Page 273 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

270 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

expressing their opinions, for there is a widespread network of informers
keeping watch on all activities, and every strand in this network leads to Riyad.
The presence of underground political organizations of one kind or another
in Saudi Arabia has been reported for two decades now. At least as early as 1961
there was a ‘National Front for the Liberation of Saudi Arabia’, whose political
complexion was murky but which appeared to gain a Marxist tinge as time
went by. During the latter years of the reign of Saud ibn Abdul Aziz this group
was allied with the dissident members of the royal house led by Talal ibn Abdul

Aziz, who took refuge for a time in Egypt. Another group, with the recherche
name ‘Federation of Democratic Forces of rhe xVabian Peninsula’, emerged in
1964, rather more radical in character and possibly incorporating some ele­
ments of the National Liberation Front. Almost at once it found itself with a
rival, the ‘Arabian Peninsula People’s Union’, a Nasserist organization based
in the Yemen. Over the next three years the two clandestine movements were
responsible for a series of sporadic bombing incidents in a number of Saudi
Arabian towns, which in turn occasioned a sequence of public executions by
the Saudi authorities, although it was not clear whether the persons executed
were the actual perpetrators of the bombings. After the Egyptians withdrew
from the Yemen in 1967 the Arabian Peninsula People’s Union more or less
faded from the scene. Cells of the Arab Nationalists’ Movement were founded
from the early 1960s onwards, usually by converts to the movement returning
home from study abroad. Their connexion, if any, with the National Libera­
tion Front was obscure. So, too, was the identity of the ‘Popular Democratic
Front’ which made its presence felt in 1969, declaring itself to be ‘a workers’
revolutionary movement embracing the path of mass violence’. Its origins

seemed to go back to 1965, yet its name and its distinctly Marxist pronounce­
ments seemed to align it with the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, which broke away from the PFLP and the ANM in February
t969.
The Popular Democratic Front, the National Front for the Liberation
of Saudi Arabia and the Federation of Democratic Forces all appear to have
been implicated in a revolutionary conspiracy - or perhaps two separate con­
spiracies - which was uncovered in June and July 1969. (So sparse is the
information available about these revolutionary groups that it is not certain
whether the last two were separate organizations or one organization under
different names.) The Popular Democratic Front seems to have recruited
mainly army and air force officers and men to its ranks, while the Nationa
Front for the Liberation of Saudi Arabia (and the Federation of Democrauc
Forces) had a membership composed largely of clerks, teachers and other
government employees, along with individuals from some prominent Hijazi
families. Differing accounts, none of them very illuminating, have been given
of the nature of the conspiracy, its aims and the reasons for its failure. ( ne o
the more interesting explanations is that it was designed to achieve an indepen­