Sawsan Al Shaer
How could you ignore the League of the Righteous bandits, the Mahdi, Al Sadr, Badr, and Al Abbas armies, Ashtar and Al Quds Brigades and dozens of others from the Middle East where you are looking for those who stand behind “terrorism”?
By Sawsan Al Shaer
Mr Thomas Friedman, the strategic errors committed by the Obama administration on account of American-Gulf relations in general, and American-Saudi relations in particular, are far greater than anyone can ever imagine. Please do not worsen the situation by misleading us with your recent article in the New York Times. You have twisted the truth so much so that we can no longer recognise it!
In your article Mr Friedman, it was not poison in honey that you mixed in order to praise Iranian terrorists in the region and put all the blame on Saudi Arabia, just a day before the visit of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, to Iran. You have forged history, stated information out of context and completely reversed the truth!
When you mentioned Shia terrorist organisations in the Middle East, you could only remember Hezbollah? And according to you, the single crime that it committed was in Beirut in 1983, when 63 Americans were killed!
You have managed to ignore the dozens of Shia organisations that run amok today despite the fact that the death toll is in the thousands. Is it because they are Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, Yemeni and Bahraini Arabs? Did you drop them from your account just because they were killed by Shias? It is obvious that polishing Iran’s terrorist image has become an urgent requirement for you now!
How could you ignore the League of the Righteous bandits, the Mahdi, Al Sadr, Badr, and Al Abbas armies, Ashtar and
Al Quds Brigades and dozens others from the Middle East where you are looking for those who stand behind “terrorism”? Is the Iranian nuclear agreement so important that it can cloak the images of death, destruction and bodies burnt and left behind by these Shia groups?
When you talked about financing terrorist organisations and those who stand behind them, you acknowledged that the Saudi oil money that funded Sunni organisations, so to say, came from individuals and not the state budget?
You didn’t take into account that the Saudi state is at war with these people, locally and internationally.
It chases them everywhere and there is a special reward for those who disclose their whereabouts. Saudi Arabia also cooperates internationally with the US in the war on terror.
On the other hand, how did you forget Mr Friedman, to tell the American reader who was providing funds to the Shia terrorist organisations, which are numerous, such as Hezbollah? Of course, it is the Iranian state which openly and informally declares logistical support to these organisations through operating forces on the ground.
However, you jumped out in breach of the foundations of this profession’s ethics and code of conduct when you twisted facts over the major truth, which was even embodied by Hollywood movies, about the role of the CIA in the establishment, funding and training of (Sunni) organisations since the eighties before this plot bounced back. Would Mr Friedman deny the CIA’s role in the training of the Afghan mujahidin?
If you stop at the 9/11 tragedy, you would have to go 20 years back in time to know who fed the beast.
The American support for these organisations has not been disrupted, but the fingerprints are clear at every site where these groups currently have taken ground, in an attempt to shape the New Middle East Project.
Who paved the way for Al Qaeda in Libya, for example, to cross under American forces’ sight to reach Ras Lanuf and Nofaliya, where they constituted the centre for Al Qaeda guerrilla operations. This is along with other terrorist organisations inside the camps that are scattered along the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea and are preparing to enter Sirte. On the other hand, who covered up what happened in Bab Al Azizia and the Green Square?
Who opened the gate for the terrorist organisations in Mosul and Raqaa, which were supported by large numbers of combat weapons that were seen with the naked eye and filmed by Aljazeera television, as it also filmed the speeches of their leader in the mosques? On the same day, your satellites were conveniently disrupted in order not to transmit the speeches.
Who paved the way, punished the authorities, ousted the regimes, and removed the bushes to open the way for those organisations to grow and stretch in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria? Was it not so with the help of US intelligence or at least by the indirect support it gave to them by overlooking their actions?
The fingerprints are clear wherever Al Qaeda, IS or any other organisation described as Sunni comes into the spotlight. Such organisations are hunted down by the Saudi state that is losing the valuable lives of its citizens in its fight against terrorism.
We do not need to wait for the release of Wikileaks to know the extent of the involvement of US intelligence in supporting these organisations.
Mr Friedman, if you are really concerned with the elimination of terrorism, all types of terrorism, you should be direct and clear, so as not to add insult to injury.
