With Saudi Arabia, Beware of Building Friendship Bridges

The 28 classified pages of the official report on the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States was surprisingly reminiscent of when in 1986, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain opened the King Fahd Causeway. Hailed as an infrastructural engineering feat that would remap geopolitics in the Gulf region, the friendship highway bridge was expanded in 2010 to accommodate twenty million people per year crossing between the Saudi peninsula and the island monarchy. It was also the conduit for Saudi tanks and military equipment to cross into Bahrain to crush the Shia uprising, and effectively annex the country.(1)

America’s Friendship Bridge With House of Saud Backfired
Years ago, the U.S. made a friendship bridge with Saudi Arabia too, consisting of oil in return for military arms and to dominate the region. From igniting proxy conflicts with Israel to funding terrorist organizations, the House of Saud sought to eventually control the entire Arabian Peninsula, even expanding into North Africa, Asia Minor and Fertile Crescent, and Iran. What’s more, they’ve lured and embroil American forces into dozens of wars and military occupations, including an infrastructural engineering nightmare on 9/11 which destroyed the World Trade Center in New York.

The 28 redacted pages of the report in fact proved that the U.S. Government had not only fostered and maintained close diplomatic ties with the House of Saud before, during, and after the attacks, but that high ranking Saudi officials were personally involved with several of the 9/11 hijackers. Indeed, Omar al-Bayoumi, a prominent Saudi intelligence officer, provided substantial assistance to at least two hijackers that crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. FBI documents, in addition, linked a senior al Qaeda operative to a high ranking Saudi consular.

Financial statements in the 9/11 report also showed that the Saudi Royal Family’s regime had extensive contacts with hijackers in order to fund the attacks, such as Osama Bassman and Shayk Fahah al-Thumairy, along with financing al Qaeda and its ongoing wars with the West. Without a doubt, the two hijackers made over 100 phone calls to Saudi government officials leading up to the attacks on Sept. 11. Moreover, the money from a Ercan, a Saudi based company which received money from the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Saudi imams.

Royal Family’s Forgotten Wars: 9/11 Families and Pro-Democracy Shia
It’s not yet known if the evidence in the reports will assist the 9/11 Families sueing the Saudi Royal Family. Either way, lawyers representing former Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar have already filed briefings to dismiss the information that might be used in a court of law. Meanwhile, the damning evidence could also be used against the Bush Administration, mainly for culpability and for crimes against peace and humanity. Not only did the report imply that the administration tried to suppress the information, but then lied about Saudi involvement to preemptively attack Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

As for the Saudi Royal Family’s other “forgotten war” with Bahrain’s pro-democracy Shia movement, thousands were killed and then repressed too. Considered to be the most popularly supported protest of all Arab Spring countries, the 2011 uprising was brutally crushed by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain’s ruling Khalifas. Three years later, Saudi tanks and troops are still there, as are U.S. attack helicopters and U.S. naval carrier fleet. In the meantime, U.S. military weapons continue to flood into Saudi Arabia, transported across the King Fahd Causeway friendship bridge.

Even now, Shia teachers, doctors, and religious activists are being hunted down and arrested and tortured, their mosques and homes destroyed. On second thought, beware of building bridges with both the House of Saud and White House.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action; Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com.

(1) Khanna, Parag. Connectography: Mapping The Future of Global Civilization. New York, New York: Random House, 2016., p. 189.
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