New snags in US-Saudi ties play to bin Laden

"If we are deliberately trying to weaken the House of Saud - and that seems to be what we are trying to do - don't these people have any idea who is going to replace the royal family?" asks a US-based analyst with detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the kingdom. "If there is a revolution in Saudi Arabia - God forbid - it is not going to be Jeffersonian democrats or PhDs from Stanford who take over," he says. "It is going to be the Saudi version of the Taliban."

A former prime minister of Jordan, who asked not to be identified by name, also questions Washington's motives. "There is a general idea in the region that the United States does not stand by its friends," he says. "The British back their friends up to the end. But the Americans follow only their own interests." The former prime minister adds, "So the Al Saud [family] have something to worry about."

Caught between their allies in Washington and their Arab and Islamic brothers in the region, the ruling Al Saud family has had to walk a strategic tightrope to avoid provoking or offending one side or the other. They have never been entirely successful in either endeavor.

On one side, regional and domestic forces are pressuring the regime to take more hard-line stands in accord with key concerns of the Arab and Islamic worlds. These include outrage over a lack of US action to protect Palestinians from Israeli violations of international law, widespread anger over harm to Iraqi civilians of the US-backed embargo against Baghdad, and, most recently, concern about civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

On the other side are those in Washington urging the Saudis to draw ever closer to the West and its policies. US officials are pressing the Saudis to become more proactive in hunting down possible suspects in the Sept. 11 attack and moving more forcefully to seize and freeze financial assets of those suspected of helping bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

The problem is the Saudis have long balked at revealing any information to the West that might suggest a degree of vulnerability by the royal family. And Saudi officials don't want to appear to be functioning as American puppets identifying Saudi-Muslim suspects who might then face extradition for trial in a Western, non-Islamic legal system.

Despite such reservations, the Saudis have cooperated in two key areas. They permit a contingent of several thousand US military forces on Saudi soil to patrol the southern no-fly zone in Iraq. And the Saudis are supporting the US-led coalition by providing access to highly sophisticated air-warfare facilities at Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh, where US military leaders are coordinating and directing many of the air attacks against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Even this kind of assistance to the US is extremely problematic for the Saudis, some analysts say, because of serious unresolved religious questions about the propriety of an Islamic nation helping a non-Islamic nation - the US - attack and destroy an Islamic government. The Saudis had diplomatic relations with the Taliban government until Sept. 25.

Bin Laden has made clear his position on the issue, and a number of dissident Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia appear to agree with him. The Saudis have responded with statements from clerics endorsed by the royals. But analysts say there is a brisk exchange of dissident tapes, literature, and other information among a broad number of Saudis who do not support bin Laden and his extremist views, but who are uneasy about the state of affairs in the kingdom.

Despite this activity, most analysts contacted for this article say they believe the royal family will survive the current challenges. "I think they will get through it," says James Akins, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "You can't say that an absolute monarchy is the wave of the future, but I don't think that a regressive religious dictatorship is the wave of the future either," he says. "The royal family can change.... They are moving toward representative government."

Professor Karawan sees a more basic approach as necessary to help protect the Saudis. "It is time to pause, and think, and compare notes," he says. "We should figure out what [the terrorists] want us to do, and not do it."

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