Shi'ites are busy working their dark magic for Iran, while Sunni Islamists are doing the same for Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda also fits in the mix, exploiting its ties to the Saudi Islamists.
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.
Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.
He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.
The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
The problem for the US is multi-fold. The Saudis continue to supply oil to the US, but that oil money is being used by the House of Saud to buy off its own Islamists, including the Salafist/Wahabists who comprise the ideological underpinnings for al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia, besides exporting oil, is exporting its own Islamic problem children - terrorists to other parts of the world.
The US reduced its footprint in Saudi Arabia in the runup to the Iraq operation and part of it was to reduce pressure on the House of Saud because the Islamists in the country saw the US presence as nothing more than infidels running around their holy land. It was also one of the justifications used by al Qaeda in its war against the US. Never mind that the US presence was requested by the Saudis to counter Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi threat of invasion. To the Islamists, that's secondary to the presence of infidels in Saudi Arabia.
15 of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. They are part of the problem just as surely as Iran is also part of the problem. Ignoring the Saudis because the Iranian threat is present is one that does harm to US interests in the region, let alone harms the Iraqis and everyone else harmed by the Sunni Islamists, al Qaeda included.
Others debating the issues includes Professor Bainbridge.
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