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The Legacy of 1979: Religious Fundamentalism and the Royal Family (Part II)

by Senior Analyst Talal Kapoor

Though the rebel leader, Juhayman al-Utaybi, had implored his followers to avoid using the weapons they had smuggled in to the Mosque (it is forbidden to shed blood there, or to deface or to pollute it in any way), matters had spiraled out of control almost immediately. Casualties quickly rose into the hundreds as the rebels, galvanized by the presence of their supposed "Mahdi", fought off wave after wave of attacks, despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered by the Saudi authorities. Finally, the Kingdom's main clerics, brought together by King Khalid, issued a fatwa allowing the military to use whatever degree of force was necessary to expel the rebels. Logistical problems, however, delayed the response of the military and National Guard for several more days.

Ultimately, anti-tank guided missiles and heavy guns were used to dislodge the snipers from the minarets, and armored personnel carriers were sent in, finally breaching the gates. On the sixth day of fighting (and over a month into the siege), security forces managed to take control of the courtyard of the mosque and the buildings surrounding it. But this only pushed the remaining rebels deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of hundreds of rooms and cells lying underneath. This created a problem, since intelligence services had no accurate blueprints of the Grand Mosque, and knew nothing of the underground catacombs where the militants were sheltering (in the end, they received plans to the site from the family of Usama bin Laden, which had been involved in recent construction work there). Urgency mattered - despite Saudi attempts to prevent news of the event from spreading beyond the city, word was leaking out, and the royals were coming to realize that their forces lacked the skill and experience to deal with al-Utaybi's rebellion. The king decided to turn to an unexpected source: France. French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing understood that conflict in the Kingdom would severely impact the world oil market, and discreetly dispatched three advisers from his elite counterterrorism and hostage rescue force, the General Intelligence Directorate (GIGN). The entire operation had to remain secret, of course, to avoid the appearance of Western intervention in the Islamic country.

GIGN members set up shop in a hotel in the nearby town of Ta'if, from where they devised a plan to flush out the rebels, who by now were running low on food and ammunition - the catacombs would be flooded with gas. And so, after having been trained by the French, the Saudi forces (along with Pakistani commandos) dropped gas canisters into holes blown in the basement ceiling, forcing the surrender of the last desperate men. The king and senior royals were in no mood to forgive; a month later al-Utaybi and 63 of his men were publicly executed in eight cities. Officially, 117 of the rebels were killed, but estimates for the total number of casualties reach well into the thousands.

The royal family was shocked to the core. Against a backdrop of unprecedented economic growth and rapid modernization brought about by newfound oil wealth, tensions had been boiling over among groups of extremists like those led by al-Utaybi, who had called for an official end to what he called "Western influence" in the country. In some sense this movement can be seen as a reaction against the increasing participation of women in public society - women were not only going to school but were also starting to enter universities; their presence in a traditionally male workplace soon became a visible manifestation of such change. While the expansion of opportunities for women, and issues such as the right for women to drive or travel without a guardian were being discussed openly in the late 1970's, many were caught unawares that this growing liberalization was perceived by some conservative religious scholars as a dangerous, uniquely "Western", idea.

Related articles: The Legacy of 1979: Religious Fundamentalism and the Royal Family (Part I)
Page 2: putting the brakes on reform