DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia and other
petro-powerhouses of the Gulf for years encouraged a flow of private
cash to Sunni rebels in Syria. Now an al-Qaida breakaway group that
benefited from some of that funding has stormed across a wide swath of
Iraq, and Gulf nations fear its extremism could be a threat to them as
well.
Those countries are trying to put the brakes on the network
of private fundraisers sending money to the rebel movement, hoping to
halt financing going to the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant.
Fundraising clerics complain that they are being told not to collect money for any Syrian rebels.
"Right
now there is a siege. All the Gulf countries that were supportive have
barred that support," Kuwaiti cleric Nabil al-Awadi angrily said on his
TV program.
At the same time, the Gulf states sharply oppose any
U.S. military assistance to Iraq’s Shiite-led government aimed at
stopping the extremists’ rapid advance. And they are furious at the
possibility that Washington could cooperate with top rival Iran to help
Iraq.
Their stance reflects the complex tangle of national
rivalries and sectarian enmities in the region. Sunni-ruled Saudi
Arabia, along with its Gulf allies, have had the primary goal of
stopping the influence of mainly Shiite Iran in the Middle East, and
they deeply oppose Iran’s ally, Iraqi Shiite Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, whom they accuse of discriminating against his country’s
Sunni minority.
Gulf states are torn over the Islamic State’s
victories. While they would welcome a more Sunni-friendly government in
Iraq, they also fear Islamic radicals might eventually turn their
weapons on the Gulf’s pro-Western monarchies. Gulf leaders also worry
Iran will have an even bigger role in Iraq — a scenario already
beginning to play out with top Iranian military figures in Baghdad
helping organize the army.
In phone calls this week with the
leaders or foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry heard a chorus
of disapproval for any kind of U.S. military operation to help
al-Maliki, such as airstrikes or train-and-equip missions, according to
U.S. officials familiar with the conversations. The officials spoke on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly
discuss the private exchanges.
Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia’s
Cabinet put out a statement blaming the insurgent explosion on
al-Maliki’s government’s marginalization of the Sunni minority — "the
sectarian and exclusionary policies practiced in Iraq over the past
years."
Iraq’s Cabinet replied Tuesday with a furious statement of
its own, accusing Saudi Arabia of fueling the Islamic States’ rise and
of "appeasement to terrorism." It said it holds the kingdom accountable
for "the resulting crimes, which are tantamount to genocide."
The
Islamic State’s surge in Iraq is in part a blowback from the Gulf
countries’ policies in neighboring Syria, where they have backed the
Sunni-led rebellion in hopes of toppling another of Iran’s allies,
President Bashar Assad.
With government consent, influential and
even state-linked Sunni clerics in the Gulf in recent years urged men to
join rebels in Syria and drummed up donations for the Syrian cause in
campaigns in mosques, online and on TV. The funds went to numerous
Syrian rebel factions, but some are believed to have gone to extremist
ones like the Islamic State.
David Cohen, of the U.S. Treasury
Department, put the amounts raised in the hundreds of millions. Some of
that went to legitimate humanitarian purposes, but much went the rebels,
including extremist groups, Cohen — who is the undersecretary for
terrorism and financial intelligence — said in a speech earlier this
year. He did not provide more precise figures.
He said Kuwait has
become "the epicenter of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria," and
money is being raised in Kuwait and Qatar for the Islamic State as well
al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front. The U.S. State
Department said Monday there is no evidence of Gulf governments
themselves funding Islamic State.
The head of the Western-backed
Syrian opposition coalition, Ahmad Jarba, angrily denounced the
international community for failing to support more moderate rebels from
the Free Syrian Army and implicitly accused Gulf nations of backing the
Islamic State in a speech to a gathering of leaders from Islamic
countries in the Saudi city of Jiddah on Tuesday.
"Some leaders
believed they could use terrorists as hired mercenaries but suddenly
found themselves stuck with terrorists who used the opportunity to
advance their own interests and agenda," Jarba said. Free Syrian Army
fighters have been battling Islamic State forces in eastern Syria,
trying to hold back their advances there.
The Islamic State has
emerged as one of the most radical factions in Syria’s civil war and its
priority, more than ousting Assad, has been to achieve its dream of a
cross-border "Islamic emirate" in the region, starting with Iraq and
Syria. Even before the Islamic State swept over Iraq’s second-largest
city, Mosul, a week ago, Gulf nations began to worry the group is too
uncontrollable, too ambitious and a potential threat to their rulers,
who al-Qaida and other radicals have long said should be toppled.
The
Islamic State "not only targets Kuwait, but the entire region," Kuwait
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Al-Jarallah said, adding that Gulf
nations must "protect our internal front."
Governments began
reining in their support for rebels earlier this year. Saudi Arabia has
warned its citizens they will be prosecuted if they fight abroad and
labeled the Islamic State a terrorist organization.
In Qatar, one
of the most prominent clerics supporting Syrian fighters, Sheik Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, has not been on the pulpit for months. In Kuwait, Nayef
al-Ajmi, who held the posts of justice minister and Islamic endowments
minister, resigned in May after the U.S. Treasury accused him of having a
history of promoting jihad in Syria, though the government insisted his
activities were "charitable, religious and humanitarian."
Al-Awadi,
who is part of a collective fundraising campaign for Syria by Kuwaiti
charities, has been accused by other prominent clerics in the United
Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia of using donations to fund the Islamic
State.
"Pressure has been put on me to stop collecting aid to
Syria," he said, adding that directives from the Kuwaiti government
"were clear: Syria is over." But he said money is still finding its way
through back channels.
Toby Matthiesen, author of "Sectarian Gulf"
and a research fellow at Cambridge University, said that for now Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf countries are focused on "regime survival" and
countering Iran — and "playing all the cards they can in this regional
sectarian war trumps everything else."
But the repercussions are
unpredictable. The Islamic State blitz could exacerbate sectarian
tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in flashpoints like Bahrain and
eastern Saudi Arabia, the heartland of the kingdom’s Shiite minority. It
could also embolden al-Qaida-inspired fighters against the Gulf
countries.
The Gulf polices supporting rebels in Iraq and Syria
have been a "double-edged sword," Matthiesen said. "My prediction is
that in the mid to long term, this will turn out to have been a bad
policy."
___
Lee reported from Washington. Associated Press
writers Hussain al-Qatari in Kuwait City and Abdulla al-Rebhy in Doha,
Qatar contributed to this report.