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Shifting sands and the House of
Saud
By Matthew Riemer
The
leadership in Saudi Arabia is in danger and, in fact,
has been for some time. The Arabian Peninsula, the heart
and soul of the Islamic world since its genesis 1,400
years ago, has now become the shelter for one of the
Middle East's most austere and traditional governments
and societies. And it is because of this that the opaque
administration of an ailing King Fahd and the
ostensible, yet highly contested, successor, Crown
Prince Abdullah, is coming under extreme pressure from
both without and within.
For the past several
months, factions within Washington's intellectual and
foreign-policy circles have been calling for the
re-evaluation of the United States' relationship with
the desert monarchy. Many opine that the negative
aspects of the existing regime (the kingdom's perceived
complicity with terrorists, social repression) now
outweigh the positive ones (Saudi Arabia contains the
largest quantities of the most crucial resource on the
planet).
Usually, most critics begin with the
fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the
September 11, 2001, attacks were Saudi nationals. They
then point to a political system (or lack thereof) and
society that most Westerners find a bit repressive if
not backward and wholly unacceptable - one that nurtures
and exports terrorism. When combined with the
geopolitical significance of Saudi oil reserves, the
country becomes one that Washington can't help but exert
a certain amount of control over and, if need be,
critics maintain, its desires for the kingdom can
legitimately be realized through force or "regime
change".
Last July, during a briefing given to
the Defense Advisory Board, a group that advises the
Pentagon, an analyst with the Rand Corp, Laurent
Murawiec, depicted Saudi Arabia as a terrorist state
that should be considered an enemy of the United States.
Murawiec said, "The Saudis are active at every
level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers,
from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to
cheerleader. Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and
attacks our allies [and is responsible for a] daily
outpouring of virulent hatred against the US from Saudi
media, 'educational' institutions, clerics, officials -
Saudis tell us one thing in private, do the contrary in
reality."
Toward the end of the presentation he
added, "There is an 'Arabia', but it need not be
'Saudi'." A brief list is also given outlining interests
Washington could target in order to pressure Riyadh:
oil, economic security, the holy places.
This
briefing caused a wave of anti-Saudi stories to flood
the mainstream media in the US. From radio talk shows to
cable news to political journals, the US-Saudi
relationship experienced new levels of scrutiny. For
example, News Hour with Jim Lehrer ran a segment
titled "Friend or Foe" in reference to Saudi Arabia.
This was despite the fact that many in the
administration of President George W Bush were quick to
point out that this was not US policy (in essence
calling Saudi Arabia evil and supporting regime change),
and that Washington maintained an excellent relationship
with Riyadh.
Defense Department spokeswoman
Victoria Clarke said at the time, "Saudi Arabia is a
long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The
Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism
and have the department's and the administration's deep
appreciation." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made
similar comments, and Secretary of State Colin Powell
personally called Saudi Arabia to advise Prince Faisal
that nothing in the relationship between the two
countries had changed. However, a heightened sense of
Saudi Arabia's terrorist connection persists.
Additionally, as Western opinion exerts pressure
from without, many factors work on the Saudi
leadership's political control from within, hoping for
their own kind of regime change. Since Saddam Hussein's
fateful invasion of neighboring Kuwait during the summer
of 1990 and Saudi Arabia's subsequent and close
cooperation with Washington, the Saudi royal family has
become one of Osama bin Laden's and al-Qaeda's chief
targets.
Bin Laden took exception when the
Saudis rejected his offer of assistance to help oust
Saddam from Kuwait and, instead, turned to Washington.
This resulted in the stationing of hundreds of thousands
of US troops in the region. Ever since, one of bin
Laden's central conditions for a ceasefire in the "war
on terrorism" has been the removal of US troops from the
Arabian Peninsula. Other hardline, ideologically
right-wing movements within much of the Middle East were
also offended that King Fahd allowed foreign troops to
use Saudi soil to defend another Arab country. Riyadh's
final split with bin Laden occurred in 1994 when it
revoked his Saudi citizenship.
The recent
bombings in Riyadh, targeting compounds where hundreds
of foreign workers involved in the training of the Saudi
Arabian National Guard reside, indicate that terrorist
forces still have as their goal the destabilization or
ouster of the Saudi regime.
There's also
domestic pressure from a society that can only be kept
sheltered from Western influence and technological
modernization for so long. Communications technology
alone is influencing societies and organizational
potentials as never before. Because of this, Saudi
society has a greater window on the rest of the world
than at any other time in its history. People are simply
more aware now of what their country does not offer
them.
This greatly threatens the House of Saud's
power because it has been this very ignorance that has
kept citizens indoctrinated in the monarchy's own
version of history, which emphasizes the legitimacy of
the Saudi dynasty through the mythologizing of the
dynasty's founder Ibn Saud. Wahhabism and its founder,
Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, are also emphasized,
creating another point of contention between the
monarchy and its fundamentalist critics.
The
more Saudis know about the history of their region,
other branches of Islam, and alternative political
systems, the less "royal" and God-given the House of
Saud will appear to be; they will become more
illegitimate - both politically and religiously - with
each passing year. Moreover, communications and
information technologies will be instrumental in the
dissemination of these sentiments. The threat from
religious fundamentalists, including those militants
fighting for more specific political causes, will
complement the less radical but more legitimate domestic
dissent. Diplomatic ambiguity on the part of the United
States and widely consumed news that questions Saudi
Arabia's role in the "war on terror" will only assist in
the creation of a global and regional environment that
threatens to destabilize Saudi Arabia irreparably and
possibly topple the House of Saud.
Published
with permission of the Power and
Interest News Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into various
conflicts, regions and points of interest around the
globe. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.
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