Austin Bay says there are four civil wars going on right now in the Middle East, and makes an especially interesting observation.
There's a case to be made -- by no means totally facile -- that the War on Terror is a Saudi civil war diverted to the rest of the globe. The Saud regime's petro-princes were always an al-Qaida target, but as long as al-Qaida was off in Afghanistan with the Taliban or in East Africa blowing up American embassies, the princes could pretend the Islamists were no threat to them.The Saudis now say their response to last month's bombing in Riyadh demonstrates they are full participants in America's War on Terror. The civil war's come home with a vengeance. The Saudi bust of an al-Qaida cell in Mecca is a key event. Controlling Mecca is to Saudi politics what controlling the eastern oil fields is to the Saudi economy -- absolutely vital.
via the Houston Chronicle
Posted by Alan at June 19, 2003 06:21 AM