Chill In Saudi-U.S. Relations No Surprise

by Jim Lobe

But to experts on the U.S.-Saudi alliance, which dates back to World War II, the story came as little surprise. They have warned for some time that under Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler in Saudi Arabia since King Fahd suffered debilitating strokes several years ago, the regime was likely to distance itself from Washington. Abdullah is widely considered both more nationalistic and more tuned in to domestic Saudi opinion than his two predecessors.

As Charles W. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador and frequent visitor to Riyadh, told the Washington Post recently, "for the first time since 1973, we actually have a situation in which the United States is so unpopular among the (Saudi) public that the royal family now thinks its security is best served by publicly distancing itself from the United States."

Indeed, for months since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. media have been full of accounts of rising anti-U.S. sentiment, which has made the kingdom a fertile recruiting ground and fund-raising source for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, himself a Saudi national who was stripped of his citizenship by government decree in 1994.

So intense was the coverage -- one typical New York Times headline read "Anti-Western and Extremist Views Pervade Saudi Arabia" -- that Abdullah himself complained publicly about what he called a "ferocious campaign by the Western media against the kingdom" in early November, a theme that has since been echoed frequently by Prince Bandar, the influential Saudi ambassador here, and other senior officials.

Washington has always had a close military and intelligence relationship with Riyadh, which has bought more than $50 billion in U.S. arms and construction contracts over the past 20 years with the hundreds of billions of dollars it has earned as the world's biggest oil exporter.

It was a close ally during the Cold War, providing hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S.-supported insurgents from Angola to Afghanistan, to Nicaragua.

With Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, however, those ties took a quantum leap. After a meeting immediately following the invasion, between top Saudi leaders and then defense secretary, now Vice President Dick Cheney, the kingdom invited Washington to use its territory as the launching pad for rolling back Baghdad's occupation. Some 700,000 U.S. troops followed.

After the war, Riyadh agreed to maintain some 5,000 U.S. troops on its soil. It also permitted scores of U.S. warplanes and pilots to be based at the Prince Sultan Air Base, where Washington has installed a state-of-the-art command center that covers virtually the entire Middle East, Gulf and Central Asia regions.

Ironically, the U.S. military presence was perhaps the most important catalyst in driving bin Laden -- who saw it as a desecration of Islam and its holiest places -- to launch his "jihad" against Washington.

His message clearly resonated both with conservative clerics and Saudi youth, many of whom are unemployed. In 1995, a car bomb killed five U.S. military advisers in Riyadh. It was followed the next year by the bombing of the Khobar Towers apartments, which housed U.S. troops.

Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed in the blast, which resulted in the U.S. military presence being moved to a more remote location and new tensions over the subsequent investigation.

Various currents on both the right and the left of U.S. opinion have long been critical of Washington's close ties to the royal family for a variety of reasons, ranging from its human rights record and authoritarianism to its history of corruption. In anticipation of bin Laden, these same forces argued during the Gulf War that a permanent U.S. military presence in the world's largest oil exporter would turn its population against Washington.

Despite its reputation as a "moderate" Arab state, pro-Zionist forces here have also lobbied against close ties with Saudi Arabia. Its status as unrivaled oil exporter and arms purchaser has automatically made it a major player in U.S. Middle East policy, almost on a par with Israel.

But recent events -- including the preponderance of Saudi nationals among the Sept. 11 skyjackers, the intense media attention paid to private Saudi support for al-Qaeda and anti-Western feeling within the kingdom, the rise of a more friendly Russia as a major oil exporter, the new U.S. military foothold in energy-rich Central Asia, and even the apparent collapse of the Oslo peace process -- have clearly weakened the kingdom's standing and influence here to the lowest point in memory.

At the same time, it has emboldened Riyadh's enemies.

One of its strongest foes here, the Wall Street Journal, has even featured opinion pieces suggesting that Washington abandon Saudi Arabia altogether as a regional partner and, in the words of one columnist, "be prepared to seize the Saudi oil fields and administer them for the greater good."

The newspaper itself suggested in one editorial that fears of a more radical regime taking power would "at least have the virtue of clarity that doesn't exist today (and) would force a decision on whether to take over the Saudi oilfields, which would put an end to OPEC."

This kind of talk is dangerous heresy to those, like President George W. Bush's father, the former oilman and Gulf War crusader, who have considered Riyadh to be Washington's most steadfast, reliable, and stable friend in the region. Yet, even before Sep. 11, the elder Bush intervened at least twice with Abdullah to assure him the younger Bush's heart was in the right place on Middle East issues.

For his part, the current President Bush has publicly praised Saudi cooperation in the U.S. anti-terrorism effort. Other top officials, however, have privately expressed deep frustration with Riyadh's refusal to grant permission for Saudi-based U.S. warplanes to take part in the military campaign in Afghanistan and its reluctance to crack down on charities that Washington says have been used to fund al-Qaeda. Lawmakers and newspaper editorials have echoed these frustrations.

Most observers say they believe a withdrawal of U.S. forces is not imminent but there is no question that profound adjustment -- with major geo-political implications -- is in the offing.