Well, I could go on at length about the internal politics of Saudi Arabia. I have no essential disagreement wiht this quote. The major politics of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is that between the factions of the royal family. The founder of KSA, Abdulaziz, known in the West as "Ibn Saud", had 43 sons who constitute most of the current top leadership. Their mothers came from many different tribes, Abdulaziz having unified the country by a combination of martial and marital skills. Thus the conflicts between these ruling sons represent the tribal conflicts/politics of the peninsula that also encompasses religious conflicts, as some of the tribes have traditionally been more fundamentalist than others.
The most important split is between the "Sudeiri Seven" and the rest. The Sudeiri Seven are the sons of Abdulaziz's favorite wife, Asa as Sudeiri, a first cousin of old Abdulaziz. This faction is the most powerful, the most corrupt, and the most pro-American. Their members include King Fahd, Sultan the Defense Minister (and father of KSA's US Ambassador, Bandar bin Sultan), the Minister of the Interior, the Governor of Riyadh (the capital), and others. Crown Prince Abdullah has been for long the leader of the more traditional fundamentalist, personally strict, and anti-US faction opposed to the Sudeiri Seven, getting up every morning before dawn to say his prayers and personally commanding the National Guard whose ten-story headquarters building is located on his personal palace grounds inside a high wall.
It used to be feared that he would lead a coup, but now with Fahd in bad shape and he next in line, he doesn't have to. In any case, his views are increasingly carrying sway, in response to genuine feelings among the Saudi people. He is the perfect Saudi gentleman aristocrat, inviting Madeleine Albright out to a party in desert tents with great feasting and gifts in order to tell her six months ago that KSA would not support a US attack on Iraq. Barkley Rosser On Wed, 19 Aug 1998 10:17:16 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> In his column in this week's New York Press, Alexander Cockburn quotes
> Robert Fiske in the August 9 issue of the Independent:
>
> <quote>
> The key to the identity and motives of the men who bombed the U.S.
> embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on Friday lies deep within the
> nation that the Americans regard as their principal ally. In the Arab Gulf
> - Saudi Arabia," Fiske wrote. "The growing fury of thousands of
> Saudis-including, some say, members of the Royal Family - [is aimed] at
> America's continued military and political presence in the land which Is
> home to Islam's two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina.
>
> It was not by chance that the bombs exploded in Kenya and Tanzania on the
> eighth anniversary, the very day of the arrival of the first US troops In
> Saudi Arabia following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. US forces were
> Invited into the Kingdom by the now-ailing King Fahd, who insisted that the
> Americans withdraw all their military forces once the threat of Iraqi
> aggression had ended.
>
> The Americans did not keep. their promise; today, thousands of US military
> personnel are still based In Saudi Arabia with key operatives inside the
> Saudi ministries of defence and interior - just as they were in Iran before
> the fall of the Shah.
>
> One of the latest claims of responsibility - from the so-called 'Liberation
> Army of the Islamic Sanctuaries' - itself suggests a Saudi source. Egyptian
> security services have long believed that, while Sudan may be springboard
> for military operations against them, it is the Saudis who have been the
> principal financial backers of the Gemaa Islamiya (Island Group), which has
> attacked police, tourists, Christian villagers and even President Moubarak
> himself. Saudi money funds the ferociously antifeminist Taliban militia -
> just as Saudi money was originally poured into Algeria to support the
> Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), whose banning led to the country's savage
> Internal war."
>
> Fisk discusses the Saudi outcast, Osama bin Laden, now guest of the Taliban
> in Afghanistan, who has been touted here as a prime suspect. Fiske comments
> that "what the so-called terrorist experts routinely fail to discuss are
> the reasons for Muslim frustration: Palestinian dispossession, American
> domination of the Arab world, Washington's blind sup,port for Israel, the
> U.S. stranglehold on the Gulf oil market-and the vicious intelligence
> conflict being played out between America and Muslim groups in the Middle
> East.
>
> Egyptian 'Islamists' now claim that American Intelligence operatives taught
> the Egyptian police their increasingly sophisticated torture techniques,
> just as they once taught the Shah's SAVAK secret police how to torture
> women (after the revolution, the Iranians found CIA film of these lessons).
> And 'Islamist' groups have been enraged by America's snatch squads who
> have, In effect, abducted wanted men from Muslim countries - in past years,
> from Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and now Albania.
>
> So who In Saudi Arabia leads the resistance to the American presence?
> Certainly not the three Shia Muslim Saudi& beheaded for bombing the US
> barracks In Dhahran In 1996, killing 19 Americans. The CIA [was] refused
> permission to Interview the men before their execution - even the Americans
> suspect they may have been 'set up' by powerful figures in the Kingdom.
>
> Certainly not bin Laden. Among the more vociferous critics of the US
> presence is none other than Crown Prince Abdullah. No, he doesn't lead
> 'Terror I Inc.' Nor does the Saudi government. They don't need to. For
> Saudi Arabia is metamorphosing Into an anti-American nation in front of our
> eyes.
> <endquote>
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu