			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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STORM OVER ARABIA
By 
Eric Margolis 2 July 1996

BARCELONA - The bombing on Tuesday of a US military complex
at Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen
and wounding scores of others, has produced the usual calls
for yet another war on terrorism.  President Clinton, who
was attending the photo-op G-7 summit at Lyon this week,
immediately seized on the attack to promote his election
campaign and image of firm-jawed statesmanship.

More speeches, and sending planeloads of FBI agents to Saudi
Arabia won't end the growing instability of the world's
largest oil exporter.  This is the second bombing of a US
military target in seven months, and a sure sign of growing
internal opposition in Saudi Arabia to the US presence.

The Saudi royal family claims the bombing was the work of
its hated enemy, Iran, or perhaps Iraq.  The Saudis made the
same claim after the last bombing, in November, only to
later produce four Saudis, with no links to Iran or Iraq, as
the perpetrators.  They were beheaded.  As of this writing,
the latest bombing appears to be the work of a shadowy
internal opposition group.

The Saudi opposition is deep underground.  The highly
repressive Saudi regime tolerates no opposition, no matter
how mild.  Political dissidents are routinely tortured, or
charged with drug dealing, and beheaded.

There are two main opposition groups:  educated, middle-
class youth who want to replace the feudal monarchy that
rules Saudi Arabia with a republic or western-style
democracy.  Then there are the violent extremists, also
mainly youths, who gather under the banner of political
Islam.  They want to overthrow the Saudi royal family, expel
its American protectors, bring in an Islamic republic, and
raise the price of oil to economically realistic levels.

Both groups are home-grown.  It was the Gulf War, not
Iranian machinations, that brought simmering resentment
against the royal family to a head.  During the war, the US
poured 500,000 troops into Saudi Arabia and used it as a
base for crushing Iraq.  The conflict exposed not only the
total dependence of the Saudis on American protection, it
also revealed the vast infrastructure of secret military
bases the US had built in Saudi Arabia, one of which - the
Abdel Aziz airbase - was bombed on Tuesday.

The Saudi opposition claim they are not terrorists, but
fighting to liberate their nation from foreign colonial
rule.  They assert the US runs Saudi through its agents, the
royal family.  The royals get American protection and skim
off the nation's oil profits.  In return, they keep the
price of oil artificially low, bank their money in the west,
and buy billions worth of US, British and French that they
cannot use.

The underground points to the little-known fact that the US
took advantage of the Gulf War to get the royal family to
agree to the permanent stationing of 30,000 US military
personnel in the kingdom.  Islamic fundamentalists believe
Arabia, which to Muslims is as holy as Jerusalem is to Jews,
is defiled by the presence of so many infidels, or 'Kufir'. 
Many Saudis violently object to western culture, which they
fear will infect their children with immorality, drugs,
primitive music and even poor nutrition.  Americans, of
course, regard anyone who objects to their pop culture as
demented or religious fanatics.

The US say its troops stationed in Saudi Arabia are merely
there to protect 'the west's vital oil interests' from
malefactors like Iraq and Iran, and denies they play an
internal security role.  In reality, US troops protect the
Saudi royals, who fear their own troops so much that the
Saudi Army is not even given ammunition.  The CIA and FBI
maintain large security operations to protect the Saudi
royal family from foreign agents and, one supposes, their
own people. 

Ironically, the Saudis have themselves to blame for part of
this problem.  In the 1980's, the Saudis funded all sorts of
militant Islamic groups - provided they stayed out of Saudi
Arabia.  The Saudis used these groups to attack Iran, to
fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, and to show their
religious zeal.  The men executed for last November's
bombings turned out to be Saudi veterans of the Afghan Jihad
- known in the Mideast as 'Afghani'.

The 'Afghani' have become the spearheads of resistance
across the Mideast to what many see as western neo-colonial
rule.  The 'Afghani', after all, defeated the Russians, who
were the second biggest colonizer of Muslim lands after the
British.  Now, they aim to kick the Americans out of the
Mideast.

The Americans, however, are not about to go quietly, though
they may somewhat lower their overbearing presence in Saudi. 
No US President can survive a massive increase in the cost
of gasoline.  As the conflict with Iraq showed, Americans
will go to war for cheap gas.  Of course, one day Arabia's
underpriced oil will be exhausted, but as the Americans say,
that's your problem, Mahmoud.

Or as the late, wise, and much-venerated Saudi monarch, King
Faisal observed, 'In one generation we went from riding
camels to riding Cadillacs.  The way we are wasting money, I
fear the next generation will be riding camels again.'

copyright Eric Margolis 1996

*****************************************************************
===========================================================================
Eric Margolis                  Syndicated Columnist/Foreign Affairs Analyst
                               c/o
                               Editorial Dept.
e: emargolis@lglobal.co        The Toronto Sun
                               333 King St. East
                               Toronto, ON.,Canada
                               M5A 3X5
===========================================================================

--=====================_836335190==_--



30 MARGOLIS
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