The Siege of Mecca

THE SIEGE OF MECCA: the Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Quaeda: Yaroslav Trofimov: Doubleday: Nonfiction: 301 pages

November, 1979 - I was living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Suddenly all the international telephone connections were cut and we heard rumors that many wounded Saudi soldiers were being brought to Riyadh hospitals because of a crisis in Mecca. Thirty years later this book reveals details of the violent seizure of the sacred mosque in Mecca at the height of Hadj which were impossible to learn at the time. The Saudis quashed news stories about the takeover of the mosque and downplayed the event. The CIA and the US Diplomatic Corp were focused on the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and saw the Mecca uprising as “the isolated act of a small group of religious fanatics.” The author, however, makes a plausible connection between this bloody event and subsequent Islamic fundamentalist movements including Al Qaeda.

The author’s extensive experience reporting from the Middle East are apparent from the many contacts he was able to make in order to gather the details for this book. For me the book was as gripping as any fiction thriller. If you are not familiar with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia you will need to study the map of the mosque he includes and give yourself extra time to absorb the political and religious background the author provides in the first chapters.

SH