America’s praise for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is growing leaps and bounds. It appears that MBS could overtake his predecessors in pleasing America, and he is not ashamed of hiding Saudi Arabia’s assistance in securing American interests during the cold war.
Comment:
In a candid interview with the Washington Post, MBS unequivocally stated that Wahhabism was deliberately spread at the behest of the West to counter Soviet expansionism [1]. The extraordinary admission by MBS underlines how Western powers used Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism to confront the ideology of communism during the cold war. The defiant crown prince admitted that funding of mosques and madrassas across the Islamic world was so enormous that successive Saudi governments had lost track of the amounts involved.
MBS’s frank confessions also implicate Pakistan in serving Western interests to halt Soviet imperialism in the early 80s. It is well known that Pakistani madrassas and mosques were conduits for Saudi funds and the Wahhabist ideology to prepare an army of jihadi fighter for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. MBS’s remarks makes the Saudi-Pakistan nexus central to Western plans to upend the bipolar order of the cold war.
Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter laid the foundations for defeating the Soviets and recognized Eurasia as the pivotal point for this geopolitical struggle. It should come as no surprise that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan were earmarked as the theatre for military confrontation with the Soviets.
Writing in his book The Grand Chessboard Brzezinski wanted to manipulate resurgent Sunni and Shia Islam to restrain Russia’s influence over Eurasia. Brzezinski states, “In fact, an Islamic revival – already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia – is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian – and hence infidel – control. [2]”
To set up the Soviet Union for a fatal blow, America needed to entrap the red army in Afghanistan. The Americans decided to get rid of the Shah, and supplanted him with Khomeini. American investigative journalist Dreyfuss provides a detailed account in his book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam of how the US manipulated Khomeini and his firebrand version of Shia Islam to coax the Soviets into invading Afghanistan.
Given the completion of the Soviet entrapment in Afghanistan combined with Kremlin’s inability to sustain the nuclear arms race with Pax Americana; it was only a matter of time before the iron curtain would fall exposing a vulnerable empire in tatters.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, America emerged as the world’s sole super power and the blowback of the Taliban, Al Qaida and other jihadi outfits were of little concern to American strategists. Speaking about the negative fallout of the Afghan Jihad, Brzezinski said, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
Based on the foregoing, the crucial question arising from the cold war era is whether the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan were complicit in America’s grand plan to defeat the Soviets in Eurasia. MBS’s unreserved comments suggest that the leadership of these three Muslim countries was not only in cohorts with Uncle Sam, but had no say in their relationship with America.
It is quite evident that post September 11 2001, America instigated several measures to reverse its policy of exporting Wahhabism and commenced efforts to de-Islamize societies in several Muslim countries. However, these measures had a mixed response, especially in Saudi Arabia where both King Fahd and King Abdullah paid lip service in a bid to appease the Wahhabi establishment. The aftermath of the Arab spring and the ascendency of MBS as crown prince has revitalized US plans to efface Islam from the edifice of Saudi society. The spectacular speed at which MBS is secularizing Saudi Arabia raises another awkward question. Is this an indigenous campaign or another stipulation from the West? The answer to this question is best summed up in the following words of Allah (swt):
أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى الَّذِينَ يَزْعُمُونَ أَنَّهُمْ آمَنُواْ بِمَا أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكَ وَمَا أُنزِلَ مِن قَبْلِكَ يُرِيدُونَ أَن يَتَحَاكَمُواْ إِلَى الطَّاغُوتِ وَقَدْ أُمِرُواْ أَن يَكْفُرُواْ بِهِ وَيُرِيدُ الشَّيْطَانُ أَن يُضِلَّهُمْ ضَلاَلاً بَعِيدًا
“Have you not seen those who claim to have believed in what was revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what was revealed before you? They wish to refer legislation to Taghut, while they were commanded to reject it; and Satan wishes to lead them far astray.”
(Al Nisa:60)
Abdul Majeed Bhatti
References:
[1] https://tribune.com.pk/story/1672777/3-wahhabism-spread-behest-west-cold-war-mohammed-bin-salman/