A Backlash In The Desert
The Hindu
14 May, 2003
The car-bomb attacks on expatriate housing complexes in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, carry all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda's planning and coordination, and will send shock waves around the world. These reflect the first response to the month-long American occupation of Iraq and represent an ominous reminder both to the U.S. and the Saudi monarchy that their nemesis is far from beaten and vanquished. The strike comes within less than a week of the discovery of a major arms cache in the Saudi capital and an uncharacteristically open admission of the terror threat by local officials. An American target in the desert kingdom has for years been the goal of the Saudi mastermind, Osama bin Laden, and his terrorist group, and American and Saudi officials had been warning of a plot that could cause "tremendous damage". The U.S., which announced its decision to withdraw all its combat forces from Saudi soil by the end of August even as its campaign in Iraq was winding down, had issued a specific warning early this month that militants "may be in the final phases of planning attacks" on American interests in the kingdom. That neither the warnings nor the high alert of the security apparatus could prevent the massive bomb attacks in the capital speaks of the degree of local support that Osama and his network have built up in Saudi Arabia. This must come as a shock especially to the rest of the world, which had been lulled into complacence by the easy manner in which the Saddam Hussein regime disappeared into the sands of Iraq.Aftershocks as a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq were not unanticipated and Washington had begun to plan repositioning of its forces for a post-Saddam Hussein Middle East. It was taken for granted that the first casualty of such reshuffling would be the unnatural relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, built up solely as an oil-for-security programme. In order not to give credence to talk that they may be ready to leave Saudi Arabia and ask it to fend for itself now that they are in occupation of an equally oil-rich Iraq, American officials have claimed that their military withdrawal will help ease political pressure on the Saudi royal family. It may on the contrary allow the emergence of contradictory forces in the kingdom, so far suppressed and forced to work underground. Created by the British after World War I, the Saudi kingdom is a strange mixture of the modern and the medieval. The monarchy has resisted suggestions to introduce democratic reforms and has been practising and exporting its own orthodox version of Islam. The two stances have produced a totally divergent political opposition. On the one side is a section, Western educated and exposed to modernity, which seeks a gradual movement to democracy. On the other is a section that feels the monarchy is not orthodox enough in a land that holds Islam's two holy places. A powerful adherent to the second movement is Osama, the millionaire turned terror exponent.
Riyadh, the most apolitical capital around, is no stranger in recent times to bomb explosions and attacks on the interests of Americans who came into the country in a big way after the first Gulf War more than a decade ago. The planned American withdrawal, announced after the Iraqi action so that Osama and his Al-Qaeda do not claim credit for it, is a challenge that the Saudi regime must meet by reforming society so that bomb explosions do not convert into volcanic eruptions. Fundamentalist forces armed with the terrorist's tool must be ready to reap a harvest by exploiting popular unrest. The most effective answer to counter this trend is to open up society and give the people a vehicle to express their democratic urges. In a society ruled on feudal lines by an absolute monarch, democracy must be rarer than rain. But failure to plant its seeds can have disastrous consequences for the entire region.