The Saudi Arabia of today is far different from the Saudi Arabia of Sept. 11, 2001.
All but four of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi citizens, and the Saudi kingdom was the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaida and mastermind of the attack 20 years ago. In the two decades since then, Saudi Arabia has confronted al-Qaida on its own soil, revamped its textbooks, worked to curb terror financing andpartnered with the United States to counter terrorism.
It wasn’t until the last five years, though, that the kingdom began backing away from the religious ideology upon which it was founded and which it espoused within and outside its borders — Wahhabism, a strict interpretation of Islam that helped spawn generations of mujahedeen.
For countless numbers of people in the United States, Saudi Arabia will forever be associated with 9/11, the collapse of the World Trade Towers and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
To this day, victims’ families are trying to hold the Saudi government accountable in New York and have pushed President Joe Biden to declassify certain documents related to the attacks, despite Saudi government insistence that any allegation of complicity is “categorically false.” Victims of a 2019 shootin at a Florida military base and their families are also suing Saudi Arabia for monetary damages, claiming the kingdom knew the Saudi Air Force officer had been radicalized and could have prevented the killings.
Saudi Arabia’s close partnership with the United States, including the presence of American troops in the kingdom after the first Gulf War, made its leadership a target of extremist groups.
“It is important to realize that the terrorists who struck the U.S. on September 11 have also targeted Saudi Arabia’s people, leadership, military personnel and even our holiest religious sites in Mecca and Medina on multiple occasions,” Fahad Nazer, the Saudi Embassy spokesperson in Washington, told The Associated Press. He said Saudi-U.S. counterterrorism work has saved thousands of lives.
source:https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-20-years-after-9/11-a-country-in-the-making/articleshow/86113876.cms