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It should be obvious that the Gulf and Saudi *states* have never been supplying support to the AQ knock-offs, but you neglect to highlight the very unmoot point made in the article cited concerning outside sources of "jihadist" support: "The rise of Syrian al-Qaida" "This giddy activity of the Gulf oppositionist bourgeoisie, preachers and Islamic charities fed into various wings of Islamist fighters in Syria, including, not surprisingly, al-Qaida, which appeared in Syria in early 2012." ..... "Furthermore, when getting back to trying to understand the issue here – why many Islamist forces are better armed than secular FSA forces – the biggest contrast is not in fact secular fighters versus Islamists, but the majority (secular and mainstream Islamists) versus the jihadist/al-Qaida forces. And the reason the latter are better armed than most has absolutely nothing to do with the fantasy of arms from their arch-enemies in the Gulf monarchies. Rather, their key strength is that the flow of arms and money to these jihadists from the anti-monarchial Gulf bourgeois opposition is facilitated by al-Qaida in Syria being an extension of al-Qaida in Iraq, which exists just across the open Syria-Iraq border in Iraq’s Sunni Anbar province. Thus with arms, organisation, infrastructure, cadres etc directly flowing between Iraq and Syria, we can say that the most clearly and violently sectarian part of the Islamist opposition is also the section which arose the least organically within Syria, but is also the section the least associated with the Gulf monarchies." It's very important that we counter the propaganda (from various sides) that seeks to depict this as a "sectarian" conflict with their focus on the AQ-type groups like ISIS, by exposing the genuine mass uprising characteristics of events in the so-called "Sunni" regions. For the truth is that the uprisings throughout the "Sunni" regions are an objective threat to the existence of the conservative U.S. client regimes in the Middle East. Hence: "Already in 2013, Kuwait had issued new laws criminalising “terrorist financing,” whereby “banks will be required to note down the personal details of all their clients as well as anyone making an international transfer of more than 3,000 KD ($10,500). To help track and investigate misdeeds, the Central Bank will build a new Financial Intelligence Unit with the help of experts at the IMF” ( http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/04/shaping_the_syrian_conflict_from_kuwait). "Despite these new laws, in April, “in a remarkably undiplomatic statement that officials said had been cleared at senior levels, (US) Treasury Undersecretary David S. Cohen called Kuwait “the epicenter of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria”,” underscoring how relatively unregulated the situation is in Kuwait compared to the tighter control of financial flows in other Gulf monarchies – and the level of US hostility to any Gulf support to Syrian Islamist"s ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kuwait-top-ally-on-syria-is-also-the-leading-funder-of-extremist-rebels/2014/04/25/10142b9a-ca48-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html ). -Matt http://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/the-gulf-and-islamism-in-syria-myths-and-misconceptions/ Even without examining the voluminous documentation, it's hard to deny Michael's obvious point that these regimes wouldn't be trying to bring to power the Jihadist movements which are so committed to their own destruction. This error in the ISO article calls into question the veracity of its other factual material. And maybe the original source of funding to ISIS is a moot point now that they have seized half a billion dollars in cash and a billion dollars worth of military hardware. If the rise of the Jihadists in Syria was in fact a result of their superior resources (no other good explanation exists) then their latest acquisitions are yet another great boost to a force that is toxic both to the Syrian revolution and to Iraqis who were legitimately opposed to the Maliki regime. - Jeff ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
