Inside Saudi Arabia

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Yet nothing has threatened to shake the foundations of the al Saud rule like the challenge posed by the latest generation of Islamic militants. While bin Laden never concentrated on building a political organization, he is loosely connected to like-minded comrades inside the kingdom, from fellow veterans of the Afghan war to a network of fiery young mid-rank clerics who share his views on fighting America and destroying Israel. It was the upshot of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait that ignited their anger. King Fahd's agreement to act as host to U.S. troops, bin Laden charged, revealed the al Sauds' inability to defend the kingdom and its unholy dependence on infidels. Al Saud fundamentalism was not correct enough for bin Laden, who decried the government's corruption and crackdown on dissident clerics. "The core of our disagreement with you," bin Laden wrote Fahd in 1995, "is your abandonment of the duties to the religion of the One True God." By then, bin Laden had fled the kingdom and been stripped of his Saudi nationality.

To enforce Saddam's continued isolation, some 6,000 U.S. troops remain in the kingdom, and the eviction of the "Crusader" forces is one of bin Laden's oft-repeated aims. Bomb attacks at U.S. facilities in Riyadh in 1995 and at Khobar Towers in 1996 left 24 Americans dead; bin Laden's role in the blasts, if any, is sketchy. The Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. left Saudi officials almost as stunned as they were by the roll of Saddam's tanks 11 years earlier. "What shocks me most," says a Saudi diplomat, "is why they hit America and not us."

Caught between America and bin Laden: for Saudi rulers there could hardly be more uncomfortable terrain. Hence, the Saudis have been lobbying Washington against broad attacks on terrorist bases in the Middle East and downplaying the possible use of the state-of-the-art Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh for strikes. In the belief that President Bush's seeming ambivalence toward the Palestinian cause helped inflame tensions before Sept. 11, the Saudis are appealing for much stronger U.S. pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state. "Wake up, and look at what you are doing in the Middle East," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, an investor with more than $11 billion in U.S. holdings, said to TIME last week. "Arabs and Muslims have become frustrated."

Saudi officials bitterly complain that America's automatic backing for Israel makes close Saudi ties with Washington a hard sell for their people. Still, much could be done to get the House of Saud in order and head off internal threats. While Crown Prince Abdullah, 78, has been instituting economic reforms and trimming perks like free air travel from the estimated 30,000 members of the extended clan, the public still gripes about rampant official corruption, ranging from taking commissions on arms deals to muscling in on private businessmen. Sclerosis in royal succession is also a problem: because tradition hands the reign from one son of Ibn Saud to another, the current King, 80, and the next three in line are all well past Western retirement age.