Author: NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Publication: The New York Times
Date: October 5, 2001
Not everyone in this cosmopolitan
port that claims Osama bin Laden as a native son is ready to label him
a terrorist just yet.
Indeed the popularity he enjoys
among some people here underscores the central predicament the Saudi government
faces in joining the American effort to hunt him down: too weak a stance
risks alienating its main Western supporter, the United States, but too
strong an alliance with Washington could foment serious trouble at home.
In many ways, Mr. bin Laden is an
embarrassment to the 30,000-strong royal family that runs Saudi Arabia.
His austere, fundamentalist view of Islam is also that of the kingdom's
rulers, as is his determination to spread the faith.
But the accused terrorist's hostility
to the West, and particularly to the presence of American troops on Saudi
soil, is threatening to the House of Saud, particularly because that hostility
finds some sympathy in a population angry over American support of Israel.
In this closed society, patrolled
by volunteers from the Society for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention
of Vice, people are reluctant to talk openly. But even conversations with
moderate Saudis suggest that Mr. bin Laden enjoys significant support.
American officials believe that a dozen or so of the hijackers in the Sept.
11 terror attacks on the United States may have been Saudi citizens.
"Osama bin Laden has been called
the conscience of Islam," said one influential lawyer who works with international
companies, as he sat in front of his framed diplomas accumulated during
10 years in the United States.
In most conversations, the lawyer
shows little enthusiasm for the day- to-day rules of conduct enforced by
the religious establishment here, but a certain admiration creeps into
his voice as he speaks of Mr. bin Laden.
"What he says and what he does represents
what most Muslims or Arabs want to say and can't. What he says we like,
we agree with it."
It is not easy to estimate the extent
or depth of this support. But it is clear that Mr. bin Laden remains popular
for two reasons. First, some Saudis feel he is giving voice to their own
dissatisfactions with the royal family's rule. In addition, they are not
satisfied that adequate evidence has been produced to accuse him of the
Sept. 11 attacks. If more evidence were available, it seems their opinions
might shift.
But for now, the stated American
goal of capturing or killing Mr. bin Laden appears to be an issue so delicate
that the Saudis have held back from full cooperation with Washington's
plans.
The Saudi government was already
alarmed about the growing following of Mr. bin Laden before the attacks
in the United States. A tape distributed earlier this summer in the Gulf
nations showed his guerrillas performing martial arts exercises and urban
guerrilla warfare training in their camps - while Mr. bin Laden lashed
out in verse at the United States and Israel for abusing the Palestinians.
He vowed to prove that Washington was weak.
The tape became a bootleg hit here
by the end of the summer. Police started rounding up those suspected of
helping distribute it. The pace of arrests increased after the attacks
Sept. 11, with dozens brought in for questioning about their links to Mr.
bin Laden.
"He has become a symbol of defiance
in the face of American arrogance," said a Saudi journalist, who was too
afraid of the consequences to reveal his identity.
Although he was stripped of his
citizenship for his outspoken opposition to the American military presence
in the gulf war, Mr. bin Laden retains important ties here.
It was his uncompromising Islamic
faith and dedication that made him a symbol of the Saudi-financed campaign
waged by Islamic warriors to oust Soviet forces from Afghanistan in the
1980's. That faith, that view of Islam, is still inseparable from a kingdom
that is dominated by the puritanical Wahhabi sect and is home to the sacred
cities of Mecca and Medina.
"Not all Saudis follow Wahhabism,
but it is the most powerful force there. It is a strict, stark world view.
Bin Laden's religious world view is not that different from everyone in
Saudi Arabia," Robert Vitalis of the Middle East Center of the University
of Pennsylvania, said.
But religion alone cannot sustain
Saudi Arabia; it needs its oil revenue, and most of that comes from the
United States, so there has been a clampdown on open sympathizers of Mr.
bin Laden since Sept. 11.
Those still under arrest here include
Mohammed Jalal Khalifa, Mr. bin Laden's brother-in-law, who headed the
Manila branches of two Saudi charities. The police in the Philippines accuse
him of having funneled money to Islamic militants. Mr. Khalifa has denied
it.
Detentions have further discouraged
people from talking. Occasionally someone will let slip an anecdote - for
example, how as a teen-ager Osama bin Laden used to organize neighborhood
trivia contests, with all the questions concerning the history and meaning
of Islam.
The sprawling and fabulously wealthy
bin Laden clan is based in Jidda, but they have long since disowned Osama
bin Laden. They do not make public statements about him.
Residents dismiss reports that Mr.
bin Laden telephoned his Syrian- born mother in Damascus before the Sept.
11 attacks and said he could not visit because something big was about
to happen.
Ask people here how they feel and
and they say that several leading Israeli politicians were on television
fulminating about Islamic terrorism within hours of the event, indicating
a belief by some that Israel initiated the attack.
One constituency that is clearly
not in Mr. bin Laden's camp is the al- Saud clan.
"The royal family are the only people
in this country who don't like Osama bin Laden because he is questioning
their presence, their future," said another American-educated professional.
Mr. bin Laden has argued that the royal family's closeness to the United
States makes it unfit to govern.
It greatly angers the royal family
that foreigners generally refer to Mr. bin Laden as a Saudi. Saudi journalists
have also been ordered to stop digging for information linking the hijackers
to Saudi Arabia.
Despite the sense of identification
with Mr. bin Laden, the murderous proportions of the attack appear to have
left people conflicted about how they should feel. In the streets of Jidda,
there appears to be confusion about whether Mr. bin Laden is being fairly
accused.
"There are those who think he is
a hero, the ideal Muslim, the epitome of what an Arab should be," said
a university professor, summing up the feeling of many students.
One of the reasons Mr. Bin Laden
is so popular is that he represents the long lost ideal - not seen in the
kingdom since King Abdel Aziz unified the land that became Saudi Arabia
in the 1920's - of the Arab who fights not just to preserve but to spread
the faith.
"They see Osama bin Laden as a rich
guy who could have lived like a prince, but instead went out to fight for
God," said the lawyer.
One of the core beliefs of Wahhabism
- an ascetic, joyless interpretation of Islam rejected by many Muslims
- is that the faith should be spread, never giving ground in any place
that it has conquered. This belief sent Mr. bin Laden to Afghanistan.
The question of whether the presence
of American soldiers manning the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia
constitutes such a surrender of holy Islamic ground to "infidels" is one
that now divides the House of Saud from its most notorious former citizen.
