Do We Still Need the Saudis?

People in Saudi Arabia are sick of talking about Sept. 11. They have little interest in examining why 15 of their countrymen hijacked U.S. commercial planes and killed 3,000 civilians; many prefer to believe that the attacks were the work of the CIA or the Mossad, and that the 15 hijackers were unwitting players in someone else's plot. "They were just bodies," a senior government official says. Spend an evening in Jidda, the hometown of Osama bin Laden, where young Saudis today flock to American chain restaurants and shopping malls to loiter away the stifling summer nights, and you rarely hear bin Laden's name. "They find it silly when people talk about al-Qaeda," says journalist Mohammed al-Kheriji, 28, as he sips a latte at the city's newest Starbucks. "People are worried about their own problems."

But while Saudis remain uninterested--or perhaps they're in a state of denial--in the level of Saudi participation in Sept. 11, the country seethes with open loathing for the U.S. and sympathy for bin Laden's cause. Signs of anti-Western militancy are rife throughout this vast kingdom, from the capital, Riyadh--where in June separate car bombs blew up a British banker outside his home and nearly killed an American expatriate--to Abha, a remote mountain city in the southern province of Asir, where four of the hijackers were raised and locals still celebrate all "the Fifteen," as the group is called. "Their friends are really proud of them," says Ghazi al Gamdhi, 22, a university student. "They think the Fifteen were protecting Islam. Most of the guys here want to become heroes protecting Islam."

In recent weeks Saudi militants have resumed their campaign against one of the original sources of bin Laden's wrath: the 6,000 American troops stationed on Saudi soil. In June, after U.S. investigators discovered the spent casing of a Russian-made surface-to-air missile lying in the desert near the Prince Sultan air base, Saudi intelligence arrested 11 Saudi members of an al-Qaeda cell for plotting to shoot down U.S. jets that use the facility and for preparing attacks against other American targets in the kingdom. It was the first official acknowledgment since Sept. 11 that the organization is active in Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom's latent anti-Americanism has been stoked in recent months by fierce opposition to the Bush Administration's pro-Israel Middle East policies and the perceived harassment of Muslims in the U.S. The country's powerful fundamentalist clerics have used these issues to agitate the masses. Government officials are worried that the country's imams are slipping beyond their control. "Six months ago, you could call them in and say, 'Cut it out,'" says a senior Saudi official. "But now you have hundreds of imams condemning the U.S. at prayers every Friday. How can you stop that?"