Saudi Arabia Supported Al Qaeda Before and After But Not On 9/11?

May 6, 2016 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The BBC in its 2004 article, "Al-Qaeda's origins and links," would frankly admit that (emphasis added):

Al-Qaeda, meaning "the base", was created in 1989 as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden and his colleagues began looking for new jihads. 

The organisation grew out of the network of Arab volunteers who had gone to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight under the banner of Islam against Soviet Communism. 

During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.

The BBC's article merely reports what is accepted as common knowledge and documented fact regarding the inception of this now enduring, notorious and shape-shifting terrorist organization... that it was the initial creation of joint US-Saudi interests.

This fact would carry with it an ironic sting in 2001 when Al Qaeda, allegedly led by Bin Laden, struck the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, killing nearly 3,000 people and precipitating now over 15 years of global war. 

Without doubt, the US and Saudi Arabia created Al Qaeda, and many believe still control the terrorist organization citing that the immense material support it and its subsidiaries require along with the virtual impunity they enjoy as they operate worldwide could only be due to substantial and influential state sponsorship.

Many have postulated that because the 15 years of war following September 11, 2001 have benefited only a handful of special interests both in the US and Europe, as well as in the Persian Gulf, that it cannot be ruled out that these interests were also somehow involved in the attacks that justified this enduring war to begin with.

At least one center of power involved in Al Qaeda's creation, has been called out by members of the United States government as having continued to support the terrorist organization, including on September 11, 2001. Riyadh.

Before, After, and During 9/11... 

Recently making headlines, the US Congress is attempting to make it possible for victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Riyadh over its role in supporting the terrorists allegedly behind them.

15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were Saudis, 2 were from Saudi Arabia's close ally, the United Arab Emirates, another from Egypt (a Muslim Brotherhood member) and the last from Lebanon. Despite the identities of the hijackers and the obvious ties to both Persian Gulf despots and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood they openly back, the United States opted to first invade Afghanistan, then inexplicably Iraq in the wake of the attacks.

The Independent's article, "Saudi Arabia, 9/11, and what we know about the secret papers that could ignite a diplomatic war," would elaborate, stating:

The US Congress is considering legislation which would enable the families of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, presented by the West as its most valuable ally in the Middle East, over alleged links with al-Qaeda terrorists who carried out the attacks on New York and Washington. 

The issue had cast a long shadow over the recent visit of President Barack Obama to Riyadh, with the Saudis threatening to sell off $750bn of American assets they hold if the bill is passed by Congress. 

The classified pages are in a file titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive Narrative Matters”, which have never been published from the findings of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the attacks which killed 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others.

It is a fact that the US and Saudi Arabia jointly created Al Qaeda in the late 1980s.  It is also clear that something is being hidden about Saudi Arabia's role regarding Al Qaeda during the September 11, 2001 attacks.

What is also clear is that since September 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia has continued arming and funding the terrorist group everywhere from Iraq to Libya to Yemen to Syria. In fact, a US Army report investing records related to foreign fighters battling and killing US soldiers during the US occupation of Iraq would reveal that these foreign fighters were primarily from, and backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and those currently labeled "rebels" backed by the US and Saudi Arabia in Syria.

Image: Many of the Americans killed in Iraq were victims Saudi-backed terrorists. Despite this fact, Saudi Arabia remains one of Washington's closest allies. 

West Point's Combating Terrorism Center (CTC)'s report, "BOMBERS, BANK ACCOUNTS AND BLEEDOUT al-Qa'ida's Road In and Out of Iraq," would reveal some very disturbing facts about one of America's oldest and staunchest allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, and the role Riyadh was playing in the trafficking of arms and fighters from across the region, and into Iraq where they would inevitable clash with, and kill US service members. 

The report would establish that Saudi Arabia (41%) and Libya (19% and more specifically, from those regions associated with the so-called "rebellion" in 2011) supplied the most foreign fighters to Iraq.  The report also concluded that 46% of all funding came from Saudi nationals, and noted specifically that Saudi Arabia at the very least had little to gain from stemming the flow of its nationals into the ranks of Al Qaeda in Iraq because of what the CTC report claimed was a desire to limit the "perceived influence of Iran."

Similar arguments are made to defend Saudi funding and arming of Al Qaeda in Syria today, which is far less ambiguous in nature than the CTC report makes out its role during the US occupation of Iraq.

Saudi Arabia Supports Al Qaeda Today 

The Independent would report in a May 2015 article titled, "Turkey and Saudi Arabia alarm the West by backing Islamist extremists the Americans had bombed in Syria,"  that:

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are actively supporting a hardline coalition of Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s regime that includes al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, in a move that has alarmed Western governments. 

The two countries are focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that includes Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist rival to Isis which shares many of its aspirations for a fundamentalist caliphate.

And as Turkey and Saudi Arabia openly arm and fund a terrorist organization listed and sanctioned by the US State Department, the United States government and its closest European allies continue to ship arms to Saudi Arabia and provide it with both political and military protection on unprecedented scales. In fact, one weapons deal struck between the US and Saudi Arabia constituted the largest ever in US history.

The Guardian reported in its article, "Barack Obama to authorise record $60bn Saudi arms sale," that: 

Barack Obama is to go ahead with plans to sell Saudi Arabia advanced aircraft and other weapons worth up to $60bn (£39bn), the biggest arms deal in US history, in a strategy of shoring up Gulf Arab allies to face any military threat from Iran.

With the US and Saudi Arabia having jointly created Al Qaeda, and with Saudi Arabia continuing to this day to openly arm and support the terrorist group worldwide with America's enthusiastic ($60bn) approval, it is probably not just US-Saudi relations being protected by keeping the missing pages implicating Saudi Arabia in the September 11, 2001 attacks a secret, it is probably the existence of the entire Washington and Wall Street ruling class as well that is at stake.

Image: The US claims to be "shocked" by Saudi Arabia's support of Al Qaeda in Syria, yet in reality, it is a mere continuation of what Al Qaeda began as in the 1980s to begin with, a joint US-Saudi tool to project geopolitical power globally where conventional forces could not go. 

Regardless of whether the papers are released, or what their contents may hold, that the US is still to this day involved in propping up a regime openly arming and funding an organization responsible for the worst terrorist attack in US history is an indictment not only the moral bankruptcy of the United States, but of the faltering narrative that it is a force fighting terrorism worldwide rather than one spreading it to the four corners of the globe, and one that must be exposed and stopped.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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