RIYADH // Dysfunctional ties between Riyadh and Baghdad have come into focus as a wave of violence sweeps Iraq, turning it into another arena where Saudi interests are diverging from those of the United States.
The fighting is centred in Anbar province, bordering Saudi Arabia, where Sunni fighters, some tied to the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), are rebelling against the Shiite-led government of Nouri Al Maliki, which is supported by Iran.
The Saudi view is that Mr Al Maliki shares blame for the slide into violence because he is “aggravating the feelings of marginalisation that some Iraqi Sunnis have long complained about, and that are at the root” of the current conflict, said Fahad Nazer, a political analyst at the intelligence analyst JTG, and a former analyst for the Saudi embassy in Washington.
By contrast, the US has offered to help Mr Al Maliki, and so has Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main rival. That shows how far the Saudi-American alliance has drifted since the early days of the Syrian civil war, when a similar sectarian divide saw the Saudis and US on one side and Iran on the other.
While there is no indication that the Sunni fighters in Anbar are getting Saudi support, the wider Sunni community in Iraq is looking to Riyadh for assistance. Tariq Hashemi, Iraq’s Sunni former vice president, last month called on Saudi Arabia for help.
Iraq’s Sunnis “face two main problems”, he said. “We lack a unifying project and a country that supports our cause.”
Saudi Arabia has no embassy in Baghdad, and there is little commercial contact. In 2012, Iraq traded more with Thailand than it did with the kingdom, even though Saudi Arabia is the Arab world’s largest economy. The border between the countries is closed except during Haj, according to Saudi Arabia’s ministry of interior.
In November, Saudi authorities said six mortar shells landed in an uninhabited desert area of the kingdom near the Iraq border. An Iraqi Shiite group claimed responsibility.
“The Saudis had serious reservations about the US invasion, fearing that Saddam’s removal would create a power vacuum that would be filled by Iran,” Mr Nazer said. “In the eyes of many, those fears were not unwarranted.”
That sentiment has been echoed by Saudi officials. In October, Prince Turki Al Faisal, the former head of the kingdom’s intelligence department, said that Iran’s “meddling” was the “cause of the daily killings and suffering that the Iraqi people are enduring”.
Iraq’s instability brings sectarian conflict closer to the oilfields of the Arabian Gulf, a region that holds almost half the world’s reserves. It raises concerns of another civil war in Iraq, Opec’s second-biggest producer, reviving the Sunni-Shiite conflict that followed the US invasion.
“Energy infrastructure thus far has been largely shielded from the recent surge in violence, but the risks to the oil sector are rising,” Barclays Plc wrote this week.
Meanwhile, the violence in the largely Sunni west of Iraq is being fanned by the war in Syria. Saudi leaders have signalled they are growing impatient with the western-backed rebels there, and may shift support to more hardline groups fighting to oust Bashar Al Assad.
Iraqi officials have said they are suspicious of the kingdom’s intent.
Mr Al Maliki said in November that Saudi Arabia was the only country in the Middle East that “has chosen” not to be a friend of Iraq. He said in an interview with Al Arabiya the same month that the US was mediating to repair ties between the two countries.
Sunni tribes in Anbar once worked with US forces against Al Qaeda, and the Iraqi government says many support its fight against Isil. Some of the tribes, though, have ties with Saudi Arabia and little confidence in the Shiite-led leadership now ruling in Baghdad.
“As much as the tribal leaders hate Al Qaeda, they don’t trust Maliki either,” said Crispin Hawes, managing director of the research firm Teneo Intelligence in London.
“Maliki fundamentally doesn’t believe that the Sunni population is ever going to be on his side, and he doesn’t want them to be.”
* Bloomberg
