U.S. to Withdraw Forces From Saudi Arabia Within Months

Rumsfeld outlined the decision during a joint news conference with the Saudi defense minister in Riyadh during his current tour of the Persian Gulf region.

“With the end of the Operation Southern Watch, and the successful liberation of the Iraqi people, we have had discussions about our ability now to rearrange our forces in this part of the world,” Rumsfeld told reporters, adding that “it is now a safer region because of the change in regime in Iraq.”

“By mutual agreement, the aircraft involved now, of course, will be able to leave. They will leave with us grateful for the support throughout the operation that the Kingdom provided,” Rumsfeld said.

As part of the realignment of forces in the region, the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center will now be located in nearby Qatar.

The American military has maintained a sizeable presence in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 Gulf War when U.S. forces utilized the country as a staging area to combat Iraqi troops in Kuwait. The U.S. continued to rely on a Saudi air base for planes patrolling the “no-fly” zones in southern Iraq.

“[T]he forces that are here were basically implementing the Southern Watch Operation and have after the end of the Southern Watch Operation, there is obviously no need for those troops to remain,” Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud said.

“This is does not mean that we requested them to leave or move from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But as long as their mission is over, so they will leave,” he added.

Prince Sultan Air Base is currently home to some 10,000 U.S. soldiers due in part to a doubling of forces during the Iraq war. According to media reports, practically all of the troops and some 100 U.S. aircraft will be gone by the end of the summer leaving the air base all but abandoned.

An estimated 400 U.S. troops will remain in the country to help train Saudi forces.

The stationing of U.S. troops presented a political problem for the Saudi government due in part to the presence of two of Islam’s holiest shrines in the country, a fact that has led Saudis and Arabs alike to denounce the U.S. air base as an inappropriate intrusion.

The stationing of U.S. troops in the kingdom has also been repeatedly denounced by Saudi-born al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Some regional analysts view the troop movement as a sign of strained U.S.-Saudi ties in the wake of the war in Iraq.

“The Saudis were too timid in the days leading up to the Iraq war. The Americans didn’t find a friend in Saudi Arabia and discovered that in times of crises, the Saudis were not reliable and were in fact, replaceable,” Abdul Khaleq Abdulla, a political analyst in the United Arab Emirates, told the Associated Press.

Most Saudi citizens appeared to welcome the U.S. decision to leave, but also expressed concern about the future of political and social reform in the oil rich kingdom that has been ruled since the 1920s by the Saudi royal family in alliance with a strict Sunni religious faction.

“This is a way for the Americans and Saudi Arabia to part on good terms and it’s in everyone’s interest for the time being,” Mohammed al-Khereijy, a Saudi journalist, told Reuters.

“But I’m worried that instead of thinking about the economy and education, people might cling to another issue that will suck the energy out of any possible progression,” he added.

Others were more blunt in their dissatisfaction with the decade-old U.S. presence in the country.

“Let them go home. The Americans prove every day that they are selfish and ruled by delusions of power,” Nasser al-Hamdan, a Riyadh trader, told the news service.