A rchive Date
[ 27-06-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Saudi Arabia ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/06/27/515863.html
Don't dismiss 'terrorists'
By Eric Margolis - Contributing Foreign Editor
Sun, June 27, 2004
THE SPREADING violence in Saudi Arabia is not simply "terrorism" perpetrated by al-Qaida, as the Bush administration in the U.S. and its Saudi allies claim. It's the latest sign of a long-developing rebellion in this nation containing 25% of the world's oil reserves.
Saudi Arabia is a feudal monarchy owned and run by 6,000-7,000 royal princes. The de facto ruler is Crown Prince Abdullah; the ailing king, Fahad, is a figurehead.
Saudi Arabia has been a U.S. oil protectorate since the late 1940s under the following arrangement: The royal family supplies cheap oil to the U.S. and its allies Europe and Japan. The billions earned by the Saudis are recycled into U.S. and western financial institutions and commercial projects, or spent on huge amounts of advanced weapons ($9 billion in recent years) the Saudis cannot operate. Saudi arms purchases are used to support friendly American and European politicians in politically sensitive states or regions.
In return, the U.S. supplies the royal family with protection against its own increasingly restive people and covetous neighbours, like Iraq. The small Saudi Army is denied ammunition to prevent it staging the kind of coup that overthrew Iraq's British-run puppet monarch in 1958. A parallel "White Army," composed of loyal Bedouin tribesmen led by U.S. "advisers," watches the army.
After 9/11, America's pro-Israel neo-conservatives launched vicious political and media attacks against the Saudi regime, accusing it of being in league with Saudi militant Osama bin Laden. The neo-cons' objective: Bring down the Saudi government, a key financial backer of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
But far from being an enemy of the U.S., Saudi Arabia is almost an overseas American state. One-third of the population of 24 million is foreign. Saudi defences, internal security, finance and the oil industry are still run by some 70,000 U.S. and British expatriates. Some eight million Asian workers do the middle management and donkey work.
The royal family is intimately linked to Washington's political and money power elite through a network of business and personal connections. The Bush family, and its entourage of Republican military-industrial complex deal makers, has been joined at the hip for two decades with Saudi power princes and their financial frontmen.
As this column has long maintained, Saudi Arabia did not finance or abet Osama bin Laden - it tried repeatedly to kill him. Bin Laden's modest funds came from donations by individual Saudis, wealthy and poor alike, who supported his jihad against western domination.
The violence now erupting across the kingdom is partly the work of small al-Qaida cells. Bin Laden's charges that the royal family debases Islam, squanders the nation's oil billions on useless arms, luxury prostitutes, and the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, resonate across all of Arabia.
Anti-royalist jihadi groups, many veterans of the 1980s Afghan war, have joined in the revolt with young Saudis fed up by their nation's medieval society, corrupt regime, brutal repression, and subservience to Washington. Half of Saudis are under 16. The kingdom is undergoing the same kind of generational revolt that brought down the Soviet Empire.
These anti-feudal rebels cannot simply be dismissed as "terrorists." Many want genuine democracy and modernity; others, a truly Islamic state, or, simply, change. The ground is shaking in Saudi Arabia.
Beheading of American
The recent beheading of an American military worker by al-Qaida extremists horrified westerners. Interestingly, the Saudi regime publicly beheaded 53 people last year, many opponents of the regime, without a peep from the western media.
In spite of the recent killing of senior al-Qaida operatives, the spreading revolt is likely to continue and intensify. Al-Qaida is trying to stampede foreign workers out of Saudi Arabia. Without them, the kingdom would collapse and revert to desert.
But while some westerners may flee, millions of capable Asians will likely remain. Oil production is thus unlikely to suffer much, at least short term. Physical sabotage of the vast oil infrastructure, while possible, would be difficult.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at: margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com Letters to the editor should be sent to:editor@tor.sunpub.com Home Page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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