Posted on 05/14/2003 8:52:50 AM PDT by knighthawk
On Monday, suicidal truck bombers attacked three housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing at least 29 people, a mixed group of Saudis and foreigners. The tragedy, which U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says bears the "fingerprints" of al-Qaeda, marks a setback in the war against terrorism. But in the long term, it may actually hasten al-Qaeda's demise. For years, there has been no greater exporter, financier and ideological cheerleader of Islamist terrorism than the Desert Kingdom. By biting the hand that feeds them, the terrorists may have finally forced the Saudi royal family to abandon its subsidy of murder.
Ever since Saudi Arabia's founding 71 years ago, its rulers have run their kingdom in cahoots with clerics belonging to Islam's rigid Wahhabite sect. In recent years, however, the alliance between mosque and state has broken down. Thanks to legalized polygamy, the Royal family has mushroomed to 30,000 members, each grasping to milk the country for their share of entitlements and bribes. As former CIA operative Robert Baer writes in his new book, Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Its Soul for Saudi Crude, the resultant corruption is staggering. Rogue mullahs who preach Jihad and blame the country's slide on the royal family's Western vices now command the loyalty of many of Saudi Arabia's alienated youths. Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile thrown out in 1994, is only the richest and most famous product of this phenomenon. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. According to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so are "the worst of the worst" at Guantanamo Bay.
In response to this rising discontent, the Saudis have desperately sought to export their terrorist problem overseas. Seeking to demonstrate their Islamist bona fides, Saudi royals spend much of the country's oil wealth spreading the militant, Wahhabi message in foreign mosques. They have also sent Danegeld to bin Laden and other radicals in exchange for a promise to focus their Islamist fury westward.
Indeed, the Afghan terror camps where Mohammed Atta and his crew trained were built with oil money: According to a recent report commissioned by the UN Security Council, Saudi Arabia sent about $70-million per year to al-Qaeda during the past decade -- not including the hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and free oil the country sent to Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
The strategy was successful for a while: The army of Arabs who fought with bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 1980s was largely diverted to other Muslim-infidel conflicts in arenas such as Bosnia and Chechnya. When terrorists did manage to strike within Saudi Arabia, local officials typically pretended the attacks were the work of foreign saboteurs. Thus does a Canadian biochemist, Bill Sampson, face execution for his alleged role in a 2000 car bombing that killed a British engineer. The crime is almost certainly the work of anti-Western Saudi terrorists. But Riyadh prefers to frame the murder as payback in an alcohol-smuggling turf war. Seven years ago, when terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers complex in Dharan, killing 19 Americans, the country blocked U.S. officials from performing a proper investigation. As recently as last month, the Saudi Interior Minister declared there were "no terror networks" operating in his country -- even as his men were bungling an effort to capture 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, possibly the same men who attacked on Monday.
This week's attacks will demonstrate to the Saudis -- we hope -- that the terrorists funded by Saudi cash and programmed by Saudi Mullahs cannot be guided like missiles: They are as much a threat to Saudi Arabia as to the West. Much as the recent assassination of Serbia's prime minister prompted that country to initiate a wholesale purge of its mafia clans, perhaps the Riyadh bombings will prompt Saudi Arabia to join the fight against terrorism full-bore. This would mean -- among other things -- ending cash transfers to al-Qaeda, toning down the country's export of militant Wahhabism and co-operating with Western investigators.
Such steps will not end the seething discontent building inside Saudi Arabia. Only a political revolution can accomplish that. But they might at least prevent such discontent from being expressed through horrible acts of random violence.
"By biting the hand that feeds them, the terrorists may have finally forced the Saudi royal family to abandon its subsidy of murder."
Let's hope this is the case.
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