Who Sponsors ISIS Has U.S. Playing Defense

This is the last paragraph of "As Sunnis Die in Iraq, a Cycle Is Restarting," by Alissa Rubin and Rod Nordland, which can be found in today's paper:

The Iraqi government issued a statement accusing Saudi Arabia of funding the Sunni extremists, as Mr. Maliki continued to offer explanations for the stunning success of the Sunni extremists that do not focus on his leadership. The statement drew almost immediate criticism from the United States, with Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, describing it as inaccurate and “offensive.”

Reuters has a little more information about the statement, which was made yesterday by Maliki's cabinet:

Maliki's government accused Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power, of backing ISIL - something Riyadh denies. 

"We hold them responsible for supporting these groups financially and morally and for its outcome - which includes crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the destruction of Iraqi state institutions and historic and religious sites," a government statement said. 

Maliki has blamed Saudi Arabia for supporting militants in the past, but the language was unprecedented. On Monday, Riyadh blamed sectarianism in Baghdad for fuelling the violence.

NBC's story, by Cassandra Vinograd, "Iraq Cabinet Accuses Saudi Arabia of Spurring 'Genocide'," reads like it was written by USG as a Saudi defense brief.

But for corroboration of the Iraq cabinet statement there is Josh Rogin's Daily Beast article which appeared this past Saturday, "America's Allies Are Funding ISIS":

But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime.

“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.

Gulf donors support ISIS, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda called the al Nusrah Front, and other Islamic groups fighting on the ground in Syria because they feel an obligation to protect Sunnis suffering under the atrocities of the Assad regime. Many of these backers don’t trust or like the American backed moderate opposition, which the West has refused to provide significant arms to.

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“ISIS is part of the Sunni forces that are fighting Shia forces in this regional sectarian conflict. They are in an existential battle with both the (Iranian aligned) Maliki government and the Assad regime,” said Tabler. “The U.S. has made the case as strongly as they can to regional countries, including Kuwait. But ultimately when you take a hands off, leading from behind approach to things, people don’t take you seriously and they take matters into their own hands.”

Donors in Kuwait, the Sunni majority Kingdom on Iraq’s border, have taken advantage of Kuwait’s weak financial rules to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of Syrian rebel brigades, according to a December 2013 report by The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank that receives some funding from the Qatari government.

“Over the last two and a half years, Kuwait has emerged as a financing and organizational hub for charities and individuals supporting Syria’s myriad rebel groups,” the report said. “Today, there is evidence that Kuwaiti donors have backed rebels who have committed atrocities and who are either directly linked to al-Qa’ida or cooperate with its affiliated brigades on the ground.”

Kuwaiti donors collect funds from donors in other Arab Gulf countries and the money often travels through Turkey or Jordan before reaching its Syrian destination, the report said. The governments of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have passed laws to curb the flow of illicit funds, but many donors still operate out in the open. The Brookings paper argues the U.S. government needs to do more.

“The U.S. Treasury is aware of this activity and has expressed concern about this flow of private financing. But Western diplomats’ and officials’ general response has been a collective shrug,” the report states.

When confronted with the problem, Gulf leaders often justify allowing their Salafi constituents to fund Syrian extremist groups by pointing back to what they see as a failed U.S. policy in Syria and a loss of credibility after President Obama reneged on his pledge to strike Assad after the regime used chemical weapons.

That’s what Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi intelligence since 2012 and former Saudi ambassador in Washington, reportedly told Secretary of State John Kerry when Kerry pressed him on Saudi financing of extremist groups earlier this year. Saudi Arabia has retaken a leadership role in past months guiding help to the Syrian armed rebels, displacing Qatar, which was seen as supporting some of the worst of the worst organizations on the ground.

The Saudis say that they only fund moderate Islamists. But the whole moderate vs. extremist distinction is a word game meant to obscure the fact that, as in the heady days of "Charlie Wilson's War," the U.S. is up to its old tricks again backing, along with its good monarchical friends in the gulf, the Mujahideen.

That's why you have the denial by the truly odious Jen Psaki. As a rule of thumb, if Psaki goes out of her way to issue a strong denial, as she did by labeling the Iraq cabinet statement as "offensive," you know there is a rat in the house. Psaki lies. This is what she does for a living.

For seasoned news consumers, the unified response from Western governments and the prestige press that Maliki is to blame for all that is presently going wrong in Iraq (with nary a word about the role of wealthy gulf emirs in Jiffy Popping a Salafi army into being, nor the destabilizing effects of the 2003 U.S. invasion) is a strong indication that the goal of USG is not to fight terrorism but to neuter Shiite state power.

Another fruitful line of inquiry is to look at the rat line of Salafi fighters. Carlotta Gall made a start yesterday with "Spanish Police Target Cells Recruiting War Volunteers." More than half of ISIS's fighters are foreigners. Getting them to the battlefield requires a logistics network that a localized Anbar jihadi group could not have put together in such a short span of time. The jihad network is run out of mosques and madrassas. This network is funded by the gulf emirates, foremost of which is Saudi Arabia.

USG knows all this. But where is the rallying cry for sanctions? Compare it to the U.S. response to the peaceful vote in Crimea to accede to the Russian Federation. The U.S. is now in the midst of relaunching the Cold War with all its inherent risk of nuclear annihilation. And in the case of Crimea becoming part of Russia, there is no risk to U.S. national security. But a caliphate rising in the Middle East? That certainly represents a risk. So far the U.S. seems to be doing everything it can to make sure it becomes a reality.