Some foreigners regularly try to give the impression that Saudi Arabia is at war with itself and that the threat posed by terrorism cannot be defeated, let alone eliminated. The British on one side and the Americans on the other have proven to be masters at this kind of misinformation, which is of course intended to achieve certain ends. They spread news about imminent large-scale terrorist operations and if anything happens, whether by chance or through prior planning, they would surely say: “You see. We told you and warned you long ago.”
Both the British and the Americans have been trying to give the impression that our country’s security and stability are under threat, that the safety and security of its people and of the non-Saudis living here are threatened by what they see as terrorism. They blow the threat out of all proportion while portraying the country as if it were already a large prison. They choose to believe that every move and step taken by the people in this country is surrounded by danger, that no one is sure their lives are safe and that anyone venturing outside their homes may never see their families, relatives and friends again.
Comparing the terrorist acts in Riyadh as well as those foiled in the Kingdom’s other cities and villages with the thousands of crimes taking place in London and New York and other Western cities, we will quickly see that what happens here is less than one percent of what happens there.
This is still not to mention the frequency, brutality, gruesomeness or the number of victims. Hardly an hour passes without scores of horrible crimes of the kind that send shockwaves down your spines taking place in those cities. Yet these are hardly mentioned or portrayed in the way those people portray us when things happen here.
Even more, the British in particular have outsmarted all others in becoming masters of the art of cautioning against what they describe as “imminent terrorist operations.” They use such tactics to justify the cancellation of their flights to other countries and to ensure that these measures reflect a policy that always seeks to give the impression that the situation is indeed serious in our country.
No one will play down what has happened here, but if the British agencies indeed want to do humanity a favor, they should work to confront terror threats through more genuine cooperation with other countries. Such cooperation could be achieved by dismantling the bases of terror and drying up its sources and not through sponsoring and nurturing terrorism and then seeking to market it by frightening the public with the kind of wide-ranging statements issued by the British authorities.
