Posted on 09/21/2003 9:24:34 PM PDT by swarthyguy
IYADH, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 18 — The last few American combat troops pulled out of the Prince Sultan Air Base here earlier this month, officially closing the Persian Gulf headquarters used by the Air Force during both Iraq wars and concluding a nearly 13-year run of extensive United States military operations in Saudi Arabia.
The withdrawal signaled the end of a long strategic arrangement, mutually beneficial until it fell victim to tensions resulting from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, in which 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Since then, the countries' fragile diplomatic relations have undergone considerable strain — only worsened in recent months by the American military presence in the kingdom, American and Saudi officials said here this week.
As one American diplomatic official based in the region put it, "on both sides, actually, the alliance had become a little bit of poison, and both sides were glad to see it end."
Nearly 500 advisers now constitute the only American military presence left in a country that during the 1991 Persian Gulf war had as many as 550,000 American troops at several sites. The advisers are helping to train the Saudi National Guard.
The Prince Sultan base, which at the height of the war this spring housed 10,000 American troops and 200 planes, has now been supplanted as the Middle East's main American military air operations center by Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
This last phase of the American departure from the base occurred with almost no fanfare, attracting only minor mention in the Saudi press. "It was as if they were never here," a senior Saudi official said. "They left very quietly."
The drastically reduced American profile could simplify the government's position among Saudis who espouse Osama bin Laden's contention that the American military foothold was an affront to the kingdom's sovereignty. For years, the American presence not far from Islam's two holiest sites, at Mecca and Medina, has provided Al Qaeda with an important rallying cry.
Partly for this reason, members of Saudi Arabia's royal family had rarely acknowledged the large number of American troops who used the base as a launching pad for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 50 miles southeast of here, the sprawling high-security installation does not appear on most Saudi maps and is marked on a barren desert road by an unassuming Arabic sign.
For the Americans, particularly the pilots who flew thousands of missions from the base, assignment to the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing was difficult. Late last month, the expeditionary wing was deactivated. "They came out of here hating the place," the American diplomatic official said. "The missions were often dangerous, and the Saudis set a lot of restrictions on the flights."
In part, Pentagon officials say, the shift is a logical outgrowth of the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq. Thirteen years after it began, the officials say, the American base's original Iraqi mission had been accomplished.
In 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saudi leaders asked the United States to deploy troops here. At the end of the 1991 war, thousands stayed on, many stationed at the base to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 — the no-flight zone over Iraq. But in 2001, the Saudi government prohibited the United States from originating airstrikes against Afghanistan from the base. This rankled American military commanders.
Similarly, earlier this year, Saudi Arabia declined to join the allied forces for the war on Iraq. In the weeks leading to the war, the Saudis banned American airstrikes from the base and said they did not want American aircraft to use Saudi airspace to attack Iraq. The Saudi government also tried to curtail news reports that American Special Operations forces were using other remote Saudi desert bases for attacks against Iraq, including one in Arar not far from the Iraqi border.
By the beginning of the war in March, approximately 286,000 flight missions enforcing the no-flight zone had been completed from Prince Sultan Air Base, Pentagon officials said.
On April 30, one day before President Bush announced the successful conclusion of the military operation in Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, announced that the American military mission in the kingdom would end late this summer. "It is now a safer region because of the change of regime in Iraq," Mr. Rumsfeld said that day.
Two weeks later, on May 12, three truck bombs exploded, nearly simultaneously, at Western compounds here, killing 35 people, including 8 Americans. The bombings were eventually linked to Al Qaeda.
Since the bombings here in May, the Saudis say they have worked hard to combat terrorism inside the kingdom, detaining more than 200 people, killing nearly two dozen suspects in shootouts with police officials and breaking up at least six Qaeda cells. The Saudi authorities also say they have seized more than 25 tons of explosives and weapons.
Meanwhile, the American authorities say, the Saudis have embarked on a new era of cooperation on counterterrorism investigations and inquiries into the financing of terrorism through Islamic charitable organizations.
At the base on Aug. 26, about 100 American engineers and other military personnel attended a brief ceremony to mark the end of the American mission here.
"The mission thrived and prospered here, and I believe our legacy will live on," said Col. James Moschgat, the commander of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing, according to the Pentagon. "It's bittersweet, but it's time to go."
redrock
We might need to return to that base in a few years and use it as a staging point to "democratize" Saudi Arabia.
I seriously doubt that Bush was ever fooled by the Saudi's duplicitous actions and their possible support of 9-11.
Now that we have no troops there, that leaves only the oil to force us to play nice -- unless we prove that the Saudi's are supporting terrorists. Diplomacy can be a bitch when the other guy has something you need!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.