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How do you stop anti-Western terrorism in a place where al-Qaida may have infiltrated the security forces, schools teach a rigid form of Islam and the ruler blames most of his problems on Zionists?
That's the challenge facing Saudi Arabia in the wake of attacks that have killed dozens of foreigners, including Paul Johnson, an American beheaded Friday by an al-Qaida group. And the Saudis' reluctance to acknowledge their own role in the growth of extremism doesn't bode well for the future, experts say.
"Take any cross section of Saudi society and you will find people who do not think slitting the throat of an infidel is a bad thing," says John R. Bradley, a British journalist who worked for a Saudi newspaper.
Another expert predicts violence will continue, even though the Saudis claimed Friday that they killed the leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the group behind the kidnapping and murder of Johnson.
"It seems to me we haven't seen the worst of it yet," says Michael Doran, an assistant professor at Princeton University. "There are deep-seated problems that are not going to go away."
And as if the Saudis didn't have enough internal trouble, their plodding efforts at reform have been hurt by the chaos in neighboring Iraq.
The United States is "so widely and deeply disliked in Saudi Arabia that it gives democracy a bad name because we're promoting it," says Michael Hudson, professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University.
Ever since oil was discovered in the kingdom in the 1930s, the ruling al Saud family has struggled with two conflicting forces - rapid modernization fueled by oil wealth, and the backward pull of Wahhabism, a puritanical form of Islam whose adherents condemn Western secularism and materialism.
In 1979, Islamic fundamentalists, outraged by what they saw as the corrupting influence of Western culture on the Sauds, seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca. The government crushed the takeover, but it scared the royal family into giving the Wahhabis enormous control over Saudi society and education.
While oil prices were high, Saudis enjoyed a leisurely lifestyle as Americans and other foreigners ran the economy. But when oil prices fell in the mid '80s, the economy soured and Saudis whose education was based on memorizing the Koran had few marketable skills.
As a result, Saudi Arabia finds itself in a paradox - foreigners still hold millions of jobs while unemployment among Saudis is around 30 percent. The difficulty of "Saudi-izing" the workforce - replacing foreigners with natives - was illustrated a few months ago when the travel industry almost collapsed because Saudis couldn't handle even simple jobs like making reservations.
"The work ethic has not really been possible in a place that's been awash in oil," Hudson says.
The high unemployment rate has had a more insidious effect: It makes it easier for extremist groups to recruit dissatisfied young Saudis.
"You have this ideological mixing with these awful economic conditions - there could not be a more opportune situation for a popular uprising," says Bradley, who is writing a book on the kingdom. "I think al-Qaida is going to ride that wave rather than attack oil installations or the (royal) family."
In recent months, terrorists have gone after "soft" targets with lighter protection. Al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, including some in which there is evidence of collusion by Saudi security forces.
Last month, former employees of Vinnell, a U.S. company that trains the Saudi National Guard, said some guardsmen knew in advance about the May 2003 bombing of a housing compound in Riyadh that killed 35 people.
As many as 70 guards stayed away that day, leaving the compound defenseless, the employees told London's Independent. Guard members allegedly gave inside help to al-Qaida, possibly including a detailed map of the compound.
And in last month's attack on a compound in Khobar that killed 22, gunmen purportedly wore military uniforms.
"The evidence from the last few weeks is that al-Qaida is in control of the situation, they are deciding when to attack and where to attack while the royal family seems simply to be hoping that the problem will go away," Bradley says. "They have no strategy to deal with it - the only strategy is the security forces, who have been infiltrated by al-Qaida."
Princeton's Doran says collusion between police and extremists is not surprising, given the government's support of the Wahhabi-brand of education.
"You've got to feel sorry for those poor grunts in the Saudi security system. They're up against a foe that believes deeply in what they're saying and harping on the theme that every Saudi schoolboy has learned from the clerics and is willing to die for. What ideals are the grunts fighting for? They fight for the royal family and who wants to die for the royal family?"
To a great extent, both Saudi Arabia and its longtime ally, the United States, are also paying for their support of Islamic mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, then turned their attention to other "infidels' after the Soviets left in 1989.
Heavy pressure by Islamic fundamentalists on the Saudi regime resulted in the United States pulling most of its troops out of the kingdom. And as violence surged this spring, the State Department urged all Americans - about 35,000 - to get out.
"It's ironic that we have 135,000 troops in Iraq trying to bring democracy to that place while in Saudi Arabia, which arguably is much more important - certainly in oil terms - we are urging people to leave," says Georgetown's Hudson.
Both countries insist their relationship remains strong even though the Bush administration has been frustrated by the Saudis' slowness to acknowledge the real causes of terrorism in the kingdom. Just days after the State Department praised Saudi Arabia for its "aggressive" campaign against terrorists, Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, announced that "Zionism is behind everything," Newsweek reported.
A popular "parlor game" in Washington, Hudson notes, is guessing how long the royal family will remain in power. Most experts doubt the country is in imminent danger of revolution but say the Sauds must press ahead with democratic and educational reforms.
For all their drawbacks, the royals often have been a force for modernization and liberalization, using much of the country's oil wealth to build hospitals, highways and schools open to women as well as men.
"But the problem is that whenever they did that in the past, they did it from a position of strength in the middle of the oil boom," Bradley says. "Now it's the reverse - in the middle of an economic crisis, they have to give up power and marginalize the Wahhabis and there's absolutely no precedent for that."
- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com