{"id":389779,"date":"2018-12-19T23:08:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T22:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=389779"},"modified":"2018-12-19T23:08:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T22:08:09","slug":"which-nations-are-state-sponsors-of-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/which-nations-are-state-sponsors-of-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Nations Are State Sponsors of Terrorism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On 30 December 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a cable (subsequently\u00a0released to the public by WikiLeaks<\/span><\/a>) to America\u2019s Ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Pakistan, headlined, \u201cTerrorist Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTerrorism finance\u201d is what\u2019s generally referred-to by the official phrase \u201cstate sponsorship of terrorism.\u201d This cable from Clinton contained the U.S. Government\u2019s confidential list of state sponsors of terrorism. Her cable discussed exactly how bad the situation was in each of those countries. The supply of money to jihadists is what makes a government a \u201cstate sponsor of terrorism.\u201d Supplying money to jihadists is illegal in almost every country, including the United States. And very little even of private money is paid from Americans to jihadists. However, the U.S. Government hides its own quite substantial supply of weapons<\/i> to jihadists. Here are some examples of that: On 24 March 2013, the New York Times<\/i> bannered \u201cArms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and reported that \u201cFrom\u00a0offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped\u00a0the Arab governments shop for weapons,\u201d and that \u201c\u2018A\u00a0conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500\u00a0tons of military equipment,\u2019 said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm\u00a0International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms\u00a0transfers.\u201d The U.S. Government tried to hide its involvement in this, by doing it through allied \u201cArab governments,\u201d which were named in this news-report: \u201cQatar and Saudi Arabia had\u00a0been shipping military materials via Turkey,\u201d and all four of these Governments (U.S., Sauds, Turkey, and Qatar) were trying to overthrow Syria\u2019s Government. Then, on 8 September 2014, AFP headlined \u201cIslamic State fighters using US arms: study\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and they reported that the U.S. Government was supplying ISIS. On 1 September 2017, Russian Television reported<\/span><\/a> that the U.S. Government was secretly supplying weapons to ISIS and that an anti-Assad fighter had even quit the CIA-backed New Syrian Army because of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, these supplies were only<\/i> weapons, not money. For example: the study cited by AFP \u201cdocumented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from\u00a0militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.\u201d \u201cMilitants\u201d were also called \u201crebels,\u201d and they had U.S. weapons, which were seized by U.S.-backed \u201cKurdish forces,\u201d whom the U.S. Government called \u201crebels,\u201d but who thought that \u201crebels\u201d didn\u2019t<\/i> include ISIS, and that ISIS wasn\u2019t also being armed by the U.S. Government. They were mistaken. In fact, on 2 July 2017, the great investigative journalist Dilyana Geytandzhieva headlined \u201c350 diplomatic flights carry weapons for terrorists\u00a0Azerbaijan\u2019s Silk Way Airlines transports weapons with diplomatic clearance for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Bills of lading, etc., were presented as documentation, for the CIA\u2019s secret operation to arm the jihadist groups that were trying to overthrow and replace Syria\u2019s Government.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, these were not supplies of money<\/i> to the \u2018rebels.\u2019 Only the supply of money is what makes a government a \u201cstate sponsor of terrorism.\u201d And that was her cable\u2019s topic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Secretary of State Clinton told those Ambassadors to those Muslim-majority lands, to make clear to the given nation\u2019s aristocrats, that, under the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, there would no longer be any allowance for continuation of their donations to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups that attack the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her cable opened, \u201cThis is an action request cable,\u201d meaning that the operations of the local U.S. Embassy in the given nation would be monitored for compliance with the Secretary of State\u2019s \u201crequest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s focus was:<\/span><\/p>\n

on disrupting illicit finance\u00a0activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the external financial\/logistical support networks of terrorist groups\u00a0that operate there, such as al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and\u00a0Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT).\u00a0The IFTF’s <\/i>[Interagency Illicit Finance Task Force] activities are a vital\u00a0component of the USG\u2019s <\/i>[U.S. Government\u2019s] Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af\/Pak)\u00a0strategy dedicated to disrupting illicit finance flows\u00a0between the Gulf countries and Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u00a0The\u00a0IFTF has created a diplomatic engagement strategy to assist\u00a0in the accomplishment of this objective.\u00a0The strategy\u00a0focuses on senior-level USG engagement with Gulf countries\u00a0and Pakistan to communicate USG counterterrorism priorities\u00a0and to generate the political will necessary to address the\u00a0problem.\u00a0The IFTF has drafted talking points for use by all\u00a0USG officials in their interactions with Gulf and Pakistani\u00a0interlocutors.\u00a0These points focus on funding for terrorist\u00a0groups threatening stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and\u00a0targeting coalition soldiers.\u00a0These points have been cleared\u00a0through the relevant Washington agencies.<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the named concern was \u201cgroups threatening stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan,\u201d the U.S. Secretary of State was actually telling her agents (the Ambassadors) to warn the local aristocracy to stop funding the groups that pose a terrorist threat to the United States as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was listing the actual<\/b> countries that are State Sponsors of Terrorism and threaten the people of the United States and of other countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

These confidentially listed State Sponsors of Terrorism were being listed as of 2009, which was 8 years after 9\/11; and so, after eight years of George W, Bush\u2019s being in the U.S. White House, these were the nations that still<\/i> were leading the world in the financing of the Sunni fundamentalist group Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, which were doing such attacks. <\/span><\/p>\n

This cable reviewed the existing situation regarding each one of the governments, and it included separate instructions to each of the Embassies:<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerning Saudi Arabia:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) takes\u00a0seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has\u00a0been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to\u00a0treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a\u00a0strategic priority.\u00a0\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Donors in Saudi Arabia\u00a0constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni\u00a0terrorist groups worldwide.\u00a0\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for\u00a0al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups,\u00a0including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars\u00a0annually from Saudi sources.\u00a0\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

She noted that,<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2002, the Saudi government promised to set up a\u00a0Charities Committee that would address this issue, but\u00a0has yet to do so.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

She instructed the U.S. Ambassador there to:<\/span><\/p>\n

encourage the Saudi government to take more steps to stem the\u00a0flow of funds from Saudi Arabia-based sources to terrorists\u00a0and extremists worldwide,\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

and to,<\/span><\/p>\n

encourage the Saudi government to take more steps to stem the\u00a0flow of funds from Saudi Arabia-based sources to terrorists\u00a0and extremists worldwide.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Concerning Qatar:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Qatar’s overall level of CT <\/i>[Counter Terrorist] cooperation with the U.S. is\u00a0considered the worst in the region. Al-Qaida, the Taliban,\u00a0UN-1267 listed LeT, and other terrorist groups exploit Qatar\u00a0as a fundraising locale.\u00a0\u00a0Although Qatar’s security services\u00a0have the capability to deal with direct threats and\u00a0occasionally have put that capability to use, they have been\u00a0hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for\u00a0appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking\u00a0reprisals.\u00a0\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0given the current focus of U.S. engagement with the GOQ <\/i>[Government of Qatar]\u00a0on\u00a0terror finance related to Hamas, it would be\u00a0counter-productive for Embassy Doha to engage the GOQ at this\u00a0time on disrupting financial support of terrorist groups\u00a0operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u00a0<\/i>[No explanation of that was provided, but one interpretation of it might be: Protecting Israel from Hamas was more important to the Obama Administration than was \u201cdisrupting financial support of terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u201d]<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerning Kuwait:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Kuwait …\u00a0has been less inclined to take\u00a0action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators\u00a0plotting attacks outside of Kuwait.\u00a0Al-Qa’ida and other\u00a0groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds\u00a0and as a key transit point.\u00a0\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton noted that though<\/span><\/p>\n

Kuwait’s law prohibits efforts to undermine or attack\u00a0Arab neighbors,\u00a0\u2026 the GOK<\/i>\u00a0[Government of Kuwait]\u00a0faces an uphill battle to implement\u00a0comprehensive terror finance legislation due to a lack of\u00a0parliamentary support.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: Kuwait\u2019s aristocracy refused to donate to jihadist groups that attack themselves or the aristocracies of other \u201cArab\u201d countries, but did contribute to jihadist groups which attacked non<\/i>-Arab countries. Furthermore, the official reason why they did was that the parliament, which consists of people who are elected by the public, supported jihadists who attacked non<\/i>-Arab countries. (Actually, when they supported jihadists trying to take over Syria, they were violating that rule, but only because those Sunni jihadists would be replacing a Shiite leader, Bashar al-Assad, who was, to them, even worse: he\u2019s a non-sectarian Shiite, whose political party, the Ba\u2019athist Party, is committed to a separation between church-and-state.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post\u2019s<\/i> Karen DeYoung headlined on 25 April 2014,\u00a0\u201cKuwait, ally on Syria, is also the leading funder of extremist rebels.\u201d<\/span><\/a> She reported that, \u201cLast month, the administration decided to go public with its concerns. \u2026 Such fundraising was not illegal in Kuwait until last year, when the government took\u00a0advantage of an unrelated parliamentary boycott to push through a new law. Disappointingly, since then there has not been much vigor shown in implementing a\u00a0ban on terrorist financing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

DeYoung went on: \u201cUnlike other monarchies and autocracies in the region, Kuwait\u2019s politics are relatively open and combative. The executive branch, headed by Emir Sabah Ahmed al-Sabah,\u00a0frequently clashes with a feisty parliament composed of warring political groups within both the Sunni majority and the Shiite minority. Unlike other Gulf countries, Kuwait allows broad freedom of association for its 2.7 million citizens, and Sabah\u2019s rule is characterized more by political incorporation than\u00a0confrontation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Secretary of State Clinton\u2019s cable continued:<\/span><\/p>\n

A particular point of difference between the U.S. and\u00a0concerns Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS).\u00a0\u2026\u00a0providing financial and\u00a0material support to al-Qa\u2019ida.\u00a0\u2026\u00a0In Kuwait, RIHS enjoys broad\u00a0public support as a charitable entity. The GOK to date has\u00a0not taken significant action to address or shut down RIHS’s\u00a0headquarters or its branches.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So: whereas the Sabah family had been saved by America\u2019s 1991 war against Saddam Hussein\u2019s invasion and attempted takeover there, they didn\u2019t crack down against Al Qaeda; they didn\u2019t stop the funding to Al Qaeda. They \u201ctook advantage of an unrelated parliamentary boycott to push through a new law,\u201d but, after the boycott ended, didn\u2019t enforce the new law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerning UAE:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a\u00a0variety of terrorist groups, including al-Qa’ida, the\u00a0Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups, including Hamas.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Concerning Pakistan:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Pakistan’s intermittent support to terrorist groups and militant organizations threatens to undermine regional security and endanger U.S. national security objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u00a0 <\/span>Although Pakistani senior officials have publicly disavowed support for these groups, some officials from the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) continue to maintain ties with a wide array of extremist organizations, in particular the Taliban, LeT and other extremist organizations.\u00a0 <\/span>These extremist organizations continue to find refuge in Pakistan and exploit Pakistan’s extensive network of charities, NGOs, and madrassas.\u00a0 <\/span>This network of social service institutions readily provides extremist organizations with recruits, funding and infrastructure for planning new attacks.<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

Those were the countries that, in private, the U.S. Government recognized as being State Sponsors of Terrorism. All of them were being identified as funders of fundamentalist-Sunni groups who perpetrate terrorism upon the U.S. and other countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States Government has an official list of <\/b>\u201cState Sponsors of Terrorism\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/a>, and only four governments are on it: Syria (as of 1979),\u00a0 <\/span>Iran (as of 1984), Sudan (as of 1993), and North Korea (as of 2017). None of them is a fundamentalist-Sunni-led nation, and <\/b><\/span>none of them has ever attacked, nor even threatened to attack, the United States of America. By contrast<\/b><\/span>, fundamentalist-Sunni terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, which are primarily funded by the <\/b><\/span>actual<\/i><\/b><\/span> State Sponsors of Terrorism (mainly Saudi Arabia), have attacked the U.S. Furthermore, on 6 September 2016, Asia News<\/i> headlined <\/b>\u201cConference in Grozny: Wahhabism exclusion from the Sunni community provokes Riyadh\u2019s wrath\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/a> and reported that at the international Islamic conference in Grozny, jihadist sects were condemned by all Governments except Saudi Arabia\u2019s, and that the only Government continuing to support the most extremist sect, Wahhabism, was Saudi Crown Prince Salman, the American regime\u2019s closest ally.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, in a secret 2014 court case in the United States, the financial bagman who had personally collected tens of millions of dollars for Al Qaeda during the years prior to Saudi Arabia\u2019s 9\/11 attacks, said there, under oath, that, <\/b>\u201cwithout the money of the \u2014 of the Saudi, you will have nothing\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/a> of Al Qaeda. And, yet, Saudi Arabia wasn\u2019t even on the official list of \u201cState Sponsors of Terrorism,\u201d not at all<\/i>. The U.S. Government continues, to this day, to protect the royal Saud family, who own and control Saudi Arabia and its Government and who were the chief funder of the 9\/11 attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently: On whose side is the Government of the United States of America? Is it on the side of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; or is it on the side of countries such as Iran and Syria \u2014 countries that the Sauds want to take over<\/span><\/a>? And why does it lie (deceive), so much, calling \u201cState Sponsors of Terrorism\u201d countries such as Syria and Iran that are instead the chief enemies<\/i><\/span><\/a> of the actual<\/i> state sponsors of terrorism?<\/span><\/p>\n

As I have previously documented<\/span><\/a>, the only country that has any authentic<\/i> reason to worry about terrorism that comes from Shiites, such as in (or that are backed by) Iran, is Israel. But is the U.S. Government supposed to be representing and protecting the people in Israel, or instead to be representing and protecting the people in the United States of America? What\u2019s actually behind the U.S. Government\u2019s systematic lying, against Shiites, and for Sunnis (especially Wahhabist ones) and Israel? And why is this U.S. Government lying bipartisan \u2014 not Republican or Democratic, but both<\/i> \u2014 at the very top of the U.S. regime: the people who actually<\/i> control both<\/i> of America\u2019s political Parties? Or, do the American people actually not control the American Government<\/span><\/a>? If not, then what should be done to the American Government, and why are such questions not being publicly debated and discussed, especially in the American press and among the American people<\/b>? Is the U.S. lockdown that complete? (This commentary is being submitted to all U.S. newsmedia for publication, to get that essential public conversation in America started.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On 30 December 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a cable (subsequently\u00a0released to the public by WikiLeaks) to America\u2019s Ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Pakistan, headlined, \u201cTerrorist Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance.\u201d\u00a0 \u2014 \u201cTerrorism finance\u201d is what\u2019s generally referred-to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":389791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[32,96,3604,34,907,524,20344,754],"class_list":{"0":"post-389779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-cia","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-isis","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-sauds","16":"tag-syria"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389792,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389779\/revisions\/389792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}