At a time of heightened insecurity, governments chose to ignore and undermine the collective system of security which international law represents… The USA continued to detain prisoners from the war in Afghanistan in defiance of international humanitarian law, turned a blind eye to reports of torture or ill-treatment of suspects by its officials and allies, and sought to undermine the International Criminal Court through bilateral agreements… it undermined its own moral authority to speak out against human rights violations in other parts of the world. Action that makes people feel insecure cannot make states or societies secure.¹ – Irene Khan, Secretary General, Amnesty International.

The more undemocratic, unpopular, and corrupt an Arab regime, group, or leader is, the more likely it is that Israel will either ally itself with it or support it… In this policy Israel enjoys the full support of the United States, whose customary policy is to oppose democracy in the Middle East .² – Israel Shahak, Israeli Author.

Site of Al-Hamra housing compound in Riyadh after bombing

When the Bush Administration geared for war in Iraq, many senior officials spoke with confidence about what victory in Baghdad would mean for the entire region. Think tanks and policy officials claimed that the US show of force in the war on Iraq would have a “demonstration effect” that would show Islamist groups how the struggle against the US and Israel is a lost cause, given the political, military and economic preponderance that the US currently enjoys. They hoped that a quick victory in Iraq would set the stage for a more “stable” Middle East through the expansion of US forces in the region, land-for-peace deals between the Israelis and the Arabs through the so-called “roadmap,” and an economic plan with the avowed goal of “improving the lives of ordinary Arabs.”³  

However, after months of relative silence, three compounds housing Americans were bombed in Riyadh, killing 34 people including eight Americans. The explosions took place only a matter of hours before US Secretary of State Colin Powell was scheduled to arrive in Saudi Arabia . A few days later, five Western and Jewish sites were attacked in Casablanca killing more than 40 people and injuring hundreds others. The sites included a Jewish community center supposedly affiliated with Israel, a Spanish club, a large hotel said to have been hosting US-Moroccan security meetings, and the Belgian Consulate. While the perpetrators of the attacks remain unknown, many have pointed out the great resemblance between the two attacks and previous al-Qaeda operations; in terms of the targets selected and the degree of precision and coordination.  

Outdoor restaurant in Casablanca after bombing

More importantly, however, the bombings immediately called to mind the swaggering assertions of US officials, including George W. Bush, who asserted that “al-Qaeda is on the run… Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.”⁴ Having dictatorial allies like Saudi Arabia and Morocco never seemed to bother the United States, as long as its critical interests were served and any religious rumblings were confined to domestic politics. Islamic “fundamentalism” only became fearful to the US when it questioned the status quo of international affairs and sought to challenge or upset the US ’ dominant position in the new liberal international order. The bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca against Western targets in two pro-Western countries are indicative of the degree of anti-Americanism prevalent among the masses. They are a result of a sense of marginalization and powerlessness as flagrant political, economic and humanitarian injustices continue to be perpetrated, tolerated and supported by the US and ailing regimes in the region in the name of fighting “terrorism” and the “threat of radical Islam.”

America ’s Road to Terror – Tales of Hypocrisy and Deception  

Successive US governments have not made democratic transition in Islamic countries an important priority, but rather encouraged authoritarianism as long as US strategic concerns – related to ensuring the steady flow of oil, containing Soviet expansionism, resisting Islamism, supporting Israel, and granting military bases – were met by those countries. In fact, the past 50 years were instructive on how US foreign policy created and fostered the conditions for bombings and attacks directed against its interests and those of its dictatorial allies. The post-September 11^th world has illustrated, once again, that ethical and moral concerns concerning democracy and freedom, were always superceded by national interest and the quest for security. Notions such as human rights, democracy, peace, freedom, accountability and economic opportunities are used to pursue strategic interests and serve the purpose of enforcing western domination.⁵ Nowhere is this trend more apparent than in the Islamic world, where the declared ethical goal of “democracy promotion” by Western powers was always sidelined when geopolitical concerns and strategic necessities dictated otherwise.   

US alliances continued with regional strongmen: Mohamed Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, and then, when faced with the “threat” of revolutionary Iran, the US allied itself with Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s.⁶ Since 1979, the Carter Doctrine preached keeping outside powers from controlling the flow of oil by establishing military bases in various Arab Gulf states – a feature which signaled the beginning of direct US control of the region’s vital resources and, in turn, paved the way for bin Laden’s war against US hegemony in the Middle East.  

In Algeria, for 10 years now, one of the world’s ugliest civil war is supposedly being fought between “Islamists” and “security forces.” The war is estimated to have killed nearly 200,000 people – mostly civilians. Over the past five years there has been growing evidence that elements of Algeria’s security forces were involved in some of the bloodiest massacres, including torture, extrajudicial executions of women as well as men, and the horrible act of throat-cutting of babies. Yet, the US has provided financial assistance to the Algerian military and promised to train members of its security forces by US military personnel. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, announced that Washington “has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism.”⁷  

In light of the current “war on terrorism” and America ’s obsession with security at the expense of liberty or freedom, the mistakes of the past are being repeated. In support of its operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States has worked with authoritarian regimes throughout Central Asia and the Middle East . And while before September 11^th the Bush administration had complained about widespread human rights abuses during Russia ’s crackdown on Chechnya, the White House subsequently changed its tune while seeking Russian cooperation in the “war on terrorism.” Amnesty International has warned that the US decision to work on counterterrorism with such countries as Uzbekistan, Yemen, Colombia, and Indonesia could lead to human rights abuses. As Martin Indyk, the Clinton administration’s Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, suggested: “pushing hard for political change [inside Arab states] might not only disrupt the effort to promote [Arab-Israeli] peace but could also work against vital US interests: stability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and in strategically critical Egypt.”⁸

On December 26^th, 2002, the Washington Post published a front-page story detailing the allegations of torture and inhumane treatment involving thousands of suspects apprehended since the September 11^th attacks. Al-Qaeda captives held at overseas CIA interrogation centers, which are completely off-limits to reporters, lawyers, and outside agencies, are routinely beaten, tortured and deprived of sleep by US Army Special Forces before interrogation. The same article reported that approximately 100 suspects have been transferred to US allies for further interrogation, most notably to Saudi Arabia and Morocco, whose brutal torture methods have been amply documented in the State Department’s own annual human rights reports.⁹  

The Domestic Politics of Discontent  

Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House, documents in that organization’s 2001–2002 “Survey of Freedom” that “a dramatic gap [exists] between the levels of freedom and democracy in the Islamic countries—particularly in their Arabic core—and in the rest of the world.”¹⁰ Only one out of every four countries with Muslim majorities has a democratically elected government.  

The gap between Muslim countries and the rest of the world is also widening. Over the past 20 years, democracy and freedom expanded into countries in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia ; but the Muslim world is still struggling. By Freedom House’s standards, the number of “free” countries around the world in-creased by nearly three dozen over the past 20 years, but not one of them was a Muslim-majority state. This phenomenon has been validated by non-Western scholars as well. In the summer of 2002, a team of more than 30 Arab scholars produced the Arab Human Development Report, written on behalf of the United Nations Development Program and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. It portrays an Arab world that lags behind other regions in key measures, including individual freedom as well as economic and social development. Disturbing trends, such as a youth bulge combined with youth unemployment rates—reaching almost 40% in some places—highlight potentially explosive social conditions.  

The case of Saudi Arabia

Despite massive oil wealth, the volatile mix between declining living standards and a pro-Western repressive feudal monarchy continues to foment unrest in Saudi Arabia – the West’s staunchest Arab ally. Mounting anti-Western hostility in the Kingdom continues to intensify as a result of the US-led invasion of Iraq and the Saudi regime’s implicit support for the United States and its perceived inability to change the course of the conflict.  

It is not just anti-Western sentiment that breeds that kind of attacks; it is also a growing discontent at social and economic conditions in the Kingdom – an enormously wealthy country with an equally enormous national debt, the presence of three million unemployed Saudis in an economy already dominated by expatriate workers, and the lack of representative institutions through which to voice discontents.¹¹  

For decades, oil wealth allowed the royal family to ensure a reasonable living standard for most Saudis. But given the increase in population, declining oil revenues, and declining per capita income (currently estimated at around $6,000 – one fifth of what it was in 1981),¹² the country is on the verge of a major upheaval. In addition, the Saudi people are beginning to openly object to the increasing corruption and monopoly of power exercised by the ever-increasing members (35-40 more males monthly) of the House of Saud. In fact, during the past five years the only two departments whose budgets have continued to increase are the royal household and the Ministry of Defense – the royal family and its protectors.¹³  

Leading anti-terrorism experts point out that al-Qaeda enjoys far wider support across all levels of Saudi society than either the West or the royal authorities are prepared to acknowledge.¹⁴ This comes in response to Prince Nayef’s assertion that there is no organized opposition to the regime, but only “small groups of misguided young people.”¹⁵ Given the security atmosphere that pervaded the world after September 11^th and US calls for religious and educational reform in the kingdom with hypocritical hesitancy to equally demand political or economic openness, the situation in Saudi Arabia is likely to become more violent, complex and polarized.  

The case of Morocco  

Since its independence in 1956, Morocco has known a “brutal absolutism and a permanent violation of human rights,” despite a long pluralist tradition dating back to the 1930s.¹⁶ King Hassan II anchored his country firmly in the Western camp during the Cold War in exchange for its allegiance to the Western cause. France and the United States were particularly pleased to see the regime mercilessly persecute its leftist opponents during the Cold War in order to prevent a communist or socialist takeover that would alter the strategic balance in the Mediterranean and the Arab World.  

The ferocity of the Moroccan regime reached its peak in 1990 when the so-called “bread riots” throughout the country were violently suppressed. The death of King Hassan II in 1999 and the succession of his son Mohamed VI, only managed to introduce cosmetic changes to the political system by the appointment of a prime minister. The King still has control on the decision-making process in the realms of security, defense, justice, and foreign policy. Secret police continue to roam the country and new “anti-terrorism” laws have been introduced by the King in January 2001, which justify arrest and detention for prolonged periods without trial, and prevent a suspect from having access to a lawyer.  

The country’s economy is in the hands of the World Bank and IMF officials who are implementing a rigorous neo-liberal strategy that is negatively affecting the average Moroccan. A few numbers are enough to highlight the precariousness of the economic situation in Morocco where “50% are illiterate, 30% live in poverty, 10% live in absolute poverty, 63% of the rural population have no running water, 87% of them have no electricity, 93% have no health care, and 54% of boys and 74% of girls never attend school.”¹⁷  

Peaceful demonstrations calling for respect for human rights have been broken up by riot police and newspapers critical of the government have been forced to close down. The United Nations ranks Morocco as North Africa’s most backward state. Beyond the walls of the king’s 23 palaces, 5 million people continue to live on less than a dollar a day. The dire situation in Moroccan rural areas has sent thousands to Islamist strongholds in urban slums – the same slums that hosted the alleged perpetrators of the Casablanca bombings.¹⁸ Islamists in those areas provide social services such as education and charity funds to the poor and hence a large pool of recruits to their cause becomes readily available amidst a feudal monarchy that continues to be supported by the West and Israel, but remains oblivious to the needs of its people.  

Conclusions  

In the post-September 11^th world, America’s preoccupation with security at the expense of all of its declared ethical objectives, has made the world a more violent arena of international competition and left little hope for the marginalized and alienated members of the Islamic world. The volatile mix between repressive regimes and a hypocritical, militaristic US foreign policy, has led to many blunders with catastrophic results in a region already marred by years of dictatorship, conflict and perpetual warfare. America’s quest to win “the hearts and minds” of people in the Muslim world has failed miserably since the attacks of September 11^th. Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan are seething with anti-US sentiment and have not become safe havens for democracy, security or freedom. None of the pro-Western Arab regimes which continue to oppress their people have been forced to make political concessions as long as they continue to serve US geostrategic interests.  

Eventually, the masses usually find themselves caught between the hammer of repressive regimes and the anvil of America’s iron-fist security policies, with no recourse to any legal means that would ensure just retribution. Most people in the Middle East have seen nothing but America’s arrogance and military might, and not its declared benevolence. For the alienated and marginalized, everything is still “business as usual” – the same oppression, the same regimes, the same US complacency and double-standards. When justice is not served and tyranny rules, people usually take the law into their own hands.

Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.  

1- Irene Khan, “Security for Whom?: A Human Rights Response,” Amnesty International

2- Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies (Pluto Press: London, 1997): 161

3- Richard Wolffe, “Whatever Happened to Mideast Stability?” Newsweek May 13, 2003

4- Mark Hosenball, et al. “Al Qaeda Strikes Again,” Newsweek  May 26, 2003

5- Francesco Cavatorta, “Geopolitical Challenges to the Success of Democracy in North Africa : Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco,” Democratization Vol. 8 (Winter 2001): 175-194.

6- Joseph McMillan et al. “Toward a New Regional Security Architecture [pdf file],” The Washington Quarterly Summer 2003 

7- Robert Fisk, “The Double Standards: Dubious Morality and Duplicity of This Fight Against Terror,” The Independent January 4, 2003  

8- “Causes of 9/11: US Support for Repressive Regimes?” Terrorism: Questions and Answers.

9- Eyal Press, “In Torture We Trust?” Nation March 31, 2003

10- Richard N. Hass, “Toward Greater Democracy in the Muslim World [pdf file],” The Washington Quarterly Summer 2003

11- “Kingdom Threatened By A Collision of Worlds,” The Guardian May 14, 2003

12- Douglas Jehl, “Life in Saudi Arabia is Transformed by Hard Times,” New York Times March 20, 1999

13- Said K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1996).

14- “Al-Qaeda: The Next Phase,” Jane’s May 14, 2003

15- “Bin Laden Resurgent in Saudi Arabia ?” Jane’s May 7, 2003

16- Francesco Cavatorta, “Geopolitical Challenges to the Success of Democracy in North Africa : Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco,” Democratization Vol. 8 (Winter 2001): 175-194.

17- Seedi Ahmed Salem, “ Casablanca Attacks: Background and Dimensions,” Al-Jazeera   May 17, 2003

18- Nicolas Pelham, “‘Cool’ King on a Hot Throne,” Christian Science Monitor December 14, 2000.

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