Implications of al Qaeda assault on al Khobar

The attack on al Khobar (Saudi Arabia) last weekend attributed to al Qaida left scores of people dead and many others injured. This prompted Saudi leaders to take action, among others, to crack down on an Islamic charity, and to create a commission to manage private charitable works abroad. The new commission will be subject to strict legal and financial oversight and will operate according to clear policies to ensure that charitable funds to assist the needy are not misused.

Simultaneously the US Treasury department announced that five additional branches of al Haramain, which had been the target of sanction in the past, would be placed on the terrorist black list because of "financial, material and logistical support they provided to the al Qaeda network and other terrorist organisations." The five Al Haramain branches are located in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and the Netherlands. Though the Saudi government had last year ordered al Haramain to close down its overseas branches, subsequent monitoring had shown that several were still in operation.

The possible collaboration by rogue elements from among Islamic extremists in Bangladesh is particularly disquieting because of the efforts by successive Bangladeshi governments to project the image of the country as a tolerant Muslim nation which has no sympathy with the al Qaeda Islamist agenda. It is however getting increasingly difficult to maintain this image due to recent activities of terrorists like Bangla Bhai, who, despite arrest order from the top, has remained elusive, and also because of the most recent unearthing of an Islamic militant training centre in the dense forests of Chittagong.

It has been argued that one should not be surprised at the increasing activities of the Islamists because of the relief they got immediately after the independence of Bangladesh when they were pardoned and subsequently rehabilitated into the mainstream politics of Bangladesh after the post-August 1975 change-over, which also witnessed the constitutional amendment replacing secularism (one of the fundamental principles of state policy) with the words "the principle of absolute trust and faith in the All mighty Allah."

Considering the fact that Bangladesh is overwhelmingly populated by Muslims, it would be difficult to establish a premise that the deletion of secularism as a state principle had necessarily encouraged Islamic resurgence in the country. After all, India which prides the secular character of her constitution, has had until recently a government whose ideology is wedded to Hindutva, a controversial concept not only among the minority communities, but also among large number of Hindus living in India and abroad. But then if one accepts the argument that the religion followed by the majority community in a country should be allowed disproportionate influence in the governance of that country, then it would be difficult to find fault with the seven European states led by Italy who would like inclusion of a reference to the "Christian roots of Europe" in the proposed EU constitution and also to Giscard d'Estaing's attitude on the question of the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. Perhaps, the developing countries are somewhat reluctant to believe that the West, living in the post-development and post-modern era, can be anything but secular despite Bosnia, Kosovo, and Croatian tragedies in which religious differences played no insignificant role.

Repeated al Qaeda onslaught on Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia, and other places could be explained by heightened security precautions taken by the West to counter even plausible threats, making the undertaking of terrorist activities in these countries extremely difficult, as opposed to less strident counter-terrorism measures in the developing Muslim countries coupled with hesitancy to treat even Muslim terrorists ( having subterranean support and sympathy from among a section of the local populace) as implacable enemies, making these countries "soft target" for al Qaeda operatives. In the case of Saudi Arabia, some analysts believe that terrorist attacks in al Khobar underlines, not only growing vulnerability of the Saudi regime, but also the increasing risk this poses to the world's oil supply, and by extension, to global economic stability.

Robert Baer, a former CIA field director (and author of the book The Fall of the House of Saud) has suggested "If an election were held today ... Osama bin Laden would be elected by a landslide. Saudi oil is controlled by an increasingly bankrupt, criminal, dysfunctional and out-of-touch royal family that is hated by the people it rules and by the nations that surround the Kingdom." It is also argued that Saudi dependence on the skills of the expatriates in running the Kingdom increases the vulnerability of the Kingdom's prosperity if al Qaeda succeeds in scaring off the non-Muslims and Westerners who contribute significantly to the Kingdom's economy.

Perhaps Prince Saud al Faisal's reference to "instant experts" and their attacks on Saudi Arabia "as a country where everything is wrong and their people can not recognise their problems, let alone solve them" was directed at the likes of Robert Baer. Prince Saud pointed out that Osama bin Laden, though Saudi by birth had developed his ideology and methodology not in Saudi religious schools but in Afghanistan under the tutelage of the radicalized cult of Muslim Brotherhood. While historian Bernard Lewis describes Wahabism, embraced by the Saudi rulers, as a "rejection of modernity in favour of a return to the sacred past," Prince Saud argues that even the most extremist religious elements within Saudi Arabia that are against modernity completely reject al Qaeda ideology and methodology.

Despite array of defense one can put up in favour of the Saudi ruling class there is no escaping the fact that increasingly the West is being made aware of Saudi "fundamentalism" and its cognitive effects. Michael Doran of Princeton University sees Saudi Arabia in the throes of a crisis where population growth out paces the economy, welfare state is rapidly deteriorating, and regional and sectarian resentments are rising to the fore. Doran also sees cultural schizophrenia preventing the elite from agreeing on the specifics of the reforms, and the Saudi monarchy functioning as an intermediary between two distinct political communities: a westernised elite that looks to Europe and the US as models of political development and a Wahabi religious establishment, beholden to the pristine days of Islam.

In this chaos of ideas the Protean Enemy (the term used by Jessica Stern of Harvard University to describe al Qaeda) has stepped in with remarkable alacrity to spread its contagion of terror among the deprived and the disenfranchised. Stern is impressed by al Qaeda's protean nature by constantly evolving and adapting its missions where the leaders harness humiliation and anomie and turn them into weapons. Jihad becomes addictive and for some, over time grievances evolve into greed for money, political power, status or attention. Jessica Stern chides the US for too often ignoring the unintended consequences of its actions, for example, in post-Saddam Iraq and advises the promotion of, like Joseph Nye (of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) "soft power" i.e. to set the political agenda in a way that shapes the preferences of others, ability to entice and attract through promotion of superior values etc.

As the continuing saga in Iraq shows, Kaganite muscularity alone will not win the day. On the contrary, as Marc Lynch of Williams College advises, the US may wish to approach regional public diplomacy in a fundamentally new way, opening a direct dialogue with the Arab and the Muslim world through its already existing and increasingly influential transnational media. He further advises that the US should speak with the Arabs and not at them. But then again no amount of dialogue would have the desired effect on the Arab and the Muslim world without tangible change in the US policy on the Palestinian question. Additionally the West has to learn not to equate Islam and Islamic fundamentalism -- a standard not applied to Judaism and Christianity. Nor does the West have to accept as Gospel truth Bernard Lewis' assertion that Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship, or accept Lewis' thesis that the two religions are necessarily contestant world religions, distinctive civilisations, and genuine rivals for global leadership.

Even if one were to partially accept the thesis of a clash of civilisations between Islam and Christianity in which the West (collectively the Christendom) has far outpaced the Islamic world, the West must take into account that the decisive battle is taking place within Muslim civilisation where ultraconservatives compete with moderates and democrats for the soul of the Muslim public. The assault in al Khobar is a page from this continuing saga. The world has little choice but to fight against the Faustian bargain of mortgaging the soul of the civilised world to the evil represented by religious extremists. In the ultimate analysis, persuasion rather than force, co-operation rather than dictation are more likely to assure a restless world of stability needed so sorely by the fractured part of the globe still mired in poverty and despair.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.