AL-QAEDA AND THE HOUSE OF
SAUD Eternal enemies or secret
bedfellows? By John R Bradley
In February, less than two years after
suicide attacks on Western residential compounds
in Riyadh killed 34 people, including nine
Americans, and ushered in an unprecedented wave of
terrorist violence across the kingdom, the Saudi
capital hosted a three-day international
counterterrorism conference.
During the
short period between the bombings and the
terrorism conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's
image had transformed from an oasis of relative
calm in an often volatile region into the place
held responsible in many ways for al-Qaeda's birth
and growth and where the triumph or demise of this
international terrorist organization would
ultimately be determined.
Underlining
President George W Bush's wish to work publicly as
closely as possible with the al-Saud in the
ongoing fight against al-Qaeda, its affiliates and
its sympathizers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, US
homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend
emerged from the conference declaring
that
Washington "stands squarely"
with the kingdom's rulers. She emphasized that the
conference was proof positive of a "commitment to
the elimination of terrorism" on the part of the
al-Saud ruling family. [1]
Yet,
not all observers were quite so bowled over by the
stage-managed proceedings in Riyadh. [2] The
delegates from numerous international
organizations, the United States and 50 Arab, Asian and
European countries, with the exclusion of Israel,
which predictably was not among the invitees, sat
listening to senior Saudi princes, who have been
routinely accused of at the very least failing to
prevent the funneling of money from
Saudi-based charities to terrorist
organizations, give speeches condemning
terrorism.
As recently as July, the US government
suggested that wealthy Saudi individuals remain "a
significant source" of funds for Islamic
terrorists around the world, despite widely
publicized efforts to shut down these channels.
[3] On top of such accusations, it is widely
recognized that the royal family has empowered a
hardline Wahhabi religious establishment that
propagates an extremist interpretation of Islam,
which critics argue acts as a guide and
inspiration to terrorists such as Saudi dissident
Osama bin Laden and his followers, giving it
ideological and day-to-day control over the
kingdom's mosques, judiciary, schools, media and
religious police.
There were thus two
polarized reactions to the conference, reflecting
the diametrically opposed views among Saudi
observers in the West when it comes to the
question of the kingdom's role in the "war on
terrorism". On one side are those such as Townsend
who, believing Saudi Arabia to be a crucial ally,
focused on the conference's powerful symbolism.
They stressed that one of its important objectives
was to dispel persisting doubts in the West about
the Saudi royal family's commitment to combating
terrorism. On the other side are those who see
duplicity in every al-Saud statement [4] and were
especially critical of the conference's high
symbolism, as it allowed the regime to showcase
its purported counterterrorism successes without
having to engage in substantive debate on broader,
more controversial issues.
Both
interpretations contain elements of truth. When it
comes to the issue of fighting al-Qaeda, the
al-Saud regime has been and continues to be part
of the problem in fundamental ways. Yet, it is
equally undeniable that, considering the absolute
nature of the al-Saud family's rule and the dearth
of acceptable alternatives, at least in Western
eyes, the regime is indispensable to any solution
to terrorism. Townsend implicitly acknowledged in
Riyadh that, if bin Laden's goal was to overthrow
the House of Saud and subsequently to gain the
prestige that would come from the custodianship of
Islam's two holy mosques and control of
one-quarter of the world's known oil reserves,
then the main US policy objective in response must
be to guarantee the royal family's survival.
Al-Qaeda stakes its claim
Oddly, it would appear that bin Laden
shares Townsend's view that the endgame of the
global jihad preached by al-Qaeda will be played
out in Saudi Arabia. Having failed to topple
regimes or establish permanent Islamic governments
in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan,
and with failure imminent in Iraq as well, bin
Laden's birthplace remains his last-gasp
opportunity. If he fails there, he will ultimately
have failed in his broader strategy. Despite their
evident willingness to conduct smaller-scale
terrorist operations, al-Qaeda cells in Saudi
Arabia appear to be holding off from a direct
attack on an oil installation or pipeline or
against the Saudi royal family itself.
In
his two direct addresses to the Saudi regime, in
August 1995 and December 2004, even bin Laden
himself called for internal reform within the
Saudi government rather than revolution from
below. Self-appointed al-Qaeda spokesmen regularly
post on websites that the organization is waiting
to launch a full-scale assault against the al-Saud
and its economic lifeline because a direct threat
to their rule will cause the princes' "separate
fingers to become an iron fist". A major attack
would almost certainly result in the imposition of
a state of emergency, restricting terrorists'
mobility. It is better, the spokesmen argue, to
let the royal family squabble among themselves
about reforms as resentment grows over
intensifying economic problems. An increasingly
unstable Saudi Arabia would remain a fertile
recruiting ground for arms, money and volunteers.
All this, critics claim, is well
understood by the al-Saud ruling family, who, it
has long been argued, paid off al-Qaeda in the
1990s to ensure there would be no direct attacks
launched against its regime. [5] It is indeed
strange, considering the often-trumpeted line that
al-Qaeda wants to "overthrow the Saudi ruling
family and replace it with a Taliban-style
regime", that no Saudi princes have been
assassinated, despite the many thousands of them,
most of whom are more vulnerable to such targeting
than Westerners who live in heavily guarded
residential compounds. Could it be, therefore,
that bin Laden recognizes that, in the official
Wahhabi religious establishment he officially
despises, because they legitimize the al-Saud
regime's rule by, as the favorite Islamist taunt
goes, "issuing fatwas for money", he
nevertheless sees his closest ideological ally in
a world where he is hunted and increasingly
marginalized?
Promoting a solution ...
The House of Saud's role as part of the
solution is the easiest to assess because it is
trumpeted, rather than deliberately obscured, by
the regime's officials and the state-controlled
media. The Saudi government's counterterrorism
framework includes an amnesty offer for militants
who turn themselves in, that they will not face
the death penalty and will only be prosecuted if
they commit acts that hurt others; [6] a massive
anti-extremism campaign in the Saudi media and on
billboards throughout the main cities, given a
boost by the high number of Saudis and other
fellow Muslims among the November 2003 bombing
casualties; [7] the reeducation of extremist
clerics by the Saudi royal family, although the
details remained vague and there was never any
independent verification that this retraining ever
actually took place; [8] and unprecedented
cooperation between the Central Intelligence
Agency and Saudi security forces, which includes
sophisticated command centers in Jeddah and
Riyadh. [9]
The May 2003 bombings served
as a wake-up call for the Saudi royal family,
leading it to construct the above framework, and
it has since been locked in an endless cycle of
violent confrontation with militants. Between May
2003 and June 2005, more than 30 major
terrorism-related incidents occurred in the
kingdom. At least 91 foreign nationals and Saudi
civilians have been killed and 510 wounded,
according to former intelligence chief Prince
Turki al-Faisal.
Al-Faisal has also stated
that 41 security force members have been killed
and 218 wounded, while 112 militants have been
killed and 25 wounded. [10] Included among these:
a November 2003 attack on another Riyadh compound
killed 17 people, but this time the dead were
mostly Muslims. This attack, however, seems to
have been an isolated incident, as all other
attacks have targeted the regime, or Western
people, buildings and businesses.
In May
2004, gunmen attacked the offices of the
Houston-based company ABB Lummus Global, in the
Red Sea port city of Yanbu, killing six Westerners
and a Saudi. One month later, oil company
compounds in the Eastern Province city of
al-Khobar were the target; hostages were taken at
the Oasis residential building, and at least 30
people were killed. In December 2004, the US
consulate in Jeddah was attacked. Militants
breached its heavily fortified defenses and,
before being killed, managed to pull down the US
flag. A group calling itself al-Qaeda on the
Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for most
of these large-scale attacks. In the meantime,
al-Qaeda-affiliated cells in Riyadh and Jeddah
have periodically singled out Westerners for
execution. Most infamously, US contractor Paul
Johnson was kidnapped in Riyadh in June 2004 and
beheaded, the ghastly crime recorded on video and
immediately posted on Islamist websites.
In the face of such atrocities, no one now
seriously doubts the Saudi regime's commitment to
hunt down and kill individual militants who have
al-Qaeda cells that appear to be avoiding directly
attacking the Saudi royal family. The denial of
the existence of homegrown extremists, evident in
Interior Minister Prince Naif's refusal for six
months after the September 11 attacks to
acknowledge that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi
nationals, is today a distant memory.
In
fact, Prince Naif's internal security force has
born the brunt of the casualties, losing more men
battling suspected al-Qaeda cells than any other
security force in the Arab world. In April, it was
an Interior Ministry announcement that reported
how residents of the tiny provincial capital of
Sakaka in Saudi Arabia's northernmost province,
Jouf, had witnessed a grisly scene in the main
public square: the corpses of three convicted and
beheaded militants had been tied to poles, on top
of which were placed their severed heads. The
three, who had returned to the kingdom after
fighting in Afghanistan, were executed by the
central government after being convicted of
murdering the region's deputy governor, a top
religious court judge and a police chief. They had
also killed a Saudi soldier and kidnapped a
foreign national, long before such kidnappings
became "fashionable" among Islamist groups in the
Middle East.
At its height in 2003, the
unrest in Jouf, a power base of the al-Sudairi
branch of the ruling family, which included King
Fahd, Defense Minister Prince Sultan and Riyadh
governor Prince Salman, represented in microcosm
the kingdom-wide tensions that threatened to spill
over into a general uprising. [11] The rebellion's
end in April this year, with the crudely symbolic
public display of its leaders' heads, marked the
moment that the al-Saud triumphed over the most
extreme of its homegrown enemies, at least for the
time being.
From a list of the 26 most
wanted terrorists issued after the May 2003
bombings, only two remain at large; the others
have been killed or captured or have surrendered.
Just hours after Riyadh issued a new list of 36
most wanted terrorists in July, the Moroccan
terrorist at the top, Younis Mohammed Ibrahim
al-Hayari, was killed in a shoot-out with Saudi
security forces. [12]
... or fueling
the problem? The other role of the House
of Saud - its part in the problem - is much more
difficult to document and explain, as the Saudi
regime does not want the world to know about it.
What is clear, however, is the broad context:
Riyadh's fight against terrorism since May 2003
and related calls for national unity have provided
a facade for behind-the-scenes moves to strengthen
the role of the Wahhabi religious establishment,
with whom the al-Saud rules in effective
partnership. [13]
Such moves are bad news
for the "war on terrorism" in Saudi Arabia and
elsewhere. The Saudi royal family certainly
cracked down hard on al-Qaeda in the wake of the
September 11 attacks and the subsequent Islamist
campaign of violence inside the kingdom. To shore
up support among its core constituents, however,
whom the crackdown risked alienating, it also
reached out not only to the masses through
advertising campaigns, but also to the hardline
religious establishment whose support legitimizes
the royal family. The regime claimed to endorse a
"truer" version of Islam than that of the
terrorist organizations. Yet, the line between
that "truer" Islam and al-Qaeda's proclaimed
ideology is becoming increasingly blurred.
Saudi leaders, in their eagerness to prove
their Islamist credentials in the face of charges
of being US puppets, [14] have empowered a number
of clerics who, although not overtly critical of
the regime, are also not overtly critical of the
terrorists - indeed, on occasion, quite the
reverse. The words and actions of these clerics
challenge the official, antiterrorism narrative
fine-tuned at the Riyadh conference, heavily
promoted by the state-controlled media as well as
Saudi embassies abroad, and tied to reality by the
frequent clashes between the security forces and
suspected militants. In this counternarrative, the
al-Saud, despite its effort to hunt down those who
directly threaten its own rule, is less serious
about tackling the deeper issues related to the
funding of, ideological legitimization of, and
recruitment for al-Qaeda in the kingdom.
Particularly alarming was Riyadh's
announcement, just days after the counterterrorism
conference and one day before a first round of
partial municipal elections got underway, that
Abdullah al-Obeid, a former head of an Islamic
charity, had been appointed as the kingdom's new
education minister.
Described by the Wall
Street Journal as "an official enmeshed in a
terror financing controversy", he is a former
director of the Muslim World League (WML), the
parent organization of the International Islamic
Relief Organization, which the US Department of
the Treasury claims may have had financial ties to
Islamist terrorist groups. Obeid was head of the
WML from 1995 to 2002, during which time the
charity spent tens of millions of dollars to
finance the spread of Wahhabism. The Wall Street
Journal quoted an essay by Obeid from 2002 in
which he blamed "some mass media centers that are
managed and run by Jews in the West" for reports
linking terrorism and Islam. [15] He also
reportedly organized symposiums to explain that
Palestinian suicide attacks on Israelis "are
conducted in self-defense" and "are lawful and
approved by all religious standards, international
treaties, norms and announcements". [16]
On the basis of such evidence, Obeid, who
replaced as education minister the secular,
progressive-minded Muhammad al-Rasheed, a man
hated by the hardline Wahhabis, [17] is not an
individual the West should trust to delete
anti-Semitic and anti-Christian passages from the
Saudi school curriculum, let alone its pro-jihadi
rhetoric, all widely blamed as providing
ideological justification for attacks on
non-Muslims by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
Nor, for that matter, is there much cause
for confidence in the Saudi chief justice, Saleh
bin Muhammad al-Luhaidan, who also holds the rank
of government minister. Luhaidan has been accused
of instructing Saudis on how to fight US and Iraqi
troops in Iraq in the name of Allah. An October
2004 recording obtained and distributed by a
Washington-based Saudi dissident group has
Luhaideen making remarks at a mosque in Riyadh in
response to questions from a group of Saudis who
wanted to join terrorist organizations in Iraq.
[18] He is heard advising that those who still
want to join the fight must be careful when
entering the country because US planes and
satellite surveillance equipment may be monitoring
the borders. He adds that those Saudis who do
manage to enter Iraq will not be punished by the
Saudi security forces and insists that money
raised for the jihad must go directly to those who
will launch attacks.
Two of the kingdom's
most extremist, anti-Western clerics, Safar
al-Hawali and Salman al-Auda, known as "awakening
sheikhs" because of their powerful influence on
young Arab Muslims in the early 1990s in the
aftermath of the Persian Gulf War when they were
imprisoned by the al-Saud, have also returned to
the mainstream, even acting as intermediaries
between the government and suspected terrorists.
[19]
Hawali, who reportedly recently
suffered a heart attack, is secretary general of
the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, a militant,
anti-American entity established by more than 225
radical figures from across the Islamic world as a
response to the US invasion of Iraq. The group's
initial statement condemned "the Zionists and the
American administration led by right-wing
extremists that are working to expand their
control over nations and peoples, loot their
resources, destroy their will, and to change their
educational curricula and social system". [20] In
November 2004, Hawali and Auda were among 26 Saudi
clerics, most of whom receive their salaries from
the Saudi royal family, who published a religious
statement urging Muslims to wage holy war in Iraq.
"Jihad against the occupiers is a must,"
said the statement. "It is not only a legitimate
right, but a religious duty." [21] The fact that
both of these men remain in their jobs speaks
volumes. The al-Saud's secret strategy is to put
out the message that it is okay to attack
"infidels" in Iraq, but not in Saudi Arabia.
Critics of the regime refer to this when they
point out alleged "Saudi duplicity". According to
a recent study, some 60% of suicide bombers in
Iraq are Saudi nationals, [22] and even a
Saudi-based analyst concedes that as many as 2,500
Saudis have crossed over to Iraq to join the
insurgency. [23] Saudi observer and Gulf expert
Simon Henderson has written in a more general
context:
Worried about their own necks, the
Saudi royal family tolerates a political fudge,
hoping that it can reduce support for al-Qaeda
from among its citizens and win the battle for
Islamic legitimacy. Al-Qaeda recognizes the
basic rules, targeting foreigners. Hence, no
direct attacks on members of the House of Saud
itself ... Before 9/11, Western officials say
that senior princes were paying off bin Laden to
avoid targeting the kingdom altogether. That
changed when Western pressure stopped the
payments. For the West, this means more
terrorism and high oil prices. [24]
The new strategy of tacitly
encouraging Saudi terrorists to blow themselves up
in Iraq or at least not disciplining those who
openly encourage such action is a continuation of
this game. It represents yet another attempt by
the al-Saud to postpone a final showdown with bin
Laden and his followers. The al-Saud have
certainly done little, if anything, to stop young
Saudis from traveling to Iraq. The failure of the
regime to challenge more rigorously the jihadi
culture in its schools and mosques, beyond the
confines of glossy advertising campaigns, as the
remarks by the education minister and chief
justice clearly demonstrate, compound the
long-term risk of blowback from such appeasement.
[25]
The al-Saud regime further muddies
the water with its campaigns of outright
misinformation. The hunt for Paul Johnson's corpse
is a good example of this. Only hours after his
murder, Saudi security forces gunned down a man
believed to be al-Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia,
Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, in an ambush at a petrol
station in the capital. He and several followers
were caught, the Saudi authorities said,
attempting to dispose of Johnson's
corpse.
Yet, the next day it became known
that Johnson's corpse had not been found. Still
today, it has yet to be located, and the US
Embassy in Riyadh has called off the search. In
fact, despite the attempts to link Muqrin to the
abduction and although Muqrin had a long and
bloody history from fighting in Chechnya to
apparently planning the May 2003 attacks, this was
probably the one atrocity of which he was
innocent.
Saudi spokesmen had mournfully
repeated in Riyadh and Washington that the
authorities had launched a massive manhunt for
Johnson that had narrowly missed saving him but
had at least brought rough justice to his
abductors shortly after the deed. But this story
turned out to be another example of rhetoric
replacing reality. Instead, the indications are
that Muqrin was lured into a trap independent of
and planned well ahead of the Johnson case and
that it was another terrorist leader, Saleh
al-Oufi, later named as Muqrin's successor, who
had carried out the abduction. When Johnson's head
was recovered a month later, it was in the freezer
of a safe house used by Oufi. [26]
Dangerous liaisons Al-Qaeda's
infiltration of the Saudi security forces, the
widespread sympathy in those forces' rank and file
for the terrorist organization's goals, and the
intelligence leaks that result have had multiple
negative consequences, the most profound being the
assassination of senior officers and the
collaboration between lower ranks of the security
forces and terrorists during attacks.
Members of the state security apparatus,
whose job now ostensibly amounts to keeping the
al-Saud in power in the face of growing domestic
opposition, find themselves directly in the
radicals' firing line. A radical Saudi Islamist
group affiliated with al-Qaeda claimed they blew
up a car in December 2003 in Riyadh belonging to
Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim al-Dhaleh, a senior
Saudi security officer who escaped by the skin of
his teeth.
The group, the Brigade of the
Two Holy Mosques, also said it had tried to kill
Major General Abdel-Aziz al-Huweirini, the number
three official in the Saudi Interior Ministry, who
was shot in Riyadh the same month. The statement
warned Dhaleh "and those like him" against
pursuing their war against Islamists in Saudi
Arabia. [27]
These were not empty threats.
In April 2004, a suicide attacker driving a truck
blew up the headquarters of the counterterrorism
unit in Riyadh, destroying much of the building
and killing five people. In December of the same
year, militants attacked the Interior Ministry in
Riyadh itself, although damage was minimal and
claims that Prince Naif was the target were viewed
skeptically because he was on an official trip to
Tunisia at the time of the blast. Also, in June,
Mubarak al-Sowat, head of the police
investigations department in Mecca and a leading
proponent of launching preemptive strikes against
suspected extremists, was shot nine times outside
of his home and then hacked to pieces with an axe.
[28]
Giving a rare insight into the
paranoia and fear with which senior security
officials now have to live in Saudi Arabia,
Sowat's wife told local media that her husband had
received many death threats on his cell phone and
by e-mail in the weeks and months leading up to
his assassination and was "always distracted and
nervous". He had become "constantly anxious and
fearful" after he returned from Riyadh earlier in
the year. [29]
Obviously, those singling
out such individuals for attack must have
excellent intelligence, likely provided by
insiders. They know who to target, as well as
their victims' exact movements and when best to
strike. There is also ample evidence of
collaboration between the terrorists and security
forces in the execution of terrorist attacks or,
at the very least, of an unwillingness to respond
swiftly on some occasions.
In the attacks
on the compounds in Yanbu and Khobar in May 2004,
at least 90 minutes passed before security forces
responded. In Khobar, the attackers were actually
allowed to go free to fight another day when
security forces turned a blind eye, despite the
fact that the compound in which they were holed up
had been completely surrounded. [30]
The
attacks in Riyadh in May 2003 depended on a
significant level of insider information about the
three compounds targeted, almost certainly
provided by those "defending" them. The suicide
bombers detonated their vehicle right inside the
main housing block in the Vinell compound, which
took them less than a minute to reach from the
gate. As they drove at breakneck speed with a bomb
weighing nearly 200 kilograms to the most densely
populated part of the complex, they had to know
where the switches were to operate the gates after
attacking the guards and exactly where the main
housing block was located. [31]
The
final showdown? In his December 2004
address to the Saudi ruling family, bin Laden
issued an unprecedented call for attacks that
would sabotage the oil industries of the Gulf,
including Saudi Arabia. [32] Al-Qaeda elements in
Saudi Arabia immediately endorsed attacks on their
own oil industry. "We call on all the [mujahideen]
in the Arabian Peninsula to unite ... and target
the oil supplies that do not serve the Islamic
nation, but the enemies of this nation," said an
Internet statement. [33]
Bin Laden's new
tack is a shift in al-Qaeda tactics, reversing his
and others' edicts from the 1990s that made oil
facilities in the Muslim world off-limits to
attack. Because the hoped-for Islamic empire that
he and others had announced in Sudan in 1993 would
need oil revenues to thrive, the oil facilities
had to be preserved for the glory of Islam. [34]
In Saudi Arabia, these pipelines have become the
obvious new targets for the Saudi jihadis. They
could be sabotaged by an amateur with no military
training, and a successful attack would have a
huge psychological impact.
Government
officials in Riyadh dismiss talk of attacks on the
oil pipelines as a scare tactic, arguing that,
because Saudi security forces have killed or
arrested dozens of al-Qaeda operatives, bin
Laden's ability to influence events inside the
kingdom has diminished. That may be true, and
there is no denying the Saudi government's
multiple counterterrorism successes. Yet, although
attacks on the heavily guarded oil-pumping
facilities are indeed unlikely, smaller incidents
remain possible along the kingdom's more than
10,000-mile pipeline network.
In his
message to Saudi militants, bin Laden's main aim
did not appear to be the destruction of major
installations, which would rob the Saudi people of
their primary means of financial income and turn
them completely against him and his cause, but
rather acts of sabotage that would increase oil
prices, which he said should be $100 a barrel.
Saudi Arabia has more than a quarter of the
world's known oil reserves, and even an abortive
attack on the Saudi petroleum network would raise
oil prices. It also would dramatically increase
concerns in Washington about the al-Saud family's
ability to maintain stability.
Adding to
concerns about the impact of bin Laden's tape is
the knowledge that the thousands of Saudi jihadis
who have snuck over to Iraq are likely to return
to the kingdom once Iraq stabilizes. They will
have been trained in urban warfare, including
instruction on how to sabotage oil pipelines. As
was the case after the fall of the Taliban in
Afghanistan, these Saudis are going to bring their
terrorism back home with them. A confidential
Interior Ministry document obtained by a
London-based Saudi dissident group apparently
acknowledges that 200 Saudis may have already
returned to the kingdom in the wake of bin Laden's
call. [35] What happens next will largely
determine al-Qaeda's future in Saudi Arabia. "We
expect the worst from those who went to Iraq,"
Prince Naif said in remarks published in July.
"They will be worse [than those who have already
launched attacks], and we will be ready for them."
[36]
There are troubling signs; the
tactics employed by the Iraqi insurgents are
evident in the attacks on Westerners in Saudi
Arabia. Copycat incidents include the dragging of
Westerners' bodies from the back of cars, the use
of assassinations to sabotage the vital oil
sector, and kidnappings. The ideological bonds
that bind the insurgents in Iraq and Saudi Arabia
were made explicit by those who beheaded Johnson
in Riyadh when they signed their claim of
responsibility "the Fallujah Brigade". [37] In an
attack in which six Westerners and a Saudi were
killed in Yanbu, militants dragged the body of one
of the victims into a local school playground and
forced students to watch. "Come join your brothers
in Fallujah," they shouted, in reference to the
city where four US contractors had been similarly
slain. [38] The al-Qaeda cell that attacked
foreigners in Khobar also dragged the body of a
Westerner through the streets from a car. The
leader of the group said on an Islamic website
afterward that a subsidiary of Halliburton had
been singled out for attack because "it has a role
in Iraq". [39]
The flow of Saudi jihadis
to Iraq benefits the al-Saud regime in the short
term, at least in the sense that, if they are
blowing themselves up in Baghdad, they will not be
doing so in Riyadh. Yet, there is potential for
long-term blowback, just as there was when the
"Afghan Arabs" returned from Afghanistan in the
1990s. The other main, related problem is that the
al-Saud is increasingly following a domestic
agenda focused solely on counterterrorism.
Riyadh's relentless fight against
militants and repeated calls for national unity
have conveniently provided a facade behind which
the monarchy can abandon the few reform
initiatives previously in place and reverse any
movement, at least in the short term, toward
democratic change. By remaining complicit with the
regime, particularly at a time when Saudi citizens
remain oppressed, unemployed and in some cases
even impoverished, Washington is essentially
allowing the kingdom to become a recruiting ground
for al-Qaeda.
The United States is
dependent on Saudi oil, but the Saudi regime is
dependent on the US for its survival. Current US
policy toward the kingdom should use that leverage
to call for genuine reform, rather than just
supporting the royal family in the belief that it
will keep terrorists at bay. If the US does not
look beyond the short-term benefits of stability
resulting from its relationship with the Saudi
regime, it will face far more severe, long-term
consequences.
Notes [1]
Mohammed Rasooldeen US Says Saudi Victory Crucial to
Defeating Global Terror, Arab News,
February 8, 2005. [2] See, for example, Simon
Henderson, Lights, Camera, Inaction? Saudi
Arabia's Counterterrorism Conference,
PolicyWatch, no. 956, February 11, 2005. [3]
"US Calls Saudis 'Significant Source' of Terror
Funding," Agence France Press, July 14, 2005.
[4] Robert Spencer, Ending the Saudi Double
Game, FrontpageMagazine.com, June 23,
2005. [5] Nick Fielding, Saudis Paid Bin Laden 200 Million
Pounds, Sunday Times, August 25, 2002.
[6] "Saudis Offer Amnesty to Militants,"
Associated Press, June 23, 2004. [7] "Saudi
Attacks Blamed on al-Qaeda," Associated Press,
November 9, 2003. [8] "Retraining for 1,000
Saudi Preachers," Reuters, June 25, 2003. [9]
Douglas Frantz, "Once Indifferent, Saudis Allied
With US in Fighting al-Qaeda," Los Angeles Times,
August 8, 2004. [10] Dominic Evans, "Saudi
Arabia Says Ready to Beat Militants from Iraq,"
Reuters, July 10, 2005. [11] John R Bradley,
"Smoldering Rebellion Against Saudi Rule Threatens
to Set Country Ablaze," Independent, January 28,
2004. [12] Abdullah al-Shihri, "Saudis Kill
Top Militant in Gun Battle in Capital," Associated
Press, July 4, 2005. [13] John R Bradley, The House of Saud Re-Embraces
Fundamentalism, Asia Times Online,
April 12, 2005. [14] Bin Laden makes this
accusation, at some length, in both his August
1995 and December 2004 addresses to the Saudi
royal family. [15] Glenn Simpson, "New Saudi
Aide Is in Terror-Fund Probe," Wall Street
Journal, February 9, 2005. [16] For more
details about al-Obeid's appointment, see
Henderson, "Lights, Camera, Inaction?" [17]
"Saudi Islamic Doctrine Hard to Control,"
Associated Press, April 20, 2004. [18] See
"Saudi Minister Supports War Against Iraq:
Report," Saudi Institute, April 26, 2005.
Al-Luhaidan admitted to NBC News that the voice on
the recording was his and that they were his words
but claimed, rather unconvincingly, that he had
not intended to express those opinions. See Lisa
Myers and the NBC Investigative Unit, "More Evidence of Saudi Double
Talk?" April 26, 2005, . Since he was
exposed, however, al-Luhaidan has made a clear
statement calling for Saudis not to enter Iraq.
See "Saudi Official Warns Youths Against Fighting
in Iraq," Deutsche Presse-Agentur, July 6, 2005.
[19] Erick Stakelbeck, "The Saudi Hate
Machine," National Interest 2, no.
49 (December 2003). [20] Ibid. [21] Ibid.
[22] Stephen Schwartz, "The Foreign Face of
Iraqi Terrorism," Weekly Standard, March 8, 2005.
[23 Mahen Abedin, "Al-Qaeda: In Decline or
Preparing for the Next Attack? An Interview with
Dr Saad al-Faqih," Jamestown Foundation 3,
no. 5 (June 15, 2005), (hereinafter Jamestown
interview). [24] Simon Henderson, "Bin Laden
Increases His Challenge to the House of Saud,"
London Times, May 31, 2004. [25] John R
Bradley, "Saudis Jihadis Aping Iraq Rebels,"
Washington Times, June 23, 2004. [26] Michael
Scott Doran, "Two Deaths and a Dissembling in
Riyadh," Daily Star, August 27, 2004. [27]
Faiza Saleh Ambah, "Saudi Bomb: A Shift in
al-Qaeda Tactics," Christian Science Monitor,
April 22, 2004. [28] "Mecca: One Security
Officer Assassinated," Arabic News, June 20, 2005.
[29] "Slain Saudi Policeman Was Under Threat,"
United Press International, June 20, 2005. [30]
"Saudi Security Forces 'Agreed to Let Al-Qaeda
Killers Escape'," London Telegraph, June 1, 2004.
[31] Robin Gedye and John R Bradley, "Bomber
Moles in Saudi Security Forces," London Telegraph,
May 16, 2003. [32] John R Bradley, "Terror
Comes to Saudis," Washington Times, January 19,
2004. [33] Ibid. [34] Amir Taheri, "What
'Fueled' the Saudi Raid," New York Post, December
6, 2004. [35] Jamestown interview. [36]
Evans, "Saudi Arabia Says Ready to Beat Militants
from Iraq." [37] Bradley, "Saudi Jihadis Aping
Iraq Rebels." [38] Ibid. [39]
Ibid.
(Copyright 2005 by The Center for
Strategic and International Studies and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (reprinted
with permission of the author from The Washington
Quarterly, Autumn 2005, issue 28:4, pp 139-152.)
Arab, Asian and
European countries, with the exclusion of Israel,
which predictably was not among the invitees, sat
listening to senior Saudi princes, who have been
routinely accused of at the very least failing to
prevent the funneling of money from
Saudi-based charities to terrorist
organizations, give speeches condemning
terrorism.
