Author: Arnaud de Borchgrave
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 22, 2001
Rogue states like Iraq and Libya
can't hold a candle to Saudi Arabia when it comes to the radicalization
of Islam. The controlled Saudi media doesn't mention that at least 10 of
the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis. Nor are Saudi subjects told that
their kingdom has been the principal source of funding for the Taliban
regime since 1996.
The conspiracy of silence also covers
up the fact that Saudi government funds, coupled with generous donations
from the Saudi private sector, are still funding the madrassa (religious
schools) "educational" system in Pakistan that has spawned an entire generation
of young boys taught to hate the United States, the "anti-Muslim superpower
that is the fount of all evil."
The United States, determined not
to rock the leaky Saudi boat, has been pretending it did not know that
Saudi money was greasing the various relays of transnational terrorism
- from madrassas to Osama bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
After eight years of total Koranic immersion, to the exclusion of all other
disciplines, such as math and science, but generously larded with messages
about how the United States is bent on the destruction of Islam, the most
gung-ho boys are selected for holy warrior training. It was in these Afghan
camps that bin Laden's al Qaeda operatives then picked the most promising
candidates for the hall of martyrdom fame.
By ignoring royal excesses and the
total lack of democratic processes, as well as a dubious level of cooperation
with the FBI in tracking Saudi connections to transnational terrorism,
the United States kept the oil flowing, along with Saudi billions into
U.S. Treasury bonds and U.S. arms purchases.
But the Saudis are now hoist on
their own petard. These same anti-American hatemongers that the Saudis
have been funding also hate the tired, corrupt regimes of the Persian Gulf
that have wasted their country's wealth on extravagant lifestyles. Gen.
Hameed Gul, Pakistan's retired spy chief who is now "strategic adviser"
to the more extreme religious parties, says the ruling royal families of
the Gulf have generated hatred by the way they flout "divine law." The
Saudi royals made a pact with their clergy, which is now falling apart.
In return for immunity from criticism, the royals gave the Wahhabi clergy
a free hand, allocating generous subsidies for Koranic schools all over
the Muslim world, with an estimated annual budget of $10 billion. But now
the Saudi royal regime is co-equal with the United States and Israel on
the Islamist hate list.
Even non-Muslim India has received
madrassa largess from the Saudis for the Koranic education of their 140
million-strong Muslim minority. Between them, the subcontinent's three
principal nations - India, Bangladesh and Pakistan - hold half the world's
Muslim population of 1 billion plus. More than 50 percent are younger than
25. Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of India's Institute for Defense Studies,
said, "You can spot the Saudi-financed madrassas because they look cleaner,
with fresh coats of paint."
The Koranic schools produce young
men who can read and write, speak Arabic, and recite the holy book by heart,
but have no skills. In Saudi Arabia itself, there is a deep-seated resentment
among young college graduates who can't find jobs, as they didn't learn
any skills either. Many drifted over to bin Laden's Afghan camps before
U.S. bombs returned them to the desert. There they trained to overthrow
the Saudi monarchy that still rules by divine right of kings.
Forgotten in the sound and fury
that followed Sept. 11 is the fact that bin Laden's priority objective
is the demise of the Saudi monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic
state that would control the Gulf's vast oil reserves. The United States,
as bin Laden sees it, is the principal prop of the Saudi regime. Pakistan's
Islamists talk about a greater Islamic state that would marry Saudi oil
to Islamic nuclear weapons and collapse the capitalist system. Extravagant
geopolitical lucubrations perhaps, but they are also the objectives of
politico-religious leaders who wield tremendous influence among the Muslim
world's impoverished masses.
The two air bases the United States
maintains in Saudi Arabia are state-of-the-art, but the Saudis will not
let the U.S. Air Force use them for anything beyond enforcing the no-fly-zones
over Iraq. In fact, the Saudis are hinting they would like to see a scaling
down of the U.S. presence and a gradual return to an over-the-horizon presence.
This appears to be an attempt to pre-empt the Bush administration after
Riyadh heard that some senior U.S. officials are discussing the idea of
a limited military disengagement from Saudi Arabia.
The time is at hand for the United
States and Britain and other Western democracies to convince Saudi Arabia
that the survival of the House of Saud depends on fundamental reforms whose
aim would be a constitutional monarchy acting as a unifying symbol for
a more representative government. Transparency and sunshine laws will have
to replace a system of secret royal slush funds, secret subsidies to Islamist
schools the world over, and secret arms deals commissions for the benefit
of princes of the royal blood.
The image of the United States defending
itself by attacking Afghanistan didn't last long. Already the perception
among the Muslim elites is merging with the street assessment of a mindless
superpower bombing a poor Muslim country. There is no appetite for acting
as a proxy of the United States. In telephone conversations, educated Pakistanis
express alarm because they do not see a U.S. exit strategy.
It's difficult to bomb Afghanistan
back to the Stone Age because the country is already there, and has been
for some time. Afghans are best at guerrilla tactics, which they put to
devastating use against the British and Soviet empires. There is little
to suggest that a viable plan is ready to replace Taliban's obscurantist
medieval regime. The ingredients for a much-discussed coalition government
are well-known. They speak 30 different languages and range from Pashto-speaking
tribes that straddle both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border to the Northern
Alliance made up of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minority tribes to dissident
Taliban elements. Putting them all in a blender called a grand conclave
under the symbolic chairmanship of an 87-year-old deposed king, Zaher Shah,
is mission almost impossible.
The U.S. left Afghanistan in the
lurch after Soviet occupation forces pulled out in 1989. This lack of geopolitical
foresight gave birth to the phenomenon of "Afghan Arabs" under bin Laden's
leadership who turned against the United States with a vengeance. The law
of unintended consequences gave us Sept. 11. This time, there is no way
the United States can walk away even if bin Laden is captured or killed.
Nation-building under some sort of a U.N. mandate is unavoidable.
Transnational terrorism is a hydra-headed
snake that feeds on perceived injustices and inequities suffered by the
developing world at the hands of an uncaring capitalist world. The United
States and its allies now have a historic opportunity to give the clerical
demagogues of the Muslim world the lie by dusting off a speech George C.
Marshall gave at Harvard in 1947. Bin Laden believes he found the answer
to a superpower's overwhelming conventional military power by waging asymmetrical
warfare. But his terrorist swamp would quickly drain when faced with a
Western New Deal.
[Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor
at large for The Washington Times, a position he also holds with United
Press International.]
