LONDON -- Times are very difficult for the government of Saudi Arabia. Assailed on one side by hardline Islamists for being too pro-American, Saudi leaders have also had to endure a hail of brickbats from Washington for not being sufficiently pro-American and supportive of U.S. policy.
Since the horror of 9/11, a stream of books and articles from America have denounced the Saudi ruling group as, at best, allowing terrorism and the promulgation of terrorist doctrines of hate to fester in the kingdom and, at worst, supporting terrorist factions. That all but four of 9/11's 19 assassins were citizens of Saudi Arabia has been seen as implicating Riyadh.
Growing efforts by Riyadh to crack down on terrorist cells and their sponsors have done little to halt the cooling of Saudi-U.S. relations. Saudi reluctance to provide bases for coalition forces in the Iraq war has fueled Washington's determination to build an anti-Saudi agenda. This features lofty if somewhat hazy plans for reducing reliance on the kingdom's vast oil reserves and unending criticism of the kingdom's lack of democracy, its intimacy with hardline Wahhabi Islamists, its harsh Shariah law, its treatment of women, its narrow educational curriculum, its lack of openness and so on. The Saudis are having the book thrown at them, and they are both hurt and bewildered.