Tuesday, September 9, 2008 9:38 PM CDT
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda' By Yaroslav Trofimov
Review by Herb Meeker, Staff Writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
Within hours of the 9/11 attacks the world press had the names of the hijackers and their ties to Al Qaeda.
Even their photographs were released that afternoon for broadcast around the world. The world learned very much of the terrorists and their methods so quickly.
The same cannot be said of an event that helped create Al Qaeda 22 years earlier. It was blacked out with dark consequences for the world.
In “The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda,” Yaroslav Trofimov, a Middle East foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, tells how the Nov. 22, 1979, capture and battle for the shrine shook up the House of Saud and set in motion a counterstrike by Islamic fundamentalists.
The assault and siege at Mecca was not even known to most of the world for a day and details were also withheld even longer, Trofimov writes. The Saudi regime deftly cut off all communications from the outside world partly to hide the fact that Saudi fundamentalist Muslims, led by Juhayman al Uteybi, a former Saudi national guard soldier, were attacking the holy of holies for Islam.
Much worse, they were beating back government troops in what eventually became a bloodbath for the combatants and helpless Muslims pilgrims caught in the crossfire.
Troifimov tells how an American hired by the Saudis as a helicopter pilot helped leak word of the violence via telephone to a diplomat in Saudi Arabia. What greatly assisted the Saudis in their censorship was the ban on non-Muslims entering Mecca.
Though some might applaud any news blackout with our 24/7, raw-footage overkill news cycle of today, a lack of complete information had dire consequences.
The attack on Mecca by Sunni fundamentalists, frustrated by what they considered a heretical Saudi government, came two weeks after Iranian revolutionaries had taken over the U.S. Embassy and took dozens of Americans hostage. President Jimmy Carter agreed to send an aircraft carrier task force to the Persian Gulf that fateful week in 1979.
Unfortunately, the announcement of the carrier task force was coupled with the release of a brief State Department confirmation of the Mecca assault. Some Muslims wrongly believed America was responsible for the assault on Mecca when they learned of the carrier force. The lack of information from Mecca, Trofimov states, led to several attacks on U.S. embassies, including the burning of the embassy at Pakistan that cost many lives.
Trofimov offers clear explanations of Islamic beliefs (some Christians might be shocked when they hear the role Jesus has in the Islamic End of Days) and how Juhayman came to believe that only by shedding blood on a holy shrine could he save Islam.
The shrine was finally recaptured and the House of Saud survives to this day. Many offenders were beheaded, including Juhayman, but some went to prison, providing vital details for the book. Accounts of fighting at the shrine would remain sketchy for years through Saudi machinations. Declassified documents obtained by Trofimov helped shed light on the incident.
Juhayman would be followed by others on the path to martyrdom in the Middle East with the eventual establishment of Al Qaeda. And that provides an eerie link to the 9/11 attacks.
A Saudi construction company was renovating sections of the shrine before the attack, and the company provided blueprints on the layout of the cave-like lower levels to help the Saudi military.
That company was Bin Laden Construction, owned by Osama bin Laden’s family.
Meeker is a staff writer for the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier.
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