Saudi Bashing: Homegrown American Sport or An Import Made in Israel?

By Richard H. Curtiss

In 1970 I visited Saudi journalists to get their opinions of Voice of America Arabic programming. One leading Jiddah editor of the time was Mohammad Aziz Dia, one of whose forebears had been an Indonesian who stayed on after completing the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Then in his fifties, the editor was tall, like many Saudis, but with distinctly Indonesian facial features, accentuated by white mustaches and a goatee.

This outspoken journalist solemnly described why, despite his disagreement with much of its content, he felt compelled to listen to VOA's hour-long evening news program. Then, as a tiny smile flickered for just a moment across his truly inscrutable face, he explained that, as the news program ended, he would flee his study. His teen-aged daughter would then settle into his place by the radio to listen to VOA's hour-long program of "music for easy listening."

Suddenly, this solemn Saudi editor, looking in his white robe like my mental picture of Confucius, broke into a perfect imitation of VOA's bouncy host giving a very American-style introduction to a very American piece of popular music.

My survey completed, I cabled back some suggestions to fine tune VOA programs to strengthen the listenership they clearly enjoyed among at least two generations of educated Saudis. My answer from Washington said, in effect, "who cares?" In those days our "targets" were the urbanized audiences of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. The Saudis, for our "inter-cultural communicators," lived on the far side of the moon.

Seven years later, back in Washington, I became aware that another set of "psychological warriors," this time in Jerusalem, had reached a very different conclusion. From the Israeli point of view, Saudi Arabia offered the single greatest long-term threat to Israel's self-proclaimed status as "America's only reliable ally in the Middle East."

The US had had, and would have, close relations with other Arab countries, notably Iraq in the 1950s, Jordan and Lebanon in the 1960s, and Egypt starting in the late 1970s. There were impediments, however, in the form of opportunistic Arab and US politicians, to firm relationships between the US and each of those countries.

In the case of the Saudi-US relationship, although the impediments are there, the need to override them is vital to the national interests of both countries.

The majority of Saudis are Muwahidun (unitarians), who follow a strict school of Islamic practice bearing no relationship to American Unitarianism. Foreigners incorrectly refer to this reforming branch of Islam as "Wahabiism, " after the l8th-century Islamic reformer Abdul Wahab, whose alliance with the House of Saud laid the initial groundwork for the creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

It is fitting that Mecca and Medina, the two cities associated with the life of the Prophet Muhammad, should be under the care of rulers associated with a strict school of Islam. Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has taken as his title, "custodian of the two holy mosques."

As a result, however, the House of Saud pays a steep price for every concession to modernization. Rulers who sent a whole generation of their brightest young people abroad, for the best educations money could buy, were accused by religious leaders at home of succumbing to "westernization."

When the same rulers invested billions of dollars in an infrastructure of modem universities, laboratories and teaching hospitals so that future Saudi students could acquire modern, advanced educations at home, the charges of undue foreign influence continued. For each step forward, the ullema, the religious hierarchy at home, exacts steep concessions from the government.

It is against this background that two recent dramas unfolded in Saudi Arabia. One, on the level of national survival, was the criticism by Saudi Arabia's rivals in the Islamic world of the Saudi government for inviting non-Muslim forces to defend the kingdom from invasion by the Iraqi army that had just overrun Kuwait. The other drama that caught Western media attention was the demonstration by 25 Saudi women who drove themselves through the Saudi capital to protest their government's ban on driving by women.

Whatever the personal feelings of King Fahd, and the differences among members of a royal family that now is as large as some parliaments, the necessity to hold fast against religiously motivated criticism of the first decision, a matter of national survival, made it inevitable that the Saudi government would give in to the ullema on the second question, a matter of civil law that can be considered again in less perilous times.

Virtually all Saudis, from princes to the humblest merchants and farmers, know that the United States is the only outside power that can defend their country from aggressive, larger neighbors like Iran and Iraq.

The US needs Saudi Arabia as well. It has the world's largest oil reserves outside the Soviet Union. Its continued viability as one of the three principal players in the Gulf, where 65 percent of the world's oil reserves are situated, is essential to preventing either Iran or Iraq from securing, and probably misusing, a monopoly upon these reserves.

Saudi bashing, whatever its motivation, will be a little harder to get away with in the future.

With the end of the Cold War, there is only one impediment to the US-Saudi relationship, in which Saudi Arabia plays a stabilizing role, keeping the world price of oil from sinking so low that all Western production would cease, or rising so high that the economies of the industrialized countries of the world would be shattered. That sole impediment is Israel's US lobby.

Saudi Arabia pays for what it buys from die US. When it imports sophisticated American industrial or military equipment it not only creates hundreds of thousands of US jobs, it also lays the groundwork for longterm US-Saudi personal relationships. Thousands of Americans who spend years in the kingdom installing and maintaining the equipment develop strong ties with their hosts, as do tens of thousands of Saudis who spend years at American universities, technical institutes and military bases.

Israel's psychological warriors were right. This is a relationship that won't easily be blown away. America now does have another reliable ally in the Middle East. This has been indelibly proven by the Gulf war.

Saudi bashing continues, however. A few years ago, one member of Congress called a special congressional hearing solely to listen to complaints by American contractors against their Saudi employers, American wives against Saudi ex-husbands, and Americans convicted and punished for violations of Saudi law. Many of these people no doubt thought they had legitimate grievances.

When in history, however, have there been congressional hearings to look into legal complaints by Americans against the civil authorities in, for example, Greece, Lebanon, Morocco, Israel, Spain or Turkey? All of these countries have at one time or another hosted large American communities. As a result, all have had many Americans involved in business or civil disputes with their citizens. All have convicted, and jailed, more Americans than has Saudi Arabia. None has been the subject of such congressional scrutiny.

Since the arrival of US military forces, the Saudis have continued to be fair game. At first, journalists speculated that the Saudis would not bear their share of the fighting. Then a Saudi pilot was one of the very first airmen lost in combat. One month into the Gulf war, Saudis had suffered more dead and wounded in ground combat than had Americans, with forces many times larger, or any other participants in the coalition forces.

There were extensive initial media reports that Christian and Jewish troops would not be allowed to observe their religious holidays, even within their own bases. The reality is quite different. Perhaps demonstrating the truth of the old adage that "there are no atheists in foxholes, " large numbers of American soldiers serving in Saudi Arabia have, in fact, embraced religion for the first time in their lives.

Further, with narcotics unobtainable and liquor banned throughout the kingdom, on or off military bases, journalists report that Saudi Arabia has turned into the largest "detoxification" center in the world for alcoholic and drug-addicted members of the US armed forces.

Saudi religious leaders, for their part, have been astonished to discover that some of the American soldiers serving on their soil are practicing Muslims, who have tuned in to the calls to prayer five times a day on Saudi radio, and joined Saudis on their bases for these prayers. Both US and Saudi authorities have quietly noted, also, that a surprising number of non-religious US soldiers have adopted Islam.

War is a disaster that always has unforeseen consequences. One consequence of the Gulf war, however, is both good and predictable. Saudi bashing, whatever its motivation, will be a little harder to get away with in the future. Just as a lot of Saudis have been in the US and know its good as well as its bad sides, now an extra half million Americans will have been to Saudi Arabia. When they see or hear Saudi bashing they'll recognize it for what it is, because they've already met the bashees. Perhaps they'll now want to investigate the motives of the bashers.