"Saudi Support For Wahhabi Radicalism Is The Taproot Of Islamic Terror"
"Saudi Support For Wahhabi Radicalism Is The Taproot Of Islamic Terror"
Saudi Arabia Forms Muslim Antiterror Coalition
The 34-member bloc will fight terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan, deputy crown prince says, but sectarian tensions raise questions
Saudi Arabia’s plan to form a Muslim antiterrorism coalition has underlined a new muscular foreign policy aimed at confronting the extremist group Islamic State, even at the risk of wading deeper into the Middle East’s messiest conflicts and fanning its sectarian hostilities.
Calling terrorism a “disease which affected the Islamic world first before the international community as a whole,” Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday said the coalition of 34 Muslim states would fight the scourge in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.
In this Sept. 17 file photo, Saudi security forces take part in a military parade in preparation for the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Besides the 34 Muslim nations, Riyadh said more than 10 other countries expressed their support for the new bloc. Absent from the list was predominantly Shiite Iran—the kingdom’s main rival for leadership in the Muslim world—as well as Israel and Shiite-led Iraq.
Still, it remains unclear what the Sunni kingdom is asking the other countries to do—whether it is a loose grouping to talk strategy and share intelligence or the first step to establishing a fighting force against the Sunni militant group.
The formation of the coalition followed criticism from U.S. and European politicians that Saudi Arabia hasn’t done enough to fight Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Islamic State militants took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria last year and are the focus of the U.S.-led air campaign in which Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are participating.
German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said last week that Saudi Arabia should stop supporting extremist groups and urged the kingdom to play a bigger role in the region. “We need Saudi Arabia to solve the regional conflicts,” he said.
On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the Saudi-led coalition against Islamic State appeared “aligned with something that we’ve been urging for quite some time, which is greater involvement in the campaign to combat ISIL by Sunni Arab countries,” using an acronym for Islamic State. “Obviously they have…a better ability than we will have to promote what we know is necessary in the long run for the defeat of ISIL in Iraq and Syria.”
The Saudi decision to form the alliance is a signal the kingdom sees a need to take matters of regional security into its own hands after being frustrated with how the Obama administration handled the crises in Syria and Iraq, as well as a sign of its concern over the increasing threat posed by militant groups in the region.
Christopher Davidson, a professor at Durham University in the U.K. who specializes in Gulf affairs, said the new bloc was primarily a way for Saudi Arabia to generate positive news about its role in international affairs following recent terror attacks in Paris and California. Both of the assailants in this month’s San Bernardino attack had spent time in the kingdom.
Yet divisions among the participating countries of the Islamic coalition don’t bode well for its effectiveness, he said. “The constituent members of the new coalition mostly fall on the Sunni side of the sectarian fault line and are themselves deeply divided on a number of key policy areas,” Mr. Davidson said. “The probability that it can become an effective international security alliance is therefore almost zero.”
Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, views itself as a main target for Islamic State, whose leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called the kingdom “head of the snake” in an audio recording released last year.
Since late last year, when militants opened fire outside a community hall for the Muslim Shiite minority in the eastern village of Dalwa, Saudi Arabia has been targeted in shooting and suicide attacks that have marked a sharp escalation in extremist violence. In July, the Saudi government said it had arrested 431 suspects connected to Islamic State and foiled several plots targeting mosques, a foreign diplomatic mission and homes of security officials.
Some Saudis believe the time has come to show the government is serious about fighting Islamic State, which has roots in Saudi Arabia’s own region and religion.
Islamic State “is the seed of evil that we have let out of the can in the Middle East,” PrinceTurki Al Faisal, chairman of King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, told the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai. “It’s our responsibility to vanquish it.”
Yet not only was Iran excluded from the coalition but also Iraq, which is facing its own formidable struggle against Islamic State.
Iraqi officials warn that the Saudi coalition threatens to distract from efforts to coordinate the anti-Islamic State campaign.
“This makes it very confusing for us. Who will be the one leading the fight against terrorism in the region?” asked Nasser Nouri, spokesman for Iraq’s defense ministry. “Will it be the larger international coalition, and if so, what will be the point of having this new alliance.”
Iraq, a majority Shiite country, has long had a strained relationship with the Sunni kingdom to its south. There has been no Saudi embassy in Iraq since it was withdrawn when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, but Saudi officials have said they plan to reopen the embassy this week.
Many officials in Iran and their allies in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Syria have repeatedly accused Saudi Arabia of being responsible for the creation of Islamic State to weaken the Tehran-led axis in the region. These people often point to what they say are similarities between the ultraconservative brand of Sunni Islam embraced by the Saudi kingdom and Islamic State’s ideology.
“We do not think Saudi Arabia is serious in combating terrorism when it is the one exporting suicide bombers,” Iraqi Shiite lawmaker Hakem al-Zameli told Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV on Tuesday in reaction to Riyadh’s announcement.
The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, was quoted by Iran’s state media on Tuesday as saying Israel, Islamic State, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. were colluding to fight Shiites the same way they were fought more than 1,300 years ago by Sunni caliphs.
“The goal is to corrupt the true Islam preached by Prophet Muhammad and spread satanic ideas in Muslim states,” said Gen. Jafari in what Iranian state media reported was a letter he wrote to the family of one of his soldiers killed in Syria recently fighting on the side of the regime.
The new Saudi-led coalition will have a joint command center in Riyadh to coordinate and develop means to fight terrorism militarily and ideologically, Prince Mohammed told a news conference at a Riyadh air base early Tuesday.
Some countries that were listed as members expressed willingness to review such a proposal but didn’t appear to make any formal commitment to a military coalition.
Turkey, the only country in the alliance that is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, welcomed the new coalition. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday that “the best response to those striving to associate terrorism and Islam is for nations of Islam to present a unified voice against terrorism.”
Meanwhile, Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad Momani said the war against terrorism was “our war and the Muslims’ war,” the official Petra news agency reported.
William Hague, a former U.K. foreign secretary, told the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai on Tuesday that more Arab involvement was needed to combat Islamic State and counter the extremist narrative that it was at war with the West. Making it effective required coordination, however, he said.
“To make something like NATO, you really have to decide to act together…to send people to fight and die in another country,” Mr. Hague said.
For Riyadh, the risks of such aggressive military action on a broad scale have become apparent in Yemen.
The Yemen coalition, composed of mostly Sunni Muslim Arab allies, began bombing the Houthis from the air on March 26. It deployed a ground force in July, soon recapturing the southern city of Aden and pushing toward the capital, San’a.
The campaign, however, has been costly for the Saudi government, both in financial and human terms. Human-rights groups have also criticized the coalition for the large number of civilian casualties caused by airstrikes and fighting on the ground. The United Nations estimates the death toll of the war at more than 5,800 people.
Many observers see the war in Yemen as the outgrowth of a regional confrontation between Sunni Muslim states and mainly Shiite Iran. Saudi Arabia and its allies support Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi while Iran gives political backing—some say military support—to the Houthis, a group whose members adhere to the Zaidi offshoot of Shiite Islam.
On Monday, Col. Abdullah al-Sahyan, head of Saudi special forces in Aden, was killed during fighting near Taiz, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
A seven-day cease-fire started in Yemen on Tuesday as United Nations-mediated peace talks began in Geneva. Fighting was still taking place in the country’s oil-rich Marib province and parts of the south in the hours leading up to the pause, local security officials said.
—Ben Kesling in Baghdad, Sam Dagher in Beirut, Gordon Lubold
at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, Emre Peker in Istanbul
and Peter Wonacott in Dubai
contributed to this article.
at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, Emre Peker in Istanbul
and Peter Wonacott in Dubai
contributed to this article.
