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America and its 'friend' Saudi
Arabia
By Stephen Zunes
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
The terrorist
bombings that struck Saudi Arabia on May 12 have raised
a number of serious questions regarding US security
interests in the Middle East. First of all, they
underscore the concern expressed by many independent
strategic analysts that the United States has been
squandering its intelligence and military resources
toward Iraq - which had nothing to do with al-Qaeda and
posed no direct danger to the US - and not toward
al-Qaeda itself, which is the real threat.
More
important, however, it raises concerns about whether US
interests have been enhanced or threatened by the cozy
US relationship with Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia has traditionally been the most important US ally
in the Arab or Islamic world. It is run exclusively by a
royal family that allows neither public dissent nor an
independent press. Those who dare challenge the regime
or its policies are punished severely. There is no
constitution, there are no political parties, and there
is no legislature. It was under such an environment of
repression that Osama bin Laden and most of his
followers first emerged.
Long shielded by the
monarchy's willingness to supply the United States with
cheap oil, to subsidize the US arms industry with major
weapons purchases, and to make lucrative deals with
other major US corporate interests, the US has allowed
this family dictatorship to get away with practices that
would have been considered unacceptable from almost any
other country.
Traditions of
hypocrisy
Both Democratic and Republican
administrations have revealed their blatant hypocrisy by
wailing about the plight of Afghan women while being
dismissive of the treatment of Saudi women; by
condemning the rigid Islamic laws in Iran as
human-rights violations while defending the even more
repressive variants in Saudi Arabia as somehow an
inherent part of their culture; by demanding that
Palestinian statehood be dependent on establishing a
leadership committed to democracy and accountability,
while backing the corrupt and autocratic Saudi
leadership.
Human-rights activists for years
have been raising doubts about the close strategic
relationship both Democratic and Republican parties have
had with the Saudi regime, particularly the massive arms
transfers and military training, including its
repressive internal security apparatus. Such critics
have railed against the regime's misogyny, theocratic
fascism, and links to terrorism, but to no avail.
Despite the close ties between Washington and Riyadh,
there have never been any congressional hearings - under
either Republican or Democratic leaderships - regarding
human-rights abuses by the Saudi government.
F
Gregory Gause III, a contemporary specialist on Saudi
Arabia at the University of Vermont, notes, "The truth
is the more democratic the Saudis become, the less
cooperative they will be with us. So why should we want
that?" Such a policy raises both serious moral questions
as well as serious doubts about whether the US really
cares about freedom for Iraq while it helps make
possible repression by other Arab governments.
The Wahhabi tradition
While there is
little evidence to suggest that the top leadership of
Saudi Arabia supports the al-Qaeda terrorist network or
other extremists, there has been an undeniably lax
attitude toward cracking down on financial support for
such dangerous organizations under the guise of Islamic
charities, particularly among the Wahhabi elites and
even elements within the very sizable Saudi royal family
itself.
Wahhabism is a particularly reactionary
interpretation of Islam that - while not advocating
terrorism - has contributed to the theological
underpinnings for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. The
Saudis have funded Wahhabi religious education
throughout the Islamic world, often in places where it
has not only been the sole religious education
available, but sometimes also the only formal education
of any kind. The US-backed Saudi regime, then, is more
responsible than any other government for the spread of
this dangerous turn to the right in Islamic theology in
recent decades. The global reach of Wahhabism is made
possible in large part to the movement's generous
funding, which is a result of the billions of
petrodollars flowing to Saudi Arabia from the West - in
particular, the United States.
Fifteen of the 19
September 11 hijackers were Saudi, most of the al-Qaeda
leadership is Saudi, and much of the money trail has
already been linked to Saudi Arabia. By contrast, none
of the hijackers were Iraqi, no one in the al-Qaeda
leadership is Iraqi, and none of the money trail has
been linked to Iraq. Yet the administration of President
George W Bush and the leaders of both parties in
Congress insisted that Iraq - and not the pro-American
Saudi government - had to be the priority in the "war on
terror". In fact, in the aftermath of the September 11,
2001, attacks, the Bush administration initially ordered
US immigration officials to target immigrants and
visitors from Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran and Sudan, but
not those from Saudi Arabia.
Support for the
family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia has been a
prevailing theme of US policy for several decades. In
1945, president Franklin D Roosevelt met with King
Abel-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Arabian
kingdom that now bears his family's name, and forged the
alliance that remains to this day: in return for open
access to Saudi oil, the United States would protect the
royal family from its enemies, both external and
internal.
Support for the royal
family
This policy has remained in force under
both Democratic and Republican administrations. For
example, in 1981, then president Ronald Reagan declared,
"I will not permit [Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran,"
referring to the successful uprising that had ousted the
US-backed Shah two years earlier. Under Reagan, US
trainers provided direct assistance to Saudi National
Guard (SANG) units that crushed a popular uprising.
The SANG, whose primary function is internal
security, is almost entirely armed, trained, and managed
by the United States, largely through a network of
military contractors. It is noteworthy that al-Qaeda's
first terrorist attack, a November 1995 bombing in
Riyadh that killed five American servicemen, was
targeted at a US-operated SANG training center.
Indeed, one of the targets of the May 12
bombings was a residential compound for employees of
Vinell Corp, the US firm that has been primarily
responsible for training SANG forces. The presence in
Saudi cities of these white-collar mercenaries who help
prop up the country's despotic regime is at least as
provocative as the presence of uniformed US forces out
in the desert, most of whom are now being transferred to
bases in the tiny neighboring sheikdom of
Qatar.
Al-Qaeda believes that the Saudi regime is
corrupt and evil in large part because the royal family
has squandered its wealth for personal consumption and
exotic weaponry while most Arabs suffer in poverty. That
group is further angered by the regime's tendency to
persecute those who advocate more ethical priorities. It
is angry with the United States, therefore, for propping
up such a regime. The US-Saudi alliance, in al-Qaeda's
view, further illustrates the depravity of the Saudi
rulers in their decision to allow US troops and advisors
on what they see as sacred Saudi soil in order to keep
the regime in power. Such a regime is anti-Islamic, from
its perspective, and therefore needs to be overthrown.
So the first challenge, in the eyes of al-Qaeda,
is to oust the United States from the region, since it
is the US military that is keeping the corrupt Saudi
regime in power. Given that al-Qaeda is no match for the
US militarily, the al-Qaeda leadership therefore
rationalizes the use of terrorism.
As a result,
even putting aside moral arguments against backing such
regimes as Saudi Arabia, there are serious questions as
to whether the large-scale arms transfers and ongoing US
military presence in the Persian Gulf region really
enhances US security interests. Rather than protecting
the United States from its enemies, these policies
appear to be creating enemies. On top of all this, the
US may also be supporting a lost cause.
A
lost cause?
A secret Central Intelligence Agency
memo circulated at the National Security Council and
State Department that was leaked to the press in the
spring of 2002 noted how the "culture of royal excess"
in Saudi Arabia "has ruled over the kingdom with
documented human-rights abuses ... Democracy has never
been part of the equation." The study also reportedly
describes the House of Saud as an "anachronism" that is
"inherently fragile" and that there were "serious
concerns about long-term stability".
One can
only think back to the 1970s, when the US was also
sending arms and advisors to prop up another Persian
Gulf monarchy despite the regime's severe repression and
warnings that such support could lead to a radical
Islamic backlash - Iran.
Traditionally,
criticism of US support for the Saudi regime has come
from the left. In an interesting twist, however, the
past year has witnessed an unprecedented degree of
anti-Saudi rhetoric from right-wing think-tanks, the
media and some sectors of the Bush administration.
The first round came last spring, after Saudi
Crown Prince Abdullah persuaded every Arab government,
including the Palestinian Authority, formally to declare
their willingness to provide security guarantees for and
full diplomatic recognition of Israel in return for the
Israel's total withdrawal from Arab lands seized in the
1967 war. This was the most complete Arab acceptance to
date of the "land for peace" formula spelled out in the
US-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolutions
242 and 338, long seen as the basis for Middle East
peace. However, the Israeli government and its
supporters in Washington - who support Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's insistence on holding on to much
of the occupied territories - rejected the proposal.
This second round of attacks against Saudi
Arabia came as that government increased its outspoken
opposition to US plans to invade Iraq. The Saudis long
despised Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and were the
principal backers of the US-led Gulf War in 1991, yet
they believe that the recent US invasion was
unnecessary, illegal and likely to destabilize the
region. In effect, it appears that it is not Saudi
extremism that has resulted in a long-overdue criticism
of the regime, but Saudi moderation.
The lesson
Washington appears to be trying to communicate is, "If
you challenge our policies on Iraq, on Israel, or
anywhere else, you may become the next target of 'the
war on terrorism'."
Will Saudi Arabia be yet
another case of where, like Manuel Noriega's Panama and
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the US supports a dictatorship
for years only to suddenly declare it such a threat that
the country must be invaded and the regime overthrown?
Such an invasion of Saudi Arabia is already being talked
about openly, even as the chaos and resulting dangers
from the aftermath of the US invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq are becoming increasingly apparent.
Why
is it that Washington cannot seem to grasp that that
there are more enlightened policy alternatives than the
extremes of appeasement and of war?
Stephen Zunes zunes@usfca.edu is
Middle East Editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus
project. He is an associate professor of politics and
chair of the peace and justice studies program at the
University of San Francisco and is the author of the
recently released Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy
and the Roots of Terrorism, from Common Courage
Press.
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
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