Links for 11/9/07, and a little on Saudis

• La Tunisie des illusions perdues - excellent article on 20 years of Ben Ali
• AIPAC Court Adopts Silent Witness Rule - Testimonies in AIPAC spying case to be secret
• What today's Islamists want by Ibrahim El Houdaiby - Muslim Brother explains views
• The United States’ new backyard, by Alain Gresh - America's new near-abroad
• Rice in Lebanon: Hard to Digest - critique of US policy in Lebanon
• David Welch testimony on Lebanon - contains some whoppers considering he prolonged 2006 war
• Rich and poor build their own Cairo - nice FT story or Egypt's urban landscape
• Egypt Accused of Complacency in Hamas Weapon, Money Smuggling - points to Likud lobbying of Congress against Egypt
• It’s the Politics, Stupid - Shadi Hamid argues for conditionality on US aid to Saudi Arabia

Regarding the last article on Saudi Arabia, Hamid makes the argument that the US should put democracy-promotion at the forefront of its policy because lack of democracy creates terrorism and extremist ideology, and calls for conditionality on the US arms deal with Saudi Arabia. It seems to me that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of both Saudi Arabia and the US. The Saudi regime is an active exporter of terrorism and extremist ideology, and this has nothing to do with lack of democracy. It is a long-standing, deliberate policy backed at the highest levels of the royal family. This is a country that has funded and provided manpower to paramilitary movements in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and many other places. It has also exported and financed the most intolerant strands of Islamic theology throughout the Muslim world. At one point the US backed this, or was tolerant of it at least. But it is very much the same phenomenon that is taking place today, only this time against US interests.

With regards to conditionality, the Saudis could very well buy the weapons themselves, and the deal is a boon to the US arms industry. The important thing about the deal is not the money or weapons being delivered but the underlying strategic alliance that provides security for the Saudi royal family. But this regime will continue to promote extremist ideologies at home and abroad, and genuine democratic reforms in Saudi Arabia (a goal desirable in itself but that is certainly not linked to greater stability) would be better served by weakening, not strengthening, the al-Sauds -- not that this is going to happen, for obvious oil and corporate power reasons.