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House of Saud plays a radical
card
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Just when Islamist radicals and the
House of Saud appeared to be enjoying a mutually-agreed
standoff, a bomb blast ripped through a residential
complex in Riyadh on November 8, claiming the lives of
at least 17 people.
The attack - as yet not
claimed by any group, although al-Qaeda were immediate
suspects - threatened to take relations between the
monarchy and radicals back to the time shortly before
the Iraqi war at the beginning of the year when al-Qaeda
ended a ceasefire with the Saudi rulers.
However, events in the kingdom indicate that the
House of Saud - despite its public rhetoric against
militancy - and the Islamic radicals have "reunited' to
save the kingdom from anarchy, and the inevitable
subsequent threat of external forces meddling in the
country's domestic affairs. This is due to the efforts
of a few royal family members and prominent clerics.
At a three-day meeting over the weekend, Crown
Prince Abdullah and a group of more than 40 Saudi
scholars gathered in Mecca for discussions on mediation
between the government and those waging a bloody
campaign to overthrow the House of Saud. The meeting
included a mentor of Osama bin Laden, Muslim theologian
Safar al-Hawali, who denies claims that the recent
Riyadh bombing could be considered jihad.
"Our
problem as Muslims is with those who seek to destroy us
and our religion - and they are well known - not with
the Arab and Islamic governments in our countries,"
al-Hawali was quoted as saying in the media. He and
other Saudi radicals believe that the government should
use them as a conduit to open dialogue with the rebels.
They say that most rebels would turn themselves in if
they were guaranteed fair treatment. "This initiative
[with Crown Prince Abdullah] aims to stop any new
terrorist attacks, [to stop] the bloodshed and to open a
dialogue between the government and the extremists,"
al-Hawali said.
Al-Hawali is the secretary
general of the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, which
was established in April in Egypt by more than 225
religious and political figures over the Islamic world
as a means of uniting efforts "in alerting the community
concerning its right to self-defense and resistance to
the aggression of enemies in all possible legitimate and
effective means".
"The Muslim nation has been
subjected to vicious aggression at the hands of the
forces of tyranny and oppression, especially the
Zionists and the American administration led by
right-wing extremists," read a statement by the founders
of the group.
The complexities of Saudi
militancy
A senior Pakistani
intelligence operator who served for some time in the
Saudi cities of Riyadh and Jeddah, and who recently
worked with Saudi security authorities, told Asia Times
Online that the militant organizations in the kingdom
differ from those of bin Laden's International Islamic
Front that are involved in Afghanistan.
"These
militant organizations [in Saudi Arabia] are faceless
and nameless, and although they are sympathetic with bin
Laden and his anti-US agenda, they are not a part of
al-Qaeda's organizational structure. These groups
primarily comprise youths who fought in Afghanistan
[during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s] who, when
they returned to their country, devoted themselves to the
cause of jihad to help oppressed Muslims in Bosnia,
Chechnya etc. Afghanistan and Iraq became the new
playing fields.
"However, they were never allied
with or were privy to the terror networks involved in
al-Qaeda's terror activities. But at the same time,
these entities were sympathetic towards bin Laden, and
when al-Qaeda decided to break its truce with the House
of Saud [at the start of the Iraqi war] and began
operations against Western targets, several of these
cells got involved."
So the Saudi authorities
decided to initiate dialogue with these rebels to ask
them not to bring instability into the kingdom. The
former intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, Prince Turki
al-Faisal, was chosen to accomplish this task, and
meetings took place in London, were Turki had been
posted as an ambassador.
Several Islamic groups
have a presence in London, including the Movement for
Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) headed by Dr Saad
al-Fagih, the Hizbut Tehrir, the al-Mohajaroon and
others, which was why Turki was stationed there in the
first place.
The talks in London had just begun
with these organizations and other underground ones when
the first Riyadh bombing took place in May this year,
also in a residential area, This obviously strained
relations. However, Turki managed to bring the two sides
closer, but once again this month's blast in Riyadh,
which targeted Muslim foreigners, most of Arab origin,
disturbed the process.
The situation is similar
to that in 1998 when Turki persuaded Taliban leader
Mullah Omar in Afghanistan to hand over Bin Laden to
Saudi Arabia, which has no tradition of handing over its
citizens to a foreign country, such as the United States
(though bin Laden was stripped of his citizenship, he is
still Saudi born). At that time, the US wanted bin Laden
on charges of international terrorism in connection with
the bombing earlier that year of the US embassies in Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in which more
than 200 people died. However, this plan fell through
when the US launched cruise missiles against Afghanistan
in retaliation for the terror in Africa.
Another
bid for bin Laden was initiated by Turki and Crown
Prince Abdullah in 2001. They covertly visited Pakistan
and Afghanistan and held meetings with Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence, the Taliban and bin Laden
himself. These moves followed a US bid to use Pakistani
land and aerial routes to attack Afghanistan in order to
catch bin Laden. In the middle of these efforts, the
hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, and all talking stopped. (See Asia Times
Online Osama bin Laden: The thorn in Pakistan's
flesh )
These examples of past Saudi
bids to defuse tense international situations, as well
as the current efforts by both Turki and Crown Prince
Abdullah to smooth troubled domestic waters, while
laudable in one sense, are in fact self-serving in that
the Saudi rulers will go to any extreme to perpetuate
their rule - even if it means, as in the latest case,
soliciting the help of the Islamic radicals, and thereby
supporting their cause.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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