Afghanistan: Jihadist expansion in Iraq puts Persian Gulf states in a tight spot --- As Sunni jihadists have pushed from Syria deep into Iraq, making startling gains that are now threatening Baghdad, they are highlighting the increasingly uncomfortable position of Persian Gulf states that have backed Syria’s predominantly Sunni rebels. -- Officially, Iraq’s southern neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, oppose groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which captured advanced weaponry caches and forced a dramatic retreat of government security forces across northern Iraq this week. -- But citizens in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have quietly funneled vast sums of money to and joined the ranks of ISIS and other jihadist groups fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria over the past two years, analysts and U.S. officials have said. -- The Syrian conflict, which has pitted Sunni fighters against Syrian forces and Shiite militias backed by Iran, has now more tangibly than ever spilled across regional borders, setting off the most serious crisis in Iraq since the bloodiest periods of the U.S. occupation. As a result, the gulf-sponsored jihadists — who could threaten the very integrity of the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments — are suddenly on the gulf’s back doorstep. -- “While Sunni governments don’t support ISIS,” their people do, said Andrew Tabler, an expert on Arab politics at the Washington Institute for Near East policy. “The funding for ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadist organizations is coming from” gulf states. -- Now those gulf states “are in an awkward position,” he said. -- And yet gulf governments are hardly expected to come to Iraq’s aid. They have long harbored animosity toward Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who came to power during the war in Iraq and empowered the country’s Shiite majority at the expense of Sunnis, and whom many Sunni Arabs view as a pawn of Iran. --- Although Saudi Arabia and its gulf allies may fear ISIS, “they have no particular interest in shoring up Maliki’s government,” said Shadi Hamid, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. -- King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly refused to meet with Maliki, despite a long, shared border. -- “The king has a personal attitude that this man is a puppet in the hand of the Iranians, and he dismissed him from his book a long time ago,” said Mustafa Alani, director of the National Security and Terrorism Studies Department at the Gulf Research Center.