US CAMPAIGN IN AFGHANISTAN DEEPENS THE DILEMMA FOR SAUDI ARABIA
Mark N. Katz: 10/22/01

The Saudi royal family has no reason to love the Taliban, given the radical Islamic movement’s close links with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. The US military campaign against the Taliban, though, poses a serious problem for Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia was one of only three governments (the other two were Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates) that extended diplomatic recognition to the Taliban after the latter’s capture of Kabul in 1996. Riyadh initially provided millions of dollars in aid to the Taliban, despite the fact that bin Laden is a Saudi fugitive who found a safe haven in Afghanistan after he fled Sudan in 1996.

Saudi support for the Taliban appeared quite sensible at the time the movement seized Kabul and gained control over up to 90 percent of Afghanistan. After years of fighting among various Afghan factions, the Taliban seemed capable of bringing order to the country. The highly anti-Shi’ite nature of the Taliban regime may also have appeared useful to the Saudi leaders, who were aiming to keep their Shi’ite Iranian rivals on the defensive.

Saudi officials may even have found it convenient for bin Laden to be in Afghanistan since the Taliban reportedly promised Riyadh that they would keep him under wraps for awhile, and eventually turn him over. In short, the Saudis believed in 1996 that their assistance to the Taliban regime bought Riyadh influence over it.

By 1998, however, Saudi Arabia had become disillusioned with its Taliban arrangement. A high level Saudi delegation reportedly traveled to Afghanistan in June of that year to arrange for bin Laden’s extradition to the Kingdom, but was rebuffed. Another delegation reportedly traveled to Afghanistan in September, weeks after the August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, only to be rejected a second time.

The Taliban’s failure to extradite bin Laden in 1998 resulted in Riyadh suspending aid to Afghanistan, an official source told me during an interview in Saudi Arabia in May. Although it did not actually sever diplomatic relations at the time, Saudi-Taliban relations remained frozen afterward, the source added.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, formally broke diplomatic relations with the Taliban. Riyadh feels very much betrayed by the Taliban both for not extraditing bin Laden and for allowing him to continue his terrorist campaign. Bin Laden, after all, seeks not just the expulsion of the United States from the Middle East, but also is promoting the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy.

Nevertheless, the current US military campaign against Afghanistan poses a serious problem for Riyadh. Saudi legitimacy is based on the royal family’s claim to be faithful guardians of the two holy cities Mecca and Medina, and of Islamic law and values generally.

Although there are often serious disputes among Muslims, many – perhaps most – devout Muslims firmly believe that it is their duty to set aside prior disagreements and support fellow believers in a dispute involving Muslims and non-Muslims.

Many Saudis, including bin Laden, condemned Riyadh for asking non-Muslims from America and other Western countries to defend the Kingdom against Muslim Iraq in 1990-91 — despite the fact that Saddam Hussein’s regime is secular Arab nationalist in orientation, and one that has ruthlessly suppressed Islamic opposition.

For Riyadh to support the United States in its war against the obviously un-Islamic regime of Saddam Hussein was bad enough. But for it to support American action against what many non-Afghan Muslims see as the uprightly Islamic Taliban government is far worse. Indeed, many Muslims believe that Riyadh’s support for the American military campaign in Afghanistan reveals the falsity of Saudi claims to uphold Islamic values, as well as the illegitimacy of its guardianship over the two holy cities.

Thus even though the Taliban has continued to harbor Riyadh’s arch-enemy—bin Laden—after the September 11 attacks, the Saudi government has been extremely reticent in its public support for the US campaign in Afghanistan. From the Saudi perspective, it would be best if the Taliban were ousted quickly and a new broad-based Afghan government replaced it.

The longer the campaign drags on, the more vulnerable Riyadh will be to criticism from within the Islamic world over Riyadh’s even tacit support for the US anti-terrorism campaign. American military intervention in Afghanistan by itself is probably not enough to destabilize the Kingdom. It is something, though, that if prolonged could further undermine the Saudi monarchy's legitimacy.

Editor’s Note: Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University.

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Posted October 22, 2001 © Eurasianet
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