A 60-year career of dedicated public service came to an end yesterday evening when Crown Prince Naif was buried in a simple funeral ceremony after the Maghreb Prayer at the Grand Mosque in Makkah.
Prince Naif was born in 1934. After training in diplomacy and security, he took up the first of his many governmental positions at the age of just 18, when he was made deputy governor of the Riyadh region, the full governorship of which he took over a year later.
However, it was at the age of 36 that he embarked upon what, amidst a host of other responsibilities, was to remain the main plank of his governmental career. In 1970, he began working at the Ministry of the Interior. Within five years, as a reflection of his efficiency and professionalism, he joined the Cabinet for the first time, when he was appointed to be the Minister of the Interior. It was the job he would continue to hold for the 43 years until his death.
The many obituaries in the last 48 hours have detailed his wide range of other pubic service, not least his role in the last two years as Crown Prince and his overseeing of the 2010 Haj, when Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah was forced by illness to rest. There have also been many references to his extensive charitable works.
Nevertheless, perhaps Prince Naif’s single most important contribution, not simply to life in the Kingdom, but to the rest of the world, was in the security brief that he held for so much of his career. Long before 9/11, the gorgon head of terrorism had raised itself in the Kingdom, starting with the 1979 assault and occupation of the Grand Mosque. Confronted with a new and ruthless enemy in Al-Qaeda, that would stop at nothing to destroy the cohesion of Saudi society, the forces of law and order had to feel their way toward a lasting solution to the threat.
Certainly Prince Naif ensured that the security forces were spared no resource, nor themselves spared any effort in tracking down terrorists throughout the Kingdom. It was a long and hard campaign which drove terror cells from the country and very largely negated their siren propaganda. However, just as the struggle against terrorism was starting to be won here, the depravity of the 9/11 attacks threw the world into fear and confusion.
There are those who believe that the role of Saudi Arabia and in particular that of Prince Naif in assisting the international community after 9/11 has yet to be fully revealed. It is certain that Kingdom’s authorities were able to contribute a great deal of knowledge and understanding to campaign to crack down on terror cells around the world. The fact that the majority of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, who shamed their fellow countrymen by their depraved crime, also meant that Prince Naif and his top security people were quickly able to contribute considerably to the intelligence picture that was being built of Osama Bin Laden’s evil empire of terror.
Prince Naif oversaw three highly successful campaigns. The first was to mount intelligence-led operations to crack down on terrorists before they could strike. The second was to identify and interdict the sources of finance that the Al-Qaeda gangs needed to sustain themselves as they hid in the shadows. In this respect also the Prince Naif backed a highly successful campaign to have ordinary Saudis report unusual activity in their neighborhoods, which made it ever harder for the killers to conceal themselves and led to a series of swoops that broke up terror gangs before they could do further serious damage.
However Prince Naif’s insight into the challenge of terrorism went considerably beyond tracking down and confronting the men of violence in their hide outs. He recognized immediately that the struggle against terror also had to be fought for the hearts and minds of the terrorists, many of whom had been duped into following their perverse and evil leaders.
Thus in 2007 he established a program to rehabilitate convicted terrorists back into Saudi society. Though some, not least the Americans, criticized this initiative at the time, it has proven to be largely successful. Former terrorists who have seen the wicked error of their ways, have themselves been instrumental in persuading others to abandon their terrible cause.
Prince Naif’s far-sightedness in this program, as in so much else that he did, demonstrates better than anything, how this dedicated servant of the Kingdom combined a commitment to his task of ensuring our security, with the humanity to see that among the men of violence, there was often a way back for them, which would bolster social stability and cause others to think twice about following their evil path.
Editorial: Tribute to a great leader
