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Forget Afghanistan; What About Saudi Arabia?

By Geraldine Brooks
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2001, at 9:41 PM ET

(Warning: upcoming sentence contains irony.)

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So, enough with Kabul: Why not bomb Riyadh?

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Amid all the talk about punishing nations that harbor terrorists, no mention has been made of the country that appears to have spawned, housed, educated, and exported at least two-thirds of the actual suicide bombers.

Saudi Arabia has long been a state sponsor of intolerance, a hot house of hatred. Westerners given leave to enter the desert kingdom are required to check their otherness at the door. A family Bible in your luggage? The customs official may rip it up in front of you. Wearing a Star of David or a crucifix? The religious police may cane you in the street. There are no non-Muslim places of worship in Saudi Arabia. (Even the ruins of an ancient, probably pre-Islamic, synagogue in the southern province of Abha have been razed to a sandpit.) And don't think about a private gathering for non-Muslim worship in the privacy of your own home. It's illegal.

Intolerance of other religious symbols is so extreme that the national airline, Saudia, ordered its logo redesigned and it entire fleet repainted after an influential customer complained that the space between the S and the A in the old design formed the shape of a Christian cross. During Desert Storm, there was much alarmed discussion of disposal of foreign corpses: non-Muslims unfortunate enough to die in defense of the Land of the Two Mosques had to have their bodies repatriated lest the holy soil be contaminated by infidel remains.

This is the atmosphere that nurtured the events of Sept. 11. And here are the reasons we don't discuss it: The first is the glaringly obvious matter of oil and Saudi Arabia's obligingly supine posture toward the needs of the U.S. economy. The second is the less-well-appreciated fact that Saudi Arabia has, for many years now, been the chief buttress of the U.S. arms industry, its purchases dwarfing those of any other foreign client and keeping many U.S. military contractors solvent. The third is the skill of the kingdom's able ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, dean of the Washington diplomatic corps and perhaps the smoothest and subtlest operator in the history of foreign service. Under Republican administrations, particularly, Bandar often seems to be functioning more like a member of the National Security Council than the representative of a foreign power.

The U.S. troops massed in the eastern province that are so discomposing to Mr. Bin Laden are there because a corrupt and timid royal family does not trust its own people enough to enlist them in an army of any adequate size. Saudi Arabia claims its small population makes self-defense impossible. Yet Israel, with fewer citizens, seems to manage somehow ...

The al-Sauds fear the sons of their own holy soil more than they fear Saddam. And, as we see, not without reason. The trouble is, the unquestioning support of the United States has brought that wrath westward, in all its terrible fire. How ironic that the despots we prop up are the very same people who pay the salaries of the clergy whose sermons have, for so long, fanned the flames.

Geraldine Brooks is the author of Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women and Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. Click here to read her "Breakfast Table" conversation with Tony Horwitz.

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