Why Is the White House Pretending That Saudi Insurgents in Iraq Are Iranian?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting nearly half of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops in Iraq have come from Saudi Arabia – one of Washington's closest allies in the Middle East. U.S. officials have so far refused to publicly criticize Saudi Arabia's role in Iraq, focusing instead on Iran. Democracy Now! spoke with an L.A. Times correspondent in Iraq, Ned Parker, and Toby Jones, a former Persian Gulf analyst with the International Crisis Group and history professor at Rutgers University.

Amy Goodman: We go now to Iraq to speak with Ned Parker, staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He joins us from Baghdad. Ned Parker recently wrote a widely read article on how Sunni militants from Saudi Arabia make up half the foreign fighters in Iraq. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ned Parker. We saw over and over again on the Senate floor, as ultimately the attempt to pass the resolution that would begin withdrawal of troops from Iraq was defeated, we saw Iran raised and the idea that in Iraq US soldiers were fighting off Iranian insurgents, and that was part of what the battle in Iraq was all about, taking on Iran. You found that, in fact, there are more Saudi than Iranian foreign fighters in Iraq. How do you know this?

Ned Parker: Well, I mean, the Iranian issue is complicated, to say the least. And I don't -- it's from America's, US military's own numbers about foreign fighters in Iraq, that there are more Saudis fighting in Iraq than Iranians. I mean, that said, the Iranian element, there's no doubt that the Iranians are involved in Iraq, and if they are backing Shia militias, the military believes that this is with full government backing.

The Saudi issue is more complicated, because it's not really clear what the Saudi government is really doing. Are they actively involved in sending these Saudi fighters to Iraq, or are they just sort of letting it happen as a way to pressure the Shia government there? So, and then, Saudis are the United States's allies [inaudible], so there's all that at play.

Democracy Now! cohost Juan Gonzalez: And your report also gives some indication of the total number of foreign fighters, which I found -- or at least the ones that are in custody, which I found to be somewhat low, in terms of what we might imagine. Could you talk about the actual numbers?

Parker: Right. I mean, their numbers -- I mean, it's still -- I think the Americans would even say that their numbers aren't precise. It's based upon detainees arrested over the years, detainees currently in prison. Right now there's, I think, 130 foreign fighters in US custody. Of those, 45% are Saudi. The United States guesses that there are between sixty and eighty foreign fighters who cross into Iraq each month through Syria, so almost half of those, according to the United States, have been Saudi. So it is actually -- it's a fairly low number in the scheme of things, and the United States, even in releasing these numbers, were saying that the Saudi foot soldiers are being used as suicide bombers, for the most part, or fighters on the ground, people with, you know, a very quick shelf life, that are probably going to die. But they're quite open about the fact that the majority of al-Qaeda in Iraq, even if it has a foreign leadership, is Iraqi, and, I mean, that shouldn't be lost sight of. The vast majority of al-Qaeda in Iraq is Iraqi.

Gonzalez: And what did the military brass in Iraq tell you about their efforts to try to get Saudi Arabia to somehow or other control the Jihadist fighters that are leaving their country?

Parker: Well, we -- the officers I've spoken with, they believe that the Saudi government should be doing a tougher job on its border with Jordan, because that's the flow of Saudi fighters to Iraq, often by bus or plane, be it Jordan to Syria or by plane perhaps direct to Syria. So their objection is that there's no sense of real vigorous screening of the males crossing the border, meaning that if they fit a certain profile, there's no questioning of them. They just let people go. It's not suspicious if they have very little money, you know, narrow possessions, think they're going for a very short trip. There's no effort to stop them, according to the US military officers I've spoken with -- or the Iraqis, for that matter.