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| Arabia | |
| Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Bomb | |
| 2004-06-24 | |
| Part 2 Manhattan immigration lawyer Michael Wildes has carved a niche in representing high-value intelligence defectors to the United States. One of them, Mohammed al-Khilewi, was a first secretary to the Saudi mission at the United Nations. He was a specialist in nuclear non-proliferation. In the weeks before his defection in May 1994, al-Khilewi began copying thousands of top-secret intelligence dossiers to take with him. Armed with the documents, al-Khilewi attempted to set up a meeting with the FBI. It was a dangerous time. According to Michael Wildes, the Saudis were already looking for the defector. The documents al-Khilewi had in his possession were simply staggering. Information on assassination plots against Western ambassadors in the US and covert Saudi intelligence operations on American soil. Also amongst them, evidence of Saudi Arabia’s efforts towards nuclear proliferation. MICHAEL WILDES: Diplomats, according to Mr al-Khilewi, were trained, not only in intelligence operations, but how to take bomb-making material through border post and diplomatic pouches. He showed me, actually, a diagram - which I can provide you if you like - of an individual, how you can sneak in bomb-making material through diplomatic posts. But incredibly, the FBI agents who debriefed the Saudi diplomat were instructed not to accept any of the documents he was offering - presumably to avoid any embarrassment to the US-Saudi relationship. Even the Saudi Ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, wanted the affair dealt with quickly and quietly. MICHAEL WILDES: We were told repeatedly by the Saudi ambassador, "Let’s work this out as gentlemen. If your client wants to get a green card, I can get it for him, no problem." I couldn’t get the FBI to take a piece of paper off the table and give me a straight report without 12 people being consulted but the Saudi Ambassador can get him an American green card. Go figure. In 1994, London’s ’Sunday Times’ published details from al-Khilewi’s documents, showing how, during the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent billions on Iraq’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb on the condition that the technology be transferred to the kingdom if it was successful. The author of many of al-Khilewi’s documents, the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal, rejects their existence. He says al-Khilewi was fired for incompetence. As Saudi Arabia’s spymaster for over 20 years, Prince Turki al-Faisal probably knows much more than he’s prepared to talk about on the record. He resigned as head of Saudi intelligence just days after the September 11 attacks. He’s also named in a lawsuit brought by victims of the 9/11 attack over his alleged past links to Osama bin Laden. He’s now the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Great Britain. He insists the Saudi kingdom has never pursued a nuclear agenda. The Saudis opened their first nuclear research centre in an isolated stretch of desert in 1975. But the move which first attracted attention in the West was their purchase of CSS-2 missiles from China with a target range of nearly 3,000km and specifically designed for a nuclear payload. All they needed now was a bomb. Non-proliferation expert Leonard Weiss has followed Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s relationship closely for many years. He says the Saudis helped pay for Pakistani nuclear weapons so that they would come under the protection of their nuclear umbrella.
Weiss was one of the authors of America’s 1978 non-proliferation act under the guardianship of Senator John Glenn. He says, even back then, anti-proliferation efforts were often stymied. Now Weiss believes that America’s failure to deal with it properly may have a terrible price. LEONARD WEISS: You should never lose sight of what the consequences are of making non-proliferation a lower objective in your foreign policy. And especially when we look at what the world situation is like today, where terrorism is playing such a high role, one can see that the failure to have dealt with non-proliferation problems in the past is now coming back to haunt us and particularly with respect to Pakistan. By turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s bomb and the efforts to set up a worldwide Islamic nuclear network, has America seriously misread the real threat? Could short-term strategic expediency have blinded them to what could turn out to be the ultimate case of blow-back? | |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #2 Rafael is right. "Blowback" is a meaningless term. Every action has unforseen consequences. Not taking action has unforseen consequences, too. Thanks, Paul, for posting this. It confirms my suspicions (as I commented here once) that the Saudis are the lienholder on the Pakistani bomb. Seen in this light, OBL's actions make more sense. There's a movement. Let's call it the Khalifa Movement (KM). Within KM there are conservatives (Abdullah and Matathir), moderates (Naif), and radicals (OBL and his Alliance against the Crusaders and Zionists). All have the same goals: * Khalifa * Sharia * Islamic bomb * Destruction of Israel * Weakening of the West * Spreading Wahhabism and its allied theologies of Salafism and Deobandism * Preservation of core Arab culture (there may or may not be heartfelt reasons for these last two bullets. In the case of the moderates and conservatives, cultural and religious issues may only be levers to control the ummah) The means and time horizons are very different for the three factions: Conservatives - Means: Dawa, money-favoring, and immigration; Time horizon: multigenerational Moderates - Means: Same as conservatives plus proxy war in Israel, Chechnya, Kashmir, Thailand, and any other target of opportunity; Time horizon: One generation (20-25 years) Radicals - Means: Immediate armed confrontation with the West; Time horizon: Less than ten years. All three factions make temporary alliances of convenience with one another since their ultimate goals are the same (just as the goals of most Western political parties are fairly well aligned). All are funded by oil, drugs, weapons proliferation, and other criminal activity. The centers of gravity are pretty obvious. The real question is how do we generate the political will in the West to attack them. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-06-24 12:54:14 PM |
| #1 Hindsight is always 20/20 (sometimes even better). |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-06-24 1:34:18 AM |