First, who's who.
Iraq: 20-30% Sunni Muslim (these are the Baathists...which is
too damned close to "Baptist" for my comfort...and the ruling Saddam power base for the last few decades), the rest are Shiite and Kurds.
Jordan: 92% Sunni Muslim, 6% Christian (bet that's a nervous bunch) with a few Chechens and the occasional Jew who never leaves his basement.
Syria: 74% Sunni Muslim, 16% "other" (meaning Shiite) Muslim, 10% Christian and one Jewish guy named Abe who refuses to leave Damascus.
Turkey: 99% Sunni Muslim, 1% Christians and Jews
Iran: 89% Shi'a (Shiite) Muslim, 9% Sunni Muslim, 2% Christian, Jew, Bahai and Zoroastrian (
"Zoroastrian?")
Saudi Arabia: 100% Sunni Muslim...by law. The proper name is Wahabbi Muslim, named after the early 20th century Islamic reformer who partnered up with the House of Saud and returned Arabia to its fundamentalist Islamic principles, sort of.
Political analysis in the Middle East is like trying to make sense out of a Baptist's accounting books - complex to say the least! Take the Iran-Iraq war for instance. 10 years of incredibly bloody fighting. Shiite Iran duking it out with Sunni-ruled but Shiite populated Iraq. The war ground on for so long that they both said "screw it" and started using chemical weapons.
Now let's take a look at the American troubles in Iraq. The latest rumor in the breeze on the American side are concerns about a real civil war in Iraq that could split the country into three parts: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the west and Shiites in the east (next to Shi'a Iran). The reason this rumor is floating around is because the American general in charge (Abazaid) is now vehemently denying this could ever happen. I rest my case. The reason for this is, obviously, the insurgency that's blowing up...well, basically everything and everybody.
Are these insurgents Iraqis? Doubtful. Oh there may be a Saddam holdout here and there, some glory-days Baathist who straps on a dynamite bolo and goes out to face the world, but the majority of the little bits and pieces of terrorists that we scoop up belonged to Sunnis from other countries.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20051002-110701-9762r.htmThe above link is a news story titled "1000 Foreign Fighters in Iraq". That is a seriously conservative estimate. Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are all Sunni dominated and they all have a stake in seeing Iraq a Sunni Arab state. The borders of Iraq are porous; vast tracks of inhospitable desert and mountain terrain (not a water slide in sight!) and the U.S. forces tied down in the urban regions trying to keep a lid on things. Recently, however, a 1000 man force of U.S. soldiers blasted its way into Sadah on the Syrian border, a village said to be completely taken over by insurgents and turned into a border crossing for more foreign fighters coming out of Syria.
But is Syria the biggest problem? When confronted with a mystery the very first two questions you want to ask yourself are 1.) who would, and 2.) who could. To a degree the Syrians meet both these prerequisites, but not as much as someone else next door.
Enter the Saudis.
Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's two holiest sites: Mecca and Medina (Mohammed's tomb is actually there). The third holiest site of Islam is Jerusalem (where Mo-baby flew away on a winged horse...yeah!), but they got problems of their own. And Saudi has a serious reputation problem in the Arab world and are constantly concerned about how they are perceived. The reason for this is plainly the debauchery, degeneracy and playboy lifestyles of the entire House of Saud who've ruled Arabia for 70 years. That lifestyle comes from contact with the west and about 3 trillion in oil money spent on luxuries and "civic" improvements.
Remember Prince Bandar? He was the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and an elite member of D.C.'s highest social circles for a very long time. He owns 8 palaces and the world's only Rolls Royce dune buggy. He also owns homes in England, France and America. My own brother worked for 6 months at his home in Aspen and said that the smallest building on the property, a hunting lodge, cost $8 million to build. When Band-aid flies his private Boeing 747 into Denver International a fleet of brand new white Cadillac SUV's picks him up from the airport. The man has cameras in the trees on his extensive estate. Check the real estate prices in Aspen and you'll have an idea of the wealth we're talking about. My brother personally remembers one unlucky camel jockey getting fired and sent home for urinating outdoors, and with 30% unemployment and the religious police watching you pray 5 times a day I think the poor soul would rather be chilling it in Aspen than Riyadh. And Bandar's big fun too. He's known to be extremely witty, extremely generous (once tipping a British airline stewardess hired for his jet 1000 pounds for her good service) and quite the gambler and ladies man.
Yeah, that will about make you the most hated man in Arabia, no matter how popular you are in New York and London.
(postnote - Bandar himself got sent home when old King Fahd died last month and was officially replaced by Crown Prince Abdullah, a much more fundamentalist Muslim who doesn't lean near as far westward as his predecessor)Lot's of folks think that terrorism is something that comes
from the Middle East and is mainly just an export, but the Iraq insurgency should cure us of that notion. Saudi Arabia has terrorism at home as well, along with some serious political unrest coming from their own fundamentalists who think the House of Saud is corrupt beyond imagining...and how they got that idea I'll never know. When a nation of 26 million people is ruled by a family of 4000 and owns 25% of the world's oil and has BEEN RUNNING UP A NATIONAL DEBT FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS then I'd say there's definately a financial self-discipline problem somewhere. Recent domestic terrorism in Saudi Arabia includes the murders of police, judges, a provincial governor and several thousand bystanders. It's pretty serious. One guy even drove a truck full of explosives into the government's anti-terrorism headquarters, which is a really effective way of delivering a message. A 2003 issue of National Geographic called Saudi Arabia a "kingdom on edge", and that's not only the truth, it's getting worse. Democracy and human rights there are a joke, they still have public beheadings, women can't drive a car or walk down the street alone...AND THERE'S NO BOOZE! Talk about fuel for the fire. The country is, amazingly, in debt, they're running out of potable water and (this last one will floor you) Iraq had democratic elections BEFORE Saudi Arabia did...last year! All the money goes to the ruling family, the Muslim world knows the Sauds are in bed with the west while sitting on Islam's holiest sites, and unemployment is through the roof. There are 6 million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia (mostly from neighboring Arab countries) who do the menial work that the Sauds won't do for themselves, and they constitute over 50% of the work force! Saudi Arabia is a powder keg, and they know it.
Now check out world gas prices:
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/You see, with the exception of Venezuela's coveted twelve cent / gallon gas prices and a few others, oil is sky high all over the world. I think the nation with 25% of the market literally cornered might have something to say about that. What's going on is not near so much Hurricane Katrina as it is price-gouging by the Saudi Kingdom in an effort to shore up capital to keep their tenuous hold on power. It's a stop-gap measure that without real change and progress will only buy them a little time before their own people rise up and burn the place down. If your household income was $7000 a year and you had to drive to work everyday past a palace constructed as a duplicate of the U.S. White House, you as a muslim would get pretty pissed.
Getting back to Iraq: who would and who could.
The Saudi's would. They have to legitimize themselves in front of the Muslim world and their own people or risk rebellion and/or insurrection, which may already be taking place. So far their own oil industry infrastructure has been magically spared by domestic Saudi terrorists, but when the pot boils over their going to shut the House of Saud down by lobbing a few hand grenades over the refineries fence. No oil, no money, no Sauds. The House of Saud is on the razor's edge and they not only have real reasons to fund a Sunni Iraq but are almost certainly experiencing pressure from their neighbors to do so.
And the Saudi's could. They got the cash and the whole Muslim world knows it. They were expected to finance the PLO and Hamas and they did and continue to do so. With white crusaders on holy land in Iraq you can bet your camel's eye teeth the Saudis are expected to fund the Iraq insurgency. And guess who has the longest border with Iraq? It ain't Taiwan!
But the Saudis never get mentioned. Their PR guys are the best their money can buy after 9/11 showed that 15 out of 19 of the hijackers were Saudi nationals. In 2002 a quiet little survey was conducted at Guantanamo. 100 out of 158 terrorists behind bars in Club Gitmo were Saudis. And Saudi Arabia is 100% Sunni, not Shiite like Iran (whom they don't trust).
The big secret in Iraq is that it's our old buddies from Desert Storm, our big supplier of oil, the owner of upteen huge American corporations and unto thousands of acres of prime U.S. real estate, whose king was recently a guest at the Bush ranch in Crawford, our supposed staunch ally in the war on terror, one of our biggest trading partners and a HUGE buyer of American weapons - the Saudis - who are killing our sons and daughters in Iraq.
