November 10, 2003
NEWS ANALYSIS
Attacks in Saudi Arabia Aim to Rattle a Dynasty
By PATRICK E. TYLER
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — For years, Osama bin Laden called for the violent overthrow of the Saudi royal family for allowing American bases in the holiest land of Islam.
But with American forces gone, the bombs continue to explode — signaling that the withdrawal did not address the deeper grievances among the hardened Saudi militants who were behind the car bomb attack in Riyadh late on Saturday. Those militants are now seeking to exploit the opposition that is growing within Saudi Arabia to a dynasty long immune to political challenge.
What seems ever more apparent in the attack in Riyadh that left at least 17 people dead and 122 wounded is that it is no longer Americans or even Westerners who are the targets of terrorism in Saudi Arabia, but rather stability itself in the oil-producing kingdom, as well as the writ of the House of Saud.
With targets like government ministries and diplomatic quarters heavily guarded, the bombers may have opted for blowing up a relatively unprotected housing compound associated with Western lifestyles and foreign influence to make their point.
"I think they are after the royal family," said Wyche Fowler Jr., a former senator who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from October 1997 to February 2001. "There is a determined fight to rattle the government if not bring it down."
A prominent Saudi who advises the royal household agreed. "This is an effort to destabilize the regime," he said. "It's against the monarchy and it is against the government."
As such, the terror campaign is merging with the domestic struggle over political reform in the conservative kingdom, where demonstrations against the royal family in Mecca last month showed a new boldness among opposition forces.
Though Saudi officials were quick to blame Al Qaeda for the bombing, it was difficult even for Saudis to distinguish where domestic political opposition ends and the goals of the current terrorist campaign begin. But the danger for the Saudi royal family, analysts said, was that the growing ranks of domestic opponents to the monarchy would adopt the violent tactics of Al Qaeda, or look to its members for leadership.
"I think that is the ultimate concern of the Saudis," Mr. Fowler said. "I think that is why they are being so thorough to uncover these cells and eliminate them."
The threat to the royal family has mobilized security forces who have used increasingly aggressive tactics and firepower during the summer to break up terrorist plots and to seize large caches of explosives and ammunition. The tactics have shocked the public in their scale and volume.
To counter both domestic political opposition and the terrorist instinct that courses through dissident mosques, Crown Prince Abdullah, the day-to-day ruler of the royal family, has tried to accelerate some political reforms. But he is offering far less than even the most centrist opponents demand.
Last month, the government announced that elections for municipal offices would be organized next year and, more recently, the crown prince opened for television coverage the deliberations of the consultative assembly, whose members he appoints. While the steps he has taken or talked about draw derisive comments — as in: too little, too late — from Saudi dissidents, the crown prince is regarded as the most reform-minded among the sons of King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, who unified the warring tribes of the Arabia Peninsula and created the Saudi state.
The bombing in Riyadh was the second major strike in the new campaign and the largest attack since those of the mid-1990's directed at Western and American military targets. It destroyed homes in a compound inhabited mostly by expatriates from other Muslim countries, though some Westerners were among the wounded.
On May 12, a larger and more coordinated assault force set off a series of car bombs in three Riyadh housing complexes whose residents were mostly Saudi, but included American and other foreign workers. The explosions killed 34 people, including 8 Americans and 9 attackers.
"May 12 was the inevitable wake up call," said Judith Kipper, director of Middle East programs at the Council on Foreign Relations. Since then, as Ms. Kipper pointed out, Saudi security authorities have mobilized a significant campaign under the interior ministry to arrest religious figures who have preached violence and to disrupt the flow of illicit arms to people who would use them for terrorist attacks.
"It's going to take some time to dig them all out," she said.
The role of the United States in this struggle may prove to be crucial, analysts said, but the kingdom has come under assault at a time when the Bush administration's relations with Saudi Arabia have been troubled by two years of recriminations over the prominent role that some Saudis played in the Sept. 11 attacks and the Saudi money that has flowed, wittingly and unwittingly, to organizations and charities connected to terrorist groups.
Last week, President Bush admonished Saudi Arabia and Egypt to take concrete steps toward democracy in a speech widely viewed in the Arab world more as hectoring for domestic effect in the United States than constructive statesmanship abroad.
But it is also true that Mr. Bush was articulating a deeply held view among conservatives in his administration: that American power and influence, recently exercised in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, should be used to advance the horizons of democracy, not just to protect American national interest by securing strategic commodities, like the oil resources of the Persian Gulf.
While Crown Prince Abdullah continues to welcome American intelligence in the campaign against terrorism, it is unlikely that the Saudi ruler will want publicly stated advice or assistance on how to conduct political reform from Mr. Bush, whose bluntness lacks the subtleties to which Saudis are accustomed in foreign relations.
In Riyadh on Sunday, Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, struck a supportive tone, one that seemed to emphasize American hope than certainty.
"We have the utmost faith," he said, "that the direction chosen for this nation by Crown Prince Abdullah, the political and economic reforms, will not be swayed by these horrible terrorists."