Saudi Money Funding Islamists' Recent Efforts in Kurdish Iraq & Bangladesh
By Andrew Cochran
As a follow-up to Douglas Farah's post today on the move by the Saudi royals away from the U.S., I can add news provided today by British journalist James Brandon at a Jamestown Foundation forum. Brandon's recent travels through Kurdish Iraq exposed him to new Islamist TV stations in the region, funded according to him by money from Saudi Arabia, with most of it by foundations there. The stations spew the typical Wahabi propaganda in favor of strict sharia and sexual segregation and against the U.S., Israel, and Western-style democracy. The stations are trying to pull Kurds away from moderate Islamic parties in the region.
This comes on top of Animesh Roul's March 21 post, in which he reported disclosures by a top ranking military commander of the Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Mostafizur Rahman Shahin, that the money for about 5,000 JMB operatives in there "comes from Bangladeshi expatriates settled in foreign countries, including the United States and Saudi Arabia."
Reminds me of one of Doug's posts last month titled, "The More Things Change..."