Egypt blocked UN sanctions on Daesh in Saudi Arabia

Egypt led a campaign to prevent the Saudi Arabian branch of Daesh from being added to a UN watch list, documents have revealed.

According to a report by Middle East Eye, four affiliates of the terror group in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan-Pakistan were to be added to a sanctions list that would force the respective governments to take action against them.

In February, Egypt, currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, stated that it wished the UN “put on hold… the proposal of the United States of America to add ISIL-Saudi Arabia”, using another acronym for the group. In May, Egypt objected to the inclusion of the Saudi branch altogether, resulting in it being removed from the US proposal entirely.

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Egyptian diplomats informed their US counterparts that they acted at the behest of the Saudi government, according to US officials and internal emails describing the exchange. This is the second time in a year that Saudi Arabia has intervened to prevent the local affiliate from being added to the UN terrorist list.

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Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at LSE, stated that this was “a classic case of Saudi Arabia not wanting to draw attention to its own terrorism problems”.

The Saudi branch of Daesh has formally existed in the country since 2014, perpetrating several attacks inside the country, including a suicide bombing at a mosque in 2015 that killed 15 people.