Block Feeding The ISIL: ˈIran Dailyˈ

Tehran, Aug 11, IRNA - An English-language paper on Monday urged the US to identify and help block the financial donors of the terrorist group ISIL, instead of striking the criminal group. Under pressure of global public opinion, US President Barack Obama recently ordered limited airstrikes against ISIL terrorists who captured large swaths of the northern Iran since June, noted ˈIran Dailyˈ in its Opinion column. Obama said Thursday that he authorized ‘targeted airstrikes’ if needed to protect US personnel in Iraq, as well as airdrops of food and water to religious minorities in Iraq who are under siege from the terrorist group and trapped on a mountaintop. “Today, America is coming to help,” Obama said. This came three years after the US combat troops left this war-torn country, it added. But, Jim Michaels, a writer of USA Today, believes that the “response may prove inadequate to force the retreat of a surprisingly ferocious enemy (ISIL) that has evolved into a conventional army equipped with tanks and heavy weapons. Many of those weapons, including Humvees and artillery, are American-made and were seized from Iraqi national troops who fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.” Many analysts warn that US military involvement might be forced to widen, however, because the ISIL poses such a significant threat to Iraq’s sovereignty. Only a more robust military response can halt the terrorist group’s unrelenting progress across Iraq, they say. They ask the Pentagon to intensify its airstrikes and put advisers in Iraq to stop the progress of the ISIL, which has yet to suffer a significant setback at the hands of Iraqi security forces. But US officials stressed that the airstrikes will be limited in scope and not part of “a larger air campaign at this point”. Therefore ISIL is assured that it can continue its barbaric acts in northern parts of Iraq, reflected the paper. Many analysts believe that the Takfiri militants receive funding from donors in wealthy Persian Gulf states, the Saudi Arabia in particular. The militants also have seized oil fields in Syria and Iraq and sell the crude to smugglers under priced. They say that the US should put pressure to Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to stop funding the Takfiri militants operating in Iraq and Syria. David Gardner, the writer of Financial Times, explained in his recent article the role of Saudi Arabia in funding extremist groups across the world. Gardner said, “Since the end of the cold war and after the wars of the Yugoslav succession, the western Balkans—in particular Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and even bits of Bulgaria—have been carpeted with Saudi-financed Wahhabi mosques and madrassas (schools). This is moving local Muslim culture away from Turkic-oriented, Sufi Islam towards the radical bigotry of Wahhabi absolutism, which groups such as ISIS (ISIL) have taken to its logical conclusion. This is fertilized ground for jihadi ambition.” “Saudi Arabia not only exports oil, but tanker-loads of quasi-totalitarian religious dogma and pipelines of jihadi volunteers, even as it struggles to insulate itself from the blowback,” said the columnist. It is uncertain whether the Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states finance terrorist groups such as ISIL, but their citizens do. ISIL, which committed atrocities in Syria, also enjoys mortal support from the ultra conservative kingdom. ISIL’s extreme interpretation of monotheism anathematizes other beliefs, in particular the practices of Christians and Shia Muslims, as ‘infidel or apostate’. The terrorist group destroyed mosques, churches and holy sites of Shias and Christians in Iraq and Syria. This method is used in Saudi Arabia during the past years. There is no church in the country and the number of mosques of Shias are limited. The US may face challenge in blocking the House of Saud’s support of ISIL because the country took double-standards in dealing with the group. One of the Saudi double-standards is its recent one-billion-dollar aid to Lebanon for fighting terrorism in the Mediterranean state. Riyadh supplied Lebanon with the money as the country is fighting the ISIL Takfiri terrorists in the eastern border town of Arsal. We should not forget that the Lebanese government is supported by Saudi Arabia and this is natural that Riyadh does not like its ally faces the problem of terrorism or Lebanon’s resistance group Hezbollah garner popularity because of fighting with ISIL terrorists/end