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COMMENTARY
Whither Saudi Arabia?
By Ehsan
Ahrari
The London Guardian of July 28, 2002,
carried a troublesome dispatch with a headline, "Britons
left in jail amid fears that Saudi Arabia could fall to
al-Qaeda." Given that it is a closed society, and that
it is difficult to measure the dynamics of the Saudi
public mood, my personal assessment is that the dispatch
is not too far off the mark in describing what might be
brewing in that country. The power of the Jihadi-Salafi
groups is indeed on the rise in and around the Saudi
neighborhood. These groups are thus named because of
their fervent dedication to carrying out jihad (holy
war) in order to reestablish a "pure" Islamic state of
the days of the Salaf (pious ancestors). There are a
number of worrisome developments of the recent past -
some still evolving - that seem to be casting their
ominous shadow on the prospects of future stability in
Saudi Arabia.
First, while the political
differences between Riyadh and Washington have been
mounting since September 11, the anti-regime feelings
within Saudi Arabia are also escalating, roughly with
similar intensity. In the post-September 11 domestic
environments, both countries have been operating under a
highly deleterious phenomenon of "mutual vilification",
whereby the Saudi regime is depicted, at best, as
duplicitous in dealing with the United States, or, at
worst, a promoter of anti-Americanism within its own
borders. To make this point, the American print and
television media have been harshly criticizing the
Wahhabi sect of Islam - an integral part of Saudi
official creed - as a promoter of the primacy of jihad.
Similarly, inside Saudi Arabia, America's war on
terrorism is being perceived as a euphemism for
"anti-Islamism" and mounting "Islamophobia".
The
globalized environment of the information age has been
instantaneously carrying to Saudi Arabia almost all
aspects of public scrutiny that it has been receiving
within the United States. Consequently, the position of
those Saudi insiders who were somewhat sympathetic to
America's argument for fighting transnational terrorism,
a distinct minority to be sure, has been significantly
weakened.
Second, there is little doubt that the
overall perspective of the Wahhabi sect is against
anything or anyone that fails to measure up to that
sect's some say impossible puritanical standards. The
United States' role in defending the kingdom in 1991 had
earned it strong support inside its domestic arena.
However, that support turned into an equally powerful
feeling of antipathy when the United States did not show
any interest in withdrawing its troops at the conclusion
of that campaign. Washington knows full well that the
presence of its forces in Saudi Arabia has always been a
contentious issue. Indeed, Osama bin Ladin as well as
the domestic Jihadi-Salafi groups broke with the Saudi
government on this very issue, even while the military
operations under Operation Desert Storm were still
continuing. But Washington's decision to station its
troops appeared oblivious to the rising tide of
hostility related to that issue, and was driven
fundamentally by its strategic agenda of containing
Iraq. And, thus far, the Saudi government has not
gathered enough moral courage to "disinvite" the United
States from its country.
However, the
post-September environment within Saudi Arabia has also
created an entirely different situation that the regime
cannot ignore. The fact that 15 out of 19 hijackers of
the September 11 attacks were Saudi nationals made it
abundantly clear to the government that its pro-American
policies were in dire need of radical re-evaluation.
There are even reports that the "group of 15" - as the
15 Saudi hijackers are referred to - are held in high
esteem in some circles of Saudi society. Consequently,
there are frequent rumors of growing dissension within
the ruling elites about how far the government ought to
go to accommodate the United States, especially at a
time when Washington's war on global terrorism is
generally perceived in Muslim countries as essentially
"anti-Islamic".
Third, the American
dismantlement of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and
the continuing suffering of the Palestinians in the
occupied territories has given a lot credence to the
calls of the Jihadi-Salafi groups for the "return to
true Islam" in almost all Muslim countries. The
theological perspectives of these groups had always
carried a special meaning inside Saudi Arabia, whose
raison d'etre is to promote Islamic puritanism, not just
within its own borders, but also all over the Muslim
world. The government has played its role fervently. In
fact, the entire modality of its involvement in the
American-sponsored war against the Soviet Union in the
late 1970s and 1980s was aimed at promoting its
self-styled role of the "defender" of Islam. During that
war, that Saudi role was in perfect harmony with
America's own strategic objectives of defeating the
"godless" communist superpower. However, nowadays, to
the utter annoyance and dismay of the United States, it
has emerged as the "great satan" and the chief "enemy"
of the Jihadi-Salafi forces, a depiction that was
popular only in Iran in the 1980s.
Now the Saudi
regime's predicament is how to separate itself from bin
Laden and Ayman al-Jawahiri (the head of Egypt's former
Islamic Jihad party, which joined the al-Qaeda terrorist
group in the 1990s), and their ideological compatriots.
Another Saudi quandary is that the Bush administration
has become at least highly indifferent (some say,
hostile) to Saudi Arabia's role as a promoter of and
proselytizer for Islam. But the Saudi government would
lose whatever legitimacy it has within its borders if it
deviated from that role. After all, such a divergence
goes against the very "compact" reached in 1745 between
Mohammad Ibn Saud and Mohammad Abdel Wahhab, the
spiritual head of the Wahhabi sect.
Fourth,
Saudi Arabia cannot remain indifferent to the remnants
of the al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in South Asia and
their ardent supporters, whose numbers defy any
reasonable guessing. At the same time it cannot
wholeheartedly endorse the American solution of totally
eradicating them. Such a solution is deemed optimal only
in the United States. In and around Saudi Arabia, no
government would endorse it explicitly and still be able
stay in power for long. The very fact that the
government of Pakistan's President General Pervez
Musharraf is waging a military campaign against these
forces on the Pakistan-Afghan borders makes it anyone's
guess whether it will survive, and for how long. But the
fact that the government in Riyadh cannot even endorse
eradication of the al-Qaeda and Taliban elements, much
less openly participate in carrying it out, makes it
suspect in the eyes of the US government. Such is the
nature of the dilemma the rulers in Riyadh currently
face.
The turbulences of the post-September 11
era in the Muslim world at large may be compared to
another time when Mustafa Kemal in Turkey dissolved the
office of the caliphate in 1922. The major difference is
that only selected areas of the Muslim world then felt
the brunt of despair emanating from that development. On
the contrary, since the September 11 era is happening
simultaneously with the information revolution, the
sense of rootlessness and despair abounds from Morocco
to Malaysia regarding how to regain the "glorious"
Islamic past. In the temporal sense, that era is part of
the distant past, but the nostalgia for its associated
glories seems to be getting strong in a number of Muslim
countries, thanks to the intense emotional rhetoric and
zealotry of devotion manifested by the Jihadi-Salafi
groups. These groups have no blueprint to regain that
past glory, but they have indeed become the winds of the
storm in terms of their focused criticism of
pro-American dictators and kings. Musharraf, whose
latest derogatory name in the streets of Karachi and
Islamabad is "Busharraf" - a depiction that underscores
his affiliation with the policies of President George W
Bush - is no more secure in his seat of power than
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or President Megawati
Sukarnoputri of Indonesia.
In an ironic way, the
Jihadi-Salafi groups may be compared to the Red Guards
of the cataclysmic Cultural Revolution that started in
the People's Republic of China in 1966 and ended 10
years later. But the potential turbulence of the
Jihadi-Salafis greatly exceeds anything the Red Guards
were able to generate Despite its large size, China was
a politically and economically isolated country during
the Cultural Revolution. On the contrary, Muslim
countries - especially the oil-producing Muslim states -
are highly interconnected with the global economy in the
21st century. Thus, major turbulence in one or more of
those countries would be felt instantaneously within
their regions. Indeed, the global repercussions of such
turbulences are likely to follow soon thereafter.
Fifth, knowing how much emotional turbulence the
incessant television coverage of Palestinian suffering
was causing in the Arab world, the Saudi government took
the lead in putting forth a "land for peace" proposal as
a basis of negotiations between the Palestine Liberation
Organization and Israel. Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdel
Aziz was the chief author of that plan. However, despite
his personal promise to the crown prince to promote the
plan, Bush completely ignored it when he officially
called for an "interim" Palestinian state in his
announcement of June 26. While that announcement will be
remembered in the West for its denunciation of Yasser
Arafat's leadership, in the Arab world it symbolized the
official spurning of the Saudi peace plan. Needless to
say the rivals of Crown Prince Abdullah, most notably
Prince Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz, the Saudi defense
minister, might use that spurning against him in a
potential struggle for succession after the ailing King
Fahd passes on.
It is interesting to note that
Sultan is believed to be a preferred US candidate for
the Saudi throne. So an argument can be made that Bush's
ignoring of the Abdullah peace plan had a distinct
purpose, that of undermining his prestige. However, if
the reports of heightening anti-Americanism inside Saudi
Arabia are correct, the last thing that Washington ought
to do is to involve itself in "kingmaking" in that
kingdom.
When political change comes to Saudi
Arabia, one hopes that it remains peaceful and follows
the long-established procedures of succession. It is
also hoped that Crown Prince Abdullah's claim to the
throne is not jeopardized by any overt or covert
American participation. The Islamic world needs a
peaceful change in the birthplace of Islam. By the same
token, the world at large deserves nothing less than
that. It is hoped that the United States is reading the
trends with rapt attention and will maintain a low
profile when political change occurs in Saudi Arabia.
Only by doing this might it still be able to influence a
peaceful change. Any heightened American posturing or
declarations regarding what it prefers to see in that
country are likely to harm the cause of moderate forces
and the prospects for peace and stability, for the
Jihadi-Salafi groups are not likely to sit idly by.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk,
Virginia, US-based strategic analyst
(©2002
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