If GWOT is Authentic Where are the Economic Sanctions on the Gulf Sheikhdoms?

After a year spent where the United States ignored and downplayed the existence of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, choosing instead to focus on the officially demonized figures of Bashar al-Assad and Nouri al-Malaki, suddenly the uber-jihadi group is front and center. Islamic State's threat to oil-rich and pro-American Kurdistan, followed by its decapitation video of freelance journalist James Foley, has put the Global War on Terror (GWOT) back in the limelight and made the caliphate Public Enemy No. 1.

At this point the public must be feeling whipsawed. First, despite more than a decade of programming regarding the evils of Islamic fundamentalism, people were asked to ignore Western collaboration with jihadis in order to accomplish the collapse of the Syrian government; now we are being told to be afraid, very afraid.

So it is prudent to be skeptical. Questions are being asked about the authenticity of the Foley beheading. And even today's Gray Lady editorial, "A Necessary Response to ISIS," mentions the support given to Islamic State by of our closest allies in the Gulf:

The prospects of defeating ISIS would be greatly improved if other Muslim nations could see ISIS for the threat it is. But, like Iraq, they are mired in petty competitions and Sunni-Shiite religious divisions and many have their own relations with extremists of one kind or another. ISIS has received financing from donors in Kuwait and Qatar. Saudi Arabia funneled weapons to Syrian rebels and didn’t care if they went to ISIS. Turkey allowed ISIS fighters and weapons to flow across porous borders. All of that has to stop.

Creating a regional military force may be required, including assistance from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Turkey. It certainly will require money, intelligence-sharing, diplomatic cooperation and a determined plan to cut off financing to ISIS and the flow of ISIS fighters between states. France’s suggestion for an international conference deserves consideration. 

No matter how many American airstrikes are carried out — Mr. Obama is also considering strikes against ISIS in Syria — such extremists will never be defeated if Muslims themselves don’t make it a priority. To their credit, some leaders are speaking out. Among them is Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority, the grand mufti, who called ISIS and Al Qaeda the “enemy No. 1 of Islam.” 

But they must go further and begin a serious discussion about the dangers of radical Islam and how ISIS’s perversion of one of the world’s great religions can be reversed.

Kuwait and Qatar come in for more unwelcome attention in Rukimini Callimachi's "U.S. Writer Held by Qaeda Affiliate in Syria Is Freed After Nearly 2 Years: Peter Theo Curtis, Abducted in 2012, Is Released by Nusra Front":

Ghanim al-Mteiri, a sheikh from Kuwait, approached an employee of The New York Times with a photograph of Mr. Curtis in captivity, and The Times arranged for the image to be sent to the Curtis family. The sheikh, a known fund-raiser for jihadi groups, said he could organize Mr. Curtis’s release, and Ms. Curtis agreed that same month to fly to Istanbul, meeting twice with the shadowy figure, who insisted on seeing her at night, relatives said.

He proposed a complicated prisoner swap, offering to release Mr. Curtis if his mother arranged for the government of Iraq to free two women — both wives of jihadists — held in prisons there. The proposal went nowhere.

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American experts on ISIS and Middle East politics suggested that Qatar, which has supported some militant Islamic extremist groups in the past but is an important American ally, moved more aggressively to help secure Mr. Curtis’s freedom after Mr. Foley was killed, partly to emphatically send a message that it opposes groups like ISIS. 

“I think what we’re seeing is a shift as the result of the Foley beheading,” said Rick Brennan, senior political scientists at the RAND Corporation. “Qatar has an interest in making certain it is seen as an ally in the war on terror. And beheading Americans or Westerners is not in Qatar’s interest."

The question of whether the sudden efflorescence of GWOT is contrived or authentic is important. If it is truly authentic, then why not sanction the countries known to support Islamic State? Look at all the effort expended to isolate Russia. Why not something approaching a fraction of that effort directed at Qatar and Kuwait? The behemoth, Saudi Arabia, could be spared for now, the message being, "You're next."

But we all know this is a fantasy. The Gulf monarchies are stakeholders in USG; they have representatives in the U.S. Congress. There will be no sanctions. The Great Game will continue as it has in Afghanistan. The West, with its unrivaled air power, will blow up the "bad guys" -- along with a lot of innocent people -- yet jihad will spread.  Perpetual war. That is what we have in store.

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.

Gray Lady's New Focus on Jihadi Role in Syrian Civil War

Over the last couple months a shift has been apparent in the way the New York Times covers the Syrian civil war. No longer is the conflict covered solely through the prism of al-Assad's demonization. Where before the rise of Al Qaeda and Wahhabism as dominant forces among the rebels received mention, if at all, at the bottom of the story, now, it is the lede. (To give credit where credit is due, Anne Barnard, the Gray Lady's Beirut Bureau Chief and principal reporter on the civil war, fell out of love with the Syrian National Coalition at the end of summer about the time of the Ghouta gassing.)

What this undoubtedly reflects is a shift in the official United States Government position. Once the plan to attack Syria was aborted due to overwhelming public and Congressional opposition, the Obama administration has embraced a position -- at least for public consumption -- that is a polar opposite of one that it espoused just a few months ago.

Despite caterwauling by the Saudis, the U.S. now sees Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al Nusra Front as far more significant threats than the Syrian government. Today's frontpage story, "Private Donors’ Funds Add Wild Card to War in Syria," by Ben Hubbard is the most recent example of the Obama administration's "pivot" to deal with the jihadi domination of pockets of Syria.

Most private donors shun the Western-backed Supreme Military Council, undermining a body meant to unify the rebels into a moderate force. And they dismiss the opposition’s political leadership as well as calls by the United States and other powers for peace talks. With funds estimated to be at least in the tens of millions of dollars, they have contributed to the effective partition of Syria, building up independent Islamist militias that control territory while espousing radical ideology, including the creation of an Islamic state.

Hubbard focuses on the funding network operating in Kuwait. Most of its support goes to Al Nusra.

The Kuwaiti government has played down the importance of the funds, saying Kuwait’s charitable contributions dwarf any cash sent for arms.

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American officials disagree. 

“The Kuwaitis could be doing a lot more on this issue,” said David S. Cohen, the Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. He said that Kuwait posed the region’s biggest problem of financing linked to extremists in Syria, and that American efforts to press the issue with the Kuwaiti government had yielded limited results. 

Mr. Cohen declined to estimate the amount of private funding flowing through Kuwait to Syria, but said it was enough to equip extremist fighters with ample light arms and supplies.

This kind of reporting represents a significant change. The Gulf monarchies will take note. American public opinion is already strongly anti-sheikhdom, running far ahead of what is allowed in the mainstream media. If this point of view gets a toehold in the prestige press, watch out.