Saudi Complicity in the Rise of ISIS by PATRICK COCKBURN

Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on google More Sharing Services 56

The Blunders of Prince Bandar

Saudi Complicity in the Rise of ISIS

by PATRICK COCKBURN

How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world?

Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/15/saudi-complicity-in-the-rise-of-isis/