As government leaders, intelligence agencies, academics, and news media around the world scramble to figure out what is really going on in Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East, several facts – some grim, some just bizarre – are coming to light.
Perhaps the most telling revelation is that the Saudi royal family indirectly deserves much of the blame for terrorist attacks on American facilities in the US, Africa, and Arabia.
The royal family is hardly nuclear or even extended (as we usually think of the word). Abdul al Aziz Saud, the founder of the Saud dynasty, had more than 40 sons, and their offspring have split into several factions. The faction that is most powerful and most friendly to the US is the al-Sudairi bloc. It is led by aging King Fahd, who has an estimated 1,000 sons, brothers, and grandsons. The al-Sudairi are the most open to modernization, and King Fahd has even tried to encourage Arab peace with Israel.
However, in his ailing condition, King Fahd has turned the reigns of power over to Crown Prince Abdullah, who leads the other main faction. Abdullah’s bloc appeals to Muslim fundamentalists who believe in repressing women, oppose open worship by other religions, and are isolationists.
All factions of the royal family have treated Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth as if it belonged to them personally. The result is that super-fundamentalist Saudis living in exile have flooded their homeland with faxes "alleging...bogus commissions, shell companies, kickbacks, and royal land grabs...have poured millions of dollars into the princes’ hands," reported Time International last January." One prince is reputed to have earned $10 billion in commissions on questionable arms sales.
To keep critics from inciting an insurrection within Saudi Arabia, the royal family has – in effect – made a pact with the devil, paying off other fundamentalists by financing Wahhabi schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Arab world. These schools turn out half-literate boys who are mostly unemployed, unhappy with urban life, and resentful of most things modern, which for them is epitomized by the United States.
As one panelist on PBS’s Inside Washington remarked last Sunday, "Saudi Arabia exports oil and terrorism."
The truckloads of Pakistanis who this past week joined the Taliban included many Wahhabites. (Ironically, their arrival comes just as several Mujahedeen commanders have forsaken the Taliban for the Northern Alliance.)
One silver lining in the present thunder clouds over the Middle East is that Saudi Arabia – under pressure from the United States – has announced it will no longer finance the Wahhabi schools.
Obviously, Saudi Arabia for the moment is the world’s largest oil producer, and it is common for American pacifists to claim our government ignores Saudi misdeeds because we’re so eager for Saudi oil. But it’s an allegation made by uninformed "experts," of which West Marin has far too many. If you really want to know what the US State Department publicly says about Saudi Arabia, go on the Internet and check its website at <www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2000/nea/index.cfm?docid=817>. A more scathing report would be hard to imagine.
Those West Marin residents who continue to believe that US support for bad governments somehow led to the Sept. 11 attack are the counterparts to today’s skinheads who believe that Jews deserved what Hitler did to them. Take a moment to look at who is supporting bin Laden.
Last Friday, The Washington Post revealed that the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone has been helping finance bid Laden for the past three years to the tune of millions of dollars. In case anyone could forget, the Revolutionary United Front is the guerrilla group that in 1996 took to amputating hands, legs, mouths, and other body parts of villagers to punish the citizenry for voting in that year’s elections. The atrocities were so terrible and systematic they nauseated people around the globe.
Now it turns out, the Revolutionary United Front has been mining diamonds in guerrilla-held territory and selling them to al Qaeda agents for a tenth of their value. Al Qaeda then sells them illicitly in Belgium for a huge markup. The profits for bin Laden are enormous. The Post quoted a European investigator as saying, "We are talking about millions and maybe tens of millions of dollars in profits and laundering." UN experts estimate the street value of the diamonds at $75 million.
For a moment, Bin Laden and the Taliban appeared to get a boost last week from Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Chavez on Oct. 29 "condemned the Afghan campaign as ‘fighting terrorism with terrorism,’" The New York Times reported. Chavez’s comment prompted Washington to recall our ambassador to Venezuela, Donna Hrinak, "to discuss the current state of our bilateral relationship."
Before leaving Caracas, however, Ambassador Hrinak pointedly noted Chavez has also expressed sympathy for "Carlos the Jackal," who has been imprisoned in France since 1994 after being captured by the Sudanese government.
A blood-thirsty communist born in Venezuela as Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, Carlos the Jackal worked for Mohamar Kaddafi of Libya, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, President Assad of Syria, Fidel Castro of Cuba, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Italian Red Brigade, Colombia’s M-19 Movement, the Baader-Meinholf Gang, and numerous other terrorist groups.
Along the way he tried to assassinate a Jewish millionaire in Great Britain. He took part in seizing the French Embassy at the Hague (in the process killing two French intelligence agents, which is why he is now in prison). In 1976 he kidnapped OPEC oil ministers in Vienna and later that year took part in the skyjacking that led to the Israeli commando raid in Entebbe, Uganda. His resume also includes numerous other skyjackings and bombings, as well as armed attacks on British, French and Israeli citizens.
Finally, let’s look at who is supporting us. Turkey last week became the first Muslim country to announce it would join US and British air attacks on the Taliban. This week, Afghanistan’s neighbor Tajikistan became the second Muslim country to join the war effort, agreeing to allow our military to use airbases on its soil.
Last Sunday in Damascus, the Arab League of foreign ministers condemned bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s attack on the United States. Despite bin Laden’s call for a holy war against the United States, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said, "I think there is a war between [bin Laden] and the world." Amr Moussa, secretary general of the league, said bin Laden "does not speak for Arabs and Muslims." Along with Egypt, nations in the Arab League include Yemen, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Lebanon, and Bahrain.
So, I say to the pacifists, take your pick. Defend groups whose members believe in repressing women (often to the point of death), in cutting body parts off African villagers, in hijacking airplanes, and in assassinating innocent people on almost every continent. Or be grownups. Acknowledge the world is not perfect but can be made better. Capturing Carlos the Jackal was a first step. Getting the Saudis to stop funding Wahhabi schools was a second. Having the Arab League declare that bin Laden’s terrorism is no holy war was a third. Destroying bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban will be the fourth.
And let’s not hear anymore nonsense to the effect:
• "If bid Laden is killed, 50 more will rise up to take his place." Cut the head off the snake, and the snake dies. If brainwashed warriors see that Allah is not protecting their leaders, even the most fanatic terrorists will begin to question how holy their war is.
• Of course, our bombs have accidentally killed a number of innocent Afghani civilians, but in the past year, Taliban bombs have deliberately killed hundreds of innocent Afghanis.
• And, indeed, our bombing accidentally hit a UN office. Meanwhile the Taliban were looting UN warehouses of food that had been destined to feed Afghanis, who are starving because of a three-year famine.