Divorce, Saudi-style
By Avi Davis November 8, 2001
Among Arizona's Pueblo Indians, a woman could obtain a divorce
simply by placing her husband's moccasins outside the front door.
If that method became just as practicable for nations, the United
States would be today checking that its slippers are still under the
bed it shares with Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Last week
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, in a bid to convince 150 prominent
Saudis that the government is defending Muslim interests, warned
that a divorce from the U.S. may well be in the offing. Reading
from a letter sent to George W. Bush, he announced that their
two nations are at a crossroads and that it may be time for each
to look to their separate interests.
Separate interests? Now what would they be? An answer might be
found by focusing on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban regime
that shield him. The U.S. war against Afghanistan is as unpopular
on the Saudi street as Bin Laden and his minions are admired. It
is lost on no one that Bin Laden is a Saudi citizen, and that just as
in almost every other hamlet, village and city throughout the
Arab world, he is seen as a hero who has struck a decisive blow
for Muslim honor. This pride of ownership may well have
percolated up to the upper echelons of the Saudi royal household
who regard the international renegade as one of their own.
On the other hand it is certainly not news to the Saudi street that
Bin Laden's own manifesto has targeted the Saudi ruling elite. His
characterization of them as corrupt sycophants, who, he
demands, must expel all foreign forces from the region, may well
have hit a chord in the Saudi heartland. The threat of revolution
must therefore be making the sleep of the Saudi royals a little
more fitful these days. No wonder they have stymied U.S.
investigations into the eight known Saudi citizen hijackers. No
wonder the growing need to define Saudi goals as diverging from
those of the United States.
Yet, neither of these reasons was employed by Abdallah to
identify the Saudis' 'separate interests.' Rather it was U.S.
support for Israel that garnered the blame. This is a familiar
trope of the Arab world -- the attempt to deflect attention from its
own corruption and ineptitude by identifying the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the ultimate cause of Arab rancor.
That distant conflict, which had little to do with Al Qaida's
motivation for the attacks on America, is so often used as a blind
for Arab rejection of the West, that it has crumbled into parody.
Palestinian suffering, apparently so deeply sensed by all Arab
nations that not a finger has been lifted by them to relieve the
misery of refugees living in squalid camps within their own
borders, is rarely ever the true reason for Arab rejectionism. But
it is a convenient screen behind which to hide a glibly
anti-western agenda.
It is not, therefore, American support for Israel that causes
consternation in the Arab world. It is what Israel and the U.S.
represent. Democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of
conscience and a free press are anathema to tribal elites and
dictators who display the barest interest in the welfare of their
own people. The United States' allies in the Middle East are
indistinguishable from the more extreme regimes in this regard.
In fact states such as Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are so
accustomed to their own designation as "moderate" that they
expect their own records of repression and militarism to be
cavalierly ignored.
There are no easy means of dealing with Arab nations ruled by
such despotic regimes. And in a tumultuous, uncertain world it
may well better to deal with the devil you know than the one you
don't. But the potential defection of Saudi Arabia augurs a world
that one day may be cracked in two -- one side in support of
democracy and freedom and the other violently opposed to it. In
such an event, it might pay for the U.S. to be the first to seek
divorce from its more capricious partners. Maybe it will put all the
"moderate" states on notice at how much they have to lose when
the moccasins are finally placed outside their own front doors.
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