Most people known to be associated with the terrorist activities come from the privileged or middle classes - they have money, education, social connections, they travel abroad, and study in foreign universities. Could you please explain how they are "oppressed."?
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i read this today in the washington post and was surprised because up to that point i had understood the hijackers to be just as wojtek describes above. -- kirsten
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Some Light Shed On Saudi Suspects http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19549-2001Sep24.html
Arab and U.S. analysts have been struck by the number of suspects with connections to the mountainous provinces of Asir and Baha.
Asir was the last region of the kingdom conquered by the ruling Saud family and did not come under central government authority until the early 1930s. It remained a wild backwater of unruly tribes for the next 50 years. It is just north of Yemen, where the alleged terrorist leader Osama bin Laden has his family roots.
The oil boom of the 1970s that brought much wealth to the Saudi kingdom almost completely bypassed Asir. Many of its impoverished inhabitants turned to the government for jobs, seeking employment in the military and security services where they hold mostly lower and middle-ranking jobs, according to Saudi sources.
For the past 30 years, Asir has had the same governor, Prince Khalid al Faisal, who has been credited with bringing it a measure of modernity and prosperity. In the past few years, he has sought to use its natural beauty and cool climate to attract Arab tourists. But many inhabitants are resentful that the oil-based welfare state has not provided for them.
The region also has been a reservoir of Islamic militants eager to enroll themselves in jihad, or holy war. One reason may be that many members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, another fundamentalist group, have served as teachers there, according to Charles W. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia who now heads the Middle East Policy Council.
One of the kingdom's leading dissident clerics, Safar al Hawali, comes from Abha. He has scorned the U.S. military presence in the kingdom in his anti-government preachings. No evidence has yet surfaced that any of the hijackers was a follower of Hawali. But most of them probably were aware of his militant views, which gained widespread publicity after the United States sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia following Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. wojtek