(iv) Saudi Arabia and terrorism

There is no doubt that the Saudis are suffering from terrorism as well as generating it. One of the best known examples was the November, 1979, terrorist attack in Mecca. Carmen Bin Laden, who lived through the experience, recounts:

Then one November [1979] morning, Yeslam rushed home from work, ashen and agitated, and told me, "Mecca has been taken." Hundreds of Islamic extremists had stormed the Grand Mosque and seized control of Islam's holiest place. Through the muezzin, their leader was making incendiary statements about the corruption and loose living of some of the al-Sauds--particularly Prince Nayef, the governor of Mecca. The extremist forces had sneaked into Mecca using Bin Laden Organization trucks, which were never searched.

We must have been the first to know. The Bin Ladens kept a permanent staff of employees in a maintenance of­fice in Mecca. When the rebels stormed the Grand Mosque, a Bin Laden worker immediately phoned the head office in Jeddah, and reported that violence had broken out. Then the insurgents cut the phone lines. Incredibly, it was the Bin Laden Organization that informed King Khaled that rebellion had broken out in Islam's holiest city.

One of the King's first decisions was to cut all phone lines in the nation. I wanted to phone my mother, to reassure her, but there was no way to get a line out. The newspapers didn't dare report the attack for several days. But the rumor spread anyway. There was tumult. Air traffic was grounded.

After days of dis­cussion and attempts to negotiate with the extremists, they laid out plan after plan for military assaults on the extremist-held mosque. All of them failed.
...
Finally, the famous French GIGN paratroopers were called in. They flooded the Mosque basement, killing many of the extremists. (They had to undergo the world's most rapid conversion to Islam before they could approach the building.) In a country with no journalism, rumors ran wild: The French had electrocuted the rebels; it hadn't been the French at all; the rebels hadn't really been captured. Then dozens of men were executed in public, across the country.

...Nobody in Saudi Arabia slept well during those long, tense weeks.

In early December, we heard that violence had erupted in Qatif, in eastern Saudi Arabia. There had been riots, and many deaths. This was a region inhabited by a small minor­ity of widely reviled non-Wahabi Muslims--they were Shi'ites, like most Iranians. Perhaps influenced by Khomeini's revolution in Iran, the Shi'ites had taken to the streets in unusual numbers that year for their annual procession to commemorate the death of the Prophet Mohamed's grand­son Hussein. The religious police had intervened in the pro­cession, we heard. The number of deaths was unknown, but an open rebellion had lasted several days. [p. 123-125]

And what of the Saudi contribution to terror? Carmen bin Laden opines:

I have lived in the Bin Laden clan; I have analyzed the workings of Saudi society. And I fear for the future of the free world. My fear--and outrage is based on my convic­tion that a large majority of Saudis support the extremist ideas of Osama Bin Laden, and that the Bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family continue to operate hand in hand, even if their relations are sometimes too intricate for their con­vergent convictions to be apparent.

The Bin Ladens and the princes work together, very closely. They are secretive, and they are united. They have been inextricably linked for many decades through close friendships and business ventures. Most of the Bin Laden brothers have business partnerships and direct vested interests with at least one Saudi prince (for example Bakr Bin Laden is a business associate of Abdel Aziz Ben Fahd, the King's preferred son; Yeslam Bin Laden, my for­mer husband, has privileged links with Prince Meshal Ben Abdel Aziz).

I openly defy the Saudi ruling class--the Bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family -- to open their books and prove to the world where they stand. [p. 199-200]

Carmen's forecast for the world is rather dire; she writes:

The ground of Saudi Arabia is fertile soil for intolerance and arrogance, and for contempt toward outsiders. It is a country where there is no room for mild­ness, mercy, compassion, or doubt. Every detail of life is de­fined absolutely. Every inclination for natural pleasure and emotion is forbidden. $audis have the unshakable convic­tion that they are right. They head the Islamic nations. They were born in the land of Mecca. Their way has been chosen by God.

I have never yet met a Saudi who truly admires our West­ern society. They don't necessarily seem overtly hostile (though they are often condescending and arrogant). They are eager to use our technology, and they understand our political systems. But inside them, there is nothing but scorn for what they perceive as the godless, individualistic values and shameless freedoms of the Western way of life.

In the end, I believe that what shaped Osama is the strict Wahabi doctrine. In my analysis and experience, a vast majority of people in Saudi Arabia feel just like him. In their eyes, you cannot be too religious. They have no room to grow as individuals. They are desperately angry at the West for its countless, irresistible temptations. They refuse to evolve, to adapt. For them, it is easier to crush those temptations--to destroy them, to kill them, like an errant teenager. I hope I am wrong but, unfortunately, I believe that the fundamentalists who are at the receiving end of Saudi Arabia's oil wealth are here to stay. I fear that if we, in the Western world, are not vigilant enough, there will be no end to their terrorism. They will use our tolerance to infil-trate our society with their intolerance.
[p. 201-203]

We ignore the warnings at our peril.

Saudi Arabia is a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, the job of which is to malign Israel systematically. No doubt, Saudi Arabia and the Commission deserve each other.