Saudis Say the U.S., Not Iraq, Threatens Stability

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Sept. 22, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — This longtime ally of America isn’t convinced that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein poses a serious and imminent military threat to regional stability and security. That threat, Saudi Arabia believes, comes from another source: the United States, top officials say.

Many here believe that Hussein has been chastened by his military failures and is unlikely to wage war on his neighbors--unless the U.S. decides to invade.

“The U.S. may know something about the existence of chemical weapons in Iraq, but we are not sure,” said the nation’s longtime security chief, Interior Minister Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, adding that a U.S. attack on Iraq would create problems in the region “faster than any Iraqi operation against its neighbors.”

For more than 70 years, Saudi Arabia and the United States have had close ties, a marriage of convenience that has served their mutual political and strategic interests. But relations have been strained since the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., and the priorities of both countries have diverged.

The U.S. government wants Hussein ousted. The Saudi leadership wants the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved first. Neither side has been willing to budge.

Against this backdrop, the White House faces the prospect of waging a major military campaign in the Persian Gulf region without the key strategic support of Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudis don’t regard Saddam as a military threat,” said a high-level Western diplomat based here in Riyadh, the capital. “For the Saudis, he is a political threat. The Saudis fear U.S. military action will not only divert attention and break up a coalition to fight terrorism but will also foster terrorism.”

So far, the Saudi government has been very clear. If the U.S. goes it alone, without the endorsement of the United Nations, the Saudi government will refuse to allow the use of its territory.

When authorities said recently that they would allow U.S. forces to operate here if there is a U.N. resolution, observers say, the goal was to thwart a war by pressuring Hussein to let in weapons inspectors. It was not meant as a nod to the U.S. agenda, they say.

“Anything that will avoid military operations against Iraq, or military operations in the region, will be a positive act,” Nayif said in an interview.

This reluctance to attack Iraq reflects the significant differences between what is happening today and what occurred in 1990, when Hussein invaded Kuwait and the entire area felt threatened by the region’s largest armed force.

“Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 posed the gravest threat to Saudi Arabia’s security that I had yet encountered in my military career,” Prince Khaled bin Sultan wrote in “Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander.” “Our vital oil-producing Eastern province--the principal source of our national wealth--lay open to his mechanized and armored divisions.”

Saudi Arabia is a large land mass, with a relatively small population living on top of a valuable resource: one-fourth of the world’s known oil reserves. It is surrounded by unpredictable neighbors, such as Iraq and Iran, and its leadership strives to preserve credibility in a nation that has blended political and religious authority. An alliance with the United States has helped the Saud dynasty maintain the status quo.

For these reasons, Saudi Arabia continues to allow the U.S. to fly military patrols over a “no-fly” zone set up in southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and allowed America to use a high-tech command center to run the war in Afghanistan.

Although the United States has moved thousands of its troops out of the kingdom, about 5,000 U.S. military personnel remain in Saudi Arabia, as well as the command center, which could be quietly used in an Iraqi operation.

At the moment, officials, diplomats and political observers say there is no fear that Baghdad will attack any neighbor. But there is a fear that if the U.S. strikes, Hussein could lash out, perhaps targeting the oil fields.

U.S. officials in the region are paying close attention to what the Saudi government is saying, although they say there is no sign that it is wavering in its opposition to a war. Saudi Arabia’s leadership has a reputation of choosing its words carefully and rarely being duplicitous.

“They conceivably could have a powerful role if they offered facilities to support some sort of response to Iraq’s flouting of U.N. resolutions,” said a high-level U.S. diplomat from the region. “It would be practically very important--plus, it would be a huge signal throughout the Arab world.”

Even during the Gulf War there were elements of concern, ideas that today have come to define the national policy. Some Saudi leaders didn’t like the idea of Arabs fighting Arabs, and they worried that an invasion of Iraq could have negative consequences for the rest of the region.

“Our fear is that a defeat will be inflicted on them, dividing and scattering their ranks and fragmenting their unity into ethnic groups,” Crown Prince Abdullah was quoted as saying in Joseph Kechichian’s book “Succession in Saudi Arabia.”

In the end, almost everyone, including Abdullah and the nation’s top religious leaders, accepted the idea of allowing foreign forces to join a military coalition based on the Arabian peninsula.

The war was successful, Hussein’s military was defeated, and, for a short time, Saudis thanked America for its help.

But the anti-American sentiment started with a growing sense of embarrassment among Saudis who questioned why they could not defend themselves--especially after their leaders had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on weapons.

The hostility was stoked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the early days of the current Bush administration, in particular, the government here grew incensed at the White House’s hands-off policy.

But as important as the Palestinian issue is to the Saudis, nothing has set back relations as drastically as the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans may feel that they have been double-dealt by the Saudis’ conservative religious system, but the Saudis feel that their faith and culture have been demonized by the secular West.

“It’s like a bad marriage. Neither one of us are listening to each other. And no one is taking the other seriously,” said the Western diplomat based here. “We see each other as the problem.”

This presents more than a public relations challenge. The leadership in each country finds itself under increasing pressure to redefine relations with the other.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Saudi government has tried to tone down the outward expression of anti-American sentiment in the kingdom, and to some extent it has succeeded.

But it has done little to extinguish those feelings--and has been careful not to offend religious conservatives.

“You are an American, you are a terrorist,” said Ahmed, a farmer in the central province of Qassim, a poor religious and independent agricultural area that has presented the regime with some of its most vociferous religious critics. “We call you to be Muslims, to be brothers. Instead, you fight the whole world.”

Over and over, in interviews in cafes and university offices, in the poorest neighborhoods and the highest levels of government, Saudis expressed a belief that they are victims of America’s misdirected anger.

“Concerning the relationship, there are no changes accorded from our side,” said Saleh ibn Humaid, who chairs the Shura Council, an appointed consultative body. “The U.S. is fully responsible [for a worsening of relations] for one reason: If, after the 11th of September, some Saudi names appeared in this case, it should have been treated like individuals, but not by accusing the government.”

Many people here believe that America has targeted their religion.

Because Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state, with the Koran as its constitution and religious law, called Sharia, as its guide, criticism of any aspect of the way people here live is seen as a criticism of their faith.

The issue of charity is an example. U.S. investigators have said that Saudis--individually and through the government--gave millions of dollars to charitable organizations that, in some cases, then funneled the money to terrorist groups.

Many Saudis see the U.S. finger-pointing as a criticism of one of the five pillars of Islam: charity.

“Yes, many Saudis used to give to charity--never, never ever for [Osama] bin Laden or Al Qaeda or any terrorist organization,” said Mohammad bin Saad al Salam, president of Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.

“You give your contributions [and] you are limited about what you know about this. To perform Islam you have to give--it’s your responsibility. You are not a Muslim if you don’t do that.”

The gap in understanding is so great that Interior Minister Nayif, while emphasizing how strongly his nation condemned the Sept. 11 attacks, insisted that there is no credible evidence that Bin Laden or the 19 suspected hijackers either planned or carried out the attacks. And he said that if they did do it, some other organization was behind them.

“Personally, I think Al Qaeda is not qualified and doesn’t have the ability to do such a big and criminal action such as happened in the Sept. 11 attack,” he said.

“In any case, we cannot say for sure. They claim that they did it. At the same time, maybe they were an agent for those people who asked them to do it, or those people who are really behind it.”

Although Nayif’s conspiracy ideas are popular, they are not universal. There are others who believe that Bin Laden was responsible and that he has achieved one of his main goals: driving a wedge between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

“He succeeded, really,” said Salam, the university president. “We never dreamed we would be treated like an enemy of the United States.”

This sense of distrust, and the widespread feeling of victimization, plays a role in what course of action the Saudi government will play if the United States asks for help with Iraq.

“People here don’t trust America,” said a prominent religious leader, Sheik Salman al Odah. “They think America is a real danger.”