Khalaf Al-Harbe
Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, our beloved friends in American suddenly discovered that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the terrorist crime that changed the face of the world.
This astonishing discovery makes us ask a number of innocent questions. Why has America then destroyed the poor Afghanistan until it left no stone or brick standing erect? Why did it invade Iraq, taking it thousands of years backward?
Why did America ally with Saudi Arabia, in particular, in its war against terrorism and depended on it largely in chasing the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization?
Can we, therefore, consider the hundreds of thousands of people who died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq were killed by mistake at a time of American anger?
Can we say that Mama America’s conscience awoke only after the Muslim world was submerged up to its neck in terrorism and sectarianism?
Well, let us assume that America was aware of what it was doing in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as it was directly punishing the terrorists.
Let us also assume that America’s accusation against Saudi Arabia was limited to the establishment of Al-Qaeda, which was born out of the womb of what was then called the “Afghan Arabs,” who the Kingdom has greatly supported during the Soviet occupation of that country.
Here we must stop to tell Americans openly that all this was done in close collaboration with their government. The Kingdom did not act alone but with the complete knowledge and blessing of the United States.
If some of the Mujahideen fighters the Kingdom had supported deviated to join Al-Qaeda, this is not the responsibility of the Kingdom but of America itself.
More important than this is the fact that after 9/11 and the unpredictable American polices in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, Saudi Arabia has entered into a ferocious war against Al-Qaeda on its own territories.
The Al-Qaeda launched a war against the Kingdom for the simple reason that the terrorist organization considered Riyadh to be a close ally of the United Sates.
More than this, America had signed security cooperation agreements with the Kingdom to fight Al-Qaeda jointly. This raises the question: Has America become schizophrenic and amnesiac to accuse Saudi Arabia of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks?
I think our public relations teams abroad now have a historic mission to counter America’s fabrications. We should not be punished for mistakes we have not committed. These mistakes were the work of none other than America itself.
