Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Grim
choices By Ehsan Ahrari
America's two major
allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, "played important
roles in the growth of al-Qaeda". That is one of the
themes filtering out of the information provided by
members of the 9-11 Commission in Washington to the
American media on a background basis. The brunt of this
support or acquiescence, according to those members,
existed before the terrorist attacks of 2001.
The troubling aspect of that information is that
these members - basing their information from all the
information that they have acquired from various
classified sources - are claiming that support or
acquiescence for al-Qaeda in both those Muslim countries
existed even in 2003, more in Saudi Arabia than in
Pakistan. The unstated aspect of these contentious
assertions is that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have
now turned against al-Qaeda and their hardline Islamist
supporters, when those elements threatened the very
survival of the two regimes.
Al-Qaeda leader
Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin and three other prominent militants
were killed in a shootout with Saudi security forces on
Friday after a number of foreigners were killed in the
country, and King Fahd Ibn Abdul-Aziz warned on Sunday,
"We will not allow a corrupt group led by deviant
thought to violate the security and stability of this
land." Pakistan, meanwhile, has launched a second major
operation in its tribal areas to eliminate al-Qaeda and
other foreigners hiding there. Last week, the Pakistanis
killed a leading abettor of the foreign fighters, Nek
Mohammed.
The eventual outcome of these
conflicts in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan may not be
welcomed by the US.
In the US's global "war on
terrorism", the share of blame for not tracking down
al-Qaeda and its Islamist supporters has to be borne
almost equally by the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In
the case of the US, the Bill Clinton administration did
not follow a serious course of quiet diplomacy to put
pressure on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to crack down on
hardline Islamist and al-Qaeda elements within their
respective borders.
At least Pakistan was
treated critically during the 1999 trip of Clinton to
South Asia. But no follow-up measures - more
importantly, no sustained diplomatic steps - were taken
to insist that Pakistan sever its diplomatic ties with
the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, which was blatantly
supporting al-Qaeda. At that time, Saudi Arabia was
pursuing a policy of benign neglect about al-Qaeda, as
long as that terrorist organization was not taking
direct measures to destabilize the Saudi monarchy.
Despite its public denial, Pakistan was fully cognizant
of al-Qaeda's terrorist activities in surrounding areas,
but refused to put pressure on the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan to oust that organization, or at least
curtail its activities.
But it should be
remembered that the Clinton administration was operating
in an entirely different international environment and
at a time when political pressure to bring about reforms
of the Saudi regime, or to take steps to ameliorate the
influence of al-Qaeda inside Saudi Arabia was deemed
politically untenable and incorrect. The Bush
administration continued that policy prior to the
September 11 attacks.
It was only after those
attacks that the US radically altered its policy and
started pressuring both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to
bring about major changes in their policies toward the
Wahhabi creed, al-Qaeda, and their support for the
Taliban regime. Saudi Arabia was the toughest nut to
crack. The monarchy, at first, pursued a highly
irrational policy of denial - that there was no link
between al-Qaeda and terrorist attacks on the US, or
that there was no threat from al-Qaeda to their (Saudi)
security. Pakistan was first to respond positively, not
only by severing its ties with the Taliban, but also by
becoming a front-line state in the "war on terrorism",
whose first phase was the ouster of the Taliban regime.
But Pakistan's policy toward its own hardline Islamist
groups was very intricate and could not be changed
overnight. However, the fact that Pakistan was trying to
alter even that policy - however haphazardly - was a
major achievement of the Bush administration.
Then, when the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces -
along with that terrorist organization's major
leadership - took refuge along the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border areas after the end of major US military
operations in Afghanistan, President General Pervez
Musharraf of Pakistan proved his earnestness to fight
and eradicate al-Qaeda and its supporters in Pakistan.
But it was after the two assassination attempts on
Musharraf's life that the confrontation between the
Pakistani government and al-Qaeda and its supporters
turned deadly. The death of Nek promised to make this
battle even more deadly than ever before.
The
Saudi regime was yanked out of its policy of denial in
the aftermath of the May 2003 attacks inside its
borders. Before that, the policy of appeasement of Osama
bin Laden and al-Qaeda had continued with an irrational
expectation that that terrorist entity would only focus
on killing "Western infidels". However, since May of
last year, and especially after the November 2003
attacks inside Saudi borders, that policy brought an end
to that absurd expectation. Now the battle between Saudi
Arabia and al-Qaeda is becoming bloodier than before.
The beheading of the kidnapped American, Paul Johnson,
and the ensuing gun-battle leading to the death of Abdul
Aziz al-Muqrin is the beginning of a bloodier phase. The
monarchy maintains that al-Murqin's death is a major
blow to the terrorist organization. The terrorist group
inside Saudi Arabia claims that their leader is still
alive. There is little doubt that al-Qaeda has decided
to oust the monarchy, while the Saudi regime is equally
determined to exterminate that entity. So, both in the
case of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it is the
endangerment of regimes that has created a condition
whereby only one entity - the government or al-Qaeda and
its supporters - is likely to survive.
Unfortunately, the outcome of this conflict will
be deadly, mainly because the support for al-Qaeda,
hardline Islamism, and even jihadism is more pervasive
in both countries than meets the eye. One can think of a
scenario whereby al-Qaeda and its supporters would be
eradicated, but not without subverting, or even
destabilizing, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The other
scenario - that of the success of al-Qaeda and its
supporters over the extant governments in either country
- lurks as an "unthinkable" option for George W Bush and
his presumptive challenger in November's presidential
race, John Kerry. Whatever the outcome, challenges and
options for the United States appear dreadfully grim.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
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