WikiLeaks: Saudi crackdown on Shiites has echoes in Bahrain | McClatchy

WASHINGTON — This year’s harsh crackdown on Shiite Muslims in Bahrain follows the playbook that Sunni Muslim-ruled Saudi Arabia used against Shiites in its own Eastern Province as recently as two years ago, secret State Department cables show.

Some of the officials named in the cables as responsible for the 2009 Eastern Province crackdown now are advising Bahrain’s leaders.

Among the topics the cables discuss are the arbitrary arrests of Shiite clerics and residents, the closing of Shiite mosques and the blocking of Shiites from an important religious site in the Muslim holy city of Medina.

The cables provide rare documentation of what human rights officials have long thought is a persistent campaign waged against Shiites in Saudi Arabia by their own government. Saudi Arabia strictly controls access by foreign journalists, and, the cables note, Saudi officials often take steps to discourage coverage of incidents by local news organizations.

The cables, most of them sent from the U.S. consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, express concern that the Saudi actions are likely to fuel a sense of disaffection among Shiites, especially young people, and may make them feel less Saudi, a development that experts warn could fuel sympathy for Shiite-ruled Iran.

“Discriminatory measures such as the mosque closings … continue to be the modus operandi of elements of the (Saudi Arabian government) in their interactions with the Shia minority sect,” said one cable, dated Aug. 15, 2009.

Another cable, sent Sept. 16, 2009, said that “contacts” in the region were concerned that “the discrimination … is alienating the Shia community, particularly the youth, and is compromising their sense of Saudi ‘national identity.’ “

The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment. U.S. officials don’t respond to requests for comment about WikiLeaks cables.

In annual human rights reports, the State Department has expressed concern about anti-Shiite actions in Saudi Arabia but it’s unclear whether U.S. officials protest the actions in their private meetings with Saudi officials.

The similarity between the actions ascribed to Saudi officials in the cables and what’s taken place in Bahrain since Saudi troops arrived there March 15 also is striking. Saudi officials quoted in the cables even cite the same reasons for closing mosques — improper permits and illegal construction — that Bahraini officials used to explain why they’ve destroyed at least 40 Shiite mosques in the last three months.

According to the Aug. 15, 2009, cable, Saudi officials closed at least five Shiite mosques in the Eastern Province in 2009. At least 20 had been closed since 1998, the Sept. 16, 2009, cable said.

“Several contacts claim that Prince Mohammed bin Fahd (MbF), the wealthy and influential son of the late King Fahd, is behind the mosque closings, noting that the orders came from the provincial governor’s office,” the Aug. 15 cable said, discussing the closing of mosques in the city of Khobar. “MbF will not lift the ban on Shia mosques in al-Khobar unless his hand is forced by the King.”

Another cable, dated March 25, 2009, singled out Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz al Saud as “ultimately behind many of the abuses and discrimination of the Shi’a.”

The Sept. 16 cable cited yet a third Saudi leader in connection with the crackdown, Prince Badr bin Jalawi, the governor of the Ahsa region, which comprises much of the Eastern Province.

Citing a source whose name McClatchy has decided not to publish out of concern for his safety, the cable said that “the Prince’s discrimination against the Shia is ‘systemic and intentional.’ “

Sources also told U.S. diplomats that “Badr is ‘extreme’ in his discrimination,” and that “Prince Badr is ‘playing with fire’ by harassing al Ahsa’s Shia residents.”

Naif and bin Fahd have had publicized meetings with Bahraini officials since the crackdown began there. Bahrain is an island nation connected to the Eastern Province mainland by a causeway.

On April 22, bin Fahd traveled to the Bahraini capital of Manama to meet King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa about the Shiite uprising and other matters.

A statement from the Saudi Embassy in Washington said King Hamad lauded “the support that the (Saudi) Kingdom … has provided Bahrain against foreign interference and destabilization attempts.”

On April 19, when Bahrain’s prime minister visited Riyadh to consult about how to address the unrest, a key figure attending was Saudi Interior Minister Naif.

To outsiders, the division between the dominant Sunni sect and minority Shiites can seem incomprehensible. In simplest terms, Shiites believe that the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali was his rightful heir. Since Muhammad’s death in A.D. 632, the sects have practiced and interpreted Islam very differently, not unlike the differences between Catholics and Protestants in Christianity, which occasionally have led to war.

Those Islamic differences led to a major clash in February 2009 between Saudi security forces and Shiite pilgrims in the Saudi city of Medina, Islam’s second holiest city and the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad.

According to a Feb. 24, 2009, cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, skirmishes between police and as many as 2,000 Shiite pilgrims, most of them women, broke out after the pilgrims were denied entry to the Baqi’a cemetery, which, the cable said, “is the final resting place of many important figures from the early days of Islam, including relatives and companions of the Prophet Muhammad.”

“The Shi’a venerate these graves, and hold a historical grudge against the Al Saud for the destruction of the tombs that occurred when King Abdalaziz conquered Medina in 1925,” the cable said.

The confrontation went on for nearly three hours, according to one version recounted in the cable, and ended when “the security forces used water cannon (and according to one source tear gas) to disperse the women.”

The cemetery incident was cited in a March 25, 2009, cable as one of the reasons for rising tensions that contributed to a sit-down demonstration by Shiites on March 19 in Awamiyya, a village known for its radical Shiite politics. After the demonstration, the cable said, Saudi security officials cut off the electricity and swept through the village, arresting dozens of youths, some as young as 12.

Perhaps the most crucial realm in which Shiites are denied equal rights in Saudi Arabia is in their freedom to practice their religion the same way Sunnis can.

The cables show that Shiites struggled to obtain proper building permits for their mosques while Sunnis had it easy. The Sept. 16, 2009, cable noted how a protected source “joked that if ‘just one Sunni complains’ that he must travel too far to attend mosque the government will approve and fund a new mosque ‘tomorrow.’ “

Middle Eastern experts warn of long-term negative consequences to U.S. interests should Saudi and Bahraini repression of Shiites continue.

“My fear, and I think the U.S. fear, is that by cracking down, there is a risk of heightening sectarian feelings and that gives Iran an opportunity to exploit sectarianism. Whereas smart reforms could essentially have the opposite effect of dampening the sectarianism and closing off opportunities for Iran,” said Michael Singh, a former director of Middle East affairs on George W. Bush’s National Security Council.

To the experts, Bahrain increasingly looks like a Saudi province.

“There’s a clear sectarian strain that runs through all of this. And Riyadh has not only given the green light to the Bahrainis to crack down, but is probably more than just a passive partner in all of this,” said Toby Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

The widening Sunni-Shiite gulf threatens stability in the world’s most important oil-exporting nation.

“Frankly, all the crackdown is going to do, if it continues in its current form, it’s going to sow the seeds of future radicalism within the Shia community,” Jones said. “If the American anxiety is that Iran may play a more influential role, the only thing that the crackdown is doing is guaranteeing the fact that that will be an outcome.”

(Kevin G. Hall contributed to this report.)

via mcclatchydc.com

US Embassy Cable: THE SAUDI SHI’A: WHERE DO THEIR LOYALTIES LIE? #Sunni #Shi’a #SaudiArabia #Bahrain #Iraq

Summary
———-

¶1. (S) Some Sunni Arab leaders, including Egypt’s President
Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah, have recently publicly
questioned the loyalties of Arab Shi’a populations in the
Middle East. Privately, senior Saudi officials raise similar
concerns. Given the ongoing sectarian conflict in Iraq,
increasing regional tensions vis-a-vis Shi’a Iran, and the
tenuous status of Saudi Shi’a within their own country, the
question of whether Saudi Shi’a loyalties belong primarily
with Saudi Arabia - or, alternatively, to their
coreligionists elsewhere in the Gulf - is a timely one. It
is also of central concern to U.S. strategic interests in the
region, given the concentration of Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a
population in its oil producing areas.

¶2. (S) Our conclusion, based on discussions with a broad
spectrum of Saudi Shi’a contacts over the past eight months,
is that most Saudi Shi’a remain committed to the agreement
reached between the Saudi Shi’a leadership and King Fahd in
1993-4, whereby Shi’a leaders agreed to pursue their goals
within the Kingdom’s political system in return for the
King’s promise to improve their situation. Saudi Shi’a have
deep religious ties to Iraq and Iran and are inspired by the
newfound religious freedom and political power of the Iraqi
Shi’a; they also have a lengthy history of persecution by the
Al-Saud and face continuing discrimination (ref B).
Nonetheless, their leaders still appear committed to working
for reform from within, a strategy that, thanks to King
Abdullah, is slowly bearing fruit. In our view, it would
require a major internal or external stimulus to move the
Saudi Shi’a toward confrontation with Riyadh. Such stimuli
could include a major shift in SAG policy or leadership, the
spread of uncontained sectarian violence to the Kingdom, or a
major change in regional security arrangements, especially
escalating regional conflict involving Shi’a (ref C). Absent
these circumstances, the vast majority of Saudi Shi’a are not
likely to demonstrate significant external political
loyalties, either to Iran or to any inchoate notion of a
“Shi’a crescent.” End summary.

via cablesearch.org

This is just the summary copied here. Click the link to cablesearch.org to read the entire cable.

Japan syndrome shows why we need WikiLeaks | The Australian

reactor

The damaged third and fourth reactors of the Fukushima No1 power plant. Source: AFP

IN December 2008, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed to “a serious problem” with nuclear reactors in areas of Japan prone to earthquakes.

Recent earthquakes “have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants”, he told a meeting of the Nuclear Safety and Security Group of the Group of Eight countries. Moreover, safety guides for seismic activity had been revised only three times in the past 35 years, he added.

The information was recorded in a US diplomatic cable and comes to us courtesy of WikiLeaks. So do other cables, including one two years ago in which American officials described Tomihiro Taniguchi, a senior IAEA nuclear safety official and former head of the Japanese agency responsible for nuclear plant security following earthquakes, as “a weak manager and advocate, particularly with respect to confronting Japan’s own safety practices”. A few months earlier, Japanese MP Taro Kono told US diplomats the government was covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry. The following year, the government reversed a court ruling that a nuclear plant in western Japan had to be closed because it could withstand an earthquake of only 6.5 magnitude.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

Unfortunately, all this information, including the original cables, was released only this week, through The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian newspapers in Britain. If publicised earlier it might have increased public pressure on the Japanese government to do more to ensure the safety of reactors.

But without WikiLeaks most of it probably never would have seen the light of day. One of the justifications governments use for not releasing information is to avoid “unnecessary” fears.

The Japanese government did not completely ignore the IAEA concerns: it built an emergency response centre at the Fukushima plant. But it was designed to withstand a magnitude 7.0 quake, whereas last week’s was 9.0.

This week Julia Gillard said she had a lot of respect for whistleblowers. Deep Throat had done the right thing in leaking information about Watergate, she told the ABC1’s Q&A program. So had those who had exposed information about the operations of the big tobacco companies.

“They’ve acted for a moral purpose,” she said. “I respect that. At the centre of WikiLeaks, I don’t see that moral purpose I can respect whistleblowing if your motivation is to right wrong.” But Julian Assange’s motivation was “sort of anarchic”. Gillard’s attitude is a rationalisation of her feeling that she has to side with the US on this issue. It is for the same reason that she earlier claimed Assange was acting illegally, though she has been unable to identify which law he has broken.

The Obama administration portrays Assange as a spy, if not terrorist, who is endangering national security. He is not: he heads an organisation that is the recipient of information, which invites leaks but says it does not actively solicit them. It releases documents through news organisations, which then apply normal journalistic procedures, including considering risks to national security or whether any lives could be put in danger.

Assange’s motivation, as interpreted by Robert Manne writing in The Monthly and Inquirer, seems to be to break down authoritarian structures that are preventing the free flow of information. Whether or not that is anarchic, it sounds impossibly idealistic. The US is responding to the leak of cables by increasing the security of its internal communications rather than giving up the fight and opening its files.

In the absence of threats to national security — and the US has yet to identify any — many of the diplomatic cables released so far fall into the same category as Watergate, as well as the Pentagon papers, which exposed US lies about the Vietnam war.

Sometimes governments do not live up to the democratic ideal. If their leaders say one thing in public and another in private, then voters deserve to know.

One clear example of this is in a cable released by WikiLeaks canvassing US concerns that the Rudd government’s 2009 defence white paper appears to rule out support for an American missile defence system because it would harm nuclear deterrence.

This, explained Defence Department deputy secretary Michael Pezzullo to the American embassy in Canberra, had been written to appeal to the anti-Star Wars attitude in Labor’s Left, “but in reality will allow the GOA [government of Australia] to continue its missile defence research and development co-operation with the United States”.

Rudd’s attitude was very different from that of the Left, Pezzullo assured the Americans.

Sure enough, the Gillard government is continuing Australia’s co-operation with development of a missile defence system, which it says publicly is a threat to global nuclear stability. That such a leak is acutely embarrassing to the government is obvious. More important is that Australians deserve to know the truth.

Talking about hypocrisy, we can only marvel at the extent to which Saudi Arabia has the US over a barrel. The Saudis supply not only oil but terrorists, including 15 of the 19 who hijacked the 9/11 planes. Instead of waging war against Saudi Arabia, the US sells it large amounts of defence equipment and keeps pleading with it to do more about terrorism.

In a cable sent to embassies in Riyadh and other capitals in the region in 2009, Hillary Clinton wrote that it had been “an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”.

Though there had been some important progress, “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide More needs to be done, since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Toiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack] and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan.”

International relations can involve some least worst choices, particularly if you are a superpower. But it still comes as a surprise that the US can have so little regard for the wishes of even its most important allies. Russia insisted in negotiations over a new arms control treaty that it be given more information about Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles. The US asked Britain to agree but it refused. The US gave the Russians the information anyway.

In other respects, the US sometimes behaves as though the Cold War never ended. The cables reveal the US spied on British Foreign Office ministers to collect gossip on their private lives and professional relationships. What are friends for if not to be able to compromise them?

US diplomats do not spend all their time reporting on momentous events. Two years ago, the US embassy in Tripoli passed on to Washington “a cautionary tale” about dealing with Libya.

Italy paid for a Libyan to join students from other countries in a training program in Rome on underwater explosives. After several days of classroom instruction, the instructor told the students to jump into the pool. When the Libyan did not comply, the instructor pushed him in. He “sank like a stone” and had to be pulled out of the pool and have water pumped out of his lungs.

Rather than the anticipated government employee, the non-swimming frogman was the cousin of an official “and had simply wanted a vacation in Rome”. When the Italians raised the matter with Libya, they received “a formal written reply [averring] that it was the responsibility of the Italian government to ensure that candidates for its training programs were properly qualified and that the Italians should have taught him how to swim”.

If they had, he might be mining a few rebel vessels right now.

via theaustralian.com.au

Arab states scorn ‘evil’ Iran | World news | The Guardian

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urged Iran’s foreign minister to “spare us your evil” in a meeting that reflected profound Arab hostility to the Islamic Republic – a recurrent theme of high-level private conversations in the Middle East in recent times.

Leaked state department cables catalogue a litany of complaints from the Saudis and smaller Gulf states, as well as Egypt, Jordan and others, on issues from Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, to its involvement in Iraq and support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas.

“You as Persians have no business meddling in Arab matters,” the Saudi monarch was quoted as telling Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s foreign minister. “Iran’s goal is to cause problems,” he continued in a conversation with a senior White House official. “There is no doubt something unstable about them.”

Abdullah declared: “May God prevent us from falling victim to their evil. We have had correct relations over the years, but the bottom line is that they cannot be trusted.” US diplomats recorded similar comments earlier this year from the United Arab Emirates, described as being “46 seconds from Iran as measured by the flight time of a ballistic missile”. Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and deputy commander of the UAE armed forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, referred to Iran as an “existential threat” and was concerned about “getting caught in the crossfire if Iran is provoked by the US or Israel”. In one earlier conversation Bin Zayed even suggested that the US should send in ground forces if air strikes were not enough to “take out” Iranian nuclear targets.

Arab-Persian enmity, with a strong undercurrent of rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims, dates back centuries but increased markedly after the overthrow of the shah and the Islamic revolution in 1979 and is now viewed as a struggle for hegemony in the region. The conservative Sunni-ruled regimes in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states detect the “hidden hand” of Iranian subversion, sometimes where none exists. Tehran’s fervent support for Hezbollah and Hamas are seen as ways of extending Iranian influence.

In the UAE the foreign minister is described as viewing “Iran as a huge problem that goes far beyond nuclear capabilities”, the embassy reported in February 2010. “Iranian support for terrorism is broader than just Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran has influence in Afghanistan, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and Africa.”

Speaking to General David Petraeus of US central command in late 2009, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa “pointed to Iran as the source of much of the trouble in both Iraq and Afghanistan … [and] argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their nuclear programme, by whatever means necessary. That programme must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

In Oman, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said told the then commander of US central command, Admiral William Fallon: “Iran is a big country with muscles and we must deal with it.” A senior Omani minister singled out Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar as the three Gulf countries that would probably want the US to attack Iran.

Kuwait’s military intelligence chief told Petraeus that Iran was supporting Shia groups in the Gulf and extremists in Yemen. Yemen and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly accused Iran of supplying weapons and money to the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s Saada region, though the evidence is not conclusive. US diplomatic cables also confirmed that Qatar, the wealthiest country in the region, was an outspoken critic of Iran in private, while maintaining cordial public relations with it and the US.

“Iran is clever and makes its opponents dizzy in the quest for deals,” said the Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani. “They will keep you working on a deal and then start from scratch with a new interlocutor. Iran will make no deal. Iran wants nuclear weapons.” Bin Jassim “would not be surprised to see Iran test one to demonstrate to the world its achievement”. Late last year he gave a succinct summary of Doha’s relationship with Tehran: “They lie to us, and we lie to them”.

Washington’s main Arab allies outside the Gulf, Jordan and Egypt – which both have unpopular peace treaties with Israel – are also deeply hostile to Iran.

Egyptian views on Iran are uniformly negative, as quoted by US interlocutors. General Omar Suleiman, its intelligence chief, called Iran “a significant threat to Egypt … supporting jihad and spoiling peace”. He said he had warned Iran against meddling in domestic affairs (and supporting groups like the Muslim Brotherhood) and received a “very positive message” from his Iranian counterpart indicating that Iran would not interfere in Egypt.

President Hosni Mubarak attacked his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an extremist who “does not think rationally”. He told a US congressman: “Iran is always stirring trouble”.

Mubarak, like Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, was sceptical about US plans to try to engage with Tehran after Barack Obama’s inauguration. Margaret Scobey, the US ambassador in Cairo, described Mubarak as having “a visceral hatred for the Islamic Republic, referring repeatedly to Iranians as ‘liars’, and denouncing them for seeking to destabilise Egypt and the region. He sees the Syrians and Qataris as sycophants to Tehran and liars themselves.”

via guardian.co.uk

WikiLeaks reveals imminent Saudi oil peak - The Globe and Mail

The cables from the U.S. embassy in Riyadh cite a number of conversations between embassy personnel and Sadad Al Husseini, a geologist and former executive vice-president of exploration and production with Aramco, the Saudi oil monopoly. The former Aramco exploration head contends neither the kingdom’s reserve estimates nor future production targets can be believed. According to Mr. Husseini, Aramco’s estimates of its world-leading reserves are inflated by 40 per cent.

More important, Mr. Husseini acknowledged Saudi production is never likely to get to Aramco’s 12.5 million barrel per day target. Instead, the country is struggling to produce even 10 million barrels a day and it may soon encounter a production peak after which flow rates will inevitably decline. Yet the International Energy Agency is counting on Saudi Arabia to produce no less than 14.6 million barrels a day by 2035.

Mr. Husseini’s revealing assessment of the Saudi oil industry goes a long way to explaining why President George W. Bush’s personal pilgrimage there in 2008 during the height of the last oil crisis was only able to elicit a token 300,000 barrel a day production increase. Other than a limited amount of heavy oil that many of the world’ s refineries can’t process, the kingdom has little more to offer today.

Chronic delays in new development and over-reporting of reserves by Aramco paint an illuminating picture of an oil industry that has struggled merely to keep up with depletion. Production is still below the levels reached in the 1970s. And thanks to the Saudi economy’s voracious appetite for its own massively subsidized oil, less of its near-peak production is available for export every year.

While the U.S. embassy cables acknowledge Saudi Arabia still has the capacity to raise prices should it withhold supply, it no longer has the capacity to prevent prices from rising because it can’t boost production sufficiently to meet world demand.

If Saudi Arabia no longer has an ability to raise production, who does?

Still, one way or another the global oil industry will have to produce six million barrels per day more oil than last year to offset the four million barrels per day that is lost to depletion each year, and the nearly two million barrels per day of new crude demand that another year of global economic growth will generate. (Last year, Chinese oil demand alone increased by almost one million barrels a day.)

If that supply can’t be found, there is only one solution: Higher oil prices will be needed to ration the ever-growing global fuel demand.

via theglobeandmail.com

WikiLeaks May Have Just Confirmed That Peak Oil is Imminent | Fast Company

It’s getting more and more difficult to deny that an oil supply crunch is just a few years down the road, especially now that WikiLeaks has released cables revealing that Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by as much as 40%, or 300 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter.

Peak oil, or the point when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction has been reached and is about to enter terminal decline, is no longer the fringe theory it was just 10 years ago. Even Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, has admitted that oil supply may no longer keep up with demand by 2015. But the just released cables, which detail a back-and-forth between the U.S. consul general and geologist Sadad al-Husseini, the former head of exploration at Saudi Aramco, confirms that the situation is serious.

Here’s an excerpt from one cable:

“In a presentation, Abdallah al-Saif, current Aramco senior vice-president for exploration, reported that Aramco has 716bn barrels of total reserves, of which 51% are recoverable, and that in 20 years Aramco will have 900bn barrels of reserves.
“Al-Husseini disagrees with this analysis, believing Aramco’s reserves are overstated by as much as 300bn barrels. In his view once 50% of original proven reserves has been reached…a steady output in decline will ensue and no amount of effort will be able to stop it. He believes that what will result is a plateau in total output that will last approximately 15 years followed by decreasing output.”

Other cables from the U.S. embassy in Riyadh go on to express fears that “Saudi Aramco is having to run harder to stay in place—to replace the decline in existing production,” and that “Clearly they can drive prices up, but we question whether they any longer have the power to drive prices down for a prolonged period.”

Only time will tell whether Al-Husseini’s predictions are correct, but the possibility of imminent peak oil is enough to make Obama’s goal of putting one million electric cars on the road by 2020 a little less overly ambitious.

Follow Fast Company on Twitter. Ariel Schwartz can be reached by email.

via fastcompany.com