al-Qaeda guns tied to Saudi national guard

Guns found at an al-Qaeda safehouse have been traced to the Saudi national guard, which apparently has had previous problems with illegal gun sales.

Problems in the Saudi Arabian National Guard are not new, according to the officials, and past audits of its armories have revealed that weapons were missing. But there was no crackdown on the illicit trade largely because of bureaucratic inertia, the officials said.

"This will focus their attention," a U.S. official said.

A small number of officers in the national guard have been involved in illicit gun sales for years, according to the officials, and have sold weapons, including automatic rifles, to anyone willing to pay prices well above their market value. The officials emphasized that the motivation of the officers selling the weapons was money, not ideology, and does not indicate any al Qaeda penetration of a force that is supposed to protect the government.

Whether these gun sales are motivated by money or ideology, we still have the armed forces of one of our putative allies providing weapons to a known terrorist organization. Given that the Bush administration seems to be rather focused on not upsetting the Saudis, it will be interesting to see what - if any - response there is to this news. My guess is that it will likely be downplayed, just as the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi has also been played down.

I'm not suggesting that we should go attack Saudi Arabia - I don't feel that would be warranted at this point. I would, however, like to see us take some kind of steps to pressure the Saudi government into making reforms that can help correct the problems that exist there which lead to so many Saudi citizens deciding to become terrorists, along with prodding the bureaucracy to work on preventing things such as the sale of guns by the national guard to al-Qaeda. I don't think that sanctions, which often end up hurting the civilians while having little effect on the government, are necessarily the way, either, but there should be some method of bringing international pressure to bear on the government in an effort to bring about change.

The recent bombings may have some effect in that direction. Currently, the Saudi government has - at least temproarily - pulled the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (aka the "religous police") off the streets, and are saying that they will be trying to find ways to allow women more freedom, "within the framework of Islamic teaching".

Posted by thorswitch at May 19, 2003 02:16 AM | TrackBack