NP Double-edged sword

[David Morris]

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=805137

Double-edged sword
Oct 1st 2001
>From The Economist Global Agenda

The Saudi royal family has long exploited religion to bolster its standing. 
That has helped breed the very sort of religious extremism that inspired the 
terrorist attacks on America and is now threatening the kingdom’s own 
stability

WHEN Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Afghanistan last week, 
the decision was hailed as the final step in the international isolation of 
the Taliban regime. But the most remarkable feature of the action is how 
slow the Saudis were to take it. The Saudi government sees Osama bin Laden 
as a threat to its very existence, yet Saudi Arabia was one of only three 
countries to recognise his hosts, the Taliban, as the legitimate government 
of Afghanistan. Even after Mr bin Laden took refuge with them in 1996, Saudi 
Arabia is said to have helped pay for their drive to take full control of 
the country. Now that America is planning to hunt Mr bin Laden down, Saudi 
Arabia seems reluctant to join the chase. According to a report in a Saudi 
paper on September 30th, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the kingdom's defence 
minister, has said that America will not be allowed to use Saudi territory 
to launch any attack on Afghanistan or any other Muslim countries

This reluctance stems in large part from Mr bin Laden’s popularity among 
ordinary Saudis. The royal family’s authoritarian rule makes public opinion 
hard to gauge, but stories abound of his admirers sending one another 
congratulatory text messages on their mobile telephones after the attacks of 
September 11th. A more common reaction, according to one Saudi, was 
suspicion that America was trying to frame Mr bin Laden because of his 
opposition to American involvement in the Middle East. At any rate, many 
Saudis sympathise with his denunciation of America’s “indifference” to the 
plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and Iraqis under United 
Nations sanctions.

Criticism of the kingdom’s ties to America is not the only theme of Mr bin 
Laden’s that strikes a chord with the Saudi public. He also fulminates 
against the godlessness of the royal family, some of whom do indeed seem 
more comfortable at parties in Geneva than on pilgrimage to Mecca. In the 
past, the family’s long-standing alliance with the puritanical Wahabi sect 
helped to shield it from such censure. But, whenever Islamist protest 
swelled, the regime’s standard response was to co-opt its critics by 
burnishing its Islamic credentials. The net result is that the clergy—many 
of them reactionary by western standards—now wield enormous sway over 
everything from school curriculums to municipal building codes. And, in 
foreign policy, Saudi Arabia has long tried to cast itself as the global 
sponsor of conservative Islam. Hence its support for movements such as the 
Taliban.

That policy has now come home to roost. As many as 25,000 Saudis have, like 
Mr bin Laden, travelled abroad to fight for the Muslim cause in places such 
as Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan, according to Saad al-Faqih, the leader 
of a London-based opposition group. Many of those have since returned home 
to raise money or recruit new volunteers for militant groups. Several of the 
hijackers involved in the attack on America were Saudis, even if some used 
false identities. Although violent fanaticism is just what the government 
was hoping to avoid, it seems to derive fairly directly from the sort of 
uncompromising religiosity the government has encouraged. As one Kuwaiti 
anxiously puts it, “The Saudis have been playing both sides for a long time, 
but now they have to make up their minds.”

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