How our allies in Kuwait and Qatar funded Islamic State
US President Barack Obama, (R), and British Prime Minister David Cameron meet children at Mount Pleasant Primary School in Newport
In the great jihadi funding bazaar that is the Gulf state of Kuwait, there’s a terror finance option for every pocket, from the private foundations dealing in tens of millions to the more retail end of the market. Give enough for 50 sniper bullets (50 dinars, about £110), promises the al-Qaeda and Islamic State-linked cleric tweeting under the name “jahd bmalk”, and you will earn “silver status”. Donate 100 dinars to buy eight badly needed mortar rounds, and he’ll make you a “gold status donor”.
As the jihadi funders hand out loyalty cards, the West has belatedly realised that some of its supposed friends in the Gulf have been playing the disloyalty card. Had Kuwait not been freed by American, British and allied troops in 1991, it would presumably now still be the “19th province” of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But the emirate has repaid the Western blood and treasure spent in its liberation by becoming, in the words of David Cohen, the US undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, the “epicentre of funding for terrorist groups in Syria”.
Islamic State (Isil), with its newly conquered territory, oilfields and bank vaults, no longer needs much foreign money. But its extraordinarily swift rise to this point, a place where it threatens the entire region and the West, was substantially paid for by the allies of the West. Isil’s cash was raised in, or channelled through, Kuwait and Qatar, with the tacit approval and sometimes active support of their governments.
Though this has not yet been widely understood in Europe, it is no secret. Throughout 2013 and the earlier part of this year, on TV stations, websites and social media in Kuwait and Qatar, the jihadis openly solicited money for weapons and troops, much as charities in Britain might seek donations for tents and food. One of the main Oxfams of jihad is a group called the Kuwait Scholars’ Union (KSU), which ran a number of major fundraising drives, including the “Great Kuwait Campaign”, raising several million dollars for anti-aircraft missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and fighters. Some of the money went to Isil and some to the al-Qaeda front Jabhat al-Nusra, Isil’s ally until this February.
“By Allah’s grace and his success, the Great Kuwait Campaign announces the preparation of 8,700 Syrian mujahideen,” announced the KSU’s president, Nabil al-Awadi, in June 2013. “The campaign is ongoing until 12,000 are prepared.” The same year, the KSU ran the “Liberate the Coast” fundraising campaign to help pay for a sectarian massacre of hundreds of civilians in the Syrian port of Latakia. One of the KSU’s fundraisers, Shafi al-Ajmi, tweeted that the donations would go “to buy what is needed to expel the Safavids”, an insulting term for Shia. Last month, he was designated a funder of terrorism by the US.
