Roots of 911 in a nutshell: An excerpt from a book I am reading, The Kingmakers, The Invention of the Modern Middle East, p 257-8. “The glaring inequities of Saudi life are so palpable that the kingdom’s nervous leaders rely inordinately on Islam to quell dissent and legitimatize their authority. This effort received an inadvertent and phenomenal assist from the United States following the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. In what seems to be a shrewd bargain, the Carter White House asked Saudi Arabia to match dollar for dollar America’s covert assistance to the Afghan resistance. King Fahd eagerly concurred, since this was a way of simultaneously pleasing Washington, enhancing the Kingdom’s global influence, and buying peace at home. Books and pamphlets called on Saudi youth to wage holy war against Russian infidels, and by 1984, around sixteen thousand students were enrolled in Islamic studies. Between 1981 and 1986, U.S. and Saudi a
ssistance to Afghan insurgents grew tenfold (in the estimate of Rachel Bronson) from a combined $120 million to $1.2 billion, all the aid being funneled to radical Islamic fighters through Pakistan’s military intelligence. This was the program that hatched Al-Qaeda and gave Osama Bin Laden his all-important base. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, its demise sped by its defeat in Afghanistan, a fresh opportunity arose for spreading the message of militant Islam. The Saudi Ministry of Pilgrimage and Religious Trust reported in the early 1990s that it had earmarked $850 million to build mosques and send seventy-three hundred prayer leaders to promote its brand of Islam in the predominately Muslim former Soviet republics in Central Asia. The fundamental point is soberly expressed by Ms. Bronson: “For years the royal family had manipulated Saudi domestic policies to manage Cold War challenges. To build domestic legitimacy and rebuff external aggression, Saudi leaders had catered to the most radical elements of the kingdom’s religious establishment. It was not that Washington had ignored Saudi Arabia’s proselytizing, but rather that Washington accepted and at times actively encouraged it to secure geostrategic ends. There was a long-time price to pay for such policies. On September 11, those costs came due.”
Fifteen of the nineteen terrorists who perpetrated the 2001 suicide attacks were Saudi citizens who had gained ready access to the United States under a fast-track visa policy long provided as a favor to the kingdom’s subjects—a kind of diplomatic dowry in a surreal marriage”.