Saudi-led ’Arab NATO’ declares total war on terrorism, not particular ’country or sect’

Although General Raheel Sharif claimed that the alliance is not united against any particular “country or any sect,” but rather against the “faceless enemy with extremist ideology” – the key coalition member Riyadh has recently been openly calling Iran the “number one state sponsor of terrorism.”

The Crown Prince even went as far as calling Iran’s supreme leader “the new Hitler of the Middle East” last week, in the wake of a missile attack on Saudi airport from Yemen, which Riyadh blamed on rebels and their sponsor Tehran. Widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the conflict in Yemen begain in 2014 when rebels captured the capital and forced the government to flee and seek Riyadh’s military help. The Saudi-led intervention, however, has so far failed to return the deposed Yemeni leader back to power, but already resulted in thousands of civilian casualties and a humanitarian disaster of an unprecedented scale condemned by humanitarian organizations worldwide.

Besides going after the extremist ideology, the Arab nations are also ready to combat terrorism in the communications domain by countering extremist propaganda, and in the financial sphere by going after the sources of terrorist funding.

“The vision of IMCTC is to have a collective response against terrorism capable of leading and coordinating the efforts of member countries with high efficiency and effectiveness,” said Pakistan’s former military chief, noting that over 200,000 people had been killed in some 70,000 terror attacks in the region in recent years.

At the end of the summit, the countries agreed to coordinate and integrate military efforts, as well as to share intelligence and conduct training courses and joint exercises. The military participation of the coalition states, however “will be defined in accordance with each country’s capabilities and resources, as well as in accordance with each country’s desire to participate in a given military operation,” their declaration said, announcing the creation of a joint operations center in Riyadh.