SALAFISM IS A TOUGH SELL:

Can it make peace in the wider region?: Saudi Arabia has had mixed success in its diplomacy, but it has raised its profile and should keep on trying (The Economist, 10/10/08)

Despite tribal as well as sectarian ties, Iraq’s Sunnis have notably failed to turn to the kingdom as a protector. This reflects, in part, disillusionment with the Saudi-influenced version of Sunnism espoused by al-Qaeda, many of whose suicide bombers in Iraq hailed from across the Saudi border. So Saudi diplomats have more or less excluded themselves from the Iraqi debate.

The kingdom’s latest reported diplomatic venture may have a slightly better chance. In Mecca at the end of September, King Abdullah hosted a Ramadan breakfast that gathered representatives of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government as well as of the Taliban rebels who were overthrown seven years ago. Both the Afghan government and its opponents have been quick to deny that anything like real negotiations took place. The denial is understandable, since both parties are divided, with factions bitterly opposed to any accommodation. Even if talks did go beyond polite requests to pass the salt, full-scale negotiation is a long way off.

Yet the Saudi initiative to bring the sides together comes at an opportune time, when interests may start slowly to converge towards a negotiated solution. Despite calls for more coalition troops to back President Hamid Karzai’s government, a growing number of Western soldiers and diplomats reckon there can be no purely military solution in Afghanistan. And though Taliban guerrillas have got bolder, they have suffered heavy losses. An offensive by Pakistan’s army on its own side of a lawless border seeks to deny the Taliban their main sanctuary.

That they're rejected for the same reason the Taliban is should tell the Sa'uds that they need to Reform their own house.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2008 9:38 AM