Nickdfresh
05-21-2005, 12:50 PM
Ties that Bind: An Update on Saudi Arabia
Two noteworthy articles that demand my attention today-- "Did the Saudis Know About 9-11?" by Mark Follman and "The New Great Game" by Lutz Kleveman.
In Follman’s article, he discusses the content of Gerald Posner’s book "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11." Most interesting is Posner’s allegation that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan knew about the attacks that would hit New York City.
What I appreciate in Follman’s article is a balanced perspective. He contrasts Posner’s views with others who suggest that Posner’s theory is mere conspiracy; "one analyst suggests the Zubaydah charges could be part of a disinformation campaign launched by neoconservatives who believe that the U.S. should decisively break with Saudi Arabia, which they regard as a corrupt, terrorist-supporting state," Follman writes.
Despite the contrasting views, I feel Posner has some great points that deserve further explanation from the Administration.
One of the allegations Posner puts forth is that "Top figures in the Saudi and Pakistani governments had been directly assisting Osama bin Laden for years and knew al-Qaida was going to strike America on Sept. 11. Posner cites two unnamed U.S. government sources, both of whom he asserts are ‘in a position to know,’ who he said gave him separate, corroborating reports. One source is from the CIA and the other is a senior Bush administration official ‘inside the executive branch,’ [Posner] told Salon in an interview."
Regarding the top figures in the Saudi government, Possner writes the following:
... four Saudi princes and the head of Pakistan's air force were deeply involved with Osama bin Laden for years, some of them meeting with him well after al-Qaida began its terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas in the mid-1990s...
How did this intelligence come about?
According to Posner's account, two Arab-American special forces personnel posed as Saudis and took over the questioning of [Abu] Zubaydah at the secret location in Afghanistan. CIA officials observing from another room watched Zubaydah's reaction with amazement: He was visibly relieved to be in "Saudi" hands, and started talking. He named three Saudi princes, recited their private phone numbers, and told his interrogators to call one prince, saying, "He will tell you what to do." That man was King Fahd's nephew Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a London publishing magnate and horse racing aficionado whose thoroughbred War Emblem won the 2002 Kentucky Derby. Zubaydah made clear he was under the protection -- and direction -- of the princes. During the questioning, Zubaydah also fingered Pakistani air force chief Mushaf Ali Mir, suspected to have close ties with some of the most pro-Islamist elements within Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.:mad:
What is most strange, and what Possner suggests makes Zubaydah’s information legitimate, is what occurred after Zubaydah’s interrogation.
Shortly after the U.S. inquiry, on July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed, age 43, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. On the way to Ahmed's funeral the next day, Prince Sultan al-Saud was killed in a single-car crash. A week later the third prince Zubaydah had fingered, Fahd al-Kabir , was found dead 55 miles east of Riyadh -- according to the Saudi royal court he'd "died of thirst" while traveling in the summer heat. Seven months later Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife and 15 of his closest associates died in a plane crash near Islamabad. The plane had recently passed maintenance inspection, and the weather was clear. According to the Asia Times, "Reports at the time said that the pilot had been changed just minutes before takeoff."
"Zubaydah's interrogation leaves some questions unanswered which I think will eventually be run to ground," he says. "He's recanted his story. He's said he just picked these names out of a hat to spare himself some torture. But is it possible that he picked out three Saudi princes and the head of the Pakistani air force, and then they all just had the bad luck of dying -- the three Saudis within days of each other -- after the U.S. shared the information? And from a blood clot, a car wreck, dehydration and a plane crash? I guess technically it's possible. People do win the lottery. But as I view it, it's extremely unlikely."
The only one of the supposed conspirators of 9/11, revealed by Zubaydah, to survive is Prince Turki. Follman explains Possner’s information about him:
Turki, in fact, did have friendly contacts with radical Islamist groups, including Afghan jihadis fighting the Soviets in the 1980s and later with the Taliban, over a protracted period of time. "If anyone made payments to bin Laden and al-Qaida, it would be Turki, given his connections to them through the '80s," says Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer who did extensive tours in the Mideast and Central Asia during his 21-year career and is the author of "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." "Turki arranged for things like sending cars to the Taliban, and free gas for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he supported the Islamic movement in Sudan -- it was his job. But I've never seen any evidence that Turki himself was complicit in terrorism."
The most intriguing and controversial claim, however, involved none other than the alleged key Saudi conspirator, former intelligence chief Prince Turki. Turki claimed his intelligence service warned the CIA in late 1999 and early 2000 about two al-Qaida members, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were later among the Sept. 11 hijackers. "What we told them was these people were on our watch list from previous activities of al-Qaida, in both the embassy bombings and attempts to smuggle arms into the kingdom in 1997," Turki told the Associated Press.
The CIA denied receiving any such information from Saudi Arabia until after 9/11, and Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., admitted that "no documents" were sent. But Turki insisted his agency communicated the warning to the CIA, at least by word of mouth.
The New Great Game
The second article I want to comment on was published today on The Guardian, written by Lutz Kleveman. Being from Britain, it seems to be more forthcoming in information from their American compatriots–seeming to shed more light on this Administrations mission in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea region.
Here are some quotes from this article:
As part of the Afghan campaign, the US air force set up a base near the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Brawny pioneers in desert camouflages were erecting hundreds of tents for nearly 3,000 soldiers. I asked their commander, a wiry brigadier general, if and when the troops would leave Kyrgyzstan (and its neighbour Uzbekistan, where Washington set up a second airbase). "There is no time limit," he replied. "We will pull out only when all al-Qaeda cells have been eradicated."
Today, the Americans are still there and many of the tents have been replaced by concrete buildings. Bush has used his massive military build-up in Central Asia to seal the cold war victory against Russia, to contain Chinese influence and to tighten the noose around Iran. Most importantly, however, Washington - supported by the Blair government - is exploiting the "war on terror" to further American oil interests in the Caspian region. But this geopolitical gamble involving thuggish dictators and corrupt Saudi oil sheiks is only likely to produce more terrorists.
For much of the past two years, I have researched the links between conflict in Central Asia and US oil interests. I travelled thousands of kilometres, meeting with generals, oil bosses, warlords and diplomats. They are all players in a geostrategic struggle - the new Great Game.
***
The main spoils in today's Great Game are Caspian oil and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 110 to 243bn barrels of crude, worth up to $4 trillion. According to the US department of energy, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone could sit on more than 130bn barrels, more than three times the US's reserves. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and BP have already invested more than $30bn in new production facilities.
This interesting quote regarding Saudi Arabia–
Many people in Washington are particularly uncomfortable with the growing power of Saudi Arabia. There is a fear that radical Islamist groups could topple the corrupt Saud dynasty and stop the flow of oil to "infidels". To stave off political turmoil, the regime in Riyadh funds the radical Islamic Wahabbi sect that foments terror against Americans around the world. In a desperate effort to decrease its dependence on Saudi oil sheiks, the US seeks to control the Caspian oil resources. However, fierce conflicts have broken out over pipeline routes. Russia, still regarding itself as imperial overlord of its former colonies, promotes pipeline routes across its territory, including Chechnya, in the north Caucasus. China, the increasingly oil-dependent waking giant in the region, wants to build eastbound pipelines from Kazakhstan. Iran is offering its pipeline network via the Persian Gulf.
By contrast, Washington champions two pipelines that would circumvent both Russia and Iran. One would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. Construction has already begun for a $3.8bn pipeline from Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, via neighbouring Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. BP, its main operator, has invested billions in oil-rich Azerbaijan, and can count on support from the Bush administration, which recently stationed about 500 elite troops in war-torn Georgia.
Kleveman’s assessment and possible effects of this new Great Game–
Besides raising the spectre of inter-state conflict, the Bush administration is wooing some of the region's most tyrannical dictators. One of them is Islam Karimov, the ex-communist ruler of Uzbekistan, whose regime brutally suppresses any opposition and Islamic groups. "Such people must be shot in the head. If necessary, I will shoot them myself," Karimov once told his rubber-stamp parliament.
Although the US state department acknowledges that Uzbek security forces use "torture as a routine investigation technique", Washington last year gave the Karimov regime $500m in aid and rent payments for the US air base in Chanabad. The state department also quietly removed Uzbekistan from its annual list of countries where freedom of religion is under threat. The British government seems to support Washington's policy, as Whitehall recently recalled its ambassador Craig Murray from Tashkent after he openly decried Uzbekistan's abysmal human rights record.
***
Worse is to come: disgusted with the US's cynical alliances with their corrupt and despotic rulers, the region's impoverished populaces increasingly embrace virulent anti-Americanism and militant Islam. As in Iraq, America's brazen energy imperialism in Central Asia jeopardises the few successes in the war on terror because the resentment it causes makes it ever easier for terrorist groups to recruit angry young men. It is all very well to pursue oil interests, but is it worth mortgaging our security to do so?
Nietzsche said that "It is our future that lays down the law of our today." In light of the information I read today, and in light of America’s aggressiveness world-wide, it’s clearly noticeable that this Administration has made a mockery of international law. The future they are laying for our children is bleak and possibly ravaged by terror. And just to think, it appears it’s because of oil after all.
From: Michael Parker's Journal (blog) (http://blogs.salon.com/0002090/2003/10/20.html)
Two noteworthy articles that demand my attention today-- "Did the Saudis Know About 9-11?" by Mark Follman and "The New Great Game" by Lutz Kleveman.
In Follman’s article, he discusses the content of Gerald Posner’s book "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11." Most interesting is Posner’s allegation that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan knew about the attacks that would hit New York City.
What I appreciate in Follman’s article is a balanced perspective. He contrasts Posner’s views with others who suggest that Posner’s theory is mere conspiracy; "one analyst suggests the Zubaydah charges could be part of a disinformation campaign launched by neoconservatives who believe that the U.S. should decisively break with Saudi Arabia, which they regard as a corrupt, terrorist-supporting state," Follman writes.
Despite the contrasting views, I feel Posner has some great points that deserve further explanation from the Administration.
One of the allegations Posner puts forth is that "Top figures in the Saudi and Pakistani governments had been directly assisting Osama bin Laden for years and knew al-Qaida was going to strike America on Sept. 11. Posner cites two unnamed U.S. government sources, both of whom he asserts are ‘in a position to know,’ who he said gave him separate, corroborating reports. One source is from the CIA and the other is a senior Bush administration official ‘inside the executive branch,’ [Posner] told Salon in an interview."
Regarding the top figures in the Saudi government, Possner writes the following:
... four Saudi princes and the head of Pakistan's air force were deeply involved with Osama bin Laden for years, some of them meeting with him well after al-Qaida began its terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas in the mid-1990s...
How did this intelligence come about?
According to Posner's account, two Arab-American special forces personnel posed as Saudis and took over the questioning of [Abu] Zubaydah at the secret location in Afghanistan. CIA officials observing from another room watched Zubaydah's reaction with amazement: He was visibly relieved to be in "Saudi" hands, and started talking. He named three Saudi princes, recited their private phone numbers, and told his interrogators to call one prince, saying, "He will tell you what to do." That man was King Fahd's nephew Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a London publishing magnate and horse racing aficionado whose thoroughbred War Emblem won the 2002 Kentucky Derby. Zubaydah made clear he was under the protection -- and direction -- of the princes. During the questioning, Zubaydah also fingered Pakistani air force chief Mushaf Ali Mir, suspected to have close ties with some of the most pro-Islamist elements within Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.:mad:
What is most strange, and what Possner suggests makes Zubaydah’s information legitimate, is what occurred after Zubaydah’s interrogation.
Shortly after the U.S. inquiry, on July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed, age 43, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. On the way to Ahmed's funeral the next day, Prince Sultan al-Saud was killed in a single-car crash. A week later the third prince Zubaydah had fingered, Fahd al-Kabir , was found dead 55 miles east of Riyadh -- according to the Saudi royal court he'd "died of thirst" while traveling in the summer heat. Seven months later Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife and 15 of his closest associates died in a plane crash near Islamabad. The plane had recently passed maintenance inspection, and the weather was clear. According to the Asia Times, "Reports at the time said that the pilot had been changed just minutes before takeoff."
"Zubaydah's interrogation leaves some questions unanswered which I think will eventually be run to ground," he says. "He's recanted his story. He's said he just picked these names out of a hat to spare himself some torture. But is it possible that he picked out three Saudi princes and the head of the Pakistani air force, and then they all just had the bad luck of dying -- the three Saudis within days of each other -- after the U.S. shared the information? And from a blood clot, a car wreck, dehydration and a plane crash? I guess technically it's possible. People do win the lottery. But as I view it, it's extremely unlikely."
The only one of the supposed conspirators of 9/11, revealed by Zubaydah, to survive is Prince Turki. Follman explains Possner’s information about him:
Turki, in fact, did have friendly contacts with radical Islamist groups, including Afghan jihadis fighting the Soviets in the 1980s and later with the Taliban, over a protracted period of time. "If anyone made payments to bin Laden and al-Qaida, it would be Turki, given his connections to them through the '80s," says Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer who did extensive tours in the Mideast and Central Asia during his 21-year career and is the author of "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." "Turki arranged for things like sending cars to the Taliban, and free gas for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he supported the Islamic movement in Sudan -- it was his job. But I've never seen any evidence that Turki himself was complicit in terrorism."
The most intriguing and controversial claim, however, involved none other than the alleged key Saudi conspirator, former intelligence chief Prince Turki. Turki claimed his intelligence service warned the CIA in late 1999 and early 2000 about two al-Qaida members, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were later among the Sept. 11 hijackers. "What we told them was these people were on our watch list from previous activities of al-Qaida, in both the embassy bombings and attempts to smuggle arms into the kingdom in 1997," Turki told the Associated Press.
The CIA denied receiving any such information from Saudi Arabia until after 9/11, and Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., admitted that "no documents" were sent. But Turki insisted his agency communicated the warning to the CIA, at least by word of mouth.
The New Great Game
The second article I want to comment on was published today on The Guardian, written by Lutz Kleveman. Being from Britain, it seems to be more forthcoming in information from their American compatriots–seeming to shed more light on this Administrations mission in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea region.
Here are some quotes from this article:
As part of the Afghan campaign, the US air force set up a base near the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Brawny pioneers in desert camouflages were erecting hundreds of tents for nearly 3,000 soldiers. I asked their commander, a wiry brigadier general, if and when the troops would leave Kyrgyzstan (and its neighbour Uzbekistan, where Washington set up a second airbase). "There is no time limit," he replied. "We will pull out only when all al-Qaeda cells have been eradicated."
Today, the Americans are still there and many of the tents have been replaced by concrete buildings. Bush has used his massive military build-up in Central Asia to seal the cold war victory against Russia, to contain Chinese influence and to tighten the noose around Iran. Most importantly, however, Washington - supported by the Blair government - is exploiting the "war on terror" to further American oil interests in the Caspian region. But this geopolitical gamble involving thuggish dictators and corrupt Saudi oil sheiks is only likely to produce more terrorists.
For much of the past two years, I have researched the links between conflict in Central Asia and US oil interests. I travelled thousands of kilometres, meeting with generals, oil bosses, warlords and diplomats. They are all players in a geostrategic struggle - the new Great Game.
***
The main spoils in today's Great Game are Caspian oil and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 110 to 243bn barrels of crude, worth up to $4 trillion. According to the US department of energy, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone could sit on more than 130bn barrels, more than three times the US's reserves. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and BP have already invested more than $30bn in new production facilities.
This interesting quote regarding Saudi Arabia–
Many people in Washington are particularly uncomfortable with the growing power of Saudi Arabia. There is a fear that radical Islamist groups could topple the corrupt Saud dynasty and stop the flow of oil to "infidels". To stave off political turmoil, the regime in Riyadh funds the radical Islamic Wahabbi sect that foments terror against Americans around the world. In a desperate effort to decrease its dependence on Saudi oil sheiks, the US seeks to control the Caspian oil resources. However, fierce conflicts have broken out over pipeline routes. Russia, still regarding itself as imperial overlord of its former colonies, promotes pipeline routes across its territory, including Chechnya, in the north Caucasus. China, the increasingly oil-dependent waking giant in the region, wants to build eastbound pipelines from Kazakhstan. Iran is offering its pipeline network via the Persian Gulf.
By contrast, Washington champions two pipelines that would circumvent both Russia and Iran. One would run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. Construction has already begun for a $3.8bn pipeline from Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, via neighbouring Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. BP, its main operator, has invested billions in oil-rich Azerbaijan, and can count on support from the Bush administration, which recently stationed about 500 elite troops in war-torn Georgia.
Kleveman’s assessment and possible effects of this new Great Game–
Besides raising the spectre of inter-state conflict, the Bush administration is wooing some of the region's most tyrannical dictators. One of them is Islam Karimov, the ex-communist ruler of Uzbekistan, whose regime brutally suppresses any opposition and Islamic groups. "Such people must be shot in the head. If necessary, I will shoot them myself," Karimov once told his rubber-stamp parliament.
Although the US state department acknowledges that Uzbek security forces use "torture as a routine investigation technique", Washington last year gave the Karimov regime $500m in aid and rent payments for the US air base in Chanabad. The state department also quietly removed Uzbekistan from its annual list of countries where freedom of religion is under threat. The British government seems to support Washington's policy, as Whitehall recently recalled its ambassador Craig Murray from Tashkent after he openly decried Uzbekistan's abysmal human rights record.
***
Worse is to come: disgusted with the US's cynical alliances with their corrupt and despotic rulers, the region's impoverished populaces increasingly embrace virulent anti-Americanism and militant Islam. As in Iraq, America's brazen energy imperialism in Central Asia jeopardises the few successes in the war on terror because the resentment it causes makes it ever easier for terrorist groups to recruit angry young men. It is all very well to pursue oil interests, but is it worth mortgaging our security to do so?
Nietzsche said that "It is our future that lays down the law of our today." In light of the information I read today, and in light of America’s aggressiveness world-wide, it’s clearly noticeable that this Administration has made a mockery of international law. The future they are laying for our children is bleak and possibly ravaged by terror. And just to think, it appears it’s because of oil after all.
From: Michael Parker's Journal (blog) (http://blogs.salon.com/0002090/2003/10/20.html)