Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country

[flamingdem]

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-how-saudi-arabia-helped-isis-take-over-the-north-of-the-country-9602312.html

How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: "The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally 'God help the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."

The fatal moment predicted by Prince Bandar may now have come for many Shia, with Saudi Arabia playing an important role in bringing it about by supporting the anti-Shia jihad in Iraq and Syria. Since the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) on 10 June, Shia women and children have been killed in villages south of Kirkuk, and Shia air force cadets machine-gunned and buried in mass graves near Tikrit.

In Mosul, Shia shrines and mosques have been blown up, and in the nearby Shia Turkoman city of Tal Afar 4,000 houses have been taken over by Isis fighters as "spoils of war". Simply to be identified as Shia or a related sect, such as the Alawites, in Sunni rebel-held parts of Iraq and Syria today, has become as dangerous as being a Jew was in Nazi-controlled parts of Europe in 1940.

There is no doubt about the accuracy of the quote by Prince Bandar, secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 and head of General Intelligence between 2012 and 2014, the crucial two years when al-Qa'ida-type jihadis took over the Sunni-armed opposition in Iraq and Syria. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute last week, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, emphasised the significance of Prince Bandar's words, saying that they constituted "a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed".

Who me?


This:
What destabilised Iraq from 2011 on was the revolt of the Sunni in Syria and the takeover of that revolt by jihadis, who were often sponsored by donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates. Again and again Iraqi politicians warned that by not seeking to close down the civil war in Syria, Western leaders were making it inevitable that the conflict in Iraq would restart. "I guess they just didn't believe us and were fixated on getting rid of [President Bashar al-] Assad,"* said an Iraqi leader in Baghdad last week.

* Putin seemed to see it coming, he should be our ally in getting rid of extremists

[TwilightGardener]

1. Saudi Arabia loves terror. And they love us coming to clean it up, too.

Why the US continues to dance to their fiddle is beyond me--yes, oil, but how much should that drive us to crazy self-harming policies? Obama tried to distance himself a little, refused to strike Syria and take out Assad, and SA threw a fucking fit, and all the neocons threw a fit because SA threw a fit, and they started calling us an "unreliable ally". I say, let's have a final DIRECT showdown between SA and Iran, and see who wins, no US involvement.

[flamingdem]

2. Hah, good idea

and we'd get rid of some fundamental problems that way!

I wonder what impact cutting off the funding will have. What government can continue to fund a frankenstein that will come after it someday?

Maybe that's why they want Erbil, lots of oil, other resources.

I noticed that they've taken over lots of Syrian oil fields, where is the MSM on this? They shouldn't be allowed to sell that oil on the world market.

[PeoViejo]

3. Bandar Bush

OBL's Saudi Case Officer.

His involvement goes back a long way. Everything leads to Bandar.