Osama’s Endgame Approaches

UNDERSTANDING the complex relationship between Osama bin Laden and the House of Saud is crucial to a more general understanding of the war on terror, and how it is likely to be played out in the coming months and years.

Having failed to establish permanent Islamic governments or to topple regimes in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, and doomed to failure in Iraq (where the main fear is now the emergence of a Shi'ite-led theocracy with close ties to Iran), it is in Saudi Arabia that the endgame of Osama's call for a global jihad will ultimately be played out.

The Bush administration acknowledged this in January, when US Homeland Security Adviser Frances Fragos Townsend emerged from an anti-terrorism conference in Riyadh to tell reporters that the global war on terror could not be won until Saudi Arabia had declared victory against its own Islamist militants.

'Saudi Arabia is the center for Osama's plan for a world under his control,' concurred Mr Ali Al-Ahmed, a Washington-based Saudi pro-democracy advocate and head of the Institute for Gulf Affairs.

'He aims to use Saudi Arabia as a launch pad for his campaign to dominate the world,' he added.

Osama's descent into specifically anti-American global terrorism can, in fact, be traced back to his falling out with the Saudi ruling family, and its rejection of his offer in 1990 to lead an army of Arab mujahideen to liberate occupied Kuwait.

At the time, Osama was a hero among the Saudi masses for his role in having helped to expel Soviet forces from Afghanistan during the previous decade.

He also had access to senior royals, managing to secure, for instance, a private meeting with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, during which he offered to fight the 'infidel' Saddam Hussein with a 60,000-strong 'Islamic army'.

This offer was rebuffed by the prince on the grounds that it was impractical.

'There are no caves in Kuwait,' he reportedly told Osama, before asking him: 'What will you do when he lobs missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?'

'We will fight him with faith,' Osama replied.

Putting his faith instead in Western military technology and might, Prince Sultan invited 500,000 US troops to the kingdom, where they established permanent bases after the 1991 Gulf War ended with Saddam being expelled from Kuwait.

Afterwards, Osama's ultimate goal of creating a pan-Islamic empire became focused obsessively on ridding Saudi Arabia of US troops, 'liberating' the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and replacing the late King Fahd with a 'true' Muslim leader.

His 'Declaration Of War Against The Americans' fatwa in 1996 was subtitled 'Ridding The Land Of The Two Holy Mosques Of Infidel Troops'.

Osama, however, has a habit of shifting the goalposts, as when US troops were in fact withdrawn after the Iraq war. He promptly declared that all US troops and non-Muslims must be removed from the entire Arabian peninsula.

In 1995, he addressed King Fahd directly in an 'open letter', which documented alleged corruption among the Al-Saud princes and justified the removal of the king according to Osama's (non-specialist) interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence.

After almost a decade of silence on the specific subject of Saudi Arabia, he returned to it in an hour-long audio tape released on the Internet in December.

This more recent tape was of historic significance for a number of reasons. Not the least of them is that it reversed a fatwa issued by Al-Qaeda in Sudan in 1993 which labelled oilfields in Muslim countries as off-limits because their revenues would be needed to fund a pan-Islamic empire.

In the December address, Osama called for the first time for direct attacks on oil installations inside Saudi Arabia and throughout the rest of the Gulf. The call was endorsed two days later by the Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda.

The reversal of the 1993 fatwa labelling the oil installations in Saudi Arabia as off-limits, and the refusal to call for a popular uprising inside Saudi Arabia, together sym- bolised a dramatic weakening of Al-Qaeda's strategy.

If the goal of the initial fatwa was to preserve the oil industry for the pan-Islamic empire, which would be centerd on the 'land of the two holy mosques', then the new call for sabotage in that very country indicates that such an empire is no longer considered a remote possibility.

The potential consequences of this shift in emphasis for Saudi Arabia's largely unprotected vast oil pipeline network - and by extension the world economy - should be a cause of great concern.

It has certainly not fallen on deaf ears among Al-Qaeda operatives.

According to the Washington-based SITE Institute, which monitors Islamist websites, an operative on a password-protected Al-Qaeda-affiliated forum described on Aug 19 what the author believed to be 'conclusive weapons'.

The Al-Qaeda member elaborated that to destroy the oil pipelines in Saudi Arabia would have greater power than a chemical weapon, would be easier to carry out than a car bomb, and at the same time would create a 'big economic disaster for the American public'.

He noted that Osama had referred to this tactic in December as a 'prudent method' of inflicting damage on the American economy.

The message gave eight reasons why an operation targeting Saudi Arabian oil pipelines is important. These included rising oil prices, placing a strain on the Saudi-US relationship, and spreading low morale among American soldiers in Iraq.

'When the American public realizes that the Iraqi war had brought these economic crises, they will demand a prompt withdrawal from Iraq,' the poster predicted, in a chilling echo of Internet statements calling for attacks in Spain before the March 2004 general election, months before they were actually carried out.

The operative provided detailed maps depicting the layout of the pipelines, before concluding: 'Start it, start it, Al-Qaeda men!'

More generally, in the December address Osama also consolidated related moves by Al-Qaeda to transfer the 'holy war' from the West to the Islamic heartland.

Last year, both Osama and his No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, had singled out Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia as the new battlefields. These countries are indeed now the front line in the war on terror.

However, when it comes to the specific question of the ruling Al-Saud family, Osama still appears to be hesitating.

As in the 1995 'open letter', in the December audio tape, he merely advised the 'corrupt' Saudi princes and the (then) incapacitated King Fahd to step aside - so that a more pious and responsible king could take over.

In a sense, Osama has got what he wanted with the ascension to the throne of King Abdullah last month - the first genuinely popular and pious leader since King Faisal, who ruled from 1964 to 1975.

Indeed, in both his addresses, Osama cited the abdication of the corrupt and incompetent King Saud and his replacement by King Faisal in 1964 as an example the present senior princes in the Al-Saud ruling family should emulate.

So why Osama's refusal to strike a truly radical note when he is talking about the pro-West Arab rulers he supposedly most despises?

One reason is that Saudi Arabia remains the only country in the Middle East where Al-Qaeda has a remote chance of achieving its goals. Osama has to be certain of victory there before he can call for an uprising elsewhere.

Al-Qaeda spokesmen, meanwhile, state on websites that the organization is holding back from launching a full-scale assault against the Al-Saud because a direct threat to their rule would cause the princes' 'separate fingers to form an iron fist'. That is, targeting a senior prince would almost certainly result in the imposition of a state of emergency, restricting terrorists' mobility.

So it is better, the spokesmen argue, to let the royals squabble among themselves about succession and reforms, as resentment among the masses grows over domestic economic problems and the Al-Saud's external alliance with the United States.

That way, an increasingly unstable Saudi Arabia would remain a fertile ground for obtaining arms, money and volunteers.

More controversially, it has long been argued that the main reason no prince has been attacked is that the regime allegedly made a pact with Al-Qaeda in the 1990s to ensure its own survival.

'I have always thought it strange that Al-Qaeda has not tried to kill or kidnap a Saudi prince,' said Mr Simon Henderson, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of After King Fahd: Succession In Saudi Arabia.

'I have always assumed that it was because Al-Qaeda knew that it would be crossing some sort of a red line,' he added.

But the red line is clearly shifting, and an attack on the oil pipelines or Saudi princes could mark the beginning of the endgame.

Whatever the immediate chaos resulting from such attacks, the Saudi regime would almost certainly emerge triumphant.

There can now be no doubting the Al-Saud's determination to take the battle to Al-Qaeda cells in the kingdom.

Since May 2003, at least 91 Saudi nationals and foreign citizens have been killed. Forty-one members of the security forces have died and 218 wounded, while more than 120 militants have been killed.

There is now unprecedented cooperation between Saudi intelligence officials and those from the US, Britain and France.

With a popular new leader in King Abdullah and a massive budget surplus which allowed for across-the-board pay rises, the people of Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, are less likely than ever to back calls for a popular uprising.

Al-Qaeda's charges of corruption and hypocrisy against the Al-Saud dynasty resonate. But so too does the Al-Saud's appeal for stability and quiet. After all, one of the worst charges in Islam is that of causing 'fitnah', the tribulations and chaos created by rebellion.

'A call for a popular uprising in Saudi Arabia would fall on deaf ears, just as Osama's unending calls for jihad have fallen on deaf Muslim ears since Sept 11,' predicted Professor Asad Abukhalil, the author of The Battle For Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, And Global Power. He added: 'I don't think he can simply incite a rebellion just like that.'