Riding the Riyadh Roller Coaster
By Arthur Clark
I've been in Riyadh for a dozen days now, on my
last scheduled visit to draft a book about an historical center built to honor the man who
established the country 70 years ago, King Abdulaziz Al Sa'ud.
I've devoted most of my time to
the book for the past six months, but my links with Saudi
Arabia go back to 1980 when I joined the Arabian American
Oil Company (Aramco) in Dhahran - and then didn't really return "home" for 21
years. However, the last half year has been one of the most emotional rides I've
experienced in the kingdom.
My job at Aramco gave me an
opportunity to look firsthand at Saudi Arabia. I wrote about Saudis ranging from petroleum engineers to Bedouin
trackers with an uncanny ability to navigate through trackless desert. And I took my wife
and daughter with me to places like cool, mountainous Asir Province in the southwest, Jiddah on the Red
Sea and Riyadh in the heart of the country. Ostensibly, I was working. Really, we
were learning about a place and its people.
We rarely encountered anyone even
close to a "terrorist." In fact, kindness prevailed. Knowing Arabic helped, as
did a certain "politeness" - a sensitivity to a proud culture that is
fundamentally rooted in a monotheistic faith, displays an innate business sense and is
particularly private.
Obviously, we didn't learn all
about a culture in 21 years. But we absorbed a lot and missed our old "home"
when we returned to the United States in August 2001.
So, when the opportunity to return
to Saudi Arabia came up
last winter, I seized it. By then, of course, Sept. 11 had happened. The terror of that
day underscored the fact that Americans on home ground were vulnerable to foreign
extremists bent on wreaking havoc to achieve the "justice" they desired.
The attacks were carried out
mainly by Saudis. Ironically, the man said to be their leader, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden,
was an ally in the U.S. backed campaign to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan after
its 1979 invasion. Then, fed up with politics in his homeland, where thousand of U.S.
troops remain after the 1991 Gulf War, bin Laden's men struck, setting a record for mass
murder in America.
On my first visit to Riyadh, in March, most Saudis were
still shocked by Sept. 11. Many offered sympathy. The attacks, however, raised questions.
Bin Laden had highlighted, for example, the discrepancy of Saudi Arabia hosting troops from a
country whose policies on Palestine fell so short of the region's hopes and needs. As people continued to
die - the majority of them Palestinians - in a cycle of bombs, bullets and bulldozed
homes, sympathy of Sept. 11 dried up. Instead of supporting action against terrorism, as
the United States
defined it, some Saudis I know and respect said they would not be surprised if America took another "hit."
Why, they asked, doesn't America work harder to solve the
Palestinian problem? Why is America supplying Israel with billions of dollars in aid annually while Israel violates U.N. resolutions
against building settlements in occupied lands? Why does George W. Bush meet regularly
with Ariel Sharon and refuse to sit with Yasser Arafat?
When I returned to Saudi Arabia in May, the latest
Palestinian uprising was peaking. Arafat was besieged in blasted-out headquarters, and
Israeli troops were wrecking Palestinian towns to find and destroy those desperate enough
to kill themselves - and others - for a cause.
America dithered, Saudis thought. President Bush, at first adamant that
Israeli troops quickly withdraw from Palestinian cities, blinked. He sent Colin Powell to
the region, and Arafat was finally released from prison. Then Bush told the Palestinians
to find a new leader to head a promised, but ephemeral state. Arafat, he said, must go. In
his ruined theater of the absurd, Arafat might well have responded in kind, telling Bush
that he preferred a U.S.
president who could deliver.
When I returned to Riyadh in early August, the
long-simmering crisis between Washington and Baghdad had taken center stage. The debate here is one-sided against a U.S. attack on Iraq.
Is this more American arrogance,
treating Arab leaders like poker chips in the hope that the right one will come up on the
roulette wheel?, a Saudi friend asked. "Saddam Hussein may be an evil man," he
told me, "but he is crippled." Gulf War sanctions and the resulting high loss of
Iraqi life, especially children, are what most Saudis discuss, he said.
Saudi Arabia isn't America's enemy, but neither is it Washington's stooge, he said. "Regime change" is no country's
prerogative, even if it is the sole remaining superpower.
Now, the drumbeats of war
reverberate in Washington.
U.S.-Saudi ties - based on solid economic and political links - have withstood tests
before. It's probable that they will weather whatever happens in Iraq.
But there is a palpable suspicion
that America's war on
terrorism is a cloak for another agenda. As a columnist in the daily Al-Jazirah put
it:" There is no doubt that the U.S. wants to install a pro-American government in
Iraq, as it did in Afghanistan, and establish its political, military and economic
hegemony in a region which holds 75 percent of all the world's oil reserves."
What is saddest, of course, is
that real people are caught up in the buzz saw of history that's being written -
Americans, Palestinians, Israelis and, maybe soon, a lot more Iraqis.
King Abdulaziz met President
Franklin Roosevelt on a ship in the Red Sea in the waning days of World War II. The king warned of the dangers to
the region if the Palestinians were treated recklessly in what was, after all, Palestine. But Roosevelt was dead before that wisdom
could be fully considered.
The talks between the two leaders
are among the many events in Abdulaziz's long life that are featured in the center I'm
writing about. Today's leaders should think long on the old king's advice.
Courtesy of and © 2002 by Arthur Clark |