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Farewell to US arms in Saudi
Arabia
By Charles Recknagel
PRAGUE - While announcing the decision to scale
down the United States's military presence at the
joint US-Saudi Prince Sultan air base, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, on a swing through the Middle East,
commented, "We do intend to maintain a continuing and
healthy relationship with the Saudis. We look forward to
exercises and training and working with them on their
military, but we will have the opportunity to move some
[US] forces out."
Saudi Defense Minister Prince
Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz confirmed his government's
agreement with the step at a joint press conference with
Rumsfeld in Riyadh. He said that the end of the Iraq war
had concluded the need for Washington to use the base to
mount air patrols over Iraq's southern no-fly zone. He
said that meant "there is no need for [the US and
British forces flying the patrols] to remain."
The precise scale of the downsize has
yet to be announced, but it is likely to
substantially reduce the force from the level of 8,000-10,000 there during
the recent Iraq war. That level was almost twice the
usual US forces at the base during peacetime.
Analysts say
that the US military presence in Saudi Arabia - which is
almost entirely concentrated at the air base - will now
drop from thousands of soldiers to just hundreds. Those
remaining will mainly be engaged in maintaining the
base's high-tech infrastructure and in routine training
of Saudi air forces.
Andrew Brooks, an air power
specialist at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London, said the US and Saudi governments
jointly invested some US$1 billion to make the Prince
Sultan air base into a regional command-and-control
center for US forces. The base was inaugurated just a
few years ago and was used to command the air war over
Afghanistan. Now, Brooks said, the closure of the base
is a measure of how much US-Saudi relations have been
redefined by the September 11 terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington.
"It isn't that long since
Prince Sultan was inaugurated as the command post and
within a year or two it has been downgraded and almost,
you know, that's it, forget it. And what's happened in
two years, the only thing I can think of, meaningfully,
is September 11, that's changed it completely," Brooks
said.
The attacks strained US-Saudi relations
partly because 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi
nationals. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a radical
Saudi opposed to the Saudi ruling family, cited the US
military presence in the Muslim holy land of Mecca and
Medina as one of the group's primary motives in
attacking the US. Another motive was US support of
Israel and of the Gulf's ruling families.
In the
wake of September 11, some US opinion makers called for
dramatically reducing US political and trade links with
Saudi Arabia. That advice was rejected by US President
George W Bush, who saw Riyadh as a valuable ally. But it
set off a war of words between the two countries which
highlighted the extent of Saudi popular sentiment
against the US troops and the urgency of addressing it.
The US has maintained a military presence on
Saudi soil since the 1991 Gulf War, when Saudi Arabia
was the staging ground for the coalition that evicted
Iraq from Kuwait.
In recent months, US-Saudi
relations worsened further over Riyadh's refusal to let
Washington use its soil to launch attacks to topple
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Washington was forced to
develop an alternative command-and-control center at
al-Udeid air base in Qatar and spent millions of dollars
to make it operational in just a few months' time.
Brooks said that the Qatar air base now offers
the US a more stable home in the region: "Qatar is
perfectly [suitable], the geography is just as good, the
convenience is just as good, you've got a great sea
port, the whole regime is much more supportive, there
are not that many folk living in Qatar for starters. You
haven't got a huge mass [as people.] And you haven't got
all the Muslim dimension of Medina and all that, which
basically makes it more difficult to be in Saudi
Arabia."
The analyst says that US military
personnel and contractors will now retain a residual
presence at the Prince Sultan air base to keep it in
operational shape should a new regional crisis encourage
Washington to seek to use it again.
But, for
now, US officials are stressing that they have already
moved to Qatar and that - as far as Washington and
Riyadh are concerned - the problem of US troops in Saudi
Arabia is solved.
US Navy Rear Admiral Dave
Nichols said while traveling with Rumsfeld that "we have
already switched [to Qatar]" and that the bulk of US
forces in Saudi Arabia should be out within the next few
months. He said that the Combined Air Operations Center
at Prince Sultan would remain wired but that most of its
computers would be moved to the neighboring emirate and
that "we want to be fully out of here by the end of
summer".
Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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