The oil and gas industry should find especially interesting one of the tempests aroused by secret diplomatic communications made public by Wiki-Leaks. It concerns financial support for international terrorists from oil-producing countries of the Middle East.
No one can be shocked to learn that money flows from Persian Gulf oil-producing countries to extremists eager to commit mass murder. The Middle East breeds terrorists. It's not the only region to do so. And to say it breeds terrorists is not to say most Middle Eastern people are terrorists. The region nevertheless harbors violent activists in numbers far out of proportion to its population. The miscreants strike locally, regionally, and internationally. They also finance the wicked work of allies abroad.
Scant resistance
The leaked cables reveal official US concern that the funding meets scant resistance from Middle Eastern governments. The New York Times reports that a classified message from US Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called residents of Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries the main sources of money for many extremist groups. "It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority," the cable said, according to the newspaper. "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."
In the US, this report will harden suspicions raised since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, toward the Arab and Muslim worlds in general and toward Saudi Arabia in particular. Those suspicions already rally political opposition to the use of oil. Aggravating them serves the interests of neither Saudi Arabia nor the US.
There is, of course, a difference between failure to make terrorist financing in Saudi Arabia a "strategic priority" and outright complicity by Riyadh. From the US perspective, neither possibility is acceptable, complicity being just the worse of two evils. The consequence in either case is weaponry bought with Saudi oil money and aimed at Americans.
Yet the US perspective must find a way to accommodate the pragmatics of governing a militarily weak desert kingdom surrounded by similarly weak but in some cases menacing autocracies. In such a region, stability comes from shifting alliances and public postures not always corresponding to private realities. Power balances are delicate; upsets can be deadly. Turning a blind eye to illicit money transfers might prevent an attack in one place, whatever mayhem it might underwrite somewhere else. From the comparative safety of North America, disapproval of these circumstances flows easily. Yet outsiders must deal with conditions as they are in the Middle East, not as they wish them to be. Not dealing at all isn't an option.
An appreciation for Middle Eastern intrigue should not degrade American concern about Middle Eastern funding of foreign terrorism. It simply should inform the approach. Now that word is out, political pressure will ensure that the approach is more forceful than it might have been before. The US and Middle Eastern governments, especially that of Saudi Arabia, must confront and resolve this issue.
Context for discussion
Constructive context for the discussion would come from acknowledgement by the US that it needs oil in large quantities, that the need will continue, and that access to oil produced in the Middle East is and will remain crucial to US interests. Prattle about ending dependence on Middle Eastern oil by subsidizing electric cars and mandating biofuels is unrealistic and insulting to regimes that, whatever their faults, are not as hostile toward the US as they're often portrayed to be. Middle Eastern governments, for their part, should reciprocate by openly denouncing the funding of terrorist activity from the countries and working aggressively to stop it.
The US needs to buy oil, and Middle Eastern producers need to sell it. Dependency is mutual. Both sides suffer when proceeds from their trade flow to nefarious use. Both sides share an interest in defunding terrorism—as a matter of strategic priority.
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