To List Members,
Though this is off topic, in a strange way, it is on topic in the sense
that what happens with energy will empact all futurework. In the Ottawa
Citizen a couple of days ago, it was reported that Saudi Arabia was
advocating that OPEC increase its sale of crude oil. Given all the
background provided so ably by Jay Hanson, I was stumped as to why this was
happening and I was going to type out the press article and post it - alas,
garbage day came before I had time and out went the paper. With oil being a
limited resource, capitalism dictates that prices should rise. The Saudi's
request for an increase - notably timed to coinside with the Korean
economic collapse - was stated as a lowering of the price of crude on world
markets. Why would the Saudi's try and sell more oil now, when just around
the corner is the story "PEAK" which will give all producers a perfect
excuse to raise prices? Secondly, what is the Americans, who have
supported Saudi Arabia in various ways, position on this?
When Andre Gouin posted La Mondes English translations URL, I was reading
some of the back articles when I came across the following little gem -
never reported in North American papers that I am aware off, which gives a
ton of background and an indication that all is not well with our
relationships with the mid-east. NOTE particularly that Saudi and Iran are
becoming buddy, buddy again, which in a crisis might lead to lack of access
for North America to Mid East oil. A scary thought.
To throw my two cents into the ring re the flames flying between Jay and
Harry, perhaps Harry would enlighten us if it came to pass that the mid
east oil was no longer available to North America circa 1974. It is also
interesting to note that Clinton is distancing himself from Netenyahu and
Israel. Is this all somehow connected? I will be interested to hear some
responses from our many able commentators.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - English Edition - AUGUST, SEPTEMBER 1997
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TENSIONS ABROAD, DIVISIONS AT HOME
The unsolved mystery of a Saudi bomb attack
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On 6 July King Fahd appointed 60 new members to the Saudi consultative
council (shura), bringing their numbers to 90, only two of whom are
Shiites. Set up in August 1993, the council may lack teeth but there is
still surprise at the appearance of numerous university graduates as well
as a few “dissidents”, known for their outspoken ways. A desire for change
is growing. For, despite the oil riches, economic and social difficulties
are piling up and the kingdom is paralysed by the king's fading health and
bitter squabbles for the succession. The mystery surrounding the
investigation into the bomb attack at Al Khobar on 25 June 1996, in which
19 US soldiers died, casts an strange light on the last days of a reign, as
well as Riyadh's relations with Washington.
by ALAIN GRESH
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“Not guilty.” The two words muttered in a Washington courtroom by Hani al
Sayegh, a 28-year old Saudi Shiite, on 30 July 1997 spread consternation
among American officialdom. After a hearing lasting scarcely 22 minutes,
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan took note of the plea and set the defendant's trial
for the coming 3 November. The following day Attorney-General Janet Reno
announced that the United States would “now focus its attention on
obtaining from overseas the necessary witnesses and the evidence to proceed
to trial” (1) against the defendant.
The disappointment was all the greater because the FBI had done a deal with
Mr al Sayegh after he was arrested in Canada on 18 March. For the first
time, the American authorities had put their hand on some-one who had
information about the 25 June 1996 bomb attack against the American
military in Saudi Arabia. The deal they signed looked promising: Mr al
Sayegh had agreed to be extradited to the United States and to plead guilty
to attempting to organise acts of violence against US citizens based in
Saudi Arabia between January 1994 and December 1995 - for which he would
face no more than ten years of prison. In return, he would not be charged
with the 25 June 1996 bomb attack, which would have carried life
imprisonment, but he had undertaken to reveal everything he know about it.
His sudden about-turn, refusing to plead guilty and insisting that he knew
nothing about the events of 25 June 1996, sent the FBI back to square one
in what had become a priority for every American agency engaged in
combating terrorism: discovering what had gone on at the start of summer
1996 in Saudi Arabia.
At dawn on 25 June everything seemed calm at Al Khobar, a residential
compound abutting the King Abdelaziz air base, not far from Dahran in the
east of the country, an area with a Shiite majority. The compound houses
2,900 US soldiers engaged in the aerial surveillance of southern Iraq. On
the fateful morning a sergeant on guard duty on the roof saw a Mercedes
Benz tanker approaching. It stopped. Two men got out fast and jumped into a
white Chevrolet Capri which took off like a rocket. The sergeant raised the
alarm, but it was too late. A bomb weighing 2,200 kilos exploded, making a
crater 28 metres long and eleven deep. The bodies of 19 American soldiers
were retrieved from the rubble and hundreds of others were injured. It was
the worst attack on the US army since the 23 October 1983 blast which
killed 241 marines in Lebanon.
Kept in the dark
In the United States, which was championing the fight against terrorism,
there was an outcry. Commentators debated the stability of the Saudi
regime, parliamentarians questioned the security of US bases in the
country, and the career of General Terryl Schwalier, head of the Dahran air
command, was in ruins. Emergency measures were put into force. Several
thousands of US armed forces stationed in Saudi Arabia regrouped on two new
sites: an air base in the desert 120 km south of Riyadh and a district in
the suburbs of the capital. According to General Kurt Anderson, the most
senior officer in the country, the visibility of his men dropped by 90%.
Even so, he admitted “There isn't a day that goes by that I don't get
intelligence on terrorism (2)”.
No effort was spared to track down the perpetrators. Dozens of FBI agents
were despatched to the scene, using an aerial in operation since April
1996. All available resources were mobilised, allied countries consulted
and agencies alerted throughout the world. But to no avail. To add to the
failure, the American police were kept in the dark by their Saudi
counterparts. FBI chief Louis Freeh gave an example of how the Americans
were cold-shouldered: the Chevrolet used in the attack had been found at
the start of July 1996, but it took more than six months and the most
highly-placed intercessions before the FBI was allowed to examine the
vehicle (3).
After threatening to withdraw his agents from the kingdom, Mr Freeh decided
to break the silence. On 22 January 1997 he said “We have not gotten
everything which we have asked for (from the Saudi authorities), and sure,
that has affected our ability to make findings or conclusions or to channel
the investigation in different directions (4)”. The following day Mrs Reno
went even further: the Riyadh authorities had hidden “very important
information”. Undiplomatic in the extreme, this indictment put an abrupt
end to the golden silence which had always been the trademark of the two
countries' dealings with each other.
A few weeks later, Prince Sultan, minister of defence and civil aviation,
second vice-prime minister and the third most highly-ranking member of the
Saudi royal family, arrived in the United States. In 12 years, no
delegation of such importance had crossed the Atlantic. On 27 February 1997
Nicholas Burns, State Department spokesman, reported on the meetings
between Madeleine Albright, the new secretary of state, and Prince Sultan:
“First they talked about the Al Khobar bombing… and we've been assured of
continued Saudi cooperation and intention to work very effectively and
completely with the United States but specifically with the FBI… The United
States is committed to bringing (the guilty) to justice and we're counting
on the Saudi authorities to help us to do so”.
But, despite these promises, the royal family intended to stick to the line
it had decided from the day of the bombing: it did not have the means to
find the perpetrators, it was out of the question for foreigners to join in
the investigations, it was a question of national sovereignty (5). This
nationalistic line reflects two quite distinct realities.
First, the rise throughout the country, including ruling circles, of an
anti-Americanism less and less swept under the carpet. All sorts of things
had conspired to create this climate of unspoken hostility: the continuing
presence of American soldiers after the end of the Gulf war, the growth of
an anti-establishment Islamism, Washington's “arrogance” towards the Arabs,
along with Bill Clinton's ever stronger backing of Israel. Jihad al Khazen,
editor of the daily Al Hayat, published in London but belonging to the son
of Prince Sultan, observed that, despite their alliance, the interests of
Saudi Arabia and the United States, do not coincide. He pointed out that
the kingdom's refusal to allow US citizens to take part in the
interrogations of the suspects held in the Al Khobar case was reminiscent
of the way it had declined several demands from Washington to help in the
arrest of Carlos when he was travelling between Yemen and Sudan, or of Imad
Mughniyeh, a militant Lebanese Shiite, when he was crossing Saudi Arabia
(6).
Second, the royal family cannot bear to let the United States have access
to information which it deems sensitive: in particular, to do with the
state and the influence of the Islamist opposition, but, more broadly, to
do with the economic and social crisis into which the country is sinking,
paralysed by internal struggles over the succession to the ailing King
Fahd. As one high-ranking American official admitted, “Saudi Arabia is a
black hole… We have enormous gaps in understanding what is going on here”.
After the Khobar attack, the CIA subjected the kingdom to an exceptional
analysis procedure known as “hard target strategy” (until then reserved for
countries like Russia, China, Iran, Iraq and North Korea) to try to assess
the dangers weighing down on the regime (7).
Given the kingdom's dependence on its American ally, its refusal to
cooperate was tenable on one condition only: arresting the guilty men. On
13 November 1995 a bomb had already killed five American advisers and two
Indians in Riyadh. On 31 May 1996 the authorities had announced the
execution of those responsible: four Saudi Sunnis, three of whom had taken
part in the fighting in Afghanistan. The FBI had not been able to hide its
disappointment: it had wanted to interrogate the victims. Even if the Saudi
success was only partial, since there were doubts as to whether the brains
behind the operation had been arrested, it was enough to keep the Americans
at bay.
On 17 December 1996, after six months of trying to track down the Khobar
culprits, Prince Nayef, interior minister and brother of the king, who was
in overall control of the investigation, announced that his men were close
to success (8). Despite denials, several sources confirmed that he had
given Washington taped confessions by members of the Shiite opposition.
The investigation, brutal in the extreme, had led to thousands of arrests
in Islamist circles, both Sunni and Shiite. In particular, it had allowed
the authorities to dismantle an extremist Shiite organisation, the Hejaz
Hizbollah (9), linked to the Lebanese Hizbollah and mainly made up of
militants who had had rejected an accord signed in 1993 between King Fahd
and an opposition group based in London (publishers of the magazine Al
Jazireh al Arabiyeh) (10). Despite the confessions, extracted under
torture, the FBI remained unconvinced by the exhibits and said so,
threatening to make its reservations public if the men were executed
without the agency being able to interrogate them.
Rapprochement with Iran
In his new office in north-west London, Saad al Fagih, director of the
Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a Sunni Islamist organisation, is
proud to have contributed to American suspicions. In August 1996, on the
basis of information coming directly from the Saudi interior ministry, he
was already announcing the arrest of the suspects: “They are six Sunni
militants, linked to the Arabs in Afghanistan. They are held in Jubail, 70
km north-west of Dahran, out of the reach of the Americans. For (Prince)
Nayef, the minister of the interior, it's a question of not letting the US
think that there's a solid, organised internal opposition. By accusing the
Shiite minority, he's trying to show that anti-establishment activity is
marginal.”
Since then, through communiqués, an Internet site and interviews with the
international press, he has relentlessly denounced the “machinations” of
Prince Nayef. This is a position shared by Usama bin Laden, a Saudi
millionaire stripped of his nationality in 1994 and exiled in Afghanistan,
who does not hide his support for the actions against the US military,
although he insists on his own innocence in regard to the attacks of
November 1995 and June 1996 (11).
Even if Mr Fagih's explanations fail to convince, the Shiite “trail” seems
to be sinking into dangerously shifting sands. The Saudi authorities have
charged three men: Hani al Sayegh, who has now retracted his statements and
claims to have been outside the kingdom at the time of the events; Ahmed
Ibrahim Mughassil, who fled to Iran and is now out of reach; and Jaafar
Marzuk Shuweykat, who was arrested by the Syrians in the Palestinian camp
of Yarmuk and died in prison, reported as “suicide” in mid-September 1996.
All three belong to the Hejaz Hizbollah, but the evidence linking them to
the Al Khobar plot seems, for the present, tenuous.
The involvement of the Hejaz Hizbollah, some of whose secret cells are
linked to the Iranian intelligence services, would obviously have a
regional dimension - with the trail leading to Tehran. But for years the
leaders of the Islamic revolution have been avoiding any direct clash with
the “grand Satan”. So why would they have taken such a risk as Al Khobar?
Conversely, by accusing Tehran, the Saudi regime would open the way to
American military reprisals, of which it would itself be the first
casuality. For if Iran lacks the means to reply directly, it would be
capable of intervening against the kingdom instead.
At all events, Saudi Arabia is wary of accusing its powerful neighbour.
Indeed, for the past few months Prince Abdallah, heir to the throne, who
has made foreign policy his special concern as part of the struggle for the
succession (12), has orchestrated a spectacular rapprochement with Iran.
Exchanges of messages between the two capitals have multiplied. On 1 July
1997 he sent the Saudi minister of state, Abdelaziz bin Abdallah al
Khuwaytir, there to confirm that Saudi Arabia would take part in the summit
of the Islamic Organisation Conference next December in Tehran. According
to an Iranian official, the two countries “believe it is necessary to
reconsider this matter” of the Doha economic summit in which Israel and the
Arab countries are due to take part next November. “At a time when the
Israelis are trying to impose their views on the people of the region and
continuing with their provocations against the Muslims and their
sanctities, it will not do for us to reward them by holding such a
conference. Accordingly, we believe that the Qataris should reconsider the
convening of the conference (13)”.
This joint decision to boycott the Doha summit is a new black mark against
the United States: like Israel, it attaches the utmost importance to these
annual gatherings which symbolise pax americana in the Middle East. In
fact, Prince Abdallah had already advocated cancelling the summit during a
trip to Syria and Lebanon last June - but his pronouncements had been
censured by the Saudi press.
The royal family is too dependent on American aid to allow for any
strategic opposition to the United States. But the murky enquiry into the
Khobar bomb attack shows Washington's difficulties in controlling the
internal dynamics under way in the kingdom - social and economic crisis,
the rise of Islamism and the struggle for the succession.
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(1) Reuters, 31 July 1997.
(2) Reuter, 1 March 1997.
(3) See article by Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, quoted by Middle East
International, London, 7 March 1997.
(4) The Washington Post, 22 January 1997.
(5) See the 30 June 1996 in the daily El Jezireh, quoted by Mideast Mirror,
London, 19 June 1997.
(6) Al Hayat, London, 19 June 1997, quoted by Mideast Mirror, LONDON, 19
June 1997.
(7) “In Saudi Arabia, The Ties That Bind”, International Herald Tribune, 2
December 1996.
(8) Al Sharq al Awsat, London, 17 December 1996, quoted by Mideast Mirror,
London, 17 December 1996.
(9) Like all the opposition groups, the Hizbollah does not recognise the
legitimacy of a country named “Saudi” Arabia. The Hejaz, home to Mecca and
Medina, is one of the regions of the kingdom.
(10) See “Les nouveaux visages de la contestation islamiste”, Le Monde
diplomatique, August 1992, and “Fin de règne en Arabie saoudite”, Le Monde
diplomatique, August 1995.
(11) See his long interview in Afghanistan with the London Arabic daily, Al
Quds al Arabi, reproduced by Mideast Mirror, London, 27 November 1996.
(12) In this struggle he is pitted against Sultan and his Sudeiri brothers,
in particular Nayef, the interior minister, and Salman, governor of Riyadh.
In January and February 1996, after an attack on Fahd, Abdallah became
regent. But Sultan and his brothers insisted that the enfeebled Fahd return
to the helm, resulting in an ongoing stalemate.
(13) As Sharq al Awsat, London, quoted by Mideast Mirror, London, 2 July
1997.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997 Le Monde diplomatique.
