Adel Darwish, Special to Arab News

LONDON, 26 October 2003 — Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom Prince Turki Al-Faisal has urged the Palestinians to adopt “Gandhi-style civil disobedience” instead of suicide bombings.

The prince said a concerted strategy of civil disobedience in the occupied territories would be far more effective in making the Israeli occupation “unworkable” than the current self-defeating suicide attacks which left innocent civilians, women and children dead.

The prince was speaking at a conference entitled “Countering Terrorism: The Experience of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” organized by the Royal United Service Institute and the Saudi Embassy here last Wednesday.

Panelists including Saudi, American and British academics, defense and intelligence experts and journalists exchanged ideas with some 150 diplomats, soldiers, politicians and journalists from the four corners of the world.

Saudi participants included Ruqayya Al-Shuaibi of Al-Nahda Philanthropic Society for Women (ANPSW), and businessman Talal Ahmad Al-Khereiji.

Giving a moving eyewitness account of the terrorist attack in May this year on the Al-Hamra compound north of Riyadh where he lived, Al-Khereiji described how he lost friends of many faiths and described the smell of the burning flesh of men, women and children.

Prince Turki, in his opening remarks, reminded the audience of terrorist attacks targeting the Kingdom’s embassies and interests in the 1960s and 1970s, long before Al-Qaeda emerged.

Ruqayya Al-Shuaibi then described the work of ANPSW. She said outside calls for more freedom for women would be meaningless without “Saudi women and society itself creating a movement from within,” pointing to pictures of women at ANPSW’s workshops instinctively covering their faces when confronted by the camera.

A video clip from a BBC “Newsnight” report taken in the Kingdom by Frank Gardner — who was a panelist in the final session — showed a new openness to previously unwelcome Western TV cameras. Following Saudi anti-terrorist unit patrols, the BBC camera recorded their successful smashing of terrorist cells. Gardner said that lesser officials in the Kingdom had looked upon Western media with suspicion but recognized a new openness in the higher ranks of Saudi officialdom. Gardner said diplomats like Prince Turki and Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the Kingdom’s ambassador to Washington, were contributing to an improvement of Saudi Arabia’s image, but it had a long way still to go.

Dr. Bill Durodie of King’s College, London, highlighted the sophisticated technology used by police and anti-terrorism squad in Saudi Arabia. “Over-reliance on technology like DNA samples, electronic devices, identity scanners and other mechanical tools like road-blocks to fight terrorism might lead to losing sight of the need to address the root causes of terrorism in society,” Dr. Durodie warned.

This triggered a lively discussion on the causes and roots of terrorism, which, rightly or wrongly, has been associated in the minds of many with extremism and extreme forms of Islam.

Demographic explosion, lack of opportunities for the young, combined with economic hardship were among the reasons cited by both ex-CIA analyst Stan Bedlington, once a British colonial official in Palestine, and Julie Sirrs, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency. But Prince Turki said most Sept. 11 terrorists were well off, educated and had jobs drawing comfortable salaries.

Was it the mosques and preachers who incited the young to engage in anti-Western ideological warfare and to abuse the concept of “jihad”?

Both Dr. Ahmad Turkistani, of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, and Prince Turki pointed at the massive re-education program of hundreds of imams and preachers the Kingdom had undertaken to encourage greater tolerance and acceptance of the beliefs of others. Author Malise Ruthven called for soul searching and a “truth and reconciliation” process among scholars and historians to admit to mistakes of the past, especially in demonizing others as Muslims of lesser faith.

Islamic extremists, many said, were against modernity, opposing co-operation or co-existence between faiths as they sought a global clash of cultures. “Ill-advised hostile reporting of Saudi Arabia in the American media will only benefit Al-Qeada’s efforts to create a clash between the Western world and Islam,” warned Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He called for greater cooperation between America and the Kingdom, instead of constant criticism of Saudi Arabia, in order to win the war against terrorism.

Several participants highlighted the negative effects of the Iraq war, which was muddling America’s war on terrorism by creating a new location, a new frontier and a new cause for Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden to carry out terror attacks.