SAME TACTICS, NEW TARGET
by Amir Taheri
NEW YORK TIMES
November 15, 2003
ARIS
With the terrorist attack on Riyadh last week, which killed at least 17 people, the Saudis are finally experiencing the nightmare many other Arab and Muslim regimes have already lived through: the Islamist monster they created has turned against them.
The Shah of Iran played Islamists against the left and liberals for 20 years. He was overthrown by an Islamist-led revolution in 1979. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt promoted Islamists against pan-Arabists throughout the 1970's. Islamists murdered him in 1981. Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan gave up drinking and promoted Islamists in the army as a move against leftist and centrist opponents. In 1979 he was hanged by General Zia ul-Haq, the Islamist officer he had put in charge of the army.
What is surprising in the case of the Saudis is that it has taken so long. And what is unknown is whether they will succeed in slaying the monster they helped to create.
The Saudis began to play the Islamist card in the early 1960's, mainly against the pan-Arabist movement led by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. When Nasserism ceased to be a threat, in the 1970's, the Saudis used Islamism against the Communist menace from South Yemen and Oman. In 1975, an Islamist member of the royal family assassinated King Faisal, the architect of the kingdom's Islamist strategy. In the 1980's, the king's successors used Islamism to counter the message of the Islamic Revolution coming from Iran.
By the 1990's, the Islamist card was being played against the increasingly liberal aspirations of urban middle classes in the kingdom. The state created a religious police corps known as the mutawwa ("the enforcers") that terrorizes Westernized city-dwellers who might one day want a voice in government.
According to some estimates, the Saudis have spent $100 billion to promote Islamism of various forms at home and abroad in the past two decades. Part of that came from cash collections at mosques, bazaars, schools, hospitals and other public places throughout the kingdom. But the bulk of the money came from the Saudi state.
The first signs of tension in the Saudi state's alliance with Islamists appeared in the wake of the Gulf war of 1990. Islamists were outraged when American troops were welcomed in the kingdom as allies against Saddam Hussein. In 1995, King Fahd formed a Consultative Assembly, whose members he appointed. Although many liberals in Saudi Arabia dismissed the assembly as powerless and ineffective, to many Islamists it was a sign of Westernization.
Islamist resentment of the House of Al Saud has increased with Crown Prince Abdullah's timid but unmistakable efforts to broaden the dynasty's support. The crown prince, who has been in charge of the kingdom's day-to-day government since 1996, has tried to court pan-Arabists, liberals and even some openly secularist figures to balance Islamists. He has created a number of government councils — for economic planning, for example, and for social and youth affairs — which are filled with people that Islamists regard with suspicion.
Their suspicions were confirmed last year when Crown Prince Abdullah unveiled a plan for all Muslim states to establish relations with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. To Islamists, this was heresy: any policy short of the total elimination of Israel is a betrayal of their cause.
Undaunted by Islamist attacks, Crown Prince Abdullah has used every suitable occasion to undermine and isolate the Islamist movement. One act that especially antagonized Islamists was the crown prince's decision this year to meet with a group of Shiite leaders to discuss the rights of the Shiite minority as full citizens. Saudi Islamists regard Shiites, who form about 15 percent of the kingdom's population, as heretics. Crown Prince Abdullah, however, has given them seats in the Consultative Assembly and, for the first time, appointed Shiites to senior posts in the civil and diplomatic services.
Islamist anger against the regime rose again when the government launched a crackdown against the more radical elements of the Islamist movement. In the past six months, more than 800 preachers and muezzins have had their government-issued licenses revoked. The number of Islamists purged from the education system is more than 2,000, according to official estimates.
At the same time, a committee, appointed by the crown prince, has started rewriting Saudi textbooks in a bid to expunge themes of hatred against other religions and cultures, especially Christianity and Judaism. That has incensed Islamists who believe that Muslims should regard all non-Muslim faiths as, at best, deviations from the truth and, at worst, as lies spread by the enemies of God.
Islamists are also angered by the announcement last month that the first elections in the kingdom's history will be held next year. Modest in scope, these elections concern only half the seats in the municipal councils. For the first time, however, women may be allowed to vote, something that Islamists see as an outrage in a country where women are not even allowed to drive cars or travel without the written permission of a male guardian.
Two other events may have persuaded Islamists that this was the moment to make a stand against their onetime benefactor.
The first was the invasion of Iraq by the United States, which was accompanied by the announcement that the United States is evacuating its bases in Saudi Arabia. Islamists saw this as a victory, comparing it to the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Some Islamist strategists believe that the United States, busy in Iraq, will be unable to spare any forces to help its Saudi allies. Thus it is time to fight on local fronts — in Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The second event that angered the Saudi Islamists was Crown Prince Abdullah's visit to Moscow in September. President Vladimir Putin of Russia is deeply unpopular among Islamists because of Russia's war with Chechnya, which is mostly Muslim. To make matters worse, the crown prince invited Mr. Putin to attend the Islamic summit conference in Kuala Lumpur last month.
The situation has been further complicated by the return to the kingdom in the past two years of an estimated 3,000 former mujahedeen from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Caucasus. Some returnees have resettled into their original communities. But many more are part of armed terrorist cells that have been behind scores of often unreported attacks that have targeted the government and the expatriate community since last year.
Having at first tried to ignore these cells, the Saudi authorities started dismantling them earlier this year. According to Interior Ministry figures, security forces were involved in 80 operations against Islamists in the past 18 months. More than 100 Islamists have been killed and some 700 have been captured in these operations, according to sources within the ministry.
It is too early to say whether the Saudi regime is truly determined to break with the Islamists, as the Egyptian and Algerian governments did in their time. A real break with Islamists will come when the Saudi leadership offers a new strategy aimed at an alliance with the modernizing forces in the kingdom. That has not happened.
Islamists have little popular support. They are practically shut out of the oil-rich eastern provinces, where Shiites form a majority of the population. They are also regarded as aliens in much of the south, the stronghold of another sect of Shiism. Much of the west, where Mecca and Medina are located, is also hostile to Islamists because a majority of the population are followers of a less radical school of Sunni Islam.
The only part of the kingdom where Islamists have many religious sympathizers is the desert heartland of Najd. But there, too, in a clash between the state and the terrorists, strong tribal links to the Al Saud dynasty could weaken support for Islamists.
The fight between the Egyptian state and the Islamist monster it created lasted 20 years, ending with the latter's defeat. The Algerian state crushed its Islamist monster after 12 years of war. How long the Saudi state may take to kill its monster is anyone's guess. What is clear, however, is that an Islamist defeat in Saudi Arabia, when and if it materializes, could make it easier to cut the hydra's many other heads.
Amir Taheri is co-author, most recently, of "Irak: Le Dessous des Cartes" ("Iraq: The Hidden Story"), published in France.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/699High time for the Saudis to reap the murderous hate they have sown.
Their non-cooperation in the investigation into the Khobar Towers bombing, and their not-to-be-believed telethon for Palestinian terrorists has begun to bite them on their madrassahs.
Mansoor Ijaz remains underwhelmed by Saudi efforts against terrorist attacks, stating repeatedly that in such a police state, the whereabouts of every block of C-4 and timer and length of det cord is a known.
Mansoor Ijaz works with James Woolsey in a security firm. Woolsey was snubbed by Clinton who preferred the company of the the porky pizza-bearing bimbo with kneepads--hence assuring 911.
Without the U.S. presence, will there be civil war in the House of Saud? With relatives like the bin Ladens, will there be anyting else?