Martin Schram: Saudi money no longer buys protection

American shopkeepers paid Mafia wiseguys to "protect" them from adversity. Which would come in the form of wiseguys who would break their bones or torch their stores -- maybe both -- if they didn't pay.

Saudi royals paid what amounted to protection money by giving to fundamentalist Islamic charities that had the appearance of being good causes. But the money would find its way to militant Islamic terrorist causes. Such as murdering innocent civilian men, women and children, including those thousands who died on 9/11.

The deal that never had to be spoken to be understood was that even though Osama bin Laden was calling for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy, his gang would do its murdering outside the royal sandbox that is Saudi Arabia. That left the kingdom safely in place, in all its fragile power and glory.

So the Saudi royals posed as friends of the United States of America. Even as they hindered the U.S. investigations of 9/11 that sought to find out who was behind that bloodshed of innocents in New York and Washington and a field in Pennsylvania, all of which are half way around the world from Riyadh, Jidda and Mecca. The answer: Those who were behind the murders of 9/11 turned out to be a bunch of Saudi expatriates (15 out of 19 of the known 9/11 perpetrators) and, circuitously, a lot of Saudi protection money.

Now, coincidentally, al Qaeda -- the mob and the money -- are fingered by the U.S. government as the perpetrators of last Sunday's bloody bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh. It killed 17 and wounded 122 and what shook the Saudi royals was that the targets were not Americans. They were mainly foreign Arab workers who lived in Saudi Arabia.

But the meaning of the car bombing in the heart of the Saudi kingdom is that Saudi protection money isn't buying protection for the Saudi royals any more. It may not even be buying them time. Not for the Saudi rulers nor those secular dictators in other Arab nations whose citizens were the targets of what was said to be al Qaeda. Apparently, Saudi King Fahd finally gets it. The official Saudi Press Agency quoted the king as having told his ministers that the royal government will "strike with an iron fist whoever tries to violate the security of the country or its stability and the safety of its citizens and residents."

That will mark a change, because this new Saudi iron fist will be the same hand that once doled generous charity contributions that made its way to needy terrorists. The charges that money from Saudi charities has been diverted to the causes of terrorists are hardly new. They have funded madrassas, or schools, run by Muslims who are more than just religious fundamentalists -- they are militants who are molding young minds to become young terrorists.

A decade ago, the Saudi royal family responded to world criticism that royal charity contributions were being siphoned overseas; the royal family appointed a committee to coordinate its giving. In 2002, the Saudi royal family (via its U.S. embassy) denounced as "baseless" reports that any Saudi money has gone to pay the families of terrorists who are the Palestinian suicide bombers that kill women and children in Israel. But David Tell, writing in The Weekly Standard, a conservative opinion journal, noted that the Saudi Embassy's own Web site contained repeated accounts of how the kingdom had variously paid $33 million, $50 million, $40 million to families of Palestinian "martyrs."

Perhaps at last Saudi King Fahd understands that President Bush was right when he said on September 20, 2001: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

The larger regional question is whether the violent concussion of that militant Muslim bomb in Riyadh was so powerful that it has shaken some self-preservation sense into the strong-arm secular leaders of the government in Cairo and in other Arab capitals. They are leaders who have been used to having it both ways in the war on terror.

But the loud message of the car bombing in Riyadh is that the militant Islamic terrorists will not rest until they have ousted the seculars and installed fundamentalist Islamic regimes in all Arab capitals -- unless they are vanquished.

Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service.