Saudis Praised After Their 1st Test in Combat

Amid the hulks of burned-out armored vehicles and the skeletons of charred bodies, Saudi Arabian troops exulted Friday in crushing the Iraqi assault on Khafji. Never before in the modern history of the kingdom had the Saudis fought a land battle--either here or elsewhere in the Middle East.

The victorious troops cavorted through the streets of the northern border town, waving their national flag overhead and shouting, “ Allahu akbar!” (God is great). They clutched one another in Arab embraces and swaggered about with chests extended, savoring a moment to be long remembered by a nation that had always considered itself more pampered than tough.

“This was the first battle the Saudis had ever fought,” said Col. Jack Petri, a U.S. liaison officer with the Saudi unit, “and they acquitted themselves terribly well.”

Inside the southern gate of the darkened city, the Saudi commander, Lt. Gen. Prince Khalid ibn Sultan, set his map against the remains of a destroyed Iraqi BTR-60 armored personnel carrier, a few feet from the body of an Iraqi soldier, and described the 36-hour battle with matter-of-fact military precision.

“They lost 90% of their forces--hundreds of casualties and hundreds of equipment losses,” said Khalid, the son of the Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan ibn Abdulaziz. “I think they were pushed into this (by their superiors). It was a suicide mission for them. It’s tragic that so many good people should be driven to death by their leaders. They can’t gain anything, except politically, for the mission.”

Although heavily supported by U.S. air and artillery, all the fighting in this first land battle of the war was done by Saudi and Qatari troops, which in itself was politically significant for two reasons. First, their victory helped lessen the perception that the war was to be fought by Western powers without Arab participation. And second, it dispelled concerns that the Arabs would perform poorly in battle, or perhaps would not even be willing to fight.

The performance of the Saudis and Qataris--who suffered what their commanders termed light casualties in defeating an armored Iraqi force that may have numbered 1,000--may encourage the U.S. Central Command to give Arab forces in the theater of operations a larger role in an eventual ground war. Some military analysts have speculated that the Arabs might be the lead element in the liberation of Kuwait city.

Facing Iraq in Saudi Arabia are more than 150,000 Arab troops, including upwards of 40,000 Egyptians, who fought courageously, if unsuccessfully, in three wars against Israel. There are also several thousand Syrians, whom Syrian President Hafez Assad may have sent here more to curry favor with the West than to fight, as well as a few thousand soldiers from the alliance of rich Persian Gulf states known as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Saudi Arabia’s ground strength numbers 40,000 men in the army and 55,000 in the national guard.

The national guard, which did the fighting in Khafji, is under the overall command of Crown Prince Abdullah and traditionally has been seen as guardian of the royal family. Its composition is heavily tribal. In recent years the guard’s mission has been broadened to include national responsibilities that go well beyond the internal protection of the House of Saud.

To many skeptical diplomats in the Middle East, the performance of the anti-Iraq Arab troops has been one of the surprises of the war. The 18,000-man Saudi air force has flown more missions than any other country except the United States and has been joined by pilots from Qatar and Bahrain, both mere slivers of nations. The Arab coalition aligned against Baghdad has shown no signs of cracking despite Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s almost desperate attempts to breach its solidarity with calls for Arab unity, a holy war and the liberation of Palestine.

Although Saudi Arabia’s annual defense budget is more than $14 billion and the kingdom has acquired some of the United States’ most sophisticated weapons, many Middle East watchers dismissed the Saudis’ willingness and ability to fight before the war began. As recently as October, one former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia said: “You can forget Saudis in any war. They simply don’t fit into the military equation.”

His skepticism was not without cause, for the Saudis have always been conciliators, not confronters. Their country--the only one named for a family--may have been born from Abdulaziz ibn Saud’s series of conquests in the 1920s over warring tribes and squabbling sects, but the Saudis themselves have always been a gentle people whose recent influence was exerted through checkbook diplomacy and who would go to any extremes to avoid dangerous encounters.

They never played a substantial role in any of the Arab-Israeli wars; when they sent two brigades to join the Arabs against Israel in 1967, the units didn’t reach the front until after the war was over. When they shot down two intruding Iranian planes during the Iran-Iraq War, the command from headquarters to fire was given by a Pakistani because the Saudi general in charge was nowhere to be found.

An American oilman who lived in Saudi Arabia for years recalled a night in June, 1967, when a Saudi friend stopped by his home to say goodby.

“I’m going to the war,” the Saudi said. “I leave in the morning.” There were handshakes and embraces and words of farewell.

A week later the American was taken aback to see his friend at a party in Riyadh, the capital. He asked what had happened.

“My brother went,” his friend said. “I had some business to tend to.”

Given such priorities, it is not surprising that many skeptics have been startled by the Saudis’ performance in the air and at Khafji. Although one battle does not make an army, some military analysts believe that this force that was once considered a liability could become an important asset if a land battle is needed to liberate Kuwait.

What could emerge if the confidence gained in the Khafji battle carries through the war, they say, is a more active Saudi military role in the future of the Persian Gulf region.

This article was written in part from correspondent pool reports cleared by the U.S. military.