எவ்வாறு சவுதி கொடுக்கும் பெட்ரோ டாலர் உலகெங்கும் ஜிகாதி போர்களை உருவாக்குகிறது- பிபிஸி ஆவணப்படம்

எவ்வாறு சவுதி கொடுக்கும் பெட்ரோ டாலர் உலகெங்கும் ஜிகாதி போர்களை உருவாக்குகிறது என்ற் ஆராய்ந்து அமெரிக்க, பிரிட்டிஷ் அதிகாரிகள் கூறுவதை பிபிஸி ஆவணப்படம் காட்டுகிறது.

Jihad and the Saudi petrodollar
BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy has spent the last two months investigating Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's austere brand of Islam.

In the first of a two-part series, to be broadcast on the BBC World Service, he looks at the fierce debate over whether Wahhabism and Saudi petrodollars have fomented extremism.


Saudis feature heavily among those accused of anti-US terrorism
"The essence of Wahhabism is purity," says Lawrence Wright, author of a Pulitzer-prize-winning book about al-Qaeda.

"They are only interested in purification - and that's what makes them so repressive."

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and former ambassador in London and Washington, dismisses the accusation out of hand.

"From our point of view in the kingdom, there is no such thing as Wahhabism. That's a canard."

Saudis have never cared for the "Wahhabi" label which historically was a term of abuse applied to them by their critics.

They are highly sensitive to the charge that they have used their vast oil wealth to turn an obscure desert sect into a global force.

Charge and counter-charge

Over the last two months I've talked to officials of the Saudi government and Saudi charities who argue the campaign against them is unjust.

I've heard some of the world's leading experts, gathered in a small town in the Dutch countryside, attempt to define Wahhabism - and Salafism, the bigger family of conservative Sunni Islam of which it's part.


They are teaching the students that whoever disagrees with Wahhabism is either an infidel or a deviant

Hassan al-Maliki

I've heard senior US investigators describe their deep-rooted suspicions about Saudi charities - and the frustrations of following the money trail.

Top US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told me why he'd come to believe a Saudi charity headquartered in Chicago was an al-Qaeda front.

The US authorities shut down the charity, the Benevolence Foundation, in 2002.

Two years later another major Saudi charity, al-Haramain, came under scrutiny.

The US and Saudi governments designated 10 of its branches "financiers of terrorism".

But American investigators have often found it hard to turn suspicion into proof.

And that reinforces the scepticism of Saudi and American Muslims about US government claims.

Hate literature

I looked at the role of Wahhabi literature - used in Saudi schools and exported round the world - in promoting suspicion and hatred of non-believers.

The Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Jubeir, assured me a series of steps had been taken to reform the country's educational system to instil values of tolerance.

The genie came out of the bottle and the Saudis could no longer put it back in."

Bernard Heykel
Professor of Near East studies, Princeton

Saudi educationalist Hassan al-Maliki remains to be convinced.

"They are teaching the students," he told me, "that whoever disagrees with Wahhabism is either an infidel or a deviant - and should repent or be killed."

This, he added, was an attack on half of Saudi society, where Shia and Sufi minorities coexist uneasily with the dominant Wahhabi religious establishment.

I visited the offices of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (Wamy), part of the global network of well-funded Islamic institutions created by Saudi Arabia's King Faisal in the 1960s and 1970s.

Militant networks

These bodies built mosques and schools and provided humanitarian aid to Muslims in need.

But there is evidence that, over time, some of their local branches became involved in militant networks.

Bernard Haykel, professor of Near East studies at Princeton, believes the Saudis set in motion a process over which they lost control. The Saudis' funding of militant Islam reached a new pitch in the 1980s when, with the United States and others, they bankrolled the jihad against Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan.

The Afghan war was the crucible from which emerged al-Qaeda.

"The genie came out of the bottle," says Professor Haykel, "and the Saudis could no longer put it back in."

The first of Roger Hardy's programmes, Jihad & the Petrodollar, can be heard on the BBC World Service on Friday, 16 November.



Jihad and the Saudi petrodollar II

BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy investigates Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's austere brand of Islam, which is accused by its critics of funding religious extremism.
In the second of his two-part series, he meets top US investigators who have had the frustrating task of finding out where Saudi cash ended up.


US investigators believe Saudi donations have funded jihad
In 2002, just a year after the 11 September attacks, the US authorities shut down a Saudi charity headquartered in Chicago.

"It was a big hoopla," recalls Sam Roe, an investigative journalist who covered the story for the Chicago Tribune.

"The US attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, flew out to Chicago and held a press conference.

"It was trumpeted as one of the first major victories in the 'war on terrorism'."

The charity was the Benevolence Foundation.

'Al-Qaeda front'

The Benevolence Foundation had been set up in Chicago a decade earlier by a wealthy Saudi businessman, Adel Batterjee.

I never met Osama Bin Laden. I have never flown to any of these hot places

Soliman al-Buthi


Petrodollar Jihad: Part I
But he soon handed over the running of it to his right-hand man, a Syrian called Enaam Arnaout.

The two men had met in Afghanistan in the 1980s when both had been helping Muslims fight the Soviet occupation forces.

The charity began to arouse the suspicions of the US authorities in the 1990s. But it was only after 11 September that the case acquired any real urgency - and attracted the attention of a star US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

Speaking to me at his office in an imposing federal building in Chicago, he told me how he became convinced the Benevolence Foundation was an al-Qaeda front.

Documents found at its office in Bosnia, he says, described al-Qaeda's founding meeting, its membership and the shipment of weapons.

But however strong his suspicions, Patrick Fitzgerald could not make the terrorism charges stick.

Wealthy and respected

On the eve of the trial, he struck a deal with Mr Arnaout, who was convicted on a racketeering charge.
Patrick Fitzgerald tried, but could not make terrorism charges stick
He was found guilty of supplying boots and uniforms to Bosnian Muslim fighters, while pretending he was only helping civilians.

It was, at best, an ambiguous victory for the US authorities. They had shut down a charity but had failed to prove its links to al-Qaeda.

While Arnaout serves out his jail term, his former boss Adel Batterjee remains in the Saudi city of Jeddah, a wealthy and respected businessman.

Did he break his ties with Benevolence in the 1990s, as he has always claimed? Or did he run it from afar, as the court documents suggest?

After repeated efforts to hear his side of the story, I spoke briefly to him on his mobile phone - but he declined to be interviewed.

For Saudi Arabia, however, the charity issue refused to go away.

Charity

In 2004, at a joint press conference in Washington, the US and Saudi governments announced the closure of five branches of a prominent Saudi charity, al-Haramain.

Have the Saudis bankrolled the global jihad? They certainly have a case to answer

Eventually 10 branches - stretching from the Netherlands to Indonesia - were designated "financiers of terrorism" and shut down.

Set up in the 1990s, al-Haramain was a large and prestigious organisation with close ties to the Saudi government and ruling family.

At its height, it had some 50 branches worldwide.

Its literature proclaimed it had built hundreds of mosques, run orphanages and helped equip clinics and hospitals.

At a tent in a Riyadh suburb, I met the Saudi who had set up a branch of al-Haramain in Ashland, Oregon.

He is now a wanted man.

'Compelling evidence'

Sitting on cushions drinking tea, in the company of two American lawyers, Soliman al-Buthi laughed off the charge that he was a "specially designated global terrorist".

"I never met Osama Bin Laden," he told me.


Adel Jubeir admits the charity commission has not materialised
"I have never flown to any of these hot places - Bosnia or Chechnya or Afghanistan or Pakistan."

He insists that he was engaged in the non-violent propagation of Islam - and that no real evidence has ever been presented against al-Haramain.

But for investigators like Dennis Lormel, a senior FBI official who worked on the case, the evidence of links to al-Qaeda was compelling.

Persuading the Saudi authorities to take it seriously, however, was another matter.

It took more than two years of sustained US pressure for them to act.

Eventually 10 branches of al-Haramain were shut down, and its director in Riyadh was sacked.

The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel Jubeir, told me the kingdom was not responsible for the overseas branches of its charities.

He acknowledged that a Saudi charity commission responsible for activities overseas - whose birth he himself had announced in 2004 - had still not materialised.

But he insisted that over the last few years Saudi Arabia had taken draconian steps to regulate its charities.

Dynamic

The two case studies show how hard it has been for the American authorities to turn suspicion into proof.

It is a striking fact that, in these and other Muslim charity cases in the US, they have not managed to secure a single conviction on a terrorism charge.

But what's also clear is that, for decades, Saudi charities were virtually unregulated.

Have the Saudis bankrolled the global jihad? They certainly have a case to answer.

The export of Wahhabism - which got going with the oil boom of the 1970s - acquired a dynamic of its own and ended up empowering radical Islamists.

After 11 September, the chickens came home to roost.

The second part of Roger Hardy's series Jihad & the Petrodollar will be broadcast on the BBC World Service on Friday, 23 November.