Home > Saudis find U.S. at fault on uprising in kingdom
By Joel Brinkley
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia Seventeen months into a shadowy uprising that has killed more than 100 people, numerous Saudis say they are angry not at the insurgents but at the United States for the invasion of Iraq, the signal event that they believe triggered the terror attacks.
In interviews, the Saudis expressed unremitting disdain for the United States that some of them called hatred. They regret the terror attacks, aimed primarily at foreigners, but call them a small personal inconvenience that has not forced them to make significant changes in their daily lives.
In fact many Saudis appear to have reached an intellectual accommodation with the insurgents. When asked about the attackers’ goals, many assign a motivation that is consistent with their own social or political aspirations.
These conclusions come from interviews with nearly two dozen Saudis over the last week - from a bejeweled prince of the Royal Court, sipping coffee at a café, to a truck driver wearing a frayed dishdasha, clutching a bag of onions at a local supermarket.
“The attackers want the government to give more money to the people,” said the truck driver, Jaber Al-Malky, 24.
But Prince Mubarak Al-Shafi, who works at the Royal Court, said, “This certain sect of people is unhappy about alien ideas, particularly about the democracy that the United States wants from nations all over the world, especially Saudi Arabia.”
For their part, Saudi Arabia’s leaders offer conflicting opinions on the terrorists’ motivations. Within hours of each other on Sunday, the Saudi interior minister and a half-brother of King Fahd offered polar analyses.
“Unemployment creates one of the cornerstones of terrorism, and the poor who cannot get food on their table resort to other means,” Prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz said at a conference in Amman. In Kuwait, meanwhile, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, the interior minister, told reporters he doubted that unemployment was the reason for the attacks here, according to an account in the Arab News. The prince, the newspaper added, noted that many arrested suspects were well-paid employees.
Saudi Arabia has a long history with terrorism, beginning when Islamic militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. After that, the attacks usually came many years apart - until May 13, 2003, when 25 people died in three coordinated suicide attacks on residential compounds here. That attack and many that followed were attributed to Al Qaeda.
General Mansour al-Turki, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said he agreed that the Iraq war had spawned the uprising and added that he believed most Saudis held that view.
Many of the attackers came back to Saudi Arabia after fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said, drawing on interviews with arrested terrorists. They were angry that their dream, a fundamentalist Islamic state, “had been killed by America,” he said.
“They wanted to spread their war against the United States and found that doing this was easier in their own country,” he added. “But it wasn’t until the invasion of Iraq that they could convince others in the country to share their goals. For that reason, the invasion was very important to them.”
Now, the general added, “I think we are a step ahead of them.”
“The situation is stable now,” said Saker Al-Mokayyad, a director at the Naif Arab University for Security Services.
But the attacks continue. On Sept. 26, a French engineer, Laurent Barbot, was shot dead on the street in Jidda. Ten days earlier a British resident, Edward Muirhead-Smith, was shot and killed in Riyadh. A Saudi wing of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.
The Saudis interviewed were in complete agreement in their views of the United States and of the role the Iraq war played in spawning the insurgency.
The first attacks in May 2003 came as the major combat was ending in Iraq, “and that is when it really hit home here, with all the images of collateral damage,” said Khaled Almaeena, executive editor of the Arab News. “How could America be so oblivious to our feelings?”
Saudis certainly had no love for Saddam Hussein, but “why couldn’t they topple Saddam and install a new government without destroying the country?” asked Shafi, the prince.
The Saudis said they believed the attacks have been intended both as revenge against foreigners and against the Saudi government for not stopping the Iraq war.
“The war in Iraq was absolutely not justified,” said Saad Al-Qahtni, 34, a businessman.
That led to attacks here because the Saudi government “did not prevent America from invading Iraq without justification,” said Fareed Saad Al-Asmari, a banker. Those were common refrains. The attackers have seldom explained themselves. But when insurgents beheaded Paul Johnson, an American engineer, last June, they said it was in revenge for “what thousands of Muslims taste every day because of the fire from the American Apache” helicopter.
Saudis have long held animosity toward the United States for its support of Israel. That and the invasion of Iraq “makes most people here hate the United States,” said Hamiai, the National Guard officer. But he and others stressed that they held disdain for the government, not the people.
At the same time, for decades it has been a right of passage for wealthy Saudis to send their children to the United States for higher education. “We are grateful to the United States; most of us were educated there,” said Shafi.
Still, despite the new attitudes, strong Western influences remain.
Qahtni, the businessman, waved his arms as he railed about “the alien influences” that he believes are damaging Saudi society - seated at Starbucks, sipping a tall cappuccino.