THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
September 27, 2001, Thursday
Bin Laden's secret goal is to overthrow the House of Saud
The Saudi fugitive is no madman, argues Paul Michael Wihbey: if his
plan succeeds - as it well might - the entire economic system of the
West is in danger
By PAUL MICHAEL WIHBEY
Bin Laden's secret goal is to overthrow the House of Saud The Saudi
fugitive is no madman, argues Paul Michael Wihbey: if his plan
succeeds 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
_________________________________________________________________
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
