-Caveat Lector-
Bin Laden's secret goal is to overthrow the House of Saud.
The Saudi fugitive is no madman
Sep 27, 2001
Daily Telegraph London
Author: Paul Michael Wihbey
Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom about Osama bin Laden, the
Saudi fugitive is hardly a madman. In fact, he has developed a stunningly
deceptive regional war calculus that stands a reasonable chance of success.
Despite the massive build-up of allied forces, bin Laden's strategy depends
on a set of well-conceived geopolitical assumptions that he fervently
believes can turn Western military capability to his strategic advantage.
His strongest belief is that Saudi Arabia can be brought to its knees, the
House of Saud deposed and a new theocracy, based on his version of a pure
and uncontaminated Islam, can rise to power in the Arabian peninsula.
Hoping to seize state power as Ayatollah Khomeini did in Iran in 1979, bin
Laden plans to use Afghanistan as a staging ground for self-declared
leadership in exile.
The overriding goal is to return to Saudi Arabia in triumph and put an end
to the existing regime. Such an accomplishment would dramatically tilt the
Middle Eastern balance of power in favour of radical forces led by Iraq,
Iran, Syria and, of course, the global terrorist network.
Even before the attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden's power was
felt at the highest level of the Saudi regime. Several days before the
September 11 attacks, the Saudi chief of intelligence, who held that post
for 25 years, Prince Turki, brother of the Saudi foreign minister, was
abruptly fired from his post. Turki was hardly a man to be dismissed in
such fashion; he was responsible for Saudi affairs with Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and the Saudi liaison with American intelligence services. It
seems that Turki was the first high-ranking victim of a power struggle
between two competing factions in the Saudi royal family over how to deal
with American requests to neutralise bin Laden. Turki's removal from
authority portended further upheaval within the ruling elite of the House
of Saud.
Only two weeks later, and a week after the attack on America, reliable
reports strongly suggest that the ailing King Fahd flew to Geneva with a
massive entourage and now remains secluded behind the heavily protected
walls of private estates registered in the name of his European business
partners. To bin Laden, King Fahd's departure can only be considered a
victory in his campaign to rid Saudi Arabia of the contamination of
American rule through their surrogates in the House of Saud. With King
Fahd's health maintained on a 24-hour medical watch, and the Saudi royal
family divided between the conservative, religious faction of Crown Prince
Abdullah and that of the defence minister, King Fahd's full brother, Prince
Sultan, Saudi Arabia's future political course and, with it, the stability
of the Gulf is about to be decided. Bin Laden has waited for this since
1991, when he was cast aside by the Saudis for offering his fighting forces
in defence of the kingdom against Saddam Hussein.
Bin Laden is intimately aware of the fragility of the Saudi power
structure. He is the scion of a family, led by his father, Mohamed, that,
in the mid-1960s, engineered the transfer of the Saudi throne away from the
corrupt King Saud to the pious King Faisal. In effect, Mohamed bin Laden
was a king-maker and his son grew up with an intimate knowledge of the
personal proclivities and weaknesses of the senior members of the ruling
elite. He came to despise what he saw as a corrupt and malignant power
structure indistinguishable from the American political system. Undeterred
by deference and loyalty, he understood that the legitimacy of the Saudi
royal family could be undermined by championing an alternative, indigenous
religious ideology.
Large numbers of young disaffected Saudis felt increasingly alienated by a
regime that could neither defend itself by its own means nor maintain a
standard of living that has dropped from $18,000 per capita in the 1980s to
$6,000 in 2000. With a deteriorating economic and political environment,
bin Laden may decide that the time is approaching to activate the thousands
of Saudi dissidents in the kingdom who form the core of his support, and
thereby exploit the schism between Abdullah and Sultan to launch the
destabilisation of the Saudi monarchy. Militant protests and even
subversive military action targeting oil terminals and pipelines, as well
as attacks on civilian and military American assets in Saudi Arabia, could
disrupt American war plans and force them to think again about targeting
bin Laden, the Taliban and regional terrorist networks. It is this scenario
of internal Saudi confusion and political instability that bin Laden
considers the soft underbelly of American strategy. The more it is seen
that the Saudi royal family can no longer maintain internal cohesion and
consensus within the royal family, the greater the probability that Saudi
religious dissidents will heed the call of bin Laden and rise up against
the regime. Such a scenario provides a clear escape route for bin Laden
from the closing ring of fire around Afghanistan. Should he be able to
escape and seek refuge among the thousands of supporters in Saudi Arabia,
he will no doubt be greeted as a Mahdi, whose arrival on the sacred soil of
Saudi Arabia will mark a dramatically new geopolitical landscape.
The radicalisation of Iran by the ayatollahs pales by comparison.
Possibilities of widespread regional conflict may emerge as the latest
military equipment and the vast reserves of Saudi oil become available to
facilitate bin Laden's strategic goal - to destabilise and undermine the
Western economic system.
The author is strategic fellow at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies in Washington DC
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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