Cautious United States residents of Saudi Arabia like to sport a South African flag on their gas-guzzlers.
Diplomats at South African missions in Jeddah and Riyadh say that since September last year they have done a roaring business in decals of the six-coloured standard.
”Americans are regularly updated on security developments in the kingdom,” said one South African diplomat. ”They are probably better informed than any of the other expatriates. Nevertheless many of them feel safer being identified as South Africans.”
US nervousness is evidenced in the heightened security at the already fortress-like embassy and consulates.
While Americans have been jumpy since September 11 2001, their Saudi hosts were grumpy for a long time before that.
The Saudi public has enthusiastically supported a consumer boycott of US goods for more than two years.
It started in solidarity with the second Palestinian intifada, for it is the US’s near unquestioning support for Israel that most bedevils relations with Saudi Arabia.
Saudis see themselves above all as the heart of Islam, explains Prince Faizel bin Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Saud. ”A quarter of the world’s population has their spirit and heart in this country. Being the centre of religion and culture for Muslims is Saudi Arabia’s purpose in life.”
President George W Bush or anyone else wanting to have a relationship with Saudi Arabia must understand this.
”We cannot simply have business as usual with the US and ignore the support it is giving Israel to continue its inhuman treatment and repression of the Palestinians,” said the prince, who is commander of the National Guard in the western half of the kingdom.
A decade after it spent $80-billion financing the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, Saudi misgivings on US double standards in the Middle East extend to Bush banning Iraq from acquiring lethal weapons while supplying such hardware to Israel.
This anger among the Saudi leadership is compounded by the US reaction to September 11. The requirement for Saudis and other Arabs to be fingerprinted on entering the US is regarded as racial profiling.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret this anger as support for the attacks on New York and Washington. No fewer than 15 of the 19 people suspected of flying into the Pentagon and the twin towers were Saudis.
”They were misguided youths cynically used by people with another agenda,” says Prince Faizel.
”Some of them were caught in misery and unemployment and [were] offered not only money but a direct route to God through jihad.
”What happened on September 11 served the purpose of the US more than it did that of Bin Laden. It hit at the beauty of Islam, which is a religion of peace and compassion. It unified right-wing support for Bush and it hurt the relationship between Saudi Arabia and US.
”You have to ask whose hand is strengthened by Saudi-US relations being harmed. You need look no further than the Zionists and the drug cartels who want US attention to be diverted from their activities.”
The prince insists that the chill in relations is squarely the fault of the Bush administration.
Prince Abdullah bin Faizel bin Turki, head of the Saudi Investment Board, believes that the US quest to find alternative sources of oil notwithstanding, the kingdom’s role as supplier of a quarter of the world’s crude oil must eventually shift things back to normal.
”Extremists tried to exploit Saudi anger at the US. It was clever of them to use Saudis to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians.
”Ultimately the US-Saudi relationship will survive because it is both an honourable and a strategic one.”