DUBAI, UAE – Saudi Arabia today is very different from the Saudi Arabia of September 11, 2001.
All 19 kidnappers except four on 9/11 were Saudi citizens and the Saudi kingdom was the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda and the mastermind of the attack 20 years ago. In the two decades since then, Saudi Arabia has faced al-Qaeda on his own ground, he renewed his textbooks, worked to curb terrorist financing, and partnered with the United States to fight terrorism.
It was not until the last five years, however, that the kingdom began to move away from the religious ideology on which it was founded and defended within and outside its borders: Wahhabism, a strict interpretation of the Islam that helped generate generations of mujahideen. .
For countless people in the United States, Saudi Arabia will forever be associated with 9/11, the collapse of the World Trade Towers, and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
To this day, the families of the victims are trying to hold the Saudi government accountable in New York and have pushed President Joe Biden to declassify certain documents related to the attacks, despite the Saudi government’s insistence that any allegation of complicity is “categorically false.” Victims of a 2019 shooting at a Florida military base and their families are also suing Saudi Arabia for monetary damages, claiming the kingdom knew the Saudi Air Force officer had radicalized and could have avoided the killings.
Saudi Arabia’s close collaboration with the United States, including the presence of American troops in the kingdom after the first Gulf War, made its leadership a target for extremist groups.
“It is important to note that the terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11 have also targeted the people of Saudi Arabia, the leadership, military personnel and even the most sacred religious sites in the United States. Mecca and Medina on several occasions, “Fahad Nazer, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington, told The Associated Press. He said Saudi-American counterterrorism work has saved thousands of lives.
However, while Saudi Arabia fought al Qaeda and subsequent IS group attacks, Al Saud’s rulers continued to give ultra-conservative clergy a monopoly on preaching and influence over society in exchange for their firmness. support for the monarchy.
That pact decades ago broke out in front of a large number of foreign investors in 2017, when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared a return to Islam “moderate”. A year earlier, with the support of his father the king, the prince had withdrawn the powers of the country’s religious police – Those who would chase Saudi youths and Saudi men from the parks to mingle, would go looking for cars playing music and force shops to close during the five daily prayers.
“It is a new country. It is a country in the process of being created, ”said Raghida Dergham, founder of the Beirut Institute think tank and a longtime columnist on Saudi paper. Dergham says what has happened over the past twenty years in Saudi Arabia has been “a major clean-up of extremism … and it hasn’t been easy.”
The Crown Prince doubled in April this year in statements on Saudi television. He said Saudi identity is based on its Islamic and Arab heritage. His words seemed to equate the two and pointed to the broader effort the state has begun to assert a national Saudi identity that is no longer tied to pan-Islamic causes or the religious ideologies of Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul-Wahhab. , whose ultra-conservative teachings of Islam in the eighteenth century are widely referred to by its name.
“If Sheikh Mohammed Abdel-Wahhab came out of his grave and found us clinging to his text and turning a blind eye to independent reasoning (ijtihad) or deifying it, he would be the first to oppose such a thing,” he said. Prince Mohammed.
Ali Shihabi, who has ties to the royal court, says the new tone of the kingdom indicates to “any clergy sitting in fences” that moderation is the only way forward.
Moderation, however, only goes so far. While Saudi Arabia works to alter perceptions and control the narrative of its past for the new generations of Saudis two decades after 9/11, it remains politically repressive.
Prince Mohammed’s rapid changes are part of a hasty effort that has coincided with his build-up of power on the sidelines of rivals, such as the country’s exorbitant terrorism, and the severity of criticism, including the assassination of ‘Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey by agents working for the prince.
Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who served the CIA for 30 years, says the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has undergone fundamental changes over the years, but that even in the best moments “it’s hard to present Saudi Arabia as America’s best friend.”
While Saudi Arabia remains far from an open society, the cloud of social restraints that has been looming for generations in the kingdom is dissipating. They are no longer flashy concerts, movie theaters and women with impossible or illegal driving.
“My own perspective is that there is envy of the younger generations who have these opportunities,” says Hisham Fageeh, a 33-year-old Saudi filmmaker, actor and writer who works in Los Angeles and who grew up in the shadow of the ’11 September.
But there are questions about where this new path will lead.
“There are several doors through which people can pass,” Fageeh says. “The challenge will be, how do we integrate all our parts: our past, our present and our future?”
In the two decades since 9/11, Saudi Arabia and the world have been reformed by social media, the Internet, and global connectivity. In Saudi Arabia, however, massive generational change is also being imposed. More than a third of Saudi Arabia’s population is under the age of 14, born years after 9/11. More than 60% are under 35 years old.
They all came of age after the 9/11 attacks. They, like the 36-year-old Crown Prince, were not even born when the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979 and was replaced by an anti-American and anti-Saudi Shiite regime. That same year, Sunni Muslim extremists besieged Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.
Saudi rulers responded to the events of that year by empowering state leaders and allowing Wahhabism to shape the life of Saudi Arabia. A power struggle arose between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has continued to develop into wars of sectarian representatives throughout the Middle East.
As recently as the current Syrian civil war, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states encouraged or turned a blind eye. to the armament, financing and recruitment of jihadist fighters who fought against Shiite militias and Iran-backed fighters.
But it was the shared effort of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan in the 1980s that has the strongest impact today. Years before he was removed from his Saudi citizenship, bin Laden and other mujahideen were armed and funded by the CIA and the kingdom to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan during the Cold War.
Years later, Bin Laden would plan the 9/11 attacks from the al-Qaeda base in the Taliban-protected Afghanistan, the group that has been in power for a few weeks.
When judging Saudi Arabia, Dergham says, look at the broader strategic interests that have long underpinned U.S.-Saudi relations. “Americans just think Saudi Arabia is equal to 9/11,” he said. “You know, wake up and smell the roses. This has been an association, an alliance with the United States for years and years. “
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Aya Batrawy, a Dubai-based Associated Press reporter, covers Saudi Arabia. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ayaelb