The House of Saud, a despotic and highly corrupt family that has called the shots in Saudi Arabia for nearly two and half centuries with brief interludes are known as the chief sponsors of the Wahabbi brand of Islam - advocated by terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Traditionally feigning friendship with the USA, the regime is under close scrutiny of the Bush administration - in spite of the high stakes involved - as Washington seeks to chart a road map for peace and democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
"This is the man who killed my father," this scribe recalls a seeing a young Saudi trample under his feet the currency bill with the picture of King Fahd at night club in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
The controversial House of Saud, had never had to answer the morality of their rule as they had been the custodians of two of the holiest places of the Muslims.
Intriguingly, none in the U.S. media had seriously pondered as to why at least 15 of the 19 maniacal hijackers all of them Sunni Wahabbis who carried the world's largest ever terror attacks on American soil on 9/11 were nationals of Saudi Arabia.
Some Middle Eastern observers privately say it was highly unlikely the Saudi intelligence may not have known about these plans but they seem unencumbered as the targets were in New York and Washington D.C., not in Riyadh or Jeddah.
In fact, the Saudi regime, like most Gulf sheikhdoms, has a very a efficient intelligence setup dedicated to protecting the Saud dynasty, and knows much about its nationals.
"It's hard to see this level of strained relations. There were uneasy relations after the Khobar bombings when the Saudis did not show any interest in tracking down the terrorists, but this time it's even worse," Mr. Carpenter, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Cato Institute, told this correspondent on phone from Washington D.C.
Carpenter said one of the main reasons 15 out of the 19 terrorists that struck the U.S. were Saudi nationals was that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network has a disproportionate number of Saudi young men in its rank and file. "This came as a huge shock that the majority of the attackers were Saudi nationals. That was the first major break off of relations."
Carpenter said there were three main reasons for the U.S. not being interested in what went on internally in the Saudi state. The Saudis:
"But now with U.S. troops in Iraq and elsewhere, Washington does not need the House of Saudi as such."
He said the Saudi elite had traditionally supported Islamic radicals Islamic radicals around the world. "The fact that U.S. troops are withdrawing is a sign the relations are cooling."
He said notwithstanding the high stakes in U.S.-Saudi relationships, the decline would be more of a long term phenomenon. "There are some pro-Arab officials in the State Department who think Saudi Arabia is a friend, but the major portion of the Bush administration thinks otherwise. A growing section of the US public opinion is not willing to look upon the Saudis as friends."
Professor William Beeman, director of the Middle East department at the prestigious Brown University in Providence, RI, believes there may be younger members of the Saudi royal family who sympathize with bin Laden's call for change as they themselves are yearning for a change of the old guard.
"As far as the Saudi regime goes, they are cynical that the U.S. government has ever respected them, culturally or personally. The Saudi government, too, nurtures no illusions that politicians in Washington like them. It's all along been a pure marriage of convenience," he said on phone from Providence.
Beeman, however, had doubts that any change in the relations would come fast. The reason is largely because of inertia. There are people in Washington with very little imagination, who want things to remain as they are, and as they were 30 or 40 years ago.
He said as a face-saving device, the Saudis are trying to shift the blame to outside forces like the al-Qaeda for their woes. "But the threats are coming from internally. There is a growing population of unemployed, compounded by the fact is that the Shi'ite minority are sitting on the richest oil fields and they have to be accommodated," he said.
Beeman recalled attacks on the Saudi regime had been taken place even when al-Qaeda was nowhere in sight.
On the question of a regime change, Beeman pointed out that the Saudi system was built upon a resilient structure of tribal loyalties and to effect any change some of the larger tribes within Saudi Arabia would have to play a lead role.
He told NewsMax, with regret, that there is unfortunately a dearth of knowledge on the inner dynamics of Saudi society even in the U.S. intelligence community.
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