Prince Al-Faisal on the Shortcomings of American Foreign Policy: It's Impact on Middle East Stability
By Kandie Stroud, Skytop Host and Contributor / November 22nd, 2024
Kandie Stroud was voted a top female political strategist by Business Insider in 2021. Stroud has over 40 years of experience in strategic communications, political campaigns and journalism. She has worked in nine presidential campaigns and provided advice and communications strategy for gubernatorial, senate and congressional candidates, corporations and law firms. She was the first woman to serve as the chief diplomatic correspondent for CNN and has worked as a correspondent and/or commentator for Capital Cities Broadcasting, WRC-TV, WTOP-TV, ABC and Talk Radio News Service,
She was the Director of Broadcast Communications for the Democratic National Committee for a decade and has managed the radio bookings for six Democratic National Conventions. Stroud served as a senior advisor and communications director for John Delaney’s presidential campaign during the 2020 election cycle. She served as Director of Media Relations for the Credit Union National Association (CUNA).
Stroud is a best-selling author of the political campaign book How Jimmy Won (William Morrow).
She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Boston College and is fluent in five languages.
Stroud served as board chairman of the Choral Arts Society of Washington and was a trustee for thirty years. She has performed with this symphonic chorus on concert stages around the world from South America to Russia, and from China to Europe.
I had no sooner arrived at the McLean, Virginia home of Prince Turki Al-Faisal for our interview when I was ushered into the living room by Dr. Naila Al-Sowayel, Senior Advisor for Public Diplomacy to the current Ambassador from Saudi Arabia, Princess Reema Al-Saud, Turki’s niece, part of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, and the first ever woman Ambassador from the Kingdom. I was about to sit down in a throne-like chair next to the couch. “That’s where he always sits,” she said, offering me the white couch instead. With that HRH swooped into the room.
He enters precisely on the stroke of noon. No time to waste. Turki is returning to Riyadh in a few hours after nearly a month in the US where he has been teaching at Columbia, Harvard and Princeton about the situation in the Middle East.
We are adjacent to Turki’s elegant wood-paneled office. The coffee table to my right is set with all manner of sweets and cookies. I take coffee—probably the best I have ever tasted. Is it Saudi coffee? “I brought the beans with me on the plane,” he says. The prince orders tea. The youngest son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975, Prince Turki is soft spoken, charming, humble, and laughs easily. If you didn’t know he was royalty you’d think he was a nice guy that, as they say in politics, you’d like to have a beer with.
Before we launch into geopolitics, I ask what it was like to grow up as a prince in a kingdom. “I didn’t really grow up in Saudi Arabia,” he retorts. “I grew up most of my life in America.” Turki attended Lawrenceville, Princeton and Georgetown University, where he still maintains an office.
Turki was head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID), the equivalent of our CIA, for 24 years until 2001, and is considered by many to be one of the most experienced spies on the planet. Since then, he has been Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK, Ireland and the United States. He runs a think tank in Riyadh, the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and travels the world giving lectures.
Today we are discussing his recent book, “The Afghanistan File”, a comprehensive record of his decades of effort trying to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan and the Mujahadeen.
The Kingdom has played a significant role in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion when Turki was Saudi Arabia’s chief intelligence officer and funded the Mujahideen. “The Soviet Union seemed to be expanding everywhere. In the mid 70’s many African countries were converting to Communism, starting with Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, and Angola. In Latin America they had Nicaragua. Cuba was very much a tool of Soviet expansion. And in Asia, of course, with the American withdrawal from Vietnam, it seemed to be that the Soviets were on the march on a global scale.”
Turki continues “Afghanistan was a victim of that march, and the concern was they would be expanding into Pakistan. Saudi Arabia had good relations with Pakistan, so the Pakistanis came to us to ask for help and the Americans came and said why don’t we get together and help Pakistan.”
So indeed, Saudi Arabia, with the aid of the United States and Pakistan, played a crucial role in supporting and funding the Afghan’s Mujahideen. Although he confesses that working with the different factions of the Mujahideen was like herding cats, they succeeded in expelling the Soviets.
The Saudis continued good relations with Afghanistan under the first Taliban government, but the good will ended in 1990 when they refused to hand over Bin Laden. There was also a decade of close ties during the subsequent government, under Hamid Karzai, the elected President of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. However, with the return of the Taliban now in power, the Saudis closed their embassy in Kabul “because we suspect the Taliban still has links with the terrorists, especially Al-Qaeda. We told them if you want to have relations with us you must break off your relationships with all the terrorist groups that operate out of Afghanistan.”
They have not done that.
For now, the Kingdom does not have relationships with Afghanistan other than to continue to provide humanitarian aid through the international organizations. “We think they should implement what they said they would,” Al Faisal says. “They promised the Afghan people that they would have an inclusive government and that they would protect the rights of all citizens including women. We’ve been telling the rest of the world—that you should not recognize them until they live up to their promises.”
Al-Faisal minces no words about his displeasure with U.S. foreign policy.
He is unhappy with the way the Biden Administration precipitously exited Afghanistan. Military first. Civilians last. Does he agree with the time-honored rule that you never pull the military out first? He replies with a huff of disdain. “Indeed not! None of us understood the way it happened. I was very disappointed and shocked.”
Not to mention leaving behind $88 billion in tanks, rifles, ammunition, missiles, trucks and other war materiel. Was this a strategic mistake on the part of the Biden administration? “Yes, absolutely,” Faisal says, “but it started under Mr. Trump in the first term. He is the one who made the deal to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. And that set the stage for the Biden administration to continue; but it’s the manner in which they withdrew that left a sour tase in everybody’s mouths, especially the friends of the United States.”
The key factor that led to the collapse, he says, was that the U.S. was talking directly to the Taliban behind the back of the Afghan government.
“The agreement that was reached with the Taliban was done without the government being involved. That was the nail in the coffin of the Afghan government because everybody, including Afghans, recognized the government was no longer responsible for their security and safety. That’s was the main reason why there was this collapse of the Afghan administrative system. There was no confidence anymore, not only in themselves, but in how others also see them. That led to the Taliban basically walking through whatever defenses the Afghan government had and, not finding any resistance, reached Kabul and took over.”
It appears the U.S. had decided well before the pullout that the Taliban would be the next system of government in Afghanistan.
“That was why they negotiated with the Taliban,” he says. “This was always a puzzle that they would do it that way. It reminded me of the time of the Vietnam withdrawal when America had the government in South Vietnam but negotiated with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong without the government being involved.”
In like manner, when the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan, the government collapsed. “I have no idea why Biden did it in such a manner. We’ve seen the Congressional hearings on that and seen statements by his military at the time and they all said that basically that they didn’t want it done that way. They wanted to leave something behind to protect not just Afghanistan but also American interests in Afghanistan.”
“Biden, however, had other ideas”, expresses Al Faisal.
Was this catastrophic result due to weak leadership in Washington? “Absolutely. I think it’s one of the reasons why Mr. Putin went into the Ukraine. His attack on the Ukraine followed the conclusion that America was no longer considered capable of standing up to action like that.”
“As far as Ukraine is concerned, the Kingdom mediated the release of prisoners on both sides, provided humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees and all the conferences that have been held in the Kingdom about Ukraine, included Mr. Zelinsky coming to the Kingdom and engaging in these talks.”
He sees the world “…in a state of anarchy where there is no one responsible for leadership needed to preserve order in an otherwise broken world.”
New terrorist groups have sprouted, and existing ones have grown. Hezbollah has been operating in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Israel seems to be pursuing its Greater Israel plans and China has seen all of this chaos as an opportunity to flex its muscle in many of the Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. “I don’t know if I would call it muscle. We haven’t seen military deployment by China in our part of the world-- not yet anyway, but definitely they have political and economic influence in the region. The Gulf states, all of them, have good relations with China, mostly economic. When Saudi Arabia and Iran decided to resume a relationship two and a half years ago, they did it in Bejing with China acting as host. And today Saudi Arabia is China’s largest trading partner.”
Iran has also taken a cue from the leadership vacuum in Washington and expanded in the region. “They’ve been boasting that they have control of four Arab countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and through their militias in these countries they wield very strong influence on those countries. We’ve seen it in Lebanon for example where Hezbollah for 20 years has been the dominant political force. And the recent fighting between Hezbollah and Israel shows it was Hezbollah that was engaging in Israel, not the Lebanese army or the Lebanese political elite.”
In Yemen, the Houthis, who are allied with Iran, “have been interdicting commerce in the Red Sea and the Arab Sea, using Israel’s attack on Gaza and the Palestinians as justification. In Iraq where the Shia party is the most dominant in the government, during the past few years of Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Trumps time in office they have been launching drones and missiles at American forces. And now, Iran, besides making deals with the Gulf States, it is solidifying ties and patching up past differences with Afghanistan.”
The bad blood went back decades to the time Iran tested its might in Afghanistan by running an incursion with Afghans soldiers living in Iran. “But even though these fighters were native Afghans, they were slaughtered because they were seen as invaders.” Enmity over this massacre persisted until the fall of the Soviets, when the Bin Laden family and Bin Laden’s children sought refuge in Iran. Soon thereafter relationships began to strengthen. Now the two countries are working together again.
He refers to Gaza and the Palestinian Crisis as “the mother of all conflicts in the region. It is affecting everything and unless there is a ceasefire there the killing will continue, and we will not be able to reach a resolution. Whether it’s one state or two, whatever you think, something must be done in the form of a resolution. Otherwise, it will continue to be a source of uncertainty and bloodshed and destruction, not just in Palestine but everywhere. There will be no solution if U.S. policy is unduly beholden to Israel’s positions.”
The Kingdom is very much engaged in trying to get a ceasefire not just in Palestine but also in Lebanon. “Our goal is simply to stop the killing but the Israeli’s are continuing their eradication policy in Gaza and they’re also taking action in the West bank. They are actively destroying terrorist cells in the West Bank by going into the refugee camps and destroying whatever they can. In Lebanon they are using the same policy particularly in the South of Lebanon.”
In his mind’s eye, this again demonstrates, “how impotent the U.S. is as a great power responsible for preserving world peace and security and it is the bone of contention between the Arab world and the U.S. The perception of American involvement has caused suspicion and sown discord with Arabs and Muslims.” With no peace in sight, the war could be spilling over as a regional war. “This will be the future if no just solution is found.” He promises that the Kingdom, “will continue to support any issue that brings about a just resolution and a just solution to the plight of the Palestinian community.”
He is concerned about a wider war between Israel and Iran. At the moment Iran and Israel are “going through a pas de deux, a tango. They are lobbing missiles at each and telling each other where the missiles are going … matters can escalate out of control and that is something we’re seeing happening.”
There is a loud knock on the front door. The Prince’s next visitors have arrived. Time to wrap.
What lessons or message does he want his readers to learn from his book? “Two things are my message. One is that you cannot force upon a people a system of government unless they want it. The Soviets tried to make Afghanistan into a communist regime. The West and America wanted to make it a western style democracy by force. Both failed. Governance must come from within Afghanistan.”
“The second message is what happens in Afghanistan does not stay in Afghanistan. It affects all of us whether it is terrorists or drug traffickers. Afghanistan has become a center for opium, heroin—you name it—because of economic issues. The country is surrounded by others that want to take advantage of it.”
What does he see as the future of Afghanistan to which he devoted two decades of his life? Al Faisal does not see Taliban rule ending until the Afghan people rise up and say they’ve had enough. And that day is coming although no one can say when. “No regime like the Taliban with its restrictive policy on its own people can last for long. Something will have to give. The day will come when the Afghan people will simply rise up against the Taliban and force them-- if they want to remain in power-- to change their ways-- or they will change them completely.”
Prince Turki al-Faisal will fly to the Kingdom tonight and won’t return again until next October. The flight home is 12 hours but he says he does a lot of crossword puzzles to pass the time, so it will go quickly.
I thank him for a candid exchange and wish him a safe journey home.