|
|
|
|
COMMENTARY
Saudis grapple with
terrorism
By Ehsan Ahrari
Saudi Arabia recently held a summit on
countering terrorism. Considering that it has long
denied that such a threat even existed, holding
the summit was indeed a major development. Two
other factors seem to have motivated the Saudi
rulers. First, in the wake of several al-Qaeda
attacks inside the kingdom, it appears that a
consensus has been developed within the inner
sanctum of the Saudi family that something needs
to be done for the very survival of the regime.
The Saudi regime has the best instincts to
judge when its survival is at stake. Then it
reacts only episodically to eradicate perceived
causes, but never to dig deeply and uproot the
larger reasons underlying a malignant problem.
Second, the United States has kept its own
pressure on the kingdom to take some measures
about reforming its polity, including drastically
altering a number of taboos - such as militant
jihad, continued disfranchisement of women, and
obscurantist insistence on puritanism - that are
envisaged in Washington as major problems related
to the Wahhabi school of thought.
Jihadi forces
in Afghanistan, in Central Asia and in the
contiguous areas were gathering momentum between
1997 and 2001. Their purpose was to overthrow the
existing governments. Then in September 2001, the
US itself became a target of their attacks. Since
then, Washington is not only busy fighting the
jihadis - either affiliated to or independent of
al-Qaeda - but is also pressing Saudi Arabia to
eradicate its very source by revising the
curricula of Saudi religious schools.
The
jihadi groups were not always inimical to the US,
however. In the 1980s, the resurgence of militant
jihad served the Cold War-related strategic
objectives of the US of defeating the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan. As good allies, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan were more than willing partners in
revitalizing militant jihadism as a weapon to
fight and defeat the "godless" communists, who
were also occupying the land of Islam.
(Ironically, the jihadis are currently using the
same logic to attack the Western occupation forces
in Iraq. America's continued occupation of Iraq is
one of the reasons that Osama bin Laden mentions
in justifying "defensive jihad".)
In
retrospect, the US should have dealt with its own
policy of encouraging the revitalization of
jihadism right after the Soviet Union's withdrawal
from Afghanistan. But, as usual, since great
powers have a highly intricate hierarchy of
interests, no one paid any attention to the
possibility that the chickens of jihadism of the
1980s would come home to roost in the 1990s; or
that the target would be the US itself. Washington
should have known in the 1980s that its enemies
would one day be able to use Islam as a tool to
criticize, denigrate and physically attack
US citizens and assets in the Muslim region
of the world, since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's
Islamic Revolution of 1979 was loudly and
repeatedly depicting that country as "the Great
Satan", even then.
On the contrary, no one
in their wildest dreams could have imagined that
the militant jihadis would some day turn against
the seat of Islamic puritanism, Saudi Arabia,
where the very legitimacy of the ruling dynasty
stemmed from the pact of 1744-45 between the
descendants of Mohammad bin Abdel Wahhab and King
Saud. In this instance, one has to understand the
enormous distance that the kingdom of Bedouin
fighters has traversed between then (ie,
1744-55) and in the 1990s, and how complex its
own strategic interests had become in the
duration. But the trouble was that the Wahhabi
puritans were judging the performance of the Saudi
kingdom by using the measure of that anachronistic
pact of 1745. One could argue that even the Saudi
dynasty did not realize how cumbersome its own
responsibilities had become to its region and to
the international community at the time the US was
attacked on September 11, 2001.
Saudi
Arabia's initial response was a cavalier denial
about the participation of its citizens, then it
took the position that the US was somehow
exaggerating the presence of militant jihadism in
Saudi Arabia, and definitely misstating any
witting role of the Saudi rulers in promoting it
anywhere in the world. It should be unequivocally
stated at this point that no suggestion is being
made here that the Saudi government had any role
in the September 11 attacks on the US. It came
under intense criticism and scrutiny for allowing
the perpetuation of jihadism through the curricula
of its religious schools, and for allowing the
abuse of Islamic charities by al-Qaeda for
financing its global operations.
Even in
demonstrating its resolve to the world that it is
serious about eradicating terrorism both within
and outside its borders, the Saudi government came
up with an approach that is quintessentially
Saudi. It put forward a number of Islamic scholars
who are on its payroll to label terrorism as
"anti-Islamic". Such a denunciation becomes a
rationale for using brutal force to fight merely
its symptoms, much the same way a cop deals with
criminals in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
During the summit on terrorism, the Saudi government initiated
the assiduous use of its religious scholars
to nullify the jihadist effects of its
own schools. Dr Abdul Aziz al-Askar, a professor of
the Islamic University of Imam Muhammad bin-Saud,
and Dr Majid al-Turki, an adviser at
the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, made their presence
felt by stating that fighting terrorism had
become the top priority of the Saudi government. Al-Turki
spoke of an Internet plan drawn up
by the Saudi government to have a "secret dialogue" with
youths who sympathized with extremist groups.
Some 800 messages were reportedly sent,
as a result of which some of those youths
are reported to have "recanted their views". [1]
He also announced that the Saudi government intended
to establish an international center for
fighting terrorism, and called for the assessment of
the established counterterrorism policies. This
measure was definitely in line with the Bush
administration's ongoing endeavor to restructure the
intelligence-gathering capabilities of
the United States.
Another important
announcement during that conference was the
decision of the kingdom to "tighten the noose" on
Islamic charities and control their work, a
measure that the Bush administration has been
strongly advocating since soon after the September
11 attacks.
The Saudi government has also
initiated a massive public education campaign
under the rubric, "horrors of terrorism". It
includes a public display of pictures of
bomb-damaged buildings and bloodied corpses in
different parts of the country that have
experienced terrorist attacks.
The closest
the government came to describing the current
objective of its counterterrorism strategy was
when Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Saleh
Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh stated, "The general strategy
is to expand the base of moderates." He hastened
to add, however, that as long as there were "bad
things" happening in Iraq and Palestine, it would
prolong negative events in the rest of the world.
What is wrong with the current handling of
the Saudi government regarding terrorism? To the
extent that any reform-oriented measures or
endeavors to develop a strategy should start
somewhere, the Saudi summit is a good start.
However, if its real purpose is to develop a
strategy - which by definition is an enormously
cumbersome process - Saudi Arabia has to take up a
series of follow-up measures soon after all the
lights in the summit hall are turned off and the
global media depart the premises.
To start
with, the causes of terrorism are highly intricate
and defy unidimensional explanations and similar
attempts to resolve it. Serious endeavors to
eradicate it within one society or in a region
must be based on developing comprehensive and
multifaceted policies and implementing them on a
prolonged and trial-and-error basis. Using
"state-owned" mullahs to depict terrorism as
"anti-Islamic" and suppressing it by arresting or
even killing a few hundred of the "usual suspects"
will only prove to be a stopgap measure. It will
do nothing to eradicate it.
The Saudi
government should realize that its chief problem
stems from its closeness, its secretive nature,
and its very approach to governance that
exclusively relies on dynastic rule. Democracies
have no problem debating about problems that ail
them - no matter how serious - and then developing
corrective policy measures. Close societies, on
the contrary, silently suffer from major problems
until the political system implodes. Such may be
the fate of Saudi Arabia.
What the Saudi
government needs to do is to systematically chip
away at the Wahhabi version of Islamic puritanism
that insists on maintaining the notion of
monolithism - only their version of it - that is
alien to Islam. Consequently, believers in such a
monolithic notion have argued that any deviation
from that particular interpretation is heretic,
thus a cause for the elimination of all heretics.
As a religion that is intended to be relevant
until the end of time, Islam never meant to be
monolithic, highly static, inward looking, or
obscurantist. Doing away with the Wahhabi
monolithic frame of reference means that the Saudi
government will have to find an entirely new
framework for its legitimacy, which, in turn, is
likely to shake up the very foundation its polity.
Is the monarchy up for such an iconoclastic task?
Looking at its past record, there is little reason
to be sanguine about it. The alternative might be
the gradual opening of the Saudi polity through
public debates on various controversial aspects of
the Wahhabi school. Even when it is managed, such
an approach is still potentially explosive. In the
absence of such a radical approach, no Saudi
government will be able to counter terrorism, much
less develop an effective counterterrorism
strategy.
Note
[1] It
should be noted that the London-based
International Institute of Strategic Studies
places the number of potential al-Qaeda militants
in Saudi Arabia at about 18,000. That figure is
also soft and is based on guesswork. Only the
Saudi intelligence service may be able to discuss
figures on the actual size of militants inside its
borders, and it is not talking.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an
Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Middle East Sex News
|
|
|
