January 1997 - Arab leaders gathered again in Cairo to resurrect the myth of Arab solidarity. Ignored were their sometimes lethal differences and the threats these leaders and their governments face from their own people. Those differences and threats will continue to make the region dangerous and unpredictable.

For centuries, religion has inspired the most violent actions in the Middle East. From Iran to Algeria, from Turkey to Sudan, militant Islam is the common thread. In Israel, the increasing influence of nationalist orthodoxy borders on religious fervor. To these measures of pure belief, add a few more mundane factors such as poverty, frustration and a demographic time bomb: a population bulge of the young, restless and volatile. More than half of people in Egypt (57%), Saudi Arabia (58%) and Jordan (65%) are under the age of 24.

Iran is frequently pointed to as the principal sponsor of terrorism, but a more important threat may be the presence of veterans of the Afghan war -- the ex-mujaheddin, or holy warriors, who were backed by the CIA in one of the last struggles of the Cold War. Saudi Arabia helped pay for that war and sent hundreds of fiery-eyed zealots from its puritanical Wahabi sect who, along with other Islamic volunteers, fought with the Afghans and now want to continue their struggle elsewhere.

The men who bombed the World Trade Center in New York came from these ranks, as did four Saudis who set off a car bomb that killed five Americans in Riyadh last November. "Blowback," it is called in the intelligence community. The four were beheaded last month, and the latest bombing is believed to have been in retribution, aimed not only at the "infidel" Americans but also at the Saudi royal family.

A Cooke's Tour Of The Middle East

Saudi Arabia is outwardly oil rich and seemingly stable. Unlike America's previous best friend in the Persian Gulf, the Shah of Iran, who tried to secularize and modernize a deeply religious country, the Saudi royal family is deeply entwined with the ulema, the religious leadership. Islamic law is strictly enforced. Indeed, King Fahd's very legitimacy rests on his role as the Sherif of Mecca, protector of Islam's holiest place.

The dynasty's founder, Ibn Saud, seized this role with his desert warriors -- the Ikhwan, or brotherhood, of fundamentalist Bedouin -- from the Hashemite family in 1924, charging that they had failed to protect pilgrims and enjoyed a corrupt monopoly on the sale of dried lizards, which are used as a tonic.

But, particularly since U.S. troops arrived to defend the kingdom five years ago and were allowed to stay on, the government's policy of juggling friendship with the West and fundamentalism at home has come under growing attack. Senior religious scholars have posed a series of open challenges, amid widespread accusations of corruption and, worse, decadence.

The criticism has grown as the oil boom that supported a safety net of free education, easy jobs and cheap housing collapsed and the country had to absorb $120 billion in war costs. The government itself is in disarray since King Fahd suffered a stroke in November, with power now apparently centered in Crown Prince Abdullah.

Egypt provides America with its other main supporter in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak. Under him, Egypt remains perpetually in ruins and a breeding ground for fundamentalism. Its attempts to industrialize are a shambles, its government bureaucracy legendary for sloth and inefficiency. Its schools spew out the poorly educated into a nonexistent job market and its tiny strip of farmland along the Nile is being gobbled up into jerry-built urban slums that sometimes collapse into the sewage on which they are built.

Its Islamic fundamentalists periodically shoot up tourists, the police, Coptic Christians or government officials. In return, they are shot.

Jordan, a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, has joined Egypt as a leading backer -- and hopeful beneficiary -- of the peace with Israel. Six years ago, Saddam Hussein was on posters all over Amman and King Hussein had taken to calling himself the sherif, the title his family lost to the Saudis. [In the Middle East, alliances can shift like the proverbial sands]

But the king's embrace of Israeli officials and his grief at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated Israeli prime minister, have cost him badly at home.

There has even been rioting among the Bedouin, traditionally the king's base of support in a population that is largely Palestinian.

Government officials worry, too, about a growing social disparity, with a tiny rich elite living in enormous new mansions surrounded by increasing poverty. The King has accused Syria of smuggling in terrorists to cause trouble, and last week Palestinian guerrillas, apparently coming from Syria, sneaked over the Jordan River and killed three Israeli soldiers.

Syria and Iraq remain gangster states, each ruthlessly ruled by a small clique from a religious minority -- Alawites in Damascus, Sunnis from the village of Tikrit in Baghdad.

Algeria's military dictatorship replaced failed socialism and is now battling Islamic revolutionaries who murder foreigners and liberals.

Israel is far from being a safe haven for anyone. Militant internal and external forces are ripping at its barely 50 year old fabric. It remains a constant object for terrorism, despite all efforts to achieve peace with its "neighbors."

Turkey, where Kemal Ataturk introduced secularism after World War I, is getting an Islamic fundamentalist prime minister -though in coalition with secularists, all the while suppressing Kurdish insurgency in its nation's southeast. And, according to intelligence officials, believing the Kurds to be hiding and training in Syria, the Turks are thought to be responsible for a recent bombing in Damascus.