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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AK2004 who wrote (20641)	3/14/2003 2:21:17 AM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Foreigners targeted by zealots in oil kingdomBy Robin Allen in RiyadhPublished: March 14 2003 4:00 \| Last Updated: March 14 2003 4:00 Foreigners are targeted, some provincial officials are assassinated, and guns are in high demand. But this is not a failed state. It is Saudi Arabia - traditionally a bastion of law and order, sole owner of one-quarter of the world's oil, and the pivot of US command, control and communications in the countdown to war with Iraq. But times have changed in the desert kingdom, and the build-up to war is increasing the tension and the warnings of violent consequences. Last Saturday's discovery, in a shopping mall in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, of three sticks of dynamite timed to explode at mid-morning, was another stark reminder that residents can no longer take public security for granted. Western civilians, who have been the principal victims of the violence since November 2000 - sporadic car and parcel bombs, muggings and shootings - number about 100,000 out of a total foreign population of about 7m. About three-quarters of westerners are Americans or British. Five, three of them British, have been killed. But the shootings have not been confined to westerners. Other foreigners, who comprise about a third of the population of 20m but more than two-thirds of the total workforce, have also been the targets of random shootings. They include some Egyptian and Philippine doctors and nurses whose minibus was sprayed with gunfire last month in the northern city of Hail. More alarming for the government, say Saudi analysts, is that shooting incidents are not only countrywide, but have involved the murder of Saudi officials, including two in the past eight months - a judge and a deputy governor - in one single province, Jawf. The most recent fatality was Robert Dent, a 37-year-old commercial officer for BAE Systems, employer of more than 3,000 foreigners, mostly British and Australian nationals. Walid Abukhaled, BAE's head of corporate communications, says: "We do not think that militants are specifically targeting BAE. Rather, they are targeting westerners as a whole." Further evidence of terrorist activity came last month, when Saudi officials confirmed that 90 suspected al-Qaeda militants had been indicted. However, many analysts say much of the violence is the work of what one diplomat called "angry zealots". Nonetheless, senior western diplomats say one more shooting would cause foreigners to start leaving the kingdom. Many - mostly dependants of western embassy employees and families of western corporate executives, including BAE - have already left. "Until two years ago, the veneer of Saudi modernity was sufficiently thick to disguise the tribalism and the latent violence that has always lain beneath the surface," says a Saudi analyst, "But now there is an anarchic element among a bored and unemployed youth, notably in the outlying provinces and in the cities. Their emotions are easily ignited by the sight and sounds of violence against their brother Arabs, beamed night and day on television." Senior western diplomats concur. "The looming war with Iraq has coincided with the uncomfortable realisation this is a more violent society than Saudis acknowledge," says one. "At the same time, an ageing leadership and the accumulation of domestic problems mean the government's ability to respond to, and control, the situation is limited." "Blood brings blood," says Dawood al-Shirian, a columnist for the daily Al-Hayat noted for his plain speaking. "There may be no popular explosion if the US attacks Iraq. But if the war takes months, and it becomes another Beirut, like in the 1970s and 1980s, then you will see an explosion of popular anger." news.ft.com