Saudi Arabia created the monster now devouring it

[struggle4progress]

<snip>
It is not just that Saudi oil wealth has promoted the theological environment that has allowed the ideas of groups such as al-Qaida to flourish. The link is more direct, for it was Saudi money that financed both the most extreme jihadis fighting in Afghanistan and the camps where they were trained: a recent UN report calculated that in the decade leading to 9/11 Saudi Arabia transferred over $500m to al-Qaida via Islamic charities. It is no coincidence that 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis.

Yet the west, dependent on Saudi oil and rich from arms sales, continues to ignore the culpability of the Saudis - to the extent that the Bush administration blacked out 28 pages of a Congressional report that documented Saudi government ties with the 9/11 hijackers. The US continues to allow the Saudis to suppress human rights and lock up political activists, with barely a whisper of criticism. Indeed, Bush and Blair do all they can to shore up this hated and corrupt autocracy.

Far more than the secular Ba'athist regimes targeted by the Washington neo-cons, the Saudis have turned the face of Islam against the west. The war on Iraq has only provided a rallying cry for al-Qaida supporters. The country that has played by far the greatest role in advancing global Islamist militancy was never listed in Bush's "axis of evil" speech, and is a major US ally. Indeed George Bush Snr continues openly to lobby for the Saudis and to take a salary from the Carlyle Group, a multi-billion dollar corporation channelling US investment into Saudi Arabia.

The ultimate irony is that Saudi money comes from the west as oil revenues and investment: in the end it is we who are funding the export of Wahhabi intolerance. If the Saudi regime is now crumbling, we have only ourselves to blame.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,11599,1238198,00.html