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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6151)	12/5/2003 8:52:00 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 15992

Terror 101 Are the Saudis funding schools devoted to fomenting radical Islamic ideology? msnbc.com Dec. 3 — An intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic struggle over a controversial Saudi-funded academy in Germany has shed new light on the close relationship between Saudi government officials and an international network of mosques and schools—some of which, Western intelligence officials say, have become breeding grounds for terrorism. THE GERMAN SCHOOL, the King Fahd Academy in Bonn, provoked an uproar two months ago when German television reporters infiltrated its classrooms and videotaped a teacher inciting a holy war “in the name of Allah” and advocating martial-arts training—including the use of crossbows—for young students. Local German officials announced their intention to shut the school down after receiving intelligence reports that Muslim militants from throughout Germany—some of them with suspected terrorist connections—were flocking to the area to send their children to the academy. But after expressing its own alarm, the German government quickly changed its tune. German Interior Minister Otto Schily recently praised the King Fahd Academy as an “important cultural institution” and denounced the media campaign against the school as a threat to Saudi-German relations. The reason for the change, sources tell NEWSWEEK, was hardball diplomatic pressure from Riyadh. In early October, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made an official visit to Saudi Arabia where he met with the ailing King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, the country’s de facto ruler. During the trip, Schroeder told Saudi officials that the teaching of hard-core jihadi ideology at the King Fahd Academy “must be stopped,” according to German press reports. The Saudis pledged to curb extremism and fire any radical teachers. But they also quietly passed along another message to Schroeder: that schools attended by the children of German diplomats and businessmen in Saudi Arabia could face similar harassment or even closure if the King Fahd Academy was shut down. As a result, the Schroeder government promised to back off any plans to close the King Fahd Academy for “foreign-policy reasons,” a German official told NEWSWEEK. Hirsh: Iraq Rebalances Power in Washington The German experience underscores a broader concern among U.S. and other Western intelligence officials about the role that Saudi-funded mosques and schools are playing in the fomenting of radical Islamic ideology. The Saudi government pumps tens of millions of dollars every year into such institutions around the world—including Islamic centers, mosques and schools named for King Fahd in Los Angeles, Moscow, Edinburgh and Malaga, Spain. These schools are known for spreading Wahhabism—the puritanical, hard-core brand of Islam that is the official Saudi state religion and, in its more extreme versions, can be difficult to distinguish from the radical Islamic thought preached by Osama bin Laden and his followers, some intelligence officials say. As a result, U.S. officials have become increasingly alarmed about the Saudi-funded institutions. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom two weeks ago held a public hearing on the issue and has asked Congress to launch a formal investigation into the Saudi role in financing schools that promote “hate, intolerance and other human-rights violations.” Michael Petruzzello, a spokesman for the Saudi government in Washington, said the Saudis have already begun a crackdown on their own. “They have established as a matter of public policy—there will be no funding of schools that preach extremism,” he said. Inside Saudi Arabia, he said “hundreds” of radical teachers have been dismissed from the country’s schools. Elsewhere, the Saudis have asked U.S. officials for evidence of the promotion of radical militancy and when such evidence is provided the Saudis will take action, he said. That process appears to be under way at the Saudi Embassy-funded Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in Fairfax, Va. According to a story in the Dec. 3 edition of The Wall Street Journal, the school has trained 75 people as Islamic religious advisors for Muslim-American soldiers in the U.S. military. It has also had extensive ties with Islamic radicals and has a published curriculum that calls for studying “the ruinous effect” of Christian beliefs, the Journal reported. “We have looked into this matter and we are in the process of shutting it [the institute] down,” a Saudi official said. But as the experience in Germany shows, it is far from clear how committed the Saudis are to cracking down on state-sponsored institutions that have close ties to the country’s religious establishment and in some cases even bear the name of the country’s supreme monarch. At the recent hearing before the religious-freedom commission, a prominent Saudi dissident, Mai Yamani, daughter of that country’s former oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, said the Saudis are incapable of true reform. She described the Saudi royal family as “deeply connected” to the country’s hard-core Wahhabi clerics and says the family has given them vast power over the country’s schools and mosques in exchange for religious legitimacy. “Not only has the state embraced the hard-liners,” she said, “the hard-liners are the state, fully embedded in its structure.”

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6151)	12/5/2003 11:09:11 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15992

Hawk, the extremism of Osama and his men has finally resulted in the SA monarchy to give more power to its subjects. They first tried to bribe Al-Qaeda by giving Osama his share of the royal wealth and now this...!!! Saudis setting new horizons 02-12-2003 The expansion of the role of the Saudi Consultative Shura Council was another step in the long road Saudi Arabia has charted to enhance people's participation in the decision-making process. The decree issued by King Fahd bin Abdulaziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, allows the Shura Council to propose new laws and amend legislation without seeking prior permission from the King. The move has given the 120 appointed members of the council more authority to pursue the changes they want in the country, and has given them the responsibility of using the new authorisation to make sure that reforms are going as the Saudi people want. The pro-reform move is expanding in Saudi Arabia, and it is good for the people and intellectual Saudis to see their leaders responding positively to the needs of the nation. The move was an element in a set of policies adopted recently by the Saudi leaders to give people more say in running their lives and planning for their future. These include the municipal elections in 2004 and broadcasting excerpts of the weekly session of the consultative Shura Council on TV. They followed the creation of the kingdom's first independent human rights organisation early this year. It is worth noting that the above moves are just a small step towards the main targets, but are quite important in the long road to achieving the long awaited reforms in the region. They are also important since they come along with the war against terrorism and Al Qaida cells in Saudi Arabia. It will be great to allow those elected to the municipal councils to take part in the Shura debate and become the elected core of the council. This will give the reforms more credibility and popularity among Saudis and set new horizons for the nation. gulf-news.com

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6151)	12/7/2003 7:31:19 AM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15992

Revealed: the Iraqi colonel who told MI6 that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes By Con Coughlin (Filed: 07/12/2003) news.telegraph.co.uk An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes. Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year. He said they were to be used by Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage". The containers, which came from a number of factories on the outskirts of Baghdad, were delivered to the army by the Fedayeen and were distributed to the front-line units under cover of darkness. In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Col al-Dabbagh said that he believed he was the source of the British Government's controversial claim, published in September last year in the intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes. "I am the one responsible for providing this information," said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq's Governing Council. He also insisted that the information contained in the dossier relating to Saddam's battlefield WMD capability was correct. "It is 100 per cent accurate," he said after reading the relevant passage. The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier. "Forget 45 minutes," said Col al-Dabbagh "we could have fired these within half-an-hour." Local commanders were told that they could use the weapons only on the personal orders of Saddam. "We were told that when the war came we would only have a short time to use everything we had to defend ourselves, including the secret weapon," he said. The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. "The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," he said. "If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences." Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq's air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. "Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons," he said. During the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, said that the information contained in the intelligence dossier relating to the 45-minute claim had come from a single "established and reliable" source serving in the Iraqi armed forces. Privately British intelligence officers have claimed that they believe the original source was killed during the war. Dr Kelly killed himself last July after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC radio report claiming that the Labour Government had included the 45-minute claim against the wishes of MI6 to "sex up" the intelligence dossier. Col al-Dabbagh, who spied for the Iraqi National Accord (INA), a London-based exile group, for several years before the war, said, however, that he provided several reports to British intelligence on Saddam's plans to deploy WMD from early 2002 onwards. The INA, which was made up of retired and serving Iraqi officers and Ba'ath party officials, is known to have enjoyed a close relationship with MI6 and America's Central Intelligence Agency. Dr Ayad Allawi, the head of the INA who is now a prominent member of the Governing Council in Baghdad, confirmed that he had passed Col al-Dabbagh's reports on Saddam's WMD to both British and American intelligence officers "sometime in the spring and summer of 2002". Apart from providing intelligence on Saddam's WMD programme, Col al-Dabbagh also provided details of Iraq's troop and air defence deployments before the war. Although he gave details of Iraq's battlefield WMD capability, he said that he had no knowledge of any plans by Saddam to use missiles to attack British bases in Cyprus and other Nato targets. In the build-up to the conflict, Tony Blair was criticised by intelligence officials for giving the impression that Saddam had developed ballistic missiles that could carry WMD warheads and hit targets such as Israel and Britain's military bases in Cyprus. But Col al-Dabbagh said that he doubted that Iraq under Saddam had this capability. "I know nothing about this. My information was only about what we could do on the battlefield." Col al-Dabbagh, who received two death threats from Saddam loyalists days after his interview with the Telegraph, said that he was willing to travel to London to give evidence to the Hutton inquiry. "I was there and I knew what Saddam was doing before the war," he said. An official close to the Hutton inquiry said: "What Mr Dabbagh has to say sounds very interesting and it is certainly new evidence that we will want to look at."