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74 chapter fIve the saudIs: fInancIers and voLunteers the paLaces of the House of Saud, the ruling family of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, were built to inspire awe in any visitor. The king’s palace in the capital, Riyadh, is an enormous structure decorated inside in lovely green Italian marble; the palace grounds cover a square mile. The palace complex in Jeddah, the main port on the Red Sea, is on a stretch of land larger than the island of Bahrain. The palace of the crown prince includes a dining area built around a large indoor swimming pool; overhead, the ceiling is painted to look like a star-studded sky. A huge aquarium lines one side of the room, giving occupants the impression that they are under the sea. Most of the major princes of the kingdom have more than one private palace. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former ambassador to the United States, has one in Riyadh and another in Jeddah. His palace in Riyadh encompasses a full-scale replica of the fort in the center of the old city that was the scene of the birth of the modern Saudi kingdom at the start of the twentieth century—it’s a bit like a Texan having a fullscale replica of the Alamo in the backyard. His palace on the Red Sea is designed to make a person feel as if he or she is inside the ancient Egyptian Temple of Luxor, complete with huge stone pillars and a ceiling that is forty or so feet high. The Saudi royal palaces are never open to the public, and photographs of them are very rare. But here in these modern equivalents of Versailles or Schönbrunn, the war in Afghanistan was financed. It was Saudi money, provided by both the state and private citizens, that paid for the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army. It was in the palaces of the Saudi royals that the key decisions were made in summits between top Saudi, 05-2595-4 ch5.indd 74 4/30/14 2:13 PM the saudIs: fInancIers and voLunteers 75 Pakistani, and U.S. officials. The principal architect of Saudi policy in the 1980s was Fahd bin Abdulaziz al Saud. Born in 1921, one of the sons of the modern kingdom’s founder, Abdulaziz al Saud, Fahd became minister of the interior, a key position, in 1962; upon the death of King Faisal in 1975, he became crown prince. As crown prince, Fahd was the power behind the throne of his brother, King Khalid. When Khalid died on June 13, 1982, Fahd ascended to the throne. Later he began calling himself “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” a reminder that he was in charge of the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, and that the kingdom was the defender of Islam everywhere. Despite suffering a debilitating stroke in 1995, Fahd reigned as monarch until his death in 2005. During the critical years of the Afghan war, Fahd called the shots in Saudi Arabia. Two other princes also played critical roles in the Saudi effort to help Pakistan and the Afghan mujahedin. During the 1980s, Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud, the son of King Faisal, was the head of the Saudi intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Directorate (GID). The GID handled the kingdom’s relationship with foreign intelligence services, including the ISI and the CIA. Turki traveled constantly to keep those relationships on track; he was a frequent visitor to Pakistan and spent an enormous amount of time with General Akhtar and the Afghan party leaders. He was deeply respected by the ISI leadership. Since he represented the king, he had both political and religious authority as well as deep pockets. He would implement Fahd’s promise to the United States to match every dollar of U.S. government support to the mujahedin with an equal Saudi contribution, all of it going through the ISI. The second key prince was then the governor of Riyadh Province, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. Salman, who was born on December 31, 1935, had been governor of Riyadh Province, home of the capital, since 1962. A century ago, in 1911, Riyadh had a population of less than 10,000 inhabitants, and when Salman became governor of Riyadh, it had only 150,000 inhabitants. Today Riyadh is a bustling metropolis in the heart of the Nejdi desert with a population of some 7 million people, and it is one...

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