STATEMENT
OF
Richard W. Murphy
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
before
THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SPECIAL OVERSIGHT PANEL ON TERRORISM
23
May 2002
Mr.
Chairman, thank you for the invitation to
testify today on the subject of "The Future of
U.S.-Saudi Relations." I welcome the interest
which your Subcommittee has shown in scheduling
this hearing and look forward to our discussion.
I consider the U.S.-Saudi relationship to be an
important one for the advancement of U.S.
interests in the region and have always been
interested in how it could be improved.
I
have been engaged with Saudi Arabia in several
different capacities ever since my assignment as
political officer in the American Embassy to
Saudi Arabia (1963-66). My later service as
Country Director for Arabian Peninsula Affairs
(1967-68), as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
(1981-83) and as Assistant Secretary of State
for the Near East and South Asia (1983-89) kept
me in close contact with the complicated issues
defining Saudi-American relations. I have
visited that country frequently since joining
the staff of the Council on Foreign
Relations.
What
I would like to do is begin with a brief
historical review of U.S. policy, discuss
commonly held views about Saudi Arabia and then
offer some recommendations.
When
I was in government service, "vital U.S.
national interests in the Middle East,"
referred to the security of Israel and access to
the energy sources of the Gulf. To support that
first interest, successive U.S. administrations
have worked to advance the Middle East peace
process recognizing that Israeli security could
only be sustained when a general peace was
established between it and the Arab World. We
sought to develop the closest possible relations
with key Arab countries and move them toward
peaceful acceptance.
As
for the Gulf region, we stated that it was not
in our interest to have any single country
dominate the Gulf and its energy sources. We
worked to assure the flow of oil at acceptable
prices. This proved to be a complicated task
since other foreign policy concerns frequently
clashed with the principle of assuring the free
movement of oil from the Gulf into the
international market. For example, we led the
campaign to impose United Nations sanctions on
Iraq and have maintained our own sanctions on
Iran.
Current
charges against Saudi Arabia
Rarely,
if ever, has the Saudi American relationship
been the target of such sustained and strident
criticism.
It
is asserted that:
1.
Dissidence is widespread within Saudi
Arabia; the regime is tottering and undeserving
of U.S. support given the levels of corruption
and human rights abuse.
2.
Saudi Arabia is no longer prepared to
cooperate with the United States militarily and
such support is unnecessary for a campaign to
topple Saddam Hussein.
3.
Saudi oil is not that important to the
United States. For energy security we should
develop alternative sources.
4.
Saudi Arabia, or at least rich Saudis
including members of the sizable Royal Family,
fund terrorism including al Qaeda, Palestinian
radical movements and suicide bombings of
Israelis.
In addition, Saudi Arabia does not
cooperate in tracking and stopping the funding
of terrorism.
5.
Wahhabism is a fountainhead of
international terrorism.
6.
Crown Prince Abdullah's peace
initiative is a meaningless cynical attempt to
ingratiate Saudi Arabia to the United
States.
I
assume the Committee has heard these charges and
perhaps more. I find them inaccurate and
misleading.
1.
Dissidence
Yes
it exists. It showed itself in 1979 when a group
of Islamic radicals, including Saudis, seized
control of the Great Mosque in Mecca. They
asserted they did so to confront a regime that
they considered corrupt and impious.
Eleven
years later, as Operation Desert Shield was
underway introducing 500,000 American troops and
many other foreign forces to the Kingdom,
preachers in some Saudi mosques inveighed
against the presence of those non-Muslims. This
led to the jailing of a few of those preachers
when they refused to stop their criticism.
Apparently,
neither the American nor the Saudi authorities
realized how widespread anti-Western and,
particularly, anti-American feelings had become
after Desert
Storm. In 1990, the Saudi leadership
rejected Usama bin Laden's proposal to bring a
few thousand fighters from the Afghanistan war
against the Soviets to expel Iraq without the
help of other forces. His anger built as
Washington continued to maintain approximately
5,000 military personnel in the country after
the war. There were warning signs such as the
bombing of the U.S. military advisory office in
Riyadh in 1995, and the al-Khobar barracks in
1996.
The events of 9/11, and the revelation
that Usama bin Laden had gathered so substantial
a following in Saudi Arabia, came as a shock to
both our governments.
Critics
of the U.S.-Saudi relationship charge that
America has supported a corrupt, tyrannical and
failing regime against its own people. It is
important to note that the Royal Family does try
to maintain open channels of communication with
its citizens. The mechanism for this has been
the system of the Majlis,
where local and provincial authorities, the
latter being members of the Royal Family, meet
with the general public at least weekly. At
these sessions the officials receive petitions
for redress, often against government decisions.
This system retains its vitality although,
admittedly, it works best as a way to address
individual grievances and not to hold debates on
national policy. In the mid-nineties, the King
created a Majlis
ashShura, or Consultative Council, to
broaden popular participation in government
councils. That membership is by nomination and
brings together prominent citizens, none of them
from the Royal Family, who are responsible for
reviewing and amending draft government
regulations before they are made official. It is
a consultative, not legislative, authority and
without budget powers. It does have the right to
question cabinet members on the operations of
their departments.
The
Saudi leadership knows better than anyone that
its future can only be assured if it maintains
the loyalty of its citizens.
2.
Military cooperation with Saudi Arabia
In
its effort to bolster Gulf security, Washington
has for decades supported Saudi Arabia against
external aggression. In 1980, just after the
outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war, the President
sent American AWACs to provide early warning of
any Iranian attempt to attack the Eastern
Province of Saudi Arabia. Those planes remained
on station for several years, until the Saudi
government had purchased its own AWACs and
trained its personnel. In 1990-91, Washington
asked for and received full Saudi support for Desert
Shield and Desert
Storm which forced Iraq out of Kuwait.
There
had been even earlier cooperation. Military
training began in the early years of the Cold
War. In 1963-64, we helped when Saudi Arabia
came under pressure from the United Arab
Republic for its support of the Yemeni
royalists. And there has been Saudi support
since Desert
Storm for the operation of "Southern
Watch" over Iraq and since last September for operations in Afghanistan. In this connection, it is useful to
correct the allegation of non-cooperation by
Saudi Arabia during the Afghanistan campaign.
Riyadh did ban the use of Saudi territory as a
base for planes engaged in bombing Afghanistan
as it had done earlier in the case of Iraq.
However, the Saudis did provide access to the
command and control facility at Prince Sultan
Air Base. The Pentagon found this facility
invaluable to its air campaign, along with the
thousands of overflight clearances provided by
the Kingdom.
Saudi
support will be important to any future activity
in Iraq.
The need for Saudi support will depend on
the plans developed by the National Command
Authority.
But Saudi backing can be given in a
number of ways that can ease or hinder American
operations. The kingdom can give or deny
overflight clearances, logistical support, etc.
In addition, other Gulf States will find
it difficult to assist the United States if
Saudi Arabia does not endorse such efforts.
We should be wary of those who say Saudi
support is unnecessary.
Tacit support, at a minimum, will be very
important.
3.
Oil Policy
Gulf
oil producers currently supply about 30% of our
imported oil and Saudi Arabia about 10% of our
total consumption. Saudi Arabia has recently
reiterated its pledge not to use oil as a
political weapon. The only occasion it did so
was in 1973-74, during a six month boycott of
the domestic U.S. market.
Its action on that occasion was in
reaction to the widely publicized American air
lift of arms to Israel and in response to an
Arab World demand that every Arab country makes
some sort of protest.
Saudi
oil exports make up the overwhelming percentage
of its Gross National Product. With its vast
reserves, estimated at 25% of proven world
reserves, it can produce oil at the current
level of production for another century.
Saudi
policy makers believe, for Saudi Arabia's own
self-interest, that their wisest policy is to
maintain predictable prices of oil, avoiding
spikes which stimulate research on alternative
energies and which inevitably collapse,
upsetting rational plans for the country's
development. They also are investing heavily in
developing an excess production capacity which
they have used to meet global shortfalls. That
excess is currently about two million barrels
per day. There is no other country with that
excess production capacity.
Today,
the question is often posed whether we should
decrease our reliance on Saudi oil and Arab oil
in general. Alternative foreign sources are
being urged in places such as Russia and the
Central Asian states. These have important
reserves but the consensus among oil experts is
that by the next decade the world will need all
the oil from all possible producers. Thus it is
not a question of other sources replacing Saudi
and Arab oil, but of supplementing it. And Gulf
oil has the advantage in terms of ease of
transport and of lower production costs; even
though it's cost advantage has shrunk in
recent years.
4.
Saudi support of terrorism
Riyadh
was a generous benefactor of the Afghan mujahideen
through the 1980s, matching the U.S.
contribution dollar for dollar. It maintained
diplomatic relations with the Taliban government
until just after 9/11 although it had withdrawn
its Ambassador in 1998 after the Taliban had
refused to turn over Usama bin Laden. Throughout
the nineties, Riyadh failed to install controls
over contributions to the Taliban and probably
to al Qaeda through Saudi charitable
foundations, some of whose donors may have been
unaware of the purposes to which their donations
were being put. These donors very likely
included not just rich private Saudis, but
members of the Royal Family.
Two
weeks after the 9/11 attacks and the publication
of evidence that 15 of the 19 hijackers were
Saudi citizens; the Saudi Foreign Minister
visited Washington. He then dispatched
representatives of the Saudi Ministry of Finance
and Central Bank to meet with U.S. Treasury
officials. The delegations focused on how to
monitor the flow of money through charitable
foundations to ensure that it did not go to
groups or individuals supporting
terrorism.
Since
those initial conversations with Saudi
officials, U.S. Treasury teams have made several
visits to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries
identified as hosting organizations under
suspicion of funding terrorism. I understand
that the Saudis have been cooperative and have
supported our efforts to close down two
charitable organizations operating
internationally. Secretary O'Neil has
applauded the Saudi efforts to establish
effective controls.
As
we have learned from our own experience tracking
the flow of money is not easy. For example, it
took seven years of investigation of the Texas
based Holy Land Foundation before the FBI moved
to close it down on evidence that it had
funneled money to Hamas.
Recently,
the Kingdom has been accused of funding
Palestinian suicide bombers. The fact remains
that from the beginning of the intifada
in 2000, the Saudi government encouraged its
citizens to contribute to the families of the
"victims" of the conflict. The government
has made no distinction between helping those
families whose sons and daughters had been
suicide bombers and those who had been killed or
injured in other actions. They have noted that
the families were ignorant of the intentions of
their relative to be a suicide bomber. Saudi
religious authorities have condemned suicide
bombers and the killing of innocent civilians.
5.
Wahhabi practice and the Saudi world view
This
is not the occasion to present anything more
than a brief reference to Wahhabi practice and
how it affects Saudi attitudes towards the
outside world.
They are an instinctively inward looking
people. The heartland of the country, the Nejd
province, where the Royal Family originated, was
never colonized.
In the eighteenth century, the Saud
family leadership entered into a pact with a
prominent religious leader, Mohammed Ibn Abdul
Wahhab. His followers who are termed
"Wahhabis" advocate a strict, literal
interpretation of the Koran and the earliest
traditions of Islam.
Their
pact is most simply described as a mutual
support agreement. The Sauds exercise political
leadership and the followers of Abdul Wahhab
provide spiritual guidance. This agreement has
persisted to this day with the leading Saudi
religious family, Al ash-Sheikh, who are the
descendants of Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab,
dominating the clergy while the House of Saud
maintains political control. Each legitimizes
the other.
With
the conquest in the late 1920's of what is
today Saudi Arabia, the Royal Family became
responsible for the governance of the holy sites
of Mecca and Medina.
It takes that responsibility seriously
and today the King's official title is
"Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques." The
political leadership is wedded to its role as
promoter of the Wahhabi practice of Islam and
leads a highly evangelistic clergy. It spends
massively on propagation of the faith abroad, a
point I will turn to in my recommendations.
6.
Middle East Peace and Saudi Arabia
The
Saudi's well publicized support for the
Palestinians has been termed cynical on the
grounds that it could have helped settle the
Palestinian refugees and advocated a peace
initiative such as that launched by Crown Prince
Abdullah in February years ago. The fact remains
that the "Palestinian Cause" is the single
issue on which the Arab World agrees. Most Arab
states for years have seen Israel as a state
foisted on the region by Western imperialism
seeking to dominate the Arab World. Ever since
1974, the Arab countries agreed to support the
then Palestine Liberation Organization as the
"sole legitimate representative" of the
Palestinian people. Today they support the
Palestine Authority and its goal of establishing
a viable independent state of Palestine.
Crown
Prince Abdullah, in company with most other Arab
leaders, has made plain that restarting
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations after 18 months
of the intifada is an absolute priority and has
publicly spoken against any campaign to topple
Saddam Hussein's regime. The need for Saudi
assistance is debatable, as suggested earlier,
but the Administration is clearly on the right
course in working hard and persuasively to bring
the intifada
to an end and restart negotiations.
Some
Arab countries have come to terms with the
reality of Israel's existence more quickly
than others. The Saudi instinct over the years
has been to keep its distance from the
negotiations between Israel and its immediate
neighbors. However, it is little remembered that
then Crown Prince Fahd did publish a peace plan
in 1981 two years after the Egyptian-Israeli
peace treaty. I recall my own conversations
about the Fahd plan with members of Congress in
1981-82 and how quickly they dismissed it.
Abdullah's
peace initiative last February was important
because of its simplicity. It proposed normal
relations between the Arab World and Israel in
return for the land occupied in 1967. There were
grounds for concern that his initiative would be
adulterated by amendments and
"clarifications" at the Arab Summit in
Beirut on March 27-28, but it survived in its
essence.
Some
Israelis scoffed at the summit communiqué.
However, more now see Abdullah's initiative at
least as the beginning point for a return to
negotiations. A normal relationship with the
Arab World has been the Israeli vision ever
since 1948.
Recommendations
What
should we now press Saudi Arabia to do?
Let
me suggest that we prioritize our policy vis-à-vis
Saudi Arabia. Washington should reserve the bulk
of its efforts to change Saudi foreign policy
rather than its domestic policy, as some are
advocating.
Since
9/11, a chorus of "experts" has been urging
that Saudi domestic reform, particularly in the
realm of education and religion, become
America's primary foreign policy goal. They
are arguing that we should demand that Saudi
Arabia change its education curriculum. I
believe, for at least three reasons, such an
approach would be counterproductive.
First,
it is too far a reach for any outsider to
fundamentally alter the school curriculum of
another country, particularly in a case such as
Saudi Arabia where the influence of the
religious on education is so strong.
Second,
the Saudis themselves recognize the problems
inherent in their own system and are demanding
change. Even before 9/11, visitors to Saudi
Arabia routinely heard complaints from their
Saudi counterparts about the quality of primary
and secondary education. Their children are
graduating with college degrees and are
completely unqualified for most jobs in a modern
economy. Unemployment in Saudi Arabia is said to
be upwards of 30%. Complaints by Saudi nationals
are reportedly leading the government to review
and to reform the curriculum.
The
third reason we should proceed cautiously on the
domestic front is that the Crown Prince himself
recognizes the need for change. Statements such
as the one he made at the summit meeting of the
Gulf Cooperation Council last December showed he
is well aware of the need for reforms. He shows
every indication that he is trying to move his
country forward and win back power from the more
radical elements of the religious establishment.
We should support him in his efforts. Our direct
intervention would undermine a true force for
change in Saudi Arabia.
In the domestic realm, our goal should be
to support and encourage change, but there is no
need to proceed with a heavy hand.
In
the international area, we have more latitude
and we should do everything possible to make
clear that Saudi money should not end up in
schools and mosques that preach hate,
intolerance and anti-Americanism. We must insist
on continuing and expanding Saudi cooperation in
monitoring where the money of its donors to
charitable foundations ends up. This is not a
question of challenging the precept of Islam to
be charitable. It is a political issue. Money
funneled to al-Qaeda is as antithetical to the
Saudi government and to Islam, as it is to the
American government.
On
the other hand, Washington should take care not
to appear to be trying to stop the spread of
Wahhabi practices. The Saudi conviction that
this is the best practice of Islam is not one
for the non-Muslim to challenge.
We
can do something about the quality of the
religious schools, or madrassas,
funded by Saudi Arabia in poor countries such as
Afghanistan and in regions such as the North
West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
In those areas the national Ministries of
Education have few official schools and little
funding to improve the education offered. Today
these madrassas offer the only education to local children and that
consists of rote memorization of the Koran and
the traditions handed down from the first
century of Islam. Teachers that are exiled from
Egypt and Jordan because they are too radical
often turn up at schools in East Africa, Central
Asia, Pakistan and elsewhere. Foreign aid should
be directed toward the whole spectrum of
education, from strengthening education
ministries to teacher training to curriculum
development. Foreign assistance to those
Ministries would be welcome and help provide
over the longer term a more rounded education.
Decision-makers should consider the full range
of bilateral and multilateral avenues to make
this happen.
To
those who say that the day of the House of Saud
is past I say don't be so sure. So far it has
maintained the loyalty of its people. If it
cannot maintain that loyalty, the Royal Family
will not last. In any case, it is not evident
that a different leadership would better serve
our interests or those of the Saudi citizenry.
Any sensible observer should first consider who
would be the likely replacements for the Royal
Family. Today, they would probably come from the
ranks of the religious extremists.
As
we try to shape the future of the U.S.-Saudi
relationship we should not forget the fact that
the Saudi leadership and its relationship with
the United States was also a target, and perhaps
the real target, of Usama bin Laden's
followers on 9/11. They want us off the
Peninsula. They assume that the House of Saud
would soon thereafter collapse because they
believe it survives only thanks to American
support. It would be ironic, to say the least,
for us to help them reach their goal through any
misjudgment of our own.
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