Faced with greater public awareness of its role promoting Sunni jihadist terror, Saudi Arabia has announced a 34-nation “anti-terrorism coalition,” but it may be just window-dressing for Riyadh’s anti-Shiite agenda, not a serious move against extremism, an issue addressed by ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
The leaders of Saudi Arabia in particular, but also several other participants in the 34-nation anti-terrorism coalition that the Saudis put together and was announced this week, want to tell us that they are against terrorism and that they are pulling their weight in opposing it. Beyond such messaging, this new group of states – which mostly are Muslim-majority nations and all of which are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – is unlikely to amount to much.
This is not to say that such a grouping couldn’t contribute to counterterrorism in useful ways. The potential contributions include military contributions, which for better or for worse are what immediately get thought of when people think about counterterrorism, and which have been a focus of a trip into the Muslim world this week by U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Majority Muslim countries tend to carry less of the historical and ideological baggage that Western countries carry when applying military force in other Muslim countries.
Saudi King Salman meets with President Barack Obama at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
To the extent that the new grouping encourages some practical sharing of counterterrorist information that might also be useful, although the most usable such information gets shared in channels much more restricted than a 34-nation group. And certainly when it comes to aspects of counterterrorism that usually come under the heading of the battle of ideas, the West is at even more of a disadvantage compared to what Muslim majority countries could do.
But as for exactly how the potential will be converted into actual and useful action, one’s hopes should be tempered by the vagueness of the declared program of the grouping and of what the Saudi foreign…