Saudi Arabia:De Facto Superpower

If the Saudis’ efforts had been limited to pushing fundamentalism abroad their work would have been cause for controversy. But some Saudi charities played a far more troubling role. U.S. officials now say that key charities became the pipelines of cash that helped transform ragtag bands of insurgents and jihadists into a sophisticated, interlocking movement with global ambitions.

—David Kaplan, U.S. News and World Report1

Italian wiretaps monitoring members of a European al-Qaeda cell overheard a senior operative reassuring his subordinate about funding: “Don’t ever worry about money, because Saudi Arabia’s money is your money.”

—Matthew Levitt, The Washington Institute2

American efforts to combat this [al-Qaeda] contagion are hamstrung by the fact that its ideological and financial epicenter is Saudi Arabia, where an ostensibly pro-Western royal family governs through a centuries-old alliance with the fanatical Wahhabi Islamic sect.

—Ambassador Curtin Winsor3

In 1999, Saudi Prince Nayef al-Shaalan used his diplomatic immunity as cover to smuggle two tons of Columbian cocaine into France. Prince Nayef used a family jet to transport the drug, then transferred it into ambassadorial vehicles to bypass customs agents. But a U.S. DEA tip led to the French police raiding the safe house where the Saudis had stored the illegal shipment, and Miami police indicted the prince.

As soon as the Saudis found out about the incident, “They threatened to pull the plug on a contract … worth a colossal 7 billion euros that had been under negotiation between the Saudis and France for a decade.”4 The French investigation began to drag, leaving Prince Nayef free to operate. When the prince was finally convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison in 2007, he was safe and secure in Saudi Arabia. Since Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with France, it’s unlikely he will ever see the inside of a cell.

In 2005, an Indonesian woman appeared at a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in critical condition. The woman, who had been working as a maid, was bleeding from one eye and had deep marks on her ankles and wrists as well as several broken teeth. As she was being taken to surgery, doctors found evidence of gangrene in her extremities and were forced to amputate fingers on both hands and parts of both feet to save her life.

An investigation revealed that her Saudi employer had been keeping her tied up in a bathroom for a month as punishment for failing to clean his house completely. There was physical evidence that the employer beat her regularly as well. The woman claimed she was forbidden to speak to police or embassy officials on pain of further abuse. According to the Indonesian Embassy, her case is not unique. Among the more than 2,000 housemaids who had already been repatriated to Indonesia that year, many claimed maltreatment, nonpayment of wages, and physical abuse from their Saudi employers.5 Mistreatment of foreign workers, even from other Muslim countries, is so common that Human Rights Watch and other observers have lobbied the Saudi government to do something to strengthen legal protections for its large population of foreign workers.

In 2004, a series of sites for foreign workers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia were attacked by terrorists. At the Al-Khobar Petroleum Center, another oil-industry office complex, and the Oasis Resort, the terrorists went on a rampage, asking foreign workers if they were Muslims, Christians, or Jews—then killing non-Muslims. A British oil executive killed by the jihadists was tied to the back of a vehicle and dragged through the street.

The assault lasted 25 hours. When it was over, 22 people had been killed and 25 others injured. But the Saudi Special Forces who brought the assault to an end somehow managed to let three of the murderers escape, baffling many observers. The dead included an American, a Swede, an Italian, Filipinos, Indians, and—despite the jihadists’ relish at slaughtering non-Muslims—four Muslims as well.6

Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir of Saudi Arabia was convicted in 2010 for killing his Sudanese manservant during an alcohol-fueled Valentine’s Day attack in a London hotel. Marks on the victim showed he had been bitten, beaten, and strangled. At trial,Prince Saud was accused of subjecting the victim to violence and sexual abuse for a period long before the day of the murder. He was also found guilty of trying to cover up his actions, not realizing his attack had been caught on one of the hotel’s security cameras. Although Prince Saud denied he was homosexual—a crime which carries the death penalty in his native Saudi Arabia—prosecutors presented evidence that he had employed gay escorts in London and had made frequent web searches for gay massage parlors and escort agencies.7

In 2013, Prince Saud was transferred back home. Despite receiving a life sentence for his vicious crime, British authorities confirmed his transfer to a prison in Saudi Arabia after only three years in accordance with a Saudi-British agreement that facilitates such prisoner repatriations. It remains to be seen whether Saudi Arabian authorities will respect the sentence or look the other way for a member of the royal family. There is certainly no reason the prince could not end up free to find another foreign sex slave to abuse as much as he pleases.

Perhaps the best representative of the ups and downs of the Saudi-U.S. relationship is the man who was the Saudi ambassador for Washington for over 20 years, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. There is no ambassador, certainly no Arab ambassador, who has had comparable influence in our capital. Bandar was popular for his personal energy and Western tastes— including a love of tailored suits, big cigars, and the Dallas Cowboys. At the same time, it was treacherous to rely on him, since no one could ever be sure whose interests he had in mind: the Saudis’, the Americans’, or his own.8

Bandar’s relationship with Washington, like the Saudi-U.S. relationship, was at its peak during the Reagan years, when the Americans and Saudis worked together to support the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets. This lasted through the early 90s, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and put the Saudis in mortal fear that they could be next. The relationship soured during the Clinton years when the Americans showed little interest in the Palestinians during the second intifada. Then, in 2001, everything changed:

The prince watched the World Trade Centre being attacked. Much of his life’s work (and Saudi-American relations) went up in smoke when it emerged that most of the terrorists who struck the Twin Towers came from Saudi Arabia.9

Unable to defend the kingdom from its detractors, Bandar lost his taste for diplomacy and eventually left to become Saudi Arabia’s new national security advisor in 2005. The old fun-loving, Western-style, larger-than-life Bandar was gone.

The 9/11 attacks have compelled a reevaluation of the Saudi-U.S. relationship. A proper assessment of that relationship must take into account several things which are still misunderstood or realized by only a few. First, Saudi Arabia is a superpower, with money, power, and political influence that only superpowers command. Second, it abuses its position for its own advantage and treats the other peoples of the world—including other Muslim nations—with hatred or disdain. Third, it is an Islamist superpower, the world center of an Islamic supremacist ideology that seeks to destroy America and the West. And fourth, it knowingly exports this ideology, and all the terror and death that come with it, with hardly a peep of protest from the world community. Far from being a key American ally in the War on Terror, Saudi Arabia is in fact America’s most dangerous and deadly enemy—more deadly than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union ever were.

SAUDI ARABIA AS SUPERPOWER

Saudi Arabia’s rise to prominence as a superpower began in 1932, when King Abdulaziz (also known as Ibn Saud), combined the Kingdom of Nejd and the Sultanate of Hejaz into the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, ruled by himself.10 The country itself was worth very little at the time, consisting primarily of arid desert and rocky terrain unsuitable for cultivation. For most of its history, Saudi Arabia was the home of tribal nomadic communities who made their living by trading or robbing trade caravans. So, when King Abdulaziz took charge, the country had very little in terms of capital or economic infrastructure. He did what any good Arab leader would do in a weak position: he asked the British and Americans for help.11

A year later, an American company set off down a path that would eventually enrich Saudi Arabia in a way it had never seen. In 1933, King Abdulaziz granted Standard Oil of California exploration rights in his country. Lacking the means or the technology to probe for oil themselves, the Saudis let the Americans do the dirty work. Standard Oil hit paydirt, but before the infrastructure was in place to access the oil, World War II had broken out.

The Americans knew Saudi Arabian oil would be critical for the future. President Roosevelt in 1943 called the defense of Saudi Arabia crucial for America’s defense. That same year, he tried to nationalize Standard Oil’s Saudi Arabian subsidiary by purchasing a controlling interest through a government-owned corporation.12 When this unprecedented effort failed, the administration turned to diplomacy. President Roosevelt’s first stop after discussing the future of Europe at the Yalta Conference was a meeting with King Abdulaziz aboard the U.S.S. Quincy.

The diplomatic approach begun by Roosevelt was followed in turn by every U.S. president from Truman to Ford. The Saudis were viewed as a frontline ally against the spread of communism during the Cold War. Accordingly, the U.S. signed a mutual-defense agreement with the kingdom in 1951 and encouraged American companies to develop the infrastructure and technology that would allow the Saudis to access their enormous oil reserves. The Saudis gradually took control of the successor to the Standard Oil subsidiary, culminating in the establishment of the state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil company by royal decree in 1988.13

In the 1970s, domestic oil production in America passed its peak and Saudi Arabia emerged as the largest producer of oil in the world. Billions of petrodollars flowed into the country’s coffers from the oil-hungry Western nations. Since the oil industry is owned by the Saudi Arabian government and its royal family, this has made members of the house of Saud very wealthy. With a population of just over 20 million citizens, there is more than enough money for many to avoid doing an honest day’s work. Instead, Saudi Arabia imports somewhere between 5.5 and 8.8 million expatriates to clean its homes, cook its food, and run its oil industry. Foreign workers—mostly from developing nations like India, Pakistan, and the Philippines—make up a significant portion of the Saudi workforce.14

As of 2012, Saudi Arabia enjoyed a respectable GDP of $740.5 billion. The majority of that value comes from oil and gas related industries.15 The West needs oil to fuel the modern world, so vast amounts of western money go right into Saudi Arabia’s coffers— thereby fueling one of the most backwards and anti-modern regimes on earth. Oil wealth is the cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s power, and one of the keys to its status as a de facto superpower.

The other key lies in its religious prominence. As the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, Saudi Arabia enjoys significant prominence among Muslims. On top of that, it also controls access to two of the most important cities in Islam: Mecca and Medina. Medina is the original stronghold of Islam, Muhammad’s power base in the early years. It also contains his burial site. Mecca is the site of the famous hajj (or pilgrimage all Muslims are required to take) and receives millions of visitors each year. The Saudi government even decides which Islamic groups are legitimately Muslim enough to be permitted entry.

Because of its religious prominence, Saudi Arabia has 1.5 billion Muslims willing to die in its defense. Any number of them would sacrifice their money, their families, and their own lives simply for religious belief. Saudi Arabia does nothing itself to earn this devotion. Nevertheless, it has armies at its disposal with more men than the Soviet Empire ever had. This unprecedented religious prominence makes Saudi Arabia a superpower to be feared.

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE KINGDOM

Kuwaiti officials came to Saudi Arabia in early 2013 to discuss affairs with the top Islamic authority in the country. The officials wanted to question the Saudi Grand Mufti about the small, mostly informal Christian churches which they permitted in their country for foreign workers who wished to worship in private. Like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait requires all of its citizens to adhere to Islam. But Kuwait also hosts a large number of foreign workers, for whom it makes small, grudging accommodations. The Saudi Grand Mufti was blunt: “There should be no Christian churches on the Arabian Peninsula.” He later went even further, declaring that it was “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.”16

It isn’t enough for Saudis to prevent their enormous foreign worker population from building churches or engaging in any form of public worship of their own religion. They also want to export this radical intolerance throughout the region. There are Christian churches throughout the Arabian Peninsula today—in Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. If the Grand Mufti’s authority were to be accepted, they would all be torn down.

This is what Saudi Arabia does with its money and prominence. The country is run by a theocratic monarchy with unmatched hostility and intolerance toward all other religions. All citizens are required to be Muslims and are routinely policed for their adherence to Islamic custom as determined by the ruling religious elite. A Muslim who dares to convert to another religion faces the death penalty. Non-Muslims are forbidden to build churches or similar buildings for worship, and any public displays connected to another faith (simply wearing a cross, for example) are illegal. They are also forbidden to proselytize, and could face expulsion, imprisonment, or even death for attempting to do so. Officials regularly confiscate and burn the holy books of other religions—a bald hypocrisy given the loud complaints raised by Muslims over alleged Qur’an burnings in the West. As one observer at the Saudi Institute wrote:

My Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia—where I come from—are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshipping privately.17

Even owning a copy of the Bible in Saudi Arabia can lead to arrest, deportation, or even the death penalty for citizens.18

The annual global report on human rights published by the U.S. State Department details the detention and deportation of Christian worshippers every year in Saudi Arabia. Thousands of Christians living and working in the kingdom do not dare to celebrate Easter, Christmas, or even Thanksgiving. This abuse extends even outside Saudi Arabia’s borders, as Saudi embassies have been known to distribute Muslim books labeling Jews, Christians, and members of other religions as monkeys and pigs.19 So while Muslims are permitted free practice of their religion in the West—even to the point of being allowed to pronounce hateful doctrines against members of other faiths—the very opposite treatment is afforded to non-Muslims in Muslim countries. And Muslims have the audacity to claim victimhood.

Saudi Arabia also uses its money to engage in labor practices that could be characterized as modern slavery. Slavery was legal in the country until the early 1960s, when it was abolished by royal decree under pressure from President Kennedy.20 Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia is still a “destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of involuntary servitude.”21 Millions of laborers from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Sudan come to work in Saudi Arabia as servants or low-skilled laborers. Legal protections for these workers are scant. Many face harsh working conditions, severe restrictions on movement (including being confined to one building for their entire stay), physical abuse, and withheld wages. In 2011, one Saudi company was found to be six months delinquent in paying salaries to its foreign employees.22 Complaints from foreign workers became so common that year, that Kenya, Nepal, and the Philippines began to restrict their citizens from traveling to the kingdom for work. The Philippines only eased restrictions after the Saudis finally agreed to a minimum wage of $400 a month (remember, this is a country with a GNP of hundreds of billions of dollars).23

Foreign laborers are typically treated by Saudis as inferiors. Migrant workers from Asian and African countries in particular have complained to Human Rights Watch that racial discrimination is rampant in the kingdom, and that the legacy of slavery “continues to influence the perception and treatment of migrant workers.”24 Some of this discrimination is codified in law, which forbids Saudi women to marry non-Muslims, although Saudi men can marry whomever they like.

Attitudes toward slavery and foreigners are strongly influenced by Saudi Arabia’s religious elite. According to Sheikh Saleh Al-Fazwan, a leading cleric in the Saudi government, “Slavery is part of Islam.” Al-Fazwan is a man of wide-ranging influence: he is the author of Saudi Arabia’s religious textbooks, used to teach five million Saudi students at home and around the world. He is also a member of the Senior Council of Clerics, the highest religious body in Saudi Arabia. In Al-Fazwan’s best known textbook (a Wahhabi work on monotheism), he claims most so-called Muslims are actually polytheists and therefore their blood and money are “free for the taking by ‘true Muslims.’”25 It should be no surprise, then, that some Saudi Arabians would feel free to exploit even “fellow Muslims” from Pakistan, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.

Commercial sexual exploitation in Saudi Arabia is also a significant problem. There are reports of women trafficked into Saudi Arabia for use as prostitutes or kidnapped from legitimate jobs in the country and forced into prostitution.26 Saudi men will also use a legal contract known as a “temporary marriage” to sexually exploit migrant workers:

Females as young as seven years old are led to believe they are being wed in earnest, but upon arrival in Saudi Arabia subsequently become their husbands’ sexual slaves, and are forced into domestic labor and, in some cases, prostitution.27

Saudis do not always fare much better at the hands of their own countrymen. Despite being required to wear full-body clothing and being forbidden to mingle with men they aren’t related to, Saudi women still suffer a relatively high level of gender-based violence (including rape and domestic abuse).28 Only in 2013 did the Saudi government finally get around to banning domestic violence (behavior which was formerly treated as a private affair). A 2008 study of Saudi university students found that as many as 23 percent were raped as children, and 62 percent of the cases went unreported (often because a relative of the victim was responsible).29

WAHHABISM AND SAUDI ARABIA

During the conflict in Bosnia in the early 1990s, American churches and synagogues came together to raise funds for food and humanitarian aid to Bosnian Muslims. With an eye toward further pooling their efforts, these groups also approached American mosques to suggest cooperating for the benefit of their religious brothers overseas. On a number of occasions, these approaches were rejected. What could make a Muslim group refuse to join in on a project to help fellow Muslims?

The answer, according to R. James Woolsey at Freedom House, is the influence of Wahhabi imams who now lead many American mosques. It is impermissible for Wahhabi Muslims to work with infidels, even if the goal is helping Muslims. There is an absolute distinction between the Wahhabi and every other human being on earth, which all ordinary human feelings—cooperation, friendship, and common politeness—are not allowed to bridge. In the words of one observer, Wahhabism and Islamist extremism “is the soil in which al Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are growing.”30

Wahhabism is inseparable from Saudi Arabia—the land of its birth and the source of its support and power. It began as an 18th century “back to basics” Islamic reform movement. Its founder, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, believed that Islam had lost touch with its 7th century values. Basing his teachings on a literal reading of the Qur’an and the Sunna, Wahhab advocated a strict division of the world into Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the house of war). These two worlds could never be reconciled. Instead, the aim of human life was constant jihad waged so that the former could utterly conquer and destroy the latter. Many in the West refer to Wahhabism as “conservative,” “strict,” or “puritanical.” These terms are inadequate. Wahhabism is a religious and political ideology that calls for Islam—particularly its own brand of literal Islam—to take over the world.31

Wahhabism might have remained a fringe Islamic sect, if not for a timely connection to the Saud family. The Sauds were seeking to unite the Arabian Peninsula under their authority at the same time that Wahhab was trying to revive universal jihad. The Saud family made a deal with Wahhab to adopt and promote his brand of Islam in exchange for recognition as the political and religious leaders of his movement. Even today, this deal lies at the heart of Saudi Arabian culture, as the Saud family is both the royal family and the source of supreme religious authority for the country.32

Since 1979, however, this relationship has taken an even more radical turn. In that year, two events occurred which shook the Saudi royal family to its core. One was the revolution in Iran, which swept Khomeini to power on the promise of Islamic revolutionary reform. The Iranians were Shiites and therefore religious rivals. Since the Saudis believe themselves to be the preeminent religious authority for all Muslims, the Iranian revolution presented a threat to their authority.33 The other event was the seizure of the great mosque in Mecca, the holiest of Islamic shrines, by religious extremists. Although the Saudis soon regained control of the mosque, the incident was an enormous and costly embarrassment. Fearful of losing control of the country, the royal family effectively turned the education of its citizens over to the control of the Wahhabis. In exchange, the clerics agreed to concentrate their religious hatred on targets outside the country—specifically on the U.S. and Israel.34 By giving up the soul of its people to religious extremists, the Saudi elite gained a free pass to be as degenerate and corrupt as they wanted to be.

As a result of these events, Saudi Arabia has become a fountainhead of religious hatred. Using their enormous oil wealth, the Saudis have provided funding for mosques, Islamic centers and schools, publications, and missionaries to spread their virulent ideology. The core of their campaign to spread Wahhabism lies in the use of Islamic charities. Billions of dollars have been poured into them from both the Saudi government and private individuals with the publicly stated goal of promoting correct beliefs in the hearts of Muslims. In practice, this means promoting Wahhabi beliefs.

The Wahhabi ideology exported by Saudi Arabia rejects religious coexistence or tolerance of any kind. Rather, it calls it a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews (as well as all other non-Muslims and even non-Wahhabi Muslims). Such hatred supposedly demonstrates that the Muslim is truly a believer because he has completely separated from the world of non-believers and has no attachments to them.35 Saudi publications instruct Muslims not to hire non-Muslim workers, but if they do they are told they must hate them “for Allah’s sake.”36 Even wishing a Christian “Happy Holiday” on Christmas is called “more loathsome to God … than imbibing liquor, or murder, or fornication.”37

Saudi-financed publications and imams teach that Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi sexual mores or Wahhabi codes of behavior or who do not govern their countries according to Wahhabi-style sharia law are to be condemned. Any problems or poor conditions in Muslim countries are attributed to governments ruling contrary to the guidance of Islam according to secular rather than religious laws. Democracy is portrayed as a cultural invasion from the West, pushing “deadly” principles such as separation of religion and politics or the equality of men and women.38

Even freedom and human rights are considered un-Islamic, according to Saudi Wahhabism. One tract declares:

Freedom of thinking, requires permitting the denial of faith, and attacking what is sacred, glorifying falsehood and defending the heretics, finding fault in religion and letting loose the ideas and pens to write of disbelief as one likes, and to put ornaments on sin as one likes.39

Such things are unacceptable. Since Wahhabism is the truth, anything we might think of as “freedom of thought” is just a freedom to lie, as far as they are concerned. Human rights are dismissed as a weapon of the infidel used to undermine Islam. What we call the “conscience of the world” they dismiss as “the conscience of Christians, Jews, and communists.”40

Through Saudi sponsorship, according to one estimate, Wahhabist Islam has radicalized more than 80 percent of the mosques in the United States.41 In Wahhabi-influenced mosques, Wahhabis maintain absolute control of the buildings, the religious training, the appointment of imams, the content of their teaching, the literature made available, and any charitable solicitation. This is particularly troubling given that literature distributed by the Saudis, even in American schools and mosques, has proven to be anti-American, anti-Semitic, and pro-jihad.42

For the past quarter century, thanks to Saudi money and influence, this virulent brand of Islam has become widespread in the world—even in the United States—as the Saudis have strived to compete with Iran in spreading their literal version of the Islamic faith. In spreading Wahhabism, the Saudis are spreading a radically intolerant, hateful ideology completely at odds with the values of the United States. But the Saudis do more than support the ideas that fuel terror: they support terror directly.

SAUDI ARABIA AND GLOBAL TERRORISM

Saudi Arabia’s connection to global terrorism begins with petrodollars. That money doesn’t sit idle. The Saudis invest part of their surplus overseas, and through those investments alone they gain economic and political influence. The amounts are staggering: Saudi private sector investment in the U.S. alone was an estimated $400 million in 2009.43

The Motiva oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas is a perfect example of Saudi investment in America. A $10 billion expansion of the refinery, which is jointly owned by Saudi Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell, was just completed in 2013. The refinery is the largest petroleum processor in the United States, and the expansion will move Saudi Amoco, already the largest oil company in the world, closer to becoming the largest petroleum refiner as well. Despite politicians’ claims of decreasing American dependency on imported oil, this expansion shows the Saudis are still eager to do business in America. With a bilateral trade deficit favoring them at a 3-to-1 ratio, why wouldn’t they be? Saudi Amoco has also been increasing its economic reach, reaching deals in China, South Korea, India, and the Netherlands. This translates into increased financial and political clout.44

Next, consider how terrorist organizations receive and transfer funds. One routine form of illicit money movement uses an Islamic system known as hawala. Because this informal money transfer system involves brokers disbursing funds based on a promise to be paid back, it operates more or less outside normal political and economic channels and is very difficult to track or shut down.45 Another money transfer scheme is based on the Islamic zakat tithe. One of the Pillars of Islam, zakat requires Muslims to donate two and a half percent of their wealth to charity—hence the proliferation of Islamic charity groups around the world. Since most zakat donations are anonymous and made in cash, it can be very difficult to track them. Many zakat charities are perfectly legitimate, but some are used to provide a cloak of legitimacy to the transfer of funds for use in terror attacks.Numerous Saudi charity organizations and their offshoots have been directly linked to terrorist activities. The most notorious involves an affiliate of the Muslim World League (a large charity organization sponsored by the Saudi royal family) called the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). A branch of the IIRO in the Philippines which had been controlled by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law was placed on a watch list by the United Nations for funneling money to the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group.46 Another branch in Bangladesh was raided and broken up by Indian authorities when they discovered its connection with plans to bomb U.S. consulates in Calcutta and Madras.47

Other Saudi charities connected to terrorism include the Mercy International Relief Organization, which was proven to be connected to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa. Documents at the trial of the four men convicted of involvement in those attacks showed that Mercy smuggled weapons from Somalia to Kenya, and unmasked the charity, according to a former al-Qaeda agent, as a front for al-Qaeda. In 2001, NATO forces raided the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, a charity group founded by a member of the Saudi royal family and supported directly by King Fahd. The raid uncovered some disturbing terror links, including:

Before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging U.S. State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children.48

The Saudi-based al-Wafa Humanitarian organization has been described as a key al-Qaeda group which “do[es] a small amount of legitimate humanitarian work and raise[s] a lot of money for equipment and weapons.”49

The Saudi Arabian government has denied providing any funding for terrorism or having any direct links with terrorism. Nevertheless, Saudi officials “have at minimum a clear pattern of looking the other way when funds are known to support extremist purposes.”50 This is not new behavior for Saudi Arabia—it dates back to at least the 1980s, if not before. Former CIA agent Robert Baer describes Saudi Arabia’s use of IIRO to fund Afghan rebels in the 80s, saying the charity organization “proved a perfect fit, a money conduit and plausible denial rolled into one.”51

Although publicly the United States treats Saudi Arabia as an ally in the War on Terror, behind the scenes things are not quite so simple. A leaked diplomatic cable revealed in 2010 showed that U.S. officials still regard the Saudis with some distrust when it comes to terror financing. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton observed:

It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority … donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.52

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey was equally blunt in his assessment. Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, Levey said:
If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding [for terrorism] from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia … Saudi Arabia today remains the location from which more money is going to … Sunni terror groups and the Taliban … than from any other place in the world.53

According to Levey, the Saudi government has yet to prosecute even one individual identified by the United Nations or the United States as a terrorist financier.54 The Saudis say “trust us, we’ll take care of these financiers,” and then do nothing.

American efforts to cut off funding to Islamic militants have faced serious pushback and accusations of heavy-handedness and lack of evidence from foreign leaders.55 Nevertheless, as the cable above illustrates, there is reason to believe that terrorist violence is significantly bankrolled by affluent conservative donors in the Persian Gulf—and that the governments of those countries do little or nothing to prevent it. In Saudi Arabia, the government will apprehend individuals suspected of terrorist financing only to drop all legal charges when the individuals claim they are nothing more than “political dissidents.”56 There is every reason to believe that some individuals get a pass solely because of favorable political connections with the royal family or powerful Islamic clerics.

Another way terrorists gain funding in Saudi Arabia involves the use of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca as a cover. Terrorists slip into the country under the guise of being holy pilgrims, then establish companies to act as fronts for government-sanctioned charities. Another leaked cable described the problem:

The Hajj is still a major security loophole for the Saudis, since pilgrims often travel with large amounts of cash and the Saudis cannot refuse them entry into Saudi Arabia … The Saudi government recently passed a law requiring arriving travelers to declare cash above a certain amount, but Hajj was “still a vacuum in our security” [Senior Advisor Major General Dr. Sa’ad al-Jabri] said.57

Funding is essential to Islamic terrorist activities. When Ramzi Yousef, the lead conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was captured in 1995, he confessed that it was financial troubles which prevented his operatives from building the larger bomb he had originally intended. The 9/11 attacks allegedly cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000; not an inconsiderable sum.58

Saudi Arabia also does a great deal to supply fighters to the cause of global jihad. As is already well known, Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. But they are only the tip of a very large iceberg. According to former diplomat Curtin Winsor, audio tapes recorded in a Saudi mosque in 2004 reveal the then Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia—a man charged with managing trials of terrorists in his country— urging Saudi youth to fight against Americans as well as Iraqi forces inside Iraq.59 Reports during the Iraq war revealed that foreign fighters in Iraq were often Saudis.60 One such report observes:

The intensive involvement of Saudi volunteers for Jihad in Iraq is also the result of the Saudi government’s doublespeak, whereby it is willing to fight terrorism, but only if directly affected by it on its own soil.61

The same report by terrorism expert Reuven Paz found that out of 154 Arab deaths attributed to jihad during a six-month period in Iraq, 61 percent were Saudis.62 This means one of our “allies” in the War on Terror could have been supplying the majority of our most deadly opponents in Iraq.

THE 9/11 ATTACKS AND U.S.-SAUDI RELATIONS SINCE 9/11

The 9/11 attacks have presented the gravest challenge to Saudi-U.S. relations since the oil embargo from 1973-4. There is no disguising the fact that Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Two of the hijackers are believed to have been radicalized at the King Fahd mosque in Los Angeles thanks in part to the efforts of Imam Fahad al Thumairy. Fahad was a diplomat with the Saudi Arabian consulate from 1996 – 2003 (when he was barred from reentering the U.S. due to terrorist connections).63 There is also no disguising how much funding for al-Qaeda and its sister organizations has come directly or indirectly from Saudi Arabian sources.

Due to such links, America’s diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia has become strained. For the past decades, the typical American approach to the Saudis has been to avoid any direct confrontations in favor of gentle manipulations. Some government officials cautioned that excessive pressure on the Saudis could destabilize the power structure, resulting in the replacement of the royal family with even more dangerous extremists.64 This approach is harder to sustain in the face of the facts about Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism.

For its survival, the Saudi monarchy depends on the support of extremist Wahhabi clerics. In turn, those clerics support global terror in the ways shown above. Even if the ruling government wanted to shut down all support for terrorism, their ability to force the Wahhabi clerics is limited. Instead there is a vicious loop which ends in Saudi inaction— and the deaths of American men and women around the world.65 In turn, the oil lobby has exerted powerful influence over American institutions. The scholar Mitchell Bard has found evidence of oil money buying control of ideas in American colleges and universities, in the media, and in Presidential administrations and in Congress.66 This enormous financial leverage further induces the United States to look the other way when evidence of Saudi malfeasance comes to light.

The consequences of the current U.S. approach to Saudi Arabia could be disastrous. Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, warns that “foreign funding of subversive domestic organizations linked to designated terrorist groups poses immediate dangers to US national security.”67 With Saudi Arabia standing as one of the richest and most ideologically virulent sources of such foreign funding, America’s refusal to take a stand against it could be deadly.

These issues have become more pressing after the November 24, 2013 deal with Iran in Geneva and the “historic understanding” the U.S. government reached with Iran on April 3, 2015. As America and other key powers signed off with Iran, the Saudis were signaling their intentions to acquire nuclear weapons. Before the ink was dry on the deal, the Saudi ambassador to the U.K. was already proclaiming to the media, “We are not going to sit idly by and receive a threat there [Iran] and not think seriously how we can best defend our country and our region.”68 According to a former Obama advisor and weapons expert, a deal with Pakistan could make the ambassador’s threat a reality:

Pakistan isn’t just going to hand over nuclear weapons; it’s more likely that Pakistan would station forces in Saudi Arabia, and those forces will have the ability to deploy nuclear weapons from Saudi soil.69

Such an act would be the most provocative since the 1973 oil embargo. After Geneva, it has become a possibility.

One of the surest signs of a nation’s power is how readily it flaunts the rules others must abide by. Saudi Arabia’s late-2013 program of “Saudization” of the labor force is a clear illustration of this principle in action. Starting in late November, the kingdom began the forcible removal of a large portion of its foreign labor force. About “one million Bangladeshis, Indians, Filipinos, Nepalis, Pakistanis and Yemenis” were deported, with the aim of removing two million by the end of 2014.70 What would the outcry around the world be if America, Britain, or France suddenly deported 1-2 million foreign workers? How many human rights organizations would protest such treatment? Yet the Saudis suffer nothing worse than a few disapproving media articles. Keep in mind also that many of these foreign workers are fellow Muslims. Muslims often speak of their whole religious community being one ummah, one nation of fellow-believers. If that’s true, how can the Saudis treat their own “nationals” like dogs?