Sunday, March 21, 2010
Wahhabism:
A Critical Essay -
Hamid Algar
Wahhabism, a peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine and practice that first arose in mid-eighteenth century Arabia, is sometimes regarded as simply an extreme or uncompromising form of Sunni Islam.
This is incorrect, for at the very outset the movement was stigmatized as aberrant by the leading Sunni scholars of the day, because it rejected many of the traditional beliefs and practices of Sunni Islam and declared permissible warfare against all Muslims that disputed Wahhabi teachings .
Nor can Wahhabism be regarded as a movement of "purification" or "renewal ," as the source of the genuinely revivalist movements that were underway at the time.
Not until Saudi oil money was placed at the disposal of its propagandists did Wahhabism find an echo outside the Arabian Peninsula.
The author discusses the rise of Wahhabism at the hands of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab, a native of Najd in the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula, the doctrines he elaborated to serve as the basis of the Wahhabi sect, and the alliance he concluded with the Saudi family, then rulers of the principality of alDir'iya.
An early result of this union was a creeping conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, misnamed as jihad; it culminated in the sacking of Taif and the occupation of Mecca in 1803.
This first Wahhabi occupation was short-lived but Wahhabism triumphed anew with the foundation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1925.
Among the extensions of Wahhabism beyond Arabia must be accounted the perverse and brutal regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
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Hamid Algar, born in England in 1940, received his formal training in Islamic studies at Cambridge University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1965. Since 1965, he has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.
This is incorrect, for at the very outset the movement was stigmatized as aberrant by the leading Sunni scholars of the day, because it rejected many of the traditional beliefs and practices of Sunni Islam and declared permissible warfare against all Muslims that disputed Wahhabi teachings .
Nor can Wahhabism be regarded as a movement of "purification" or "renewal ," as the source of the genuinely revivalist movements that were underway at the time.
Not until Saudi oil money was placed at the disposal of its propagandists did Wahhabism find an echo outside the Arabian Peninsula.
The author discusses the rise of Wahhabism at the hands of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab, a native of Najd in the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula, the doctrines he elaborated to serve as the basis of the Wahhabi sect, and the alliance he concluded with the Saudi family, then rulers of the principality of alDir'iya.
An early result of this union was a creeping conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, misnamed as jihad; it culminated in the sacking of Taif and the occupation of Mecca in 1803.
This first Wahhabi occupation was short-lived but Wahhabism triumphed anew with the foundation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1925.
Among the extensions of Wahhabism beyond Arabia must be accounted the perverse and brutal regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
---
Hamid Algar, born in England in 1940, received his formal training in Islamic studies at Cambridge University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1965. Since 1965, he has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001
Question:
The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski:
Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979.
But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.
And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them.
However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.
Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Translated from the French by Bill Blum.
The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski:
Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979.
But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.
And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them.
However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.
Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Translated from the French by Bill Blum.
Afghanistan, the CIA, Bin Laden,
and the Taliban
by Phil Gasper
International Socialist Review, November-December 2001
Devil's Game:
How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam
americanempireproject.com
www.robertdreyfuss.com/thebook
www.google.com
The Book
"A worthy addition to Metropolitan's American Empire Project: a devastating account that policymakers-not to mention American citizens-ignore at their peril." Kirkus Reviews
I wrote Devil’s Game to fill in a gap amid the millions of words that have been written about political Islam and U.S. policy since September 11, 2001.
It’s the story before the story, and it helps answer the question: How did we get into this mess? It’s my contention that part of the answer to that question, at least, is that for half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
I approached this book not as an historian, but as a journalist. A great deal of it is based on scores of interviews with men and women from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. military, and the private sector who participated in many of these events. And I relied on dozens of published works. Most of the sources I interviewed are quoted on the record, and virtually every fact in the book is footnoted.
For those who wonder how it is possible that the United States now supports a regime in Iraq run by hard-core Islamists, by Shiite fundamentalists supported by Iran’s ayatollahs, at least some of the answers will be found in this book.
For those who worry that Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Pakistan, and other Middle East and South Asia countries could fall to Iran-style Islamic revolution, at least some of the reasons why this is a real possibility will be found in this book.
For those who wonder about the worldwide support system for Osama bin Laden’s movement, at least some of the background about how that system came to be will be found in Devil’s Game.
Today it’s convenient to speak about a Clash of Civilizations. But in Devil’s Game I show that in the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.
In the 1950s, the United States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains. But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.
A second big mistake that emerges in Devil’s Game occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And, as described in a groundbreaking chapter in Devil’s Game, Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.
Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But as Devil’s Game shows, America’s alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.
Would the Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the virulence of the movement that we now confront—and which confronts many of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and beyond—would have been significantly less had the United States made other choices during the Cold War.
So what can the United States do now? It can start by not making things worse. It can withdraw from Iraq, and so remove the most important recruiting tool that Al Qaeda has. It can vastly reduce its military presence in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. It can work to reduce irritants that anger Muslims and fuel hatred and bitterness, above all by facilitating the creation of a viable Palestinian state and by working to ease conflicts on the fringes of the Muslim world, from the Philippines to Indonesia to Kashmir to Sudan.
Toward the end of Devil’s Game, I put forward what I believe are some constructive ideas about how to deal with the challenge posed by the Islamic right. But at the very least, it is my hope that Americans learn that the ultimate solution does not involve the U.S. armed forces. It will take many decades of nation-building and religion-building in the Middle East before enlightened, secular forces manage to eclipse the benighted forces of political Islam. Hopefully, at least, the United States won’t get in the way.
"A worthy addition to Metropolitan's American Empire Project: a devastating account that policymakers-not to mention American citizens-ignore at their peril." Kirkus Reviews
I wrote Devil’s Game to fill in a gap amid the millions of words that have been written about political Islam and U.S. policy since September 11, 2001.
It’s the story before the story, and it helps answer the question: How did we get into this mess? It’s my contention that part of the answer to that question, at least, is that for half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
I approached this book not as an historian, but as a journalist. A great deal of it is based on scores of interviews with men and women from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. military, and the private sector who participated in many of these events. And I relied on dozens of published works. Most of the sources I interviewed are quoted on the record, and virtually every fact in the book is footnoted.
For those who wonder how it is possible that the United States now supports a regime in Iraq run by hard-core Islamists, by Shiite fundamentalists supported by Iran’s ayatollahs, at least some of the answers will be found in this book.
For those who worry that Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Pakistan, and other Middle East and South Asia countries could fall to Iran-style Islamic revolution, at least some of the reasons why this is a real possibility will be found in this book.
For those who wonder about the worldwide support system for Osama bin Laden’s movement, at least some of the background about how that system came to be will be found in Devil’s Game.
Today it’s convenient to speak about a Clash of Civilizations. But in Devil’s Game I show that in the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.
In the 1950s, the United States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains. But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.
A second big mistake that emerges in Devil’s Game occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And, as described in a groundbreaking chapter in Devil’s Game, Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.
Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But as Devil’s Game shows, America’s alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.
Would the Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the virulence of the movement that we now confront—and which confronts many of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and beyond—would have been significantly less had the United States made other choices during the Cold War.
So what can the United States do now? It can start by not making things worse. It can withdraw from Iraq, and so remove the most important recruiting tool that Al Qaeda has. It can vastly reduce its military presence in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. It can work to reduce irritants that anger Muslims and fuel hatred and bitterness, above all by facilitating the creation of a viable Palestinian state and by working to ease conflicts on the fringes of the Muslim world, from the Philippines to Indonesia to Kashmir to Sudan.
Toward the end of Devil’s Game, I put forward what I believe are some constructive ideas about how to deal with the challenge posed by the Islamic right. But at the very least, it is my hope that Americans learn that the ultimate solution does not involve the U.S. armed forces. It will take many decades of nation-building and religion-building in the Middle East before enlightened, secular forces manage to eclipse the benighted forces of political Islam. Hopefully, at least, the United States won’t get in the way.
The Saudi-American Alliance
Meeting with members of a U.S. medical delegation in Riyadh on January 10, 1937, King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud told them: “I love your country and admire your president (Franklin D. Roosevelt), and am very grateful for the services which members of your mission have shown me and my people. You come wanting only to help us.” The leader of the U.S. delegation noted in his memoirs: “His cordiality took my breath away, and I could say nothing more than that I hoped the friendship would continue.” And as history has shown, the Saudi-U.S. friendship has not only continued but has weathered many storms, including numerous regional and global conflicts and crises, developing into a relationship that today spans the fields of politics, economics, education, technology and other areas of human endeavor. And as the relationship of these two nations matured, it has reflected the ideals of independence, justice and peace that are cornerstones of the United Nations Charter.
The origin of this friendship is rooted in King Abdulaziz's admiration for President Woodrow Wilson and his call for self-determination for nations at a time when much of the world, particularly the Middle East and North Africa, was burdened with colonialism. Realizing that he needed help in developing the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which he had established on September 23, 1932, King Abdulaziz saw the United States as an emerging global power that, unlike the European nations, espoused principles of liberty and self-determination for developing nations and had no colonial ambitions. King Abdulaziz based his perception of the United States on Wilson’s refusal to condone the partitioning of the Middle East among the Allied victors of World War I and his call for granting the Arabs self-determination. He was also influenced by the positive impressions left by the Americans he had met in the 1920s, including philanthropist Charles R. Crane, who helped established the first desalination plant to supply drinking water to Jeddah, and geologist Karl Twitchell, who in his quest for underground water aquifers encountered evidence of the existence of oil in the Kingdom.
Looking for a foreign company to help develop the Kingdom’s oil reserves, King Abdulaziz chose not one of the many British firms that were already working in the region - in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain - but an American company, a choice made over the objections of Britain, then the dominant global power. The granting of the oil concession on July 7, 1933, to Standard Oil of California, which would evolve into the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), was followed in November of the same year by the establishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States. The outbreak of World War II had short-term repercussions for Saudi Arabia in that it halted exports of the limited quantities of oil the Kingdom’s new fields were producing in the 1930s and impeded the pilgrimage to the Holy Mosque in Makkah. But the war also had an unexpected effect on relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
In the pre-war years, the existence of oil in the Kingdom and its extraction by an American company shaped the nature of these relations. Forcing the United States as it did into the position of a global power, the war and its conduct, also helped the United States realize the Kingdom’s important geopolitical position. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1943: “I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.” He said these words at a time when the great extent of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves was unknown. The meeting between King Abdulaziz and President Roosevelt on board the USS Quincy on February 14, 1945, in the waning days of the war, launched a new chapter in Saudi-U.S. relations. The long hours the two men spent together discussing a wide range of issues, particularly the future of Palestine, which was a British mandate at the time, marked the beginning of a unique relationship. It not only provided an opportunity to establish a personal friendship that lasted until President Roosevelt’s death, but also allowed the two leaders and senior officials from the two countries to realize the extent to which the vital interests of their nations coincided, and indeed were intertwined. That historic meeting set a precedent. Since then, every Saudi King has met with the current U.S. president, and the tone of their talks has echoed the frank and friendly discussions of King Abdulaziz and President Roosevelt.
Following the war, Saudi Arabia’s oil exports grew steadily, providing the funds needed to bring about the development that King Abdulaziz had envisioned for his Kingdom. Embarking on an ambitious development program in industry, agriculture, health care, education and other areas, the Kingdom turned to the United States for assistance. Soon, American companies and experts would be involved in building a modern infrastructure, including roads, airports, sea ports, industrial cities and telecommunications facilities, as well as universities, hospitals and other ventures. Of the 1,300 trillion dollars Saudi Arabia has spent on the development of its infrastructure and human resources since the introduction of the First Five-Year Development Plan in 1970, a sizeable portion has gone to American companies and experts. At the same time, trade flourished. The United States became Saudi Arabia’s principal trading partner, exporting to it billions of dollars worth of goods and services every year, while importing a sizable portion of its crude oil needs from the Kingdom. Saudi Arabian imports from the U.S. rose from a few million dollars a year at the time of the 1945 meeting to more than eight billion dollars in 1999. Considering that the U.S. Labor Department estimates that each one billion dollars in exports provides jobs for 10,000 American workers, the hundreds of billions of dollars of goods and services the Kingdom has imported from the United States in recent decades gives some indication of the significance of the close economic relations between the two countries.
One of the primary components of the Saudi-U.S. relationship has always been oil. In the years immediately following the 1945 meeting, most of the oil requirement of the United States was supplied by domestic production, and the remainder imported from Mexico, Venezuela and producers other than Saudi Arabia, which was a relatively small exporter of oil. Later, as domestic oil production in the United States declined and the extent of Saudi oil reserves became apparent - Saudi Arabia now has a quarter of the world’s proven oil reserves - U.S. imports of Saudi oil grew steadily. Another aspect of Saudi Arabia’s significance to the economic well-being of the United States, and indeed the whole world, is the role the Kingdom has historically played in the oil market. Committed to ensuring the stability of supplies and prices on the global market, Saudi Arabia has acted in times of crisis, such as when oil supplies were lost from Iran during the 1979 revolution and from Kuwait as a result of the Iraqi invasion of 1990, to cover any deficiency in supplies by maintaining excess production capacity. By doing so, it has prevented major shocks to the global economy from a loss of oil supplies or sharp price increases.
The growing level of economic cooperation and interdependence between Saudi Arabia and the United States brought a corresponding awareness by each of the two nations of the important role the other played regionally and internationally. In the 1950s and 1960s, both countries viewed communism as the primary threat. During that period, the United States had already emerged as the dominant military power in the non-communist world and was therefore a natural partner for Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, the Kingdom, which enjoys a special status as the birthplace of Islam, the site of the two holiest shrines to Muslims and the heartland of the extended Arab nation, was rapidly acquiring a dominant role in the Islamic and Arab worlds, as well as among all developing nations, with many countries increasingly looking to it for leadership and guidance. These qualities made the Kingdom a desirable ally for the United States.
With the Middle East and North Africa mired in revolutions and coups, the Soviet Union loomed as a real threat to the region, both directly and indirectly, through Moscow’s many proxies. This threat brought Saudi Arabia and the United States closer together in an effort to avert it and to bring stability to the region. The main domestic threat to regional peace and stability over the past half century has been the Arab-Israeli conflict and the two wars it spawned in 1967 and 1973. An ardent supporter since the time of King Abdulaziz of the rights of the Palestinians to a homeland and self-determination, Saudi Arabia has advocated settling the dispute through negotiations based on the principle of land-for-peace and United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, and has encouraged various U.S. administrations to become actively engaged in ending the conflict. In this respect, leaders from the two countries have been in constant contact to find a solution to this crisis.
Already working together in the economic, political and security fields, relations between the two countries have entered a new and closer phase over the past two decades. The catalyst for this was two events in 1979 — the Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — that posed a serious threat to stability and security in the region. The start of the Iran-Iraq War and the taking of American hostages by Iranian revolutionaries in 1980 compounded the sense of instability in the region. In the following years, Saudi Arabia and the United States worked closely together to confront Iran’s attempts to export its revolution, help the people of Afghanistan fight the Soviet occupation, and contain the Iran-Iraq war and the threat it posed to the unimpeded delivery of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to the United States and the rest of the world.
Having worked together to successfully contain these crisis, Saudi Arabia and the United States were confronted with another and far more serious problem when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and threatened to attack Saudi Arabia. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd bin Abdulaziz and President George Bush led a diplomatic campaign to forge a coalition of Arab, Muslim, European and other nations to confront Iraq and free Kuwait. The successful completion of this joint endeavor restored Kuwait’s freedom, but did not restore that country’s ability to export oil as retreating Iraqi forces had set fire to 600 of Kuwait’s 900 producing wells. During the conflict and in the following year, Saudi Arabia stepped in to compensate the lost production from Kuwait and Iraq, and thus averted a major global economic catastrophe.
The past decade has witnessed the continuing evolution of Saudi-U.S. relations. Over that period, Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, entered into a joint venture with Texaco Inc., which was later joined by Shell Oil Company, to form a downstream company that refined some 800,000 barrels per day of crude oil at four refineries and distributed the products through thousands of gasoline stations in 26 states in the eastern and southern parts of the United States. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has continued to grant large contracts to U.S. companies for the purchase of goods and services. For example the national airline, Saudi Arabian Airlines, recently took delivery of the last of 61 jetliners it had purchased under a contract worth six billion dollars with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, and American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) was granted a contract worth four billion dollars for expansion of the Kingdom’s telecommunications network. Earlier this year, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), which was established in 1999 to encourage more joint ventures with and greater investments from American and other companies, issued a license to a consortium of U.S. companies to build 3,000 new schools at a cost of 3.5 billion dollars.
In June of this year, King Fahd chaired a meeting of the Higher Economic Council that approved the signing of a long-term contract with American oil companies for the development of the gas sector. The agreement involves tens of billions of dollars of investments in desalination and power generation plants, and the development of natural gas and petrochemicals. The most recent example of the close relationship that has developed between the two nations is Saudi Arabia’s reaction to the tragic events of the September 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Shortly after the event, Saudi Arabia strongly condemned these “regrettable and inhuman bombings and attacks,” and offered sincere condolences to the families of the victims, to U.S. President George W. Bush and to the American people in general. On September 14, King Fahd sent a cable of condolences to President Bush in which he conveyed the great sorrow and grief with which the Kingdom was following reports of the terrorist attacks. Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz on September 13 spoke by telephone with President Bush and said the Kingdom would cooperate fully with the United States to find those responsible for the terrorist attacks.
In the months since the attacks, Saudi Arabia has supported U.S. military action in Afghanistan and cooperated with U.S. authorities in the hunt for the perpetrators of these and other terrorist attacks. As part of the close cooperation between the two sides, King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah met separately with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Riyadh, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al-Faisal visited Washington, DC, to assure President Bush of Saudi Arabia’s full cooperation in the fight against terrorism.  |
The Anglo-Saudi Alliance
British India Office Political and Secret Files,
1914-1939
The archives of the Political and Secret Department of the India Office are an outstanding source for the history of the Saudi state.
This is the first time the major files have been made available in their entirety in one series.
The material in this collection consists of confidential printed reports, maps, memoranda, and handbooks, together with Political and Secret Department policy files describing the wider context of international relations, as well as the practical details of an expanding political administration and social and economic infrastructure.
Nineteenth-Century Arabia
One of the reasons the Ottomans were unsuccessful [against the Wahaabis] was the growing British interest in Arabia.
The British government in India considered the Persian Gulf to be its western flank and so became increasingly involved with the piracy of the Arab tribes on the eastern coast.
The British were also anxious about potentially hostile Ottoman influence in an area so close to India and the Suez Canal.
As a result, the British came into increasing contact with the Al Saud.
As Wahhabi leaders, the Al Saud could exert some control over the tribes on the gulf coast, and they were simultaneously [fighting against] the Ottomans.
Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud
Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi
I. INTRODUCTION:
One of the most rigid and reactionary sects in all of Islam today is Wahhabism. It is the official and dominant sect in Saudi Arabia whose sole constitution is the Holy Qur’an.
Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia’s ruling House of Saud have been intimately and permanently intertwined since their births. Wahhabism created the Saudi monarchy, and the House of Saud spread Wahhabism. One could not have existed without the other. Wahhabism gives the House of Saud legitimacy, and the House of Saud protects and promotes Wahhabism. The two are inseparable because each supports the other and depends on it for survival.
Unlike Islam in other Muslim countries, however, Wahhabism treats women as third class citizens, imposes the veil on them, and denies them basic human rights such as: driving cars; the freedom of traveling within the country or leaving it without permission or Mahram (“a relative male chaperon”); the interaction with men who are not related to them in order to maintain a complete separation of the sexes; and until a few decades ago denied them public education and banned them from Radio and Television.
In addition, unlike other Islamic sects, Wahhabism outlaws the celebration of Almoulid (Prophet Mohammad’s Birthday); forbids religious freedom, opposes political freedom of expression by constantly admonishing Saudis to obey their leaders (who are not even elected); bans movie theaters; forces the public and businesses to observe prayers; cows the masses by publicly using the harshest Islamic punishments (applied mostly to the poor, like all other punishments) such as the beheading for convicted killers and the hand-amputation for thieves; denies the Saudi citizenship to non-Muslims; and condoned slavery until the 1960s. Wahhabism also abhors smoking, singing, and dancing.
To ensure full compliance of its stern ordinances, the Wahhabi “Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” with its religious police keeps a watchful eye on the Saudi public.
Wahhabism is highly self-centered and extremely intolerant of progressive ideologies, other religions, and other Islamic sects such as Shiism and Sufism.
It despises Arab Nationalism with a great deal of passion, yet it promotes “Saudi” nationalism, despite the fact that any nationalism is considered a violation of Islamic theology due to the concept of Islamic Ummah (“nation”). Wahhabism considers itself to be the only correct way in all of Islam, and any Muslim who opposes it as heretic or non-believer.
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