RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 21 — In the last decade, as thousands of young Saudis left their country to wage Islamic holy war, Saudi leaders let them go, aware of the danger they might pose to the United States, but more focused on the danger they would pose at home.
At least four times in the last six years, Saudis who were trained or recruited in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kosovo or Bosnia have been among the terrorists who carried out bombings of American targets -- in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen. But not until October, after the American military campaign in Afghanistan began, did Saudi Arabia detain young men trying to join that fight.
Until then, the Saudi royal family performed a diplomatic and political balancing act. Choosing accommodation over confrontation, the government shied away from a crackdown on militant clerics or their followers, a move that would have inflamed the religious right, the disaffected returnees from other wars and a growing number of unemployed.
It appears to have been a miscalculation of global proportions, Western diplomats now say. As they look back to examine the roots of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials in Saudi Arabia, Europe and the United States describe a similar pattern. In country after country, Al Qaeda's networks took hold, often with the knowledge of local intelligence and security agencies. But on the rare occasions that countries did address the terrorist threat, they chose to deal with it as a local issue rather than an interlocking global network.
The result: for Osama bin Laden's most audacious strike against the United States, Europe was his forward base, Saudi Arabia his pool of recruits, the United States a vulnerable target.
In interviews here, former senior Saudi officials said they had recognized the exodus of warriors as a source for concern, for the kingdom and its American ally. But they insisted that they thought the danger could be contained.
Only after Sept. 11 did Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties to the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which was spreading a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam dear to the Saudis even as it forged ever closer ties with Al Qaeda. The Taliban were recognized by just three countries.
