Given SA's military resources, I'm also inclined the think that the authorities will get on top of the Al Qaeda network in the following months. It is now in its last redoubt -- Saudi Arabia itself. And, in due course, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar will be hunted down and destroyed by one of the two big warlords in northern Afghanistan. There is no possiubility of the Taliban being allowed to re-emerge in Afghanistan because there is simply too much profit to be made from growing poppies and the drugs trade.
But, while the Saudi royals may be reasonably safe now from being attacked by Al Qaeda, they will not have solved their main problem of millions of young unemployed Saudi who have no skills and no future under the present regime. This was not mentioned in the interview. (Perhaps this was part of the ground rules in agreeing to the interview?) Will there be an uprising or a coup d'etat -- or, probably both, in quick succession? Who knows. But something like this seems almost inevitable in SA sooner or later. However, unless a new take-over regime makes an immediate compact with America and guarantees the continuation of oil supplies, then I think Bush II's successor will be obliged to invade. With a full armoured division in Kuwait, a large military base and airfield recently fitted up in Qatar and several groups of Special Forces already positioned in the Emirates around SA, the Americans could mount an invasion far quicker than they did in Iraq.
Keith Hudson
<<<< THE MIDDLEMAN
The Saudi prince and former spy tells how his country is facing the threat from one of its own -- Osama bin Laden
Roula Khalaf
Prince Turki al-Faisal is not used to dining with journalists. As Saudi Arabia's spy chief for 25 years, he had lived in the shadows. But since he moved out of that job two years ago he has taken on a public role as Saudi Arabia's ambassador in London. His old world has come back to haunt him, thrusting him into the limelight as never before.
Taking off his black coat and hat and removing a cigar from his lips, he sits down for a Thai meal in a corner at Patara in Knightsbridge. The waiters, eager to serve a royal (though he is wearing a suit rather than the traditional white robe) take an order of appetisers which the prince asks them to choose. Spicy is fine, he says, but he is allergic to garlic.
I pick rice paper rolls. We stick to water (alcohol not being an option). Prince Turki doesn't conform to the stereotypical image of a Saudi, or that of a master spy. Soft-spoken, with slightly accented English, he is strangely calm, and engaging. I remark that his new job must .be tougher than his previous post and he agrees. "Intelligence work is mostly done in the background and you have a direct link with your masters. Of course you never get credit for anything. Your name hardly ever comes up."
These days, his name pops up all too often -- in articles, in books, even in court documents. Saudi Arabia, land of oil and puritanical Islam, faces endless accusations that it is a villain who fed the scourge of terrorism and then refused to help fight it. And the man who acted as one of the kingdom's links with the ousted Taliban of Afghanistan, and before them the Islamist fighters known as the Arab Afghans, has been caught in the middle of the controversy.
Prince Turki is named in a trillion-dollar lawsuit filed in US courts by families of the September 11 victims against Saudi institutions, charities and several princes.
And, in a newly published book by Gerald Posner on the attacks, which were perpetrated by a group of 19 extremists, 15 of them Saudi, Posner claims that Prince Turki brokered a secret deal with the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden to provide bin Laden's fighters with money if they stayed clear of Saudi Arabia.
A fabrication, says Prince Turki, and not even a new tale. "He's rehashing an old story; go back a couple of years and there were a couple of books that said the same thing. Saudi Arabia never gave one cent to the Taliban." The frenzied vilification of Saudi Arabia "sells like hotcakes," he says.
Prince Turki did meet bin Laden in 1991. He had worked closely with the US Central Intelligence Agency during the 1980s to fund the Arab Afghans, who helped oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. Bin Laden, a prominent figure among the Arab Afghans, had started to stir trouble upon his return and the Saudis wanted him sent away. He ended up in exile in Sudan. The prince says he made no deal to exile bin Laden and he has not seen him, or any other al-Qaeda leader, since.
When I say that Saudi Arabia's recognition of the Taliban, a radical militia that espoused a common strict Wahabi Islam, was bound to raise questions about the relationship, the prince, more animated now, turns to a detailed account of a history he insists has been misunderstood. It is only recently that Saudis of Prince Turki's rank have been willing to discuss the past. His very personal involvement makes his version more compelling than most.
When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving it to warring warlords, he relates, Saudi Arabia told the factions to stop fighting and ended its financial support. "When bin Laden was thrown out of Sudan in 1996 he found refuge with one of the former mujahedeen leaders in Jalalabad. By the middle of 1996 that leader ceded Jalalabad to the Taliban. The Taliban [said] they had granted bin Laden asylum and they wouldn't allow him to do anything against Saudi Arabia, by word or deed. That continued until 1997, when there was the famous bin Laden press conference in which he proclaimed an army for the liberation of the holy places from the sins of the crusaders and the Jews."
But in early 1998, King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah decided the Taliban could no longer control bin Laden. Prince Turki was sent to see Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. "We talked amicably. I told him if they value their relationship [with Saudi Arabia] it was better to deliver bin Laden."
Mullah Omar later agreed, in principle, to the deal. But by August, bin Laden's gang struck in Kenya and Tanzania, provoking a US bombing of al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. "The Pakistanis took evidence to show Omar that bin Laden was responsible. Omar said bin Laden had no means to do it and refused the proposition that he should be handed over to the US, which took a sudden interest in him. Then the US sent its tomahawk missiles."
It was the US bombing, says Prince Turki, that turned Mullah Omar against the agreement to hand over bin Laden. In September of that year, when Prince Turki met again with the Taliban leader, he found him dramatically changed. "He was extremely nervous, sweating, almost shouting at me. He said how can we ask for the arrest of such a worthy man like bin Laden, the leader of the fight against the infidels. He said why doesn't Saudi Arabia put her hands in his hand and liberate the holy land. You had to be there to see the change in the man."
Did the collapse of the agreement have anything to do with his departure from the intelligence agency? His unexpected exit, only 10 days before September 11, had fuelled conspiracy theories. Prince Turki sticks by the official story: "I left because I was tired -- I thought new blood might be needed."
By the time we start the main course we are back in the present. The most immediate problem for the Saudis is that al-Qaeda has attacked at home for the first time. The ruling Al Sauds declared war on the network in May after it attacked western housing complexes in Riyadh. They have since hunted down cells all over the country and collected an alarming number of explosives.
"These are young people; probably none of them has ever met bin Laden, and they're doing this out of a sense of commitment. For the first time their aim is to kill Saudis. They knew the Riyadh compounds did not have only Americans," says Prince Turki.
I point out that Saudi Arabia stepped up its crackdown against al-Qaeda only after the Riyadh attack, and that this is resented, particularly in the US. He gives a frank and perhaps undiplomatic reply: "Don't Americans say it's more serious when Americans are killed?"
Clamping down on security alone is not enough in a country where radical ideology finds support and an absolute monarchy has left few avenues open to promote more peaceful ways of expressing anger and dissent. Many wonder whether the ruling family can force the Wahabi religious establishment to reform.
"Wahabi Islam is a misnomer. All sides use it for their own purposes. What rules Saudi Arabia's religious authority is common sense," Prince Turki says.
Saudi's history, he suggests, does not confine the relationship with religion only to Wahabi Islam. He says Saudi Arabia's rulers have acknowledged the "ills in society" and are dealing with them. A centre for religious dialogue has been established to promote divergence of opinion. Mosque preachers bent on spreading an extremist message are being sent off for "retraining" -- a polite way of sacking them. An independent attorney general's office is being set up and the king has promised wider participation in decision-making (municipal elections, but only for half the members of the councils, have been announced since our dinner).
But can the regime handle the unprecedented pressure of al-Qaeda, the deep strains in the US relationship and the domestic demands for much deeper reforms?
"The kingdom has survived what at various times was considered to be important problems. Whenever we live through crisis you tend to think it's worse than before." He lights up his cigar and prepares to leave: "The kingdom is not a rosy place but it's not hell either."
Financial Times Magazine -- 1/2 Novemeber 2003
Roula Khalaf is the FT's Middle East editor >>>>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
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