The Saudi anti-terror alliance

Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-member alliance to fight terrorism in the Islamic world.¹ It comes after growing annoyance in the West over the Islamic world’s paltry response to ISIL and its obvious preference to let the West do the heavy lifting in Syria and Iraq.

Anti-terror and anti-Shia

The long list of nations in the Islamic alliance does not include Iran, Iraq, or Syria. The three countries are of course predominantly Shia and their exclusion suggests that the a principal purpose of the alliance is to contain Shia power in Iran and Iraq, and perhaps to undermine it in Syria, where the Assad government has retreated to a Shia-Alawi heartland from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast.

Lebanon, however, is in the proposed alliance, despite the country’s one-third Shia population, most of it supportive of Hisbollah – a powerful political-military organization which is fighting in Syria. The Shia will see the alliance as aimed at weakening them, if not worse. They warily recall the recent Saudi arms gift to the largely non-Shia Lebanese army.

An opportunity is being lost to ease sectarian hostilities, which may be at their worst in centuries. Fighting in the Middle East today is painfully complex, with good and bad, pro-US and anti-US, very difficult to discern. However, Iranian forces are fighting ISIL in Iraq and to a lesser extent Syria far more than Saudi Arabia is, perhaps even far more than the combined forces of the alliance are.

Military power

The armies of the Gulf monarchies are large, well equipped, and weak. The Saudi army performed poorly in Gulf War One – its only appreciable military action since the kingdom was forged in the 1920s. Since then, the Gulf monarchies have skillfully used arms purchases from the West to nudge them into providing for the common defense. A coalescence of this new alliance is unlikely to change that.

The Gulf monarchies announced that their special forces may conduct operations in Syria. A welcome move, but one that would rely on American air support. The units are unlikely to deploy without assurances that US fighters will be available.

Two military middleweights stand out in the alliance list – Pakistan and Egypt. The Gulf monarchies would dearly love to coax them into walking point on their foreign policy ventures. They tried just that recently in the Yemen war, but neither Pakistan nor Egypt would oblige – in part because they have domestic unrest, including Islamist threats, in part because they know a quagmire when they see one. Nonetheless, the Saudis will use this alliance to create a string of beholden armies across the islamic world.

The Emirates recruited a battalion of Colombian veterans to fight in Yemen, perhaps signaling a move toward mercenary armies in the region. Pakistani veterans have filled out Saudi security forces for many years. A move toward mercenary forces holds potential for jarring political intrigue. Foreign commanders, after all, may be less respectful of Arab princes than, say, Col Lawrence was.

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The Saudi alliance is paradoxical. The wellspring of jihadi ideology, after all, is Wahhabism – a sect which preaches a harsh, militant form of Islam that is the groundwork for the creeds of ISIL, al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Saudis are well represented in ISIL and al Qaeda, and surreptitiously fund those movements. The alliance will not change that. Indeed, it may further spread Wahhabist schools, beliefs, and zeal from West Africa to Southeast Asia.

¹The 34 nations are Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Turkey, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Djibouti, Senegal, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Gabon, Guinea, Palestine, Comoros, Qatar, Cote d’Ivoire, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Malaysia, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Yemen.

^©2015 Brian M Downing