Not a good recipe for happy times

The doomsday scenario in the oil-producing Gulf region that the world has always feared is not yet here - but in Iraq and Saudi Arabia we may be having our first peek of what it may look like if it ever happens.

Beyond the waters northwest of Dubai, from where I am writing, nearby Iraq is a tempest of occupation, resistance, terror and insecurity. Beyond the desert lands to the west, nearby Saudi Arabia, one of the powerhouses of the modern Arab world, is slowly being transformed into a killing ground. Saudi terrorists attack the oil industry and methodically hunt down Americans and Britons, butchering them in cold blood.

The simultaneous spectacle of widespread, organized violence and unstable conditions in these two oil-producing giants frightens the daylights out of most of the world, which reacted in recent weeks by pushing oil prices to over $40 a barrel. More frightening for the Arab world itself is seeing two of the most powerful and influential Arab countries offering the world almost daily scenes of terror, organized political criminality and widespread fear.

The actions of three basic actors help explain the tragic trends in Iraq and Saudi Arabia - the local Arab governing elites, indigenous Islamist radicals and the United States armed forces. The relationship among these three parties has resulted in some ugly consequences to date - and these are still early days. The bewildering prospect is that the dysfunctional, often destructive, combination of American military might and indigenous Arab power elites may be on the verge or repeating in Iraq the same divisive policy that has brought Saudi Arabia to its current state of fomenting home-grown terror.

One of the main accusations that Osama bin Laden has made against the Saudi ruling establishment for over a decade has been the presence in the kingdom of American bases and troops. The US finally got the point, and moved its main regional military facility from Saudi Arabia to Qatar a few years ago, but too late. The anti-regime anger of bin Laden types in Saudi Arabia had already been unleashed, in the form of systematic attacks against the Saudi security establishment and foreign workers, especially in the oil and defense sectors.

If the United States does go ahead, as reported, and build long-term military bases for its troops inside Iraq, we are likely to see the same sort of resentment against the US develop in Iraq as it has among some Saudis. We have already seen how Iraqis who were grateful for "regime change" in Iraq quickly became resentful of American forces and occupation officials dictating policy to them. The backlash in Iraq was swift and widespread, and the Americans got the message a lot faster in Iraq than they seem to have done in Saudi Arabia; this is why they engineered a relatively hasty exit strategy. The biggest mistake they could make now is to fake their departure from Iraq and continue to rule the country indirectly.

Events in Saudi Arabia should offer a sobering tonic. The most frightening aspect of the terror attacks inside the kingdom, in my view, are the common reports and assumptions that some Saudi security personnel sympathize with, and even assist, the terrorists who now routinely attack targets there. Evidence for such a charge has not been very forthcoming, but the charge will not go away, either. This is the most dangerous consequence of foreign troops overstaying their welcome.

A somewhat parallel image in Iraq was manifested in April and May, when Iraqi and American troops and police fought against Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah and Najaf, among other towns. Many Iraqi policemen and soldiers deserted their units, and some even joined the insurgents and fought against the US and Iraqi troops. In two of the richest, most powerful and influential Arab countries, the large-scale presence of US troops acts as a major stimulant to resentment, and then to resistance and terror, and perhaps even to corrosion of the security systems.

If the US maintains 140,000 troops in Iraq for a long time, builds permanent military bases and staffs a 1,000-strong embassy that indirectly controls many aspects of Iraq's money and security from behind the scenes, Iraq is likely to generate the same sort of anti-American resentment that has driven bin Laden and Al-Qaeda for the past decade and more.

American noble intentions and pure motives would not matter in this case, because US policies on the ground would be the determining factor. If the United States armed forces were in Iraq to deliver only freedom and Tootsie Rolls, their long-term presence would still be seen by most Arabs as bad news.

You would think that someone in Washington beyond the hallucinogenic spell of the neoconservative radicals would have studied the last decade in Saudi Arabia and reached the simple conclusion that a large Western military presence is not a recipe for happy Arabian days or nights. Washington says that its military is needed in Iraq to ensure security. Say what? The evidence suggests that it does precisely the opposite: It stimulates terror against Americans and against Arabs. That's why two of the world's most important oil producers are exporting images of death, bombings and burnings these days almost as regularly as they export energy.

The full tragedy from the Arab perspective is not only the distress and suffering of these two Arab lands, or the role of the US. It is that these are not unique cases. Many other modern Arab countries have suffered similar episodes of occupation, rampant violence, terror against the state, or terror by the state. My generation has watched assorted aspects of this ugly drama play itself out in Lebanon, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Palestine, Jordan, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, Kuwait and other places. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are only the latest landscapes of Arab political intemperance and violence.