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Some Saudis are also questioning the high profile of the U.S. in their country. "The Americans are running the government," grumbles a high-ranking industrial executive. "This is an occupying force here." Others are troubled by the long-term consequences of the U.S. presence. "The Islamic world will blame the Saudis," says an intellectual from Jiddah. "They will say, You're the ones who brought the Americans. No one will have respect for us in the Arab League."
Saudi Arabia's religious conservatives are particularly dismayed by the presence of non-Muslim soldiers in the kingdom and the destruction of a neighboring Arab country. Warns a prominent Saudi prince: "If the government does not sort them out" -- that is, contain their influence -- "then in ten years we will have a Khomeini-like regime." With this in mind, the government has arrested a number of Islamic activists.
THE MAGHREB
A Torrent of New Converts
While Jordanian antipathy to the war was expected, the reaction in the Maghreb was something of a surprise. There, pro-Iraqi passions have grown so strong that they threaten to destabilize the governments of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
Sympathy for Saddam has been expressed most freely -- and violently -- in Algeria, whose reforms two years ago made it the most democratic of the North African countries. Soon after the war erupted, the opposition Islamic Salvation Front, which has unsuccessfully pressed the government to organize training camps for volunteers to fight for Iraq, led 400,000 people in a march through Algiers carrying signs such as MITTERRAND ASSASSIN. BUSH ACCOMPLICE. A follow-up rally two weeks ago attracted 60,000 people. In angrier manifestations of popular feeling, protesters in Constantine sacked part of the French consulate and set fire to the Air France office. In the capital, the bureau of the French news agency was fire bombed and a French teacher was beaten and stabbed.
Faced with such fervor, President Chadli Bendjedid has attempted to ride the popular wave so as not to be engulfed by it. Though he initially condemned Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, he proclaimed in a recent radio address, "Algeria stands at the side of its brother Iraq." At the same time, Bendjedid does not want to give carte blanche to the Islamic Salvation Front, which took a majority of the seats in the country's first municipal elections last June and could well dominate a parliamentary vote this spring. In a statement, the government denounced "those who, under the pretext of circumstantial solidarity with the Iraqi people, want to impose an Islamic dictatorship."
Like Bendjedid, Tunisia's President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali is trying to tack with the wind, but it is a fierce one. Support for Saddam has unnerved Ben Ali enough that he gave a speech condemning "the destruction and devastation of Iraq," which he said went "beyond the tolerable."
Tunisia has stepped up security patrols in the cities to prevent demonstrations. Unauthorized protests still occur every few days, to be broken up by police, often brutally. At the start of the conflict, Ben Ali had the leaders of Ennahdha, the principal Islamic organization, rounded up and jailed. Uncowed, another group, the clandestine Islamic Liberation Party, proclaimed a holy war to chase the "miscreant" Westerners from the gulf.