Silent Conspiracy Hides Saudi Terror Connection

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Conspiracy of Silence Hides Saudi Connection to Terrorism

 

By Arnaud de Borchgrave

 

Rogue states such as Iraq and Libya can't hold a candle to

Saudi Arabia when it comes to the radicalization of Islam. The state-

controlled Saudi media don'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 "educational" system

in Pakistan that has spawned an entire generation of young boys

taught in religious schools 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

martyrdom.

By ignoring Saudi 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 now are 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 a "strategic adviser" to the

more extreme religious parties, says the ruling royal families of the

Persian Gulf have generated hatred by the way they flout "divine

law." The Saudi royals made a pact with their clergy, which now is

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 coequal 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 Muslim 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 top priority 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 also are 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, 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, hidden subsidies to

Islamist schools the world over and under-the-table arms-deal

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 the 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 a mission almost impossible.

The United States 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 may be politically 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 University 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 of the Washington Times and

United Press International.