Saudi Arabia’s plan to develop a 34-Muslim nation antiterrorism coalition, which seems like a pretty sensible effort in the Middle East to help eradicate militants in the region, has been met with skepticism from certain quarters in the international community — mostly by those who are not fully aware of the ground realities and try to jump to conclusions.
Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman described this week terrorism as a “disease, which affected the Islamic world first before the international community as a whole,” and he promised to fight Daesh in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, and wherever terrorists pop up. The coalition is also expected to go after terror financing. In addition to the Gulf countries, the nations willing to join the alliance are Turkey, Indonesia Malaysia and Pakistan, among others.
The coalition provides a platform for Arab and Islamic countries to cooperate by exchanging information and resources. There is no immediate indication of Arab countries mobilizing military forces, but the door has been left open for future coordinated action against terrorist threats.
There has been criticism of Saudi Arabia since the Paris attacks last month that left 130 people dead, not the least of which was a call from German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel who urged the Kingdom to “solve the regional conflicts.” But it seems that some governments have forgotten that it’s Saudi Arabia’s intelligence gathering and dissemination of that intelligence to its allies that have played a significant role in combating global terrorism.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter lauded Saudi Arabia’s formation of the coalition, saying that the fight against Daesh is “aligned with something that we’ve been urging for quite some time, which is greater involvement in the campaign to combat (Daesh) by Sunni Arab countries.”
Yet even with the obvious need for a Muslim coalition, cynics can’t help but see some darker purpose as they always do. There have been accusations that Saudis are attempting to generate positive news in the wake of Paris and San Bernardino shootings, as if it’s just one big public relations campaign. They also allege that countries that are the “source of terrorism” cannot effectively fight terrorism.
Yet they again fail to consider that Saudi Arabia had suffered at the hands of Al-Qaeda in 2003-2004 with sporadic instances of attacks since then. The Yemen-Saudi Arabia border has been the scene of constant attempts from militants to enter the country and wreak havoc, not to mention the recent terror attacks that occurred in Abha in August and bombings in the Eastern Province.
Clearly Saudi Arabia has a keen interest in wiping out Daesh and its affiliates. Even nearly 15 years after 9/11, the Kingdom remains perhaps the most effective fighting force against terrorists operating in the Middle East. Western military operatives have never been short in their praise for Saudi intelligence operations and the results they have achieved.
It’s telling that the critics who complain the most about the role of Saudi Arabia in counterterrorism have failed to acknowledge that without the aid of the Gulf nations’ under-the-radar efforts to ferret out militants, the violence we have seen on western soil would have come a lot earlier and would have been much more bloody than what we have witnessed so far.
