Can You Really Trust Your Ally?

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Can You Really Trust Your Ally?

The author is an expert on international affairsand author of bookson the Middle East/North Africa region

Fractured U.S.-Saudi relationship exposes divergences By Hichem Karoui

As U.S. President Barack Obama visited Saudi Arabia, intending to mend relations exhausted by his criticism of the Middle East major power, a controversy erupted about the credibility of the U.S.-Saudi alliance. The controversy goes back to the terrorist attacks on the American soil 15 years ago on September 11.

The 28 pages missing (actually censored) from the famous 9/11 report released in 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States have never fallen into oblivion. Whether the purpose of those who decided to remove them from the final report was to avoid accusations unsupported by strong evidence, or to conceal some embarrassing facts from public scrutiny, the failure to reach any of these objectives is obvious. They actually succeeded in fueling resentment against Saudi Arabia, while endowing conspiracy theoreticians and their followers with real “firepower.” Just search the words “9/11 report 28 missing pages” on the Internet. You will get 2,500,000 results in less than one second.

That is why efforts to declassify those pages have never ceased. The website 28pages.org cites Congressman Thomas Massie describing the 28 pages as “shocking.” He said, “I had to stop every couple of pages and…try to rearrange my understanding of history. It challenges you to rethink everything.” Similar pages on the Internet, calling for action against Saudi Arabia, which is being held partially responsible for 9/11, have fed upon such ambiguity.

Though Director of the Commission Philip Zelikow characterized the 28 pages as “an agglomeration of preliminary, unvetted reports”concerning Saudi involvement, the tension has been nourished by disappointment after disappointment: G. W. Bush invading Iraq against the will and the warnings of his Saudi friends; then his successor, Obama, who “turned his back” on the Middle East and failed to show up when U.S. power was most needed.

In Riyadh, they think the campaign for the release of the 28 pages, linked to a bill under discussion in Congress that would allow 9/11 victims and their family members to sue the Saudi Kingdom, is part of a cabal led by the anti-Arab lobby in Washington, D.C.

Grievances accumulated against the Obama administration. The two nations are strong allies, but the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran and the rift over Syria have put a strain on historically amicable relations.

Some of Obama’s declarations concerning the Middle East and specifically the Saudis, reported in the article The Obama Doctrine this April by The Atlantic, were very badly received in Saudi Arabia. Obama has accused Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states of funding Wahhabist madrasas and seminaries that “teach the fundamentalist version of Islam favored by the Saudi ruling family.” Although he was talking about Indonesia, it was clear that the issue also concerned many countries with Muslim majorities or minorities.

Obama was cited overtly criticizing the Saudi regime for “oppressing” half of its population (women). While he maintained that the Saudis were allies of the United States, he seemed very concerned (not to say suspicious) about their overall actions in the Middle East and the way they dealt with conflicts, based on sectarian and tribal interests, which he considers destructive. Ostensibly, in Obama’s eyes, Saudi Arabia is not ready to lead Arabs and non-Arab Muslims; not only because it is failing its own people, but also because of the “violent, radical, fanatical, nihilistic interpretation of Islam by a faction” and the Saudi inability to lead and “challenge that interpretation of Islam.”

But maybe the words that most infuriated them concerned his statement on an agreement between Iranians and Saudis, when the latter expected the United States to take their side. Obama said, “The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians—which helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen—requires us to say to our friends as well as to the Iranians, that they need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace.”

Normally, such a statement would be interpreted as suggesting a possible mediation between the two rivals for a peaceful ending of their sectarian conflicts. But in the present climate of high tension, it just reaped more resentment and two noticeably angry answers. The first was by former Director of Saudi intelligence and ex-Ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faysal, in an article called Mr. Obama, We Are Not ‘Free Riders’ published by Asharq Al Awsat in March. The second was delivered in the same month by Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir, Saudi Foreign Minister, during a trip to Washington, D.C. According to several reports, he told the media that the Saudi Government would be forced to sell off almost $1 trillion in U.S. assets if Congress makes it legal to hold Saudi citizens accountable for 9/11.

In short, allies can hardly stay friends with such grievances. They need to amend their divergences in order to work together cogently and efficiently.

Copyedited by Dominic James Madar

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