Until recently, residents of Saudi Arabia could easily believe they lived in the quietest realm on earth. Sure, citizens were arrested from time to time and punished with floggings, amputations and beheadings, but usually for quiet crimes like drunkenness, theft and drug smuggling. Police rarely had occasion to flip on their sirens, much less draw their guns. If they sought someone for arrest, they did so discreetly, using family and tribal ties to track down a person rather than put out a wanted poster, which might alarm the public and scandalize the suspect's clan.
This summer, however, hardly a week has gone by in which the kingdom's newspapers haven't carried sensational headlines about the latest police shoot-out with an al-Qaeda cell or the discovery of an illicit stash of arms and explosives. The streets are blocked by police checkpoints. In an unprecedented step, the Interior Ministry has published the names and photos of al-Qaeda suspects at large, appealing to the public to turn them in. Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, has declared his own war on terrorism. The kingdom's highest religious authority has issued a declaration backing him. Saudi spokesmen claim they have fired hundreds of clerics for being too extreme and are re-educating thousands more in the ways of moderation.
Is this for real? Is this the same Saudi Arabia that, despite plain evidence, questioned for months the fact that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were its citizens? The kingdom whose Interior Minister implied that the attacks on the U.S. were the work of "Zionists"? The country whose petrodollars have long funded terrorist groups? Americans, plainly, have misgivings about the Saudi kingdom, doubts that only grew when the Bush Administration, led by a President cozier than most to Riyadh, blacked out 28 pages dealing with Saudi Arabia from Congress's official report on Sept. 11, producing the smell of a cover-up of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
Increasingly, commentators, members of Congress and policymakers, including a minority within the Bush Administration, are questioning the closeness of the U.S.'s relationship with this backward, authoritarian, fundamentalist state. Maybe the 600 families that lost loved ones in 9/11 and are holding the House of Saud accountable in a $1 trillion lawsuit have a point. This July a bill to add Saudi Arabia to the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism garnered 191 votes in the House before going down. Some critics of Saudi Arabia are even suggesting that the U.S. invaded the wrong country and seized the wrong oil wells in the spring. Champions of the U.S.-Saudi alliance say the Saudis are transforming themselves from financiers to fighters of terrorism. Abdullah's campaign has given this camp credibility of late. Still, defenders of the Saudis acknowledge they have a long way to go in addressing not just the symptoms but also the causes of Islamic extremism, among which are the hostility toward non-Muslims instilled in Saudi schools and mosques and the export of that ideology worldwide. An inside look at the issues:
THE CRACKDOWN: SPARKED BY AN ATROCITY