A trip through the kingdom reveals what really needs to be done in the war on terror
AFP-Getty Images
Before it was too late: Hostage Paul Johnson, in an image released by his captors before they beheaded him
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
June 28 issue - The images of a beheaded Paul Johnson are gruesome, but for Saudi Arabia, it has been more than a year of grim images. It started on May 12, 2003, when three cars packed with bombs exploded in a residential compound in Riyadh, killing 35 people and wounding 200. Since then, there have been at least 20 terror attacks or clashes between Saudi police and Islamic militants. Most brazenly, four gunmen entered a residential compound for oil-industry workers in Khobar last month and killed 22 people. Does this turmoil mark the beginning of a civil war in Saudi Arabia? Could jihadis get control of the most powerful oil-producing nation and use its vital resource as a weapon against the modern world they so despise?
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In search of answers, I traveled through Saudi Arabia last month, talking to princes, preachers, businessmen and dissidents. Many of the Saudis I met were defensive about the country's problems, angry with American foreign policy and enraged about the "demonizing" of Saudi Arabia. "Let me be honest: 9/11 meant nothing in Saudi Arabia," a young writer, Mshari Al-Thaydi, told me. "Some didn't believe that any Saudis were involved in it; others thought it was a conspiracy or was deserved because of America's support for Israel or whatever." But the more recent attacks—particularly the May 12 bombings—shook people out of their complacency. "May 12 was our 9/11," said Al-Thaydi. "Since then Saudis have had to recognize that Al Qaeda is not a fantasy. It is here."
NEWSWEEK ON AIR | 6/19/04
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Fareed Zakaria, NEWSWEEK International Editions Editor/Columnist and Thomas Lippman, Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute; Author of Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Westville Press, 2004)
After years of inaction and obfuscation, the regime is beginning to move forcefully. Saudi officials believe that the killing of Abdelaziz al-Muqrin, the leader of the group that murdered Johnson, will stop much of the domestic terror. "His group, with 50 to 60 members, was the one that planned almost all recent attacks," said one official. "It's now leaderless." The killing of Muqrin and three other wanted militants, this official argues, is the culmination of months of similar efforts. "It is because the regime has begun fighting these terrorists that they have been lashing out in response," he said. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi government consultant, claims that the kingdom's security spending is up 50 percent over the past two years, to $5.5 billion.
The Saudis have also finally launched measures to track the financing of terror groups. The Council on Foreign Relations issued a report last week noting that in the past year the Saudi government's new laws monitoring money laundering and donations "meet or exceed international standards in many respects" (though the report also notes that the Saudis need to do much more). The Riyadh government has admitted that some of the kingdom's clerics have been preaching messages of hatred, and it has begun to "discipline" and "re-educate" some of them.
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Were the regime to mount a sustained campaign on all these fronts, it would almost certainly be able to defeat the terrorists. Experts and Saudi officials both conclude that the militants do not have broad support, and whatever support they did have has been dwindling since the recent terror attacks.
But there are many who believe that the regime is not acting decisively enough. One of them is Saudi Arabia's own ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. In a surprisingly forceful article in the reformist Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, Bandar argued that neither Saudi society nor the state had fully mobilized itself for this struggle. "War means war," he wrote. "It does not mean Boy Scout camp." He urged that people stop calling the militants "good people who were careless" and call them instead "terrorists and aggressors with whom there can be no compromise."
Bandar made an analogy in his article to an event repeatedly cited to me by Saudis who want strong action: the battle of Al-Sabla in 1929. The founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdel Aziz, faced a revolt from his religious allies, the Ikhwan, because he was introducing modern technologies like the telephone and, worst of all, allying with the infidel British. Abdel Aziz refused to compromise, so the story goes, and slaughtered the Ikhwan at Al-Sabla.
Why would the Saudis not act decisively now? When I pointed to Egypt's harsh but successful antiterror campaign of the 1990s, everyone immediately dismissed it. "We're not a brutal police state like Egypt," one young royal said to me. But a common response was to caution that such an approach would increase support for the radicals: "We have to act in a way that doesn't create a bigger problem than it solves."
This, then, is the paradox. Saudi officials claim that the militants have no support and yet constantly act as if they do. Officials cite a recent (secret) government poll that showed 49 percent support Osama bin Laden's ideas. They speak of the need to move "slowly and carefully." While still sensitive on this topic, educated Saudis will now admit that parts of their society have become dangerously extreme. At a meeting with prominent Saudi journalists and academics, most argued that several trends over the past 30 years had fueled this radicalism. During the 1950s and 1960s, other Arab governments like Egypt and Syria had expelled Islamic fundamentalists. The Saudis, as competitors to these regimes, welcomed the dissidents, who came with revolutionary ideas advocating pure Islamic states across the Middle East. The intellectuals also recalled that the revolution in Iran in 1979 rattled the royal family, who feared a rising tide of Islamism across the Middle East.
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