According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the US  occupation of Iraq has swollen the ranks of al-Qaeda, with an estimated 18,000 “potential terrorists” available in 60 countries.⁸ Other studies indicate that the humiliation, despair and oppression that Muslims continue to endure in the Middle East has popularized “al-Qaedism” – not as a clear-cut organization, but as a militant anti-Western, anti-Zionist worldview – in the region.⁹ As a result, groups which share al-Qaeda’s ideology but may have little or no logistical or organizational links to Osama bin Laden have emerged.  

In light of Saudi Arabia’s pivotal position in the Middle East—a position ensured by virtue of its religious significance and its geostrategic importance as the world’s primary oil producer—sustained attacks on foreigners, oil installations and symbols of regime authority are a complex and perilous predicament.  

Saudi Arabia & the Politics of Islam – The Quest for Legitimacy 

The fragility of the modern Arab state, its lack of institutions for popular participation and its authoritarian nature of government have made the quest for legitimacy one of the salient features of the regional order. Much of the Saudi state’s stability is derived from popular perceptions of the regime’s commitment to Islam, rather than from the elections and pluralism that grant legitimacy by Western standards. Even the most reform-minded technocrats, businessmen and members of the royal family incorporate Islamic values into their decision-making, speeches, laws and decrees - effectively into all aspects of Saudi public life.¹⁰ 

Since the founding of the modern Saudi state in 1932, Islam has remained a principle defining factor in the kingdom’s domestic and foreign policy orientation, and the cornerstone of the regime’s legitimacy. As such, the conservative royal family has always feared the challenge to its legitimacy and right to rule posed by other, more radical states or groups. Saudi Arabia countered the 60s’ wave of Baa’thist and Nasserist radical Arab nationalism by advocating pan-Islamism. In May 1962, a Saudi sponsored international Islamic conference in Mecca  declared that “those who disavow Islam and distort its call under the guise of nationalism are actually the most bitter enemies of the Arabs whose glories are inseparable from the glories of Islam.”¹¹ In 1965, King Faisal sought to ally Jordan,   Malaysia, and Pakistan, to group them into a pan-Islamic coalition to counter radical nationalism.

But the most serious challenge to the Saudi regime came from other Muslim states or groups who questioned the Islamic credentials of the Saudi government and accused its officials of being “traitors” or agents for the enemies of Islam. For example, the armed seizure of the Grand Mosque in 1979 by a group led by Juhayman bin Saif al-Utaibi, a Saudi militant, was an attack on the “very geographic epicenter of Islam,” and hence challenged the regime’s claim to guardianship of Islam’s holy places.¹² 

Additionally, demonstrations by Iranian pilgrims against the Saudi regime, coupled with Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s constant assertions that monarchy is incompatible with Islam, posed a serious challenge to the Islamic credentials of the Saudi regime throughout the 1980s. On July 31, 1987, violent clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security forces left over 400 killed, including 85 Saudi policemen. The use of lethal force by Saudi security forces during a Muslim holy month and the massive number of casualties inflicted on the demonstrators further delegitimized the Saudi government.  

Scenes from the carnage of the raid

The current political situation in Saudi Arabia  is highly volatile. No one can determine precisely the exact nature of the groups or individuals opposed to the regime, and the possible ideological differences between the groups are unclear. But contrary to the situation in most Arab states, there is no liberal, Marxist, or socialist opposition to the regime; all opposition in Saudi Arabia is entirely based on Islam. Some even note that the situation in Saudi Arabia is unique by virtue of the fact that the regime presides over a population in which the “vast majority of politically conscious adult citizens are more conservative than [the] conservative regime [already in power].”¹³

Evidently, it would be safe to say that there are three main dissenting Islamic trends in Saudi Arabia: intellectual non-violent criticism, spearheaded by prominent religious figures such as Sheikh Safar al-Hawali and Sheikh Salman al-Auda; non-violent political activism, represented by the Islamic Reform Movement (IRM), and; militant Islamist groups, represented by al-Qaeda and its affiliates.¹⁴ Despite significant operational differences, the dissidents are united by their resentment of the regime’s mismanagement of public funds, the squandering of oil money, lack of government accountability and increasing Western influence in the Middle East. 

The seeds of modern-day militancy in Saudi Arabia were sown in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when the royal family allowed US troops to be based in the kingdom. Bin Laden had at that time founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan veterans, and some 4,000 of them in had settled in Mecca and Medina alone. He unsuccessfully lobbied the Saudi royal family to organize a popular defense of the kingdom and raise a force of Afghan war veterans to fight Iraq. Instead, King Fahd invited the Americans in, and some 540,000 US troops began establishing themselves inside the Saudi Arabia.¹⁵ In response, Bin Laden began openly criticizing the royal family, lobbying the Saudi ulema or religious scholars to issue religious edicts prohibiting the presence of non-Muslim in the country.  

In essence, the main goals of al-Qaeda and its affiliated militant groups inside the kingdom today are:   

[T]o eliminate the US and Western presence from the region; to eradicate all forms of non-Islamic rule and apply the Islamic teachings to all aspects of life; to achieve true Islamic justice and eradicate all forms of injustice; to reform the political system and purify it from corruption and to “revive” a system to make it possible for citizens to bring charges against state officials. At the same time, al-Qaeda believes that all means to bring about an Islamic state are legitimate as long as they conform to Islamic teachings. Essentially, this viewpoint contends that violence is legitimate whenever deemed necessary.¹⁶ 

Oil, Oppression & Occupation 

Despite massive oil wealth, the volatile mix of declining living standards and a repressive pro-Western 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 continued US-led occupation of Iraq and the Saudi regime’s hypocritical stance on these issues.  

Prior to the US invasion, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal insisted that his government would not allow US forces to use Saudi territory as a launching pad for an attack on Iraq. He further reiterated: “We are against any attack on Iraq because we believe it is not needed, especially now that Iraq  is moving to implement United Nations resolutions… For the government of Iraq, the leadership of Iraq, any change that happens there has to come from the Iraqi people.”¹⁷ Contrary to the minister’s assertions, the Saudi government allowed US military operations to be led from at least three air bases inside the kingdom. It also permitted US Special Forces and thousands of ground troops to stage attacks from Saudi soil, even providing them with cheap fuel.¹⁸ The American air campaign against Iraq was essentially managed from inside Saudi borders, where US military commanders operated an air command center and launched refueling tankers, F-16 fighters, and sophisticated intelligence-gathering flights. The Saudi-American military connection during the invasion of Iraq undermined the credibility of the ruling regime in the eyes of its own people and made the Saudi government appear complicit in the occupation of an Arab state. 

Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s role as a “swing producer” in the global oil market and its constant efforts to maintain the lowest possible oil prices make the ruling regime susceptible to accusations of being a “lackey” of Western imperialism, a claim made by Libya’s President Qaddafi in the 1970s, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s, and many radical Islamist groups since the 1990s. 

But it is not just anti-Western sentiment that breeds the violence witnessed in Saudi Arabia. There is also 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.¹⁹ 

Newspapers in Saudi Arabia are strictly controlled, and even the more respected ones published abroad tend to observe government limits or risk loss of advertising and freedom of circulation. More importantly, there are no political parties in the kingdom, and public protests are strictly forbidden. Last October, the government arrested 271 people in Riyadh, 83 of whom were told they would be put on trial, for demonstrating during a human-rights conference organized by the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent – a rare event in and of itself. A week later, likeminded protesters in Jeddah, Dammam and Hail were similarly dealt with.  

On December 26, 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 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.²⁰ The same article reported that approximately 100 suspects have been transferred to US allies for further interrogation, most notably to Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, whose brutal torture methods have been amply documented in the State Department’s own annual human rights reports.²¹ 

Amnesty International also expressed concern over the conditions of several prominent Saudi academics who have been detained since March 2004 simply for criticizing the government-appointed National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) and planning to set up a human rights organization of their own.²² Hundreds of suspected religious activists, clerics, critics of the government and protestors were arrested or detained in 2003 alone, and the legal status of prisoners held from previous years remains shrouded in secrecy.²³ Critics of the regime in Saudi Arabia are often at risk of indefinite detention without charge or trial. In the rare cases where individuals are charged and brought to trial, defendants do not have the right to formal representation by a lawyer, and many trials are held behind closed doors.²⁴ 

An example of the powerful Islamic imagery used by the militants

For decades, oil wealth allowed the royal family to ensure a reasonable living standard for most Saudis. But that same wealth has also been used for the creation of sophisticated and repressive security facilities and the augmentation of government-controlled civil institutions designed solely to further the aims of the regime.²⁵ The ultimate aim of the Saudi government was to use oil to “depoliticize” the masses by buying their silence with higher standards of living. But given the recent population increase, declining oil revenues and declining per capita income (currently estimated at around $6,000 – one fifth of what it was in 1981),²⁶ coupled with advancements in education and popular awareness, the country is on the verge of a major upheaval.  

Additionally, the Saudi people are beginning to openly object to the ever-growing House of Saud’s increasing corruption and their monopoly on power.²⁷ Estimates of the number of princes vary widely, between 5,000 and 10,000, with the extended family said to number between 20,000 and 27,000 – all receiving a slice of the kingdom’s vast oil wealth with absolute secrecy and no official scrutiny.²⁸ In fact, princes and other members of the royal family are exempt from income taxes. Interestingly, 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.²⁹ 

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.³⁰ Given the consequences of dissent in the kingdom, there are no accurate estimates of the popularity of al-Qaeda inside Saudi Arabia. However, Daryl Champion, an Australian writer on Saudi Arabia, suggests that Bin Laden “enjoys a semi-underground folk-hero status with many in the kingdom--and not just the 15,000 Saudi nationals who participated in the jihad in Afghanistan.”³¹ His admirers are said to be numerous on university campuses and among the growing numbers of the unemployed. Many radical clerics have expressed support for his aims, though the authorities have been vigorously cracking down on the more outspoken of them. This belies Prince Nayef’s assertion that there is no organized opposition to the regime, but only “small groups of misguided young people.”³²  

Conclusions 

The draconian measures taken by the United States' regional allies to quell domestic opposition in the name of fighting “terrorism” have disillusioned Arab masses and widened the gap between regimes and citizens in the larger Muslim world.  

While the US calls for Saudi religious and educational reform, it is hypocritically reluctant to actively work for political and economic openness in the country, out of fears of a Bin Laden-style government coming to power. As such, the situation in Saudi Arabia is likely to become more violent, complex and polarized. 

Ultimately, the security-based approach currently employed by the Saudi government will fail in quelling domestic disturbances and preventing militant attacks. This is due to the fact that the regime’s Islamic credentials have now been openly challenged from the inside, and previously employed methods of co-optation are no longer sufficient in the face of ever-increasing popular demands for transparency, accountability and freedom from foreign intervention. Hence, the cumulative impact of various opposition groups inside the kingdom is likely to pose a continuing security threat to the Saudi regime for years to come.  

The situation in Saudi Arabia is likely to become more violent, complex and polarized.

Moreover, the atrocities being perpetrated by US and Israeli forces in Iraq and Palestine respectively will doubtless fuel increasingly popular Saudi perceptions that both occupations are part and parcel of a “Crusader-Zionist” plot against Islam and Muslims. 

The continuing collaboration between the Saudi government and its American benefactors has worked to further undermine the Saudi regime and strengthen the legitimacy of those who see the presence of foreign “infidel” troops in Muslim lands as an affront to Islam. The Saudi regime can no longer guarantee compliance from its citizens while it blocks all non-violent attempts aimed at the inclusion of the masses in the political process. The ever-increasing socio-economic pressures and political stagnation faced by the average Saudi citizen are incompatible with today’s dynamic world, where the masses must shape their destinies free from foreign occupation or governmental oppression. The ongoing insurgency in Iraq and the Palestinian Intifada have demonstrated that popular resistance by sub-state groups can positively influence the political equation in the Middle East and impose its own dynamics in the ongoing confrontation with the West. As long as injustices in the Middle East remain ignored and the arrogance of military power has the final say, one man’s terrorist will remain another man’s freedom fighter.

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.

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[1] Paul Wood, “Concern Grows Over Saudi Stability,”  BBC News  May 13^th, 2004  

[2] “Saudi Arabia’s Hostage Standoff Ends,”  MSNBC May 30^th, 2004 

[3] Ibid.

[4] “UK: Are Oil Price Fears Overblown?”  Oxford Economic Forecasting UK Weekly Brief  May 14^th, 2004 

[5] Tony Walker, “Saudi Attacks Pressures Oil Prices,”  Australian Financial Review May 31^st, 2004

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Saudis Blame al-Qaeda For Suicide Attacks,”  CBC News April 22^nd , 2004 

[8] Richard Norton-Taylor, “Occupation has boosted al-Qaeda, says thinktank” The Guardian May 26^th, 2004   

[9] Jason Burke, “Al-Qaeda: Think Again,”  Foreign Policy (May/June 2004)  

[10] Anthony Cordesman, “Saudi Arabia Enters the 21^st Century,”  Center for Strategic and International Studies December 31^st, 2002 

[11] Bahgat Korany, “Defending the Faith Amid Change: The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia,” in Bahgat Korany, et al. The Foreign Policies of Arab States : The Challenge of Change (Boulder : Westview Press, 1991) 

[12] Richard H. Pfaff, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” in Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, Politics and Government in the Middle East and North Africa (Miami : Florida International University Press, 1991)

[13] Anthony Cordesman, “Saudi Arabia Enters the 21^st Century,”  Center for Strategic and International Studies December 31^st, 2002

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords (London : Pan Books, 2001)

[16] Anthony Cordesman, “Saudi Arabia Enters the 21^st Century,”  Center for Strategic and International Studies December 31^st, 2002

[17] “Saudis Will Not Aide US War Effort,”   Buzzle.com August 7^th, 2002 

[18] John Solomon, “US Got Secret Aid in Iraq War,” Washington Times April 27th, 2004

[19] “Kingdom Threatened By A Collision of Worlds,” The Guardian May 14^th, 2003 

[20] Eyal Press, “In Torture We Trust?”  Nation March 31^st, 2003

[21] Ibid.

[22] “Saudi Arabia : Fear of Torture or Ill-Treatment,”  Amnesty International March 23rd, 2004 

[23] “Saudi Arabia – Annual Report,”  Amnesty International 

[24] Ibid. 

[25] Michael L. Ross, “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?”  World Politics 53 (April 2001)

[26] Douglas Jehl, “Life in Saudi Arabia is Transformed by Hard Times,” New York Times March 20^th, 1999

[27] Said K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (St. Martin’s Press : New York, 1996) : 4

[28] “Adapt or Die,”  Economist March 6^th, 2004 : p.42

[29] Said K. Aburish, The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (St. Martin’s Press : New York, 1996) : 4

[30] “Al-Qaeda : The Next Phase,”  Jane’s May 14^th, 2003 

[31] “Adapt or Die,”  Economist March 6^th, 2004 : p.42

[32] “Bin Laden Resurgent in Saudi Arabia?” Jane’s May 7^th, 2003 

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