>>Is it goodbye, Saudi Arabia? America seeks alternatives to its awkward ally
Students of the vast, barren expanses of Saudi Arabia and the secretive ruling Al-Saud family assumed in the last couple of months that King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, who had languished in a clinic in Geneva for quite some time, was about to die. They were wrong. Last week, King Fahd rose from his hospital bed and decamped to his palace in the south of Spain. So the question of the succession is off the agenda?
No. Foreign Report can reveal that the House of Saud is now threatened by the results of years of
mismanagement and the aftershocks of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. How long will the Al-Saud last? We make a prediction.
Since its establishment and especially since the country's emergence as the world's chief oil supplier, the Saudi monarchy has played a peculiar role. Officially, it was the closest strategic ally of the United States in the Arab world; privately, it encouraged a hardline puritanical and violently anti-Western brand of Islam (Wahabism). It financed religious schools, the Madrassas, in much of Asia, Africa and even parts of Europe. The schools taught little more than primitive Islam, and bred the squads of terrorists that infested Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The tactic appeared to make sense for the 6,000-odd princelings of the House of Saud, for it allowed them to appear as both essential to the West and as enemies of the West at the same time. The snag is that some of the fanatics created in the process chose to take the latter role last September. Much has been said and written about the rising anger in the US against a government that had helped to create this terrorist movement. The anger erupted into the open when a report compiled by the Rand Corporation - a think-tank close to the American government - was recently leaked to the media. It identified Saudi Arabia as a major problem for the Bush administration in the Middle East.
The two sides sought to minimise the significance of this episode. Yet the reality remains that, behind the scenes, the Americans are now taking concrete steps to eliminate their dependence on Saudi Arabia as soon as possible.
Even more important is the effort that the Bush administration is making to remove its troops from Saudi
territory. The Pentagon has long grown tired of these bases. They cannot be used for any serious operations: the Saudis refused to give official permission for their exploitation during the Afghanistan war, and have recently imposed a ban on their use during the forthcoming Iraq war. Maintaining strategically useless bases and being criticised for doing so is too much for the Pentagon to stomach. A swift withdrawal would be regarded as a slap in the face for the Saudis. So the Bush administration now has another strategy: it is building new bases in the smaller principalities surrounding Saudi Arabia, places like Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. <<
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