House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare Director Yossef Bodansky described Saudi Arabia’s monarchy as “cynically pragmatic” in his 1999 book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. As he documented, the life of the terrorist-mastermind Osama bin Laden exemplified how rulers in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh have often instrumentalized religious zeal to the benefit of realpolitik.
The jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan following the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion provides a notable example of how the name of Islam’s prophet Muhammad can serve Machiavellian ends. The Saudi government financial support for Saudis seeking martyrdom fighting Soviet infidels on Afghanistan’s battlefields was not all altruistic, for otherwise this piety could easily have endangered an insufficiently devout Saudi kingdom. As Bodansky wrote, the “Riyadh government was happy to see these Islamists operating in distant Afghanistan, and thus away from their homeland. Paying for their keep in distant Afghanistan was a cheap price for stability.”
Piety also protected petroleum. Bodansky argued that the Soviet Afghan invasion alarmed Saudi rulers as a possible ominous first step in a wider Soviet advance into the Middle East against the Arabian Peninsula’s vital oil resources. “Rhetoric notwithstanding, Riyadh’s interest in Afghanistan was strategic—the sanctity of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. Although the concern for Islamic solidarity expressed by the Saudis was genuine, it was not their primary concern,” he wrote.
Saudi Arabia’s fortunate son Osama bin Laden rose to prominence during the Afghan jihad, but he served other Saudi strategic interests as well. Bodansky observed:
Although bin Laden was urging all-out support for the Afghan jihad, Riyadh had other priorities and plans for the well-connected young militant. At the time the idea of a strategic encirclement and pincer movement by pro-Soviet forces in the Arabian Peninsula terrified the Saudis. They were most alarmed by the growing Soviet, East German, and Cuban military presence in South Yemen—then officially a Communist state, the PDRY [People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen]—and the Horn of Africa just across the Red Sea.
Accordingly, “Saudi intelligence sponsored a clandestine Islamist insurgency in the PDRY,” Bodansky wrote, and tasked bin Laden with raising mujahideen. He formed units from jihadists who had planned to fight in Afghanistan and Saudi National Guard (White Guards) special forces that Saudi authorities formally put on leave. Bin Laden himself participated in several raids into Yemen, but this anticommunist jihad ultimately fizzled.
By contrast, Soviet forces left Afghanistan in defeat in 1989 and “bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia a hero,” Bodansky observed. He explained in detail:
The Saudi government considered him a positive role model, proof of its contribution to the immensely popular Afghan jihad.
The praise and media attention made bin Laden a sought-after celebrity. He spoke at countless mosques and private gatherings. Some of his fiery speeches were recorded; well over a quarter of a million official cassettes were sold and countless illegal—and later, underground—copies were also made and distributed.
Bin Laden described Islam’s great triumphs against the infidel superpower, arguing that the Afghan jihad demonstrated that nothing and nobody could stop the Muslim Nation once it was committed to the righteous practice of Islam. The House of al-Saud, which defines its right to power and the legitimacy of that power through its role as the custodian of the two holy shrines of Islam, was pleased with the message. Claiming that it was striving to establish a just Islamic way of life, Riyadh capitalized on the Islamist message to enhance its own posture. Riyadh’s pleasure with Osama was manifested financially as the bin Laden business received numerous government and private contracts.
This largesse included the Saudi government contract in the early 1980s to expand the two mosques in Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest sites. Normally the job would have gone to bin Laden’s father, Muhammad bin Laden, but Saudi King Fahd personally offered the expansion of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina to the younger bin Laden. He declined the king’s offer with an estimated net profit of $90 million and instead argued for greater support to the Afghan jihad.
Yet according to Bodansky’s research, ultimately
Osama did not lose much financially, for the contract went to his father. Osama later told confidants in Afghanistan that his wealth increased and his business grew with the amount of money he spent on the jihad.
The Saudi relationship with Afghanistan remained strong even after the Soviet withdrawal and the 1996 takeover by the Taliban, who instituted strict sharia law. As Bodansky explained:
Saudi Arabia has been second only to Pakistan in the extent of its support for the Taliban. Saudi funds have been instrumental in the Taliban’s rise to and hold on power. Saudi support for the Taliban has stemmed from Riyadh’s determination to find an outlet—as far away from Saudi Arabia as possible—for the Islamist zeal of Saudi radicalized youth. Support for the propagation of Islamism also cleansed the collective conscience of the House of al-Saud, the declared guardians of the quintessence of conservative Islamism, for whatever infringements of Islamism’s strict code of conduct they carry out in Saudi Arabia to ensure their own hold on power. The Taliban’s brand of Islamic revolution, with its strong conservative Islamist connotations and desire for a greater Arabic coloration, is perfect for Riyadh. The Taliban’s affinity with Saudi Arabia is also strong because the hard core of the Taliban are the Afghan refugees from the Pakistani Islamist schools whose teachers and clerics received their formal schooling and degrees from Islamist institutions in Saudi Arabia. They brought with them and instilled in their Afghan and Pakistani students a strict, conservative brand of Islamist theology and jurisprudence.
In this context, Bodansky in 1999 observed Saudi Arabia trying to play both sides of United States President Bill Clinton and bin Laden while staying out of any crossfire. Yet in Bodansky’s estimation, the Saudis considered the jihadist bin Laden the more pressing danger, for they had recently developed a
new anti-American strategy that would enable it to satisfy the Islamists without arousing Washington’s ire. Those in the House of al-Saud have no illusion, however, that if forced to choose between pacifying bin Laden or the Clinton administration, they would pacify, placate, and appease bin Laden.
This power calculus would, of course, change a few years later after 9/11’s horrors, when the angers and fears of America and the wider world would no longer accept Saudi indulgence of jihad terror. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia continues to reflect the previously discussed fault lines between Islamic and Western civilizations analyzed by Bodansky. Moreover, these conflicts extend far beyond Saudi Arabia, as the next article in this series will discuss.
Doomer says
If you think THAT is strange, consider the fact that KHOMEINI of Iran created his “Guardian Council” based on his reading of PLATO’s Republic.
In The Republic by Plato the country is ruled by the GUARDIANS,who are philosophers.
The Guardian Council in Iran is made up of 12 wise clerics and jurists,charged with making sure the laws of the country,in the constitution,are Compatible with Islam.
No new law that is rejected by them can pass.In this link Khomeini says of Platon:
“Imam Khomeini:
“This great philosopher (Plato) is one of the
great leading figures of divine wisdom and known for monotheism and wisdom.””
Plato believed in GOD and in a SOUL.
http://en.imam-khomeini.ir/en/n40033/Imam-Khomeini-This-great-philosopher-Plato-is-one-of-the-great-leading-figures-of-divine-w
gravenimage says
This barbaric Ayatollah learned nothing of substance from the great Greek philosophers. Ultimately for him everything came through the filter of Islam.
gravenimage says
Saudi Arabia between Machiavelli and Muhammad
………..
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the savage Saudis.
OLD GUY says
Saudi Arabia not to be trusted. They represent only what is good for them and their desire to be a world power. And guess what old Biden just helped them with forcing America and other countries to pour oil money into Saudi’s bank accounts. Nothing like funding your ideological enemy or supplying them with top grade military weapons.