NewsHour Online: Saudi Arabia

THE SAUDI CONNECTION

NOVEMBER 15, 1995

TRANSCRIPT

A bomb exploded at a military facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, killing five Americans. Margaret Warner looks at the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.

MARGARET WARNER: Monday's car bomb attack in Riyadh, at a training center for the Saudi National Guard, was just the latest reminder of the close military relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. One of the Americans killed was an active duty soldier. The other four were civilians employed by the U.S. Army. Thirty-seven other Americans were also injured. Some of them remain in critical condition in Saudi hospitals. Three different Islamic groups claimed responsibility for the blast, but the U.S. ambassador in Riyadh suggested the bombing might have been the work of a hostile neighboring country like Iran. The FBI has sent 19 agents to help Saudis investigate the bombing. Officials said that a study of the bomb fragments may offer clues to its origin. The American ambassador said one of the groups claiming responsibility, the so-called Islamic Movement for Change, had faxed threats to the embassy earlier this year. The ambassador said the faxes demanded that all American and British military personnel leave the Saudi kingdom before July. Three perspectives now: Mark Thompson is national security correspondent for "Time Magazine." Khalil Jahshan is the president of the National Association of Arab Americans and a Mideast analyst. He was in Saudi Arabia this Spring. And Shibley Telhami is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Near East Studies Program at Cornell University. He was in Saudi Arabia last Fall. Welcome, gentlemen. Mark Thompson, let me start with you. How big is the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and what's it doing there?
MARK THOMPSON, Time Magazine: The U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, Margaret, is there essentially to protect the flow of oil. Saudi Arabia accounts for 8 percent of the world's oil production, and of what flows into the United States, and we have about $60 billion worth of business, military business, going on with the Saudis. Protecting the Persian Gulf oil is very important to the United States and that, by and large, is our reason for being there.
MARGARET WARNER: And what's the size of our force there, or how many people?
MR. THOMPSON: For a long time, we've had about a thousand active duty military there. In recent years, that's grown to about 5,000, because of Operation Southern Watch, which is where American Air Force planes are patrolling Southern Iraq to ensure that the Shiites are protected from Saddam Hussein. So it's about 5,000 American military personnel out of a total universe of about 35,000 Americans in the kingdom.
MARGARET WARNER: But I was interested in this particular bomb attack only thirteen or fourteen of the casualties were officially American military, yet, all of them worked for the U.S. Army, but they were called civilians. I mean, is the number really much greater than 5,000, if you took those?
MR. THOMPSON: I mean, if you look at the 35,000 folks who are American in Saudi Arabia and you eliminate the 5,000 in uniform, that leaves about 30,000. And of those 30,000, it's equally divided between those working on military programs and those involved in commercial ventures.
MARGARET WARNER: And the military programs are--
MR. THOMPSON: Well, the big military programs are, you know, production. We just completed a $6 billion air defense network in Saudi Arabia. They are buying our best weapons, F-15's, M-1's, Bradlees, but the blast occurred at a U.S. Army liaison building for the Saudi National Guard, which essentially is the internal force--
MARGARET WARNER: You mean, internal security.
MR. THOMPSON: Internal security inside Saudi. They were responsible for repelling attacks on the mosque in Mecca in 1979, and things such as that. So it wasn't directed at the biggest chunk of our activity but at a very narrow chunk, the internal security force.
MARGARET WARNER: Well, Mr. Telhami, how controversial is the American military presence in Saudi Arabia?
SHIBLEY TELHAMI, Brookings Institution: Well, it is controversial, and we know it's controversial in certain quarters, particularly the Islamist opposition. But what is really striking about this bombing is how little we know about the extent of discontent within Saudi Arabia, how little we know as scholars, and how little we know in U.S. Government bureaucracy. I think there are two very important reasons for that, and one of them really has to be reconsidered. One reason, of course, the secrecy in the kingdom and the lack of access, which of course has been problematic for researchers, and to some extent for governmental officials. But I think there is what might be called the Gulf War Syndrome, which, in fact, is prevalent in American bureaucracy, and that is that during the Gulf War a large number of scholars and bureaucrats warned about public opinion in the Middle East and the Arab street never materialized. They went on the defensive, and there have been--there's an over-compensation in the bureaucracy. There are people watching for this sort of thing, and there are a lot of officials who are satisfied by keeping linkages with the dozens of people with whom they have to do business on an official basis. The American embassy in Riyadh I think has no contact with large segments of the Saudi government--with the Saudi public and Saudi society. So I don't think there is a great deal of information. We do know from certain sources like human rights activists who have investigated human rights issues that there is a deep Islamist resentment of the U.S. presence, and I think it goes beyond the rational. I think part of it is related to Islamic issues, but part of it relates to a broader regional theme about a fear of a global conspiracy, Western conspiracy orchestrated by the U.S.. They connect things all together, the lack of action to protect Muslims in Bosnia, the lack of actions even to protect Muslims in Chechnya, the congressional resolution on Jerusalem, moving the embassy to Jerusalem. They connect all of these as Western conspiracy led by the U.S. to go against Islamic causes, and it goes really beyond the secular religious break in Saudi society.
MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree with his assessment of the opposition and the nature of the anti-American feeling?
KHALIL JAHSHAN, National Association of Arab Americans: It depends whether you're talking about opposition to the regime or opposition to American presence in the kingdom. I think Shibley explained well in terms of the roots of the opposition to American presence. I would say that that opposition comes in a variety of flavors, if you will. There have been different trends in Saudi Arabia, including some among what one could term as loyal opposition and even some within official circles, even some coming from royal family, criticism about the conduct of the war, criticism about the U.S. role in it, criticism about the extent of, if you will, the expense of the war and how the U.S. handled that, if you will, billing Saudi Arabia for it, and how that impacted daily life in Saudi Arabia, so in addition to the Islamists that Shibley explained, the Islamist general, if you will--
MARGARET WARNER: Kind of cultural and political.
MR. JAHSHAN: --there is some also local criticism pertaining to U.S. role, the U.S. presence, and the general role, special relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
MARGARET WARNER: Mark Thompson, is Mr. Telhami right when he says that he thinks those in the U.S. Government are a little too blase about--I don't know if that's how you characterize it--but don't take enough time and attention to really understand the feeling in the street in Saudi Arabia?
MR. THOMPSON: I think that the Americans have made efforts to do that, but they also know that they're in a tight pickle here. The fact of the matter is that Americans in Saudi Arabia, especially military folks, are told not to wear their uniforms out on the street, they are to maintain a low profile, they are doing, I think, as best they can in terms of minimizing their presence, given how large it is. What they can do short of leaving I don't know.
MARGARET WARNER: But at the same time, you seem to be suggesting by minimizing their presence, they're not supposed to be out there mingling with people, getting to know people.
MR. THOMPSON: They're acknowledging the friction that exists, I think.
MARGARET WARNER: Yes.
MR. JAHSHAN: This condescending, if you will, sensitivity to needs in Saudi Arabia is one thing, but the fact of the matter, we have a special relationship with a key ally of the United States. Yet, at the same time, the quality of the relationship has never been upgraded on our side, on the American side, to the real level of partnership that one would expect and that could hush a lot of the opposition. I mean, the feeling among Saudis and many Arabs in general is that Arab allies of the United States, particularly in the Gulf, are treated as a milking cow. Even when we defend them, we charge them for it, and that is resented I think very strongly among a lot of people in the Gulf.
MARGARET WARNER: Well, Mr. Telhami, do you think that this attack says anything significant about the stability of the Saudi regime now above and beyond a feeling about Americans?
MR. TELHAMI: Well, it's too early to tell, and I think it would be wise not to generalize from a single attack, although it's serious. I mean, I think you have to take it seriously but you can't make a general, you know, conclusion from this, however, I would say that it does point out not only how little we know about the internal instability in Saudi Arabia, but also how our strategy has been oriented toward deterring conventional attacks by aggressor states like Iran and Iraq, and that, we've done very well, but, in fact, that very strategy in some ways is counterproductive from the point of view of defending not only against internal threat but external subversion. And in some ways, our--especially our dual containment policy toward Iran and Iraq, which is intended really to squeeze them until their collapse, and we say so explicitly, in fact, probably encourages them to carry out subversive attacks to destabilize our allies, and our presence, our military presence can't really prevent that. So we have to balance those threats, and I don't think we have figured out a way to balance those threats. And I agree with the argument that in some ways we're very sensitive to the Saudis because of this presence. But neither the Saudis nor the U.S. have really figured out how to balance these issues.
MARGARET WARNER: Mark Thompson, what is the assessment within the U.S. Government about the overall stability of the Saudi regime after the Gulf War?
MR. THOMPSON: They do acknowledge it's difficult to peer inside the kingdom and know, but they look at the map, they look at the dollars, they look at the $25 billion that the Saudis gave to Iraq to fight Iran from 1980 to 1988, and then the $55 billion that we essentially billed them for while the price of oil was falling, so there are a lot of fiscal concerns and we've seen the Saudis slow down in their procurement of American weapons. So there is sort of a skittishness here, and this week's incident doesn't lessen that.
MARGARET WARNER: But does this economic, I mean, one could never say that Saudis are economically deprived, it's all relative, of course, but Khalil Jahshan, does this have political ramifications in terms of the ability of the government to, to enjoy a secure situation at home?
MR. JAHSHAN: I think it does have, it does have certain political implications, however, it's important, Margaret, not to exaggerate the impact of an isolated incident. What this does clearly, it shatters a psychological myth, if you will, similar to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a Jewish citizen of Israel, where people said a Jew doesn't kill a Jew; now this myth has been shattered. In this sense, there has been a political myth that Saudi Arabia is immune from this type of thing. Now an incident of this magnitude has happened. It's significant. But on the contrary, I think it might even strengthen the regime in the sense that now there will be some internal evaluation of security arrangements in cooperation with the United States. The U.S. today has launched a security reevaluation of all U.S. facilities in the region, not just in Saudi Arabia, and certain steps will be taken to take care of that. Whether that would eliminate, if you will, the underlying factor in terms of the political dissatisfaction, that's a totally different story that would have to be discussed on its own merit, if you will.
MARGARET WARNER: But do you agree that this incident won't make the Saudi regime want to let opposition groups operate more freely but in fact have the opposite effect?
MR. TELHAMI: In the short-term, most likely, that will have the opposite effect, and I think it might be a bit problematic in the long-term for them, because I don't think this force of discontent based on anecdotal evidence, as you know, we don't have exact access to information, but is not just Islamists, there are--I mean, Saudi Arabia in some ways has the paradoxical situation. It is--on the economic level it's very open to business, it's global, it's well connected, it's modern. On the political and social level, it's closed. And those elites who operate in both arenas are tense as a consequence of that. And you feel that and you hear it on private conversations. There are also people who are now paying the consequence of the economic slowdown that really has to do with paying for the cost of the Gulf War. There is a saying among Middle East scholars that no taxation, no representation. That's one reason why we haven't seen increasing demands in some of the Gulf states for representation. Well, they now are having to receive less services from the government, and they're likely to ask for more representation.
MARGARET WARNER: Some things are the same all over. Thank you, gentlemen, very much.


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