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COMMENT
Saudis caught between friend and
foe
By Mushahid Hussain
ISLAMABAD - Ever since the summer, when Iraq
emerged as the next target in the US-led war on terror,
a sporadic media campaign has been launched against
Saudi Arabia. The initial expression of US ire over the
fact that 15 of the 19 September 11, 2001, hijackers
were Saudi nationals has now been transformed into a
more systematic assault on Saudi Arabia, including its
royal family.
This assault has been aided by the
close nexus between the media and the political
establishment in the United States, probably the coziest
bond in any democratic country.
The media is
used effectively to promote perceptions before these are
translated into policy. Media coverage helps in
garnering and preparing public opinion for what is to
come. The media thus reflects and shapes policy in a
significant and intelligent manner.
The example
of Pakistan is instructive. Before September 11,
President General Pervez Musharraf was treated as a
pariah, one with whom the American president refused to
be photographed shaking hands when he landed for a
five-hour stopover in Islamabad in March 2000. Musharraf
was at the time portrayed as the leader of a 'failed'
state.
After September 11, the transformation
was astonishing. Musharraf was promoted to a partner in
the war on terror, and acclaimed as a progressive and
moderate Muslim leader.
Now, however, Pakistan,
along with Saudi Arabia and even Egypt, is reverting to
a borderline status that could switch back and forth
between friend and foe depending on America's changing
regional objectives and interests. For instance, a Nov
27 in The Washington Post equated Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia when it said: "Like the Pakistani regime of
Pervez Musharraf, the Saudi government increasingly
looks like a US ally only in comparison with some of the
frightening alternatives."
Then it added, in
what is becoming the stated US objective in the region:
"The prevailing political order in the Middle East is
incompatible with America's interests. Changing it,
whether by means of gradual political and economic
liberalization, or through the removal of aggressive
dictators such as Saddam Hussein, is a challenge that
the United States must take up."
Some of the
recent charges being made in the United States against
the Saudis are ludicrous. The wife of the Saudi
ambassador to Washington, a daughter of King Faisal, was
accused of giving money to one of the terrorists
involved in the September 11 attacks.
The
charity check she gave to a needy Saudi woman is said to
have gone to her husband, who gave it to a friend who,
in turn, knew one of the hijackers.
Meanwhile
Egypt is being accused of anti-Semitism due to a
television serial. US officials have been closely
watching what they say is Pakistan's North Korean
nuclear connection, and Powell has transparently
threatened Musharraf (with "consequences") in this
regard. Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were initially
perceived as the moderate Muslim states supported by the
United States as a "bulwark against extremism", but this
picture is changing.
Two reasons account for
this change in American attitudes. As far as Saudi
Arabia and Egypt go, there is the Iraq factor since both
these Arab countries apparently are reluctant to support
a US-led invasion of Iraq. Pressuring them on other
areas is a way of getting them on board a military
operation in Iraq.
The pressure has been
unrelenting notwithstanding their moderate stance on the
one issue that matters most to US policymakers in the
Middle East: Israel. Egypt recognizes Israel, while
Saudi Arabia has managed an Arab League consensus behind
the Abdullah Plan that sought peace and normalization
with Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from
occupied territories plus establishment of an
independent Palestine.
This has been a
long-standing goal of US and Israel policy as well, but,
in the changed circumstances, it is apparently not good
enough. The other change is the lack of US trust and
confidence in these countries, despite their moderation.
Their past policies of supporting US strategy in the
region no longer count.
As the book Bush at War
(by Washington Post investigative editor Bob Woodward)
recounts, when then-chief of Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI) Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed, met US Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage at the State Department a day
after September 11, 2001, he was handed the
'with-us-or-against-us' ultimatum.
When Mahmud
tried to refer to past Pakistani services for the
Americans, Armitage cut in and snapped, 'The future
begins today'. His blunt message: It does not matter
what you did for us in the past, what matters is now
onwards.
The clubbing together of Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan is not confined to the US media. At a joint
press conference with Bush on November 23, Russian
President Putin made a similar observation. "We should
not forget that 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi
Arabia, while Pakistan still has weapons of mass
destruction and Osama bin Laden may be hiding there."
Likewise, a CNN snap poll on November 27 showed
that 69 percent of Americans admitted that they were
"prejudiced against Muslims". However, this crisis also
demonstrates a failure of Muslim countries that have had
no coordinated media strategy or collective thinking on
how to meet such challenges. As the Nov 30 Financial
Times aptly commented on the flawed diplomatic strategy
of Muslim states in Washington seeking "alliances based
on making friends with the big boys": "It's been a
relationship built on sand, not institutions."
Instead of hiring expensive public relations or
lobbying firms to articulate the positions of Muslim
states, the need is to establish think tanks that can
sustain the battle of ideas in an organized, concerted
manner.
(Inter Press Service)
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