The
vilification of Saudi Arabia by many in Washington after
September 11, 2001, led to rash speculation that the
United States might eventually turn on its longtime
ally. But the sound and fury of ongoing neo-conservative
polemics against the al-Saud dynasty have not signified
a change in policy. The Saudi-US partnership is too
profitable to risk throwing the baby out with the bath
water, and it seems destined to endure, at least until
the long-predicted fall of the House of Saud.
The United States and the House of Saud have
maintained a mutually beneficial relationship for
decades under which the US has gained access to the
Arabian Peninsula's oil reserves and Saudi Arabia has
willingly received US shipments of arms. But aside from
the obvious economic incentives for a continuation of
the status quo, Dr Sa'd al-Fagih, a Saudi dissident who
heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA),
believes that Washington's dependence on Saudi
cooperation in its "war on terror" has delivered it into
a cul-de-sac, forcing the partnership on. "The Americans
are stuck," he says. "They have gone too far in linking
their fate with al-Saud. They had the chance to maneuver
before September 11," but not now.
That even the
non-violent Saudi opposition, such as the MIRA, is
Islamic and less amenable to US interests than the House
of Saud is an added incentive for Washington to stand by
the current rulers of Riyadh. In addition, with Iraq in
turmoil, the last thing Washington needs is more
uncertainty in the region. Dr Mai Yamani, a research
fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs
(RIIA) in London, and an expert on Saudi Arabia, says
that the administration of US President George W Bush
needs stability there. "Now that there's so much
instability in Iraq," she said, "they have been trying
to protect the al-Saud rule, and to maintain the system
as long as they can."
House of Saud and
fog Few predictions have been made as frequently
as the imminent demise of the House of Saud, the dynasty
that unified Saudi Arabia in 1932. Since Said K Aburish
authored The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the
House of Saud in 1995, analysts have waited on
tenterhooks for the dynasty to fall. But rotten or not,
the al-Saud apple stubbornly refuses to drop.
Now, under siege as never before, the country's
de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, has responded to
domestic criticism by circumscribing the US troop
presence, and to US criticism by reforming the
educational system and religious establishment in order
to staunch "extremism". Also, Saudi Arabia's own "war on
terror" was ratcheted up after attacks inside the
kingdom in May and November killed dozens. Despite these
moves, observers insist that the end is nigh. "One day,
some time soon, one way or another, the House of Saud is
coming down," wrote former US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) analyst Robert Baer in the Atlantic Monthly
last May.
Notwithstanding such sanguine
predictions, events inside the kingdom remain
inscrutable. The precise identities of the Saudi
militants are only slightly less opaque than those of
their opposite numbers in Iraq. What is known, though,
are their grievances.
By any reckoning, the
House of Saud's monopolization of power has brought with
it political repression and the marginalization of
dissent. Likewise, the country's economic travails
reflect the corruption and nepotism inherent to a system
that privileges some 20,000 royals. The oil-rich welfare
state is now heavily in debt, per capita income has
plummeted by five times in 25 years, and population
growth of 3.4 percent is exacerbating endemic
unemployment.
Because of the apparent fragility
of the regime, many have turned their attentions to its
opponents. "The al-Saud have created a system where
there is no space for the liberals," says RIIA fellow
Yamani. "In Saudi Arabia now, the only organized
opposition is Islamist, and in particular Wahhabi."
Within that context, there have been numerous calls for
political reform from inside the kingdom, including a
recent petition for a move to a constitutional monarchy.
However, Yamani says the more prominent dissidents, such
as Sheikh Safar al-Hawali or Sheikh Salman al-Auda, have
been "partly co-opted by the establishment".
The
lack of transparency of the Saudi society and political
system does make evaluating the domestic opposition a
challenge. But in general, few non-violent groups within
the kingdom appear to advocate the overthrow of the
regime. For undiluted criticism one has to look abroad.
The Saudi Institute, a recent group
based in Washington, DC, has generated some media
attention in the United States. Headed by longtime Saudi
dissident Ali al-Ahmed, it has put a spotlight on the
kingdom's allegedly poor treatment of minorities. The
group's detractors, however, point out that because it
represents the Shi'ite minority and is aligned to
neo-con groups such as the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies, its legitimacy inside Saudi Arabia is
marginal.
More credible is the London-based
MIRA, headed by al-Fagih, who is a Sunni from the
politically central Najd region. MIRA runs a satellite
television station called al-Islah that broadcasts into
the kingdom and attempts to use new media to coalesce
dissent to the House of Saud. Several hundred MIRA
supporters shocked the Saudi authorities by staging
illegal demonstrations inside Saudi Arabia in October.
For al-Fagih, September 11 was the moment that
rent the House of Saud's credibility asunder. Al-Saud
had sold the US a bill of goods on stability in the
kingdom, he says, and the attacks "convinced the
Americans that the Saudis were lying - not for the sake
of protecting the violent groups, but for the sake of
keeping the American government from considering any
alternative to the Saudi regime".
Crown Prince
Abdullah's reforms - the Saudization of the job market,
the firing of 2,000 "extremist" imams, the altering of
schoolbooks to emphasize tolerance, and the monitoring
of charities that send monies abroad (a regulatory body
on this was announced last Sunday) - are insufficient,
said al-Fagih. "Real reform is political reform, which
is power sharing, accountability, transparency and
freedom of expression, which is not happening at all."
MIRA's critique of al-Saud is from an Islamic
perspective, and al-Fagih considers the neo-con attack
on Wahhabi ideology "superficial". Theological orthodoxy
isn't the root of the violence, he contends, al-Saud
"despotism" is. "Wahhabism has been there for 270 years.
Why would it be causing September 11 now, not before?"
he asked.
Al-Fagih admits that his group is
incapable of overturning the current system in the short
term, but he sees three ways the regime could collapse
"spontaneously": First, if the ailing King Fahd bin
Abdul Aziz dies; this would lay bare an insoluble
succession dispute between the Sudayris (Fahd's full
brothers) and Abdullah, his half-brother. Second, if the
violent groups begin targeting senior royals, overly
hierarchical state institutions could collapse. And
finally, a decrease in oil prices could bring on
economic chaos.
Though an effective critic of
the House of Saud, al-Fagih is hardly the kind of proxy
Washington usually elopes with. Like another well-known
dissident, Muhammad al-Mass'ari, who heads the Committee
for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), also based
in London, an important part of his critique is that the
regime is too closely aligned with the US.
The end of the affair? For decades,
successive US governments and the House of Saud have
been entwined in a mutually beneficial strategic
relationship: The peninsula's unmatched oil reserves
have ensured the US-dominated global economy's
stability, and the United States has served as Saudi
Arabia's best customer and chief supplier of arms.
Tensions
did surface when US troops were positioned on Saudi soil
after the Gulf War of 1991, and attacks on US targets in
the kingdom followed, but only the whirlwind that was
September 11 truly endangered the alliance. As soon as
Osama bin Laden was identified as the culprit, and the
citizenship of 15 of the 19 hijackers became known,
US-Saudi relations came under withering scrutiny.
The kingdom went from
erstwhile ally to duplicitous knave in an instant.
Saudi-affiliated charities in the United States were
raided as the US media obsessed over the alleged nexus
among the Saudi royal family, the bin Ladens, the
conservative Wahhabi religious establishment and
extremism. By mid-2002, Saudi-baiting had reached its
apex, as the far-right Defense Policy Board held a
seminar that concluded that the kingdom was "part of the
problem" of international terror, "rather than part of
the solution".
A breach on Saudi Arabia appeared
to be opening up between, broadly speaking, the
traditional Republican friends of Saud, centered on
former president George H W Bush - the paleo-cons - and
the staunchly pro-Israel, apparently anti-Saud neo-cons.
A Saudi Arabia Accountability Act, requiring the
president's annual certification that Riyadh is on the
right side of the "war on terror", was introduced in
Congress in November.
But in reality, few in
Washington display a genuine interest in forsaking the
Saudi royal family. The Bush administration, for
example, dutifully redacted portions of a July
congressional report on September 11 that might have
embarrassed Saudi Arabia. Even the neo-cons seem content
simply to pressure the House of Saud to reform. "There
are divisions in Washington about 'what is to be done'
about the Saudis," said Yamani, "but I think many would
like to protect the al-Saud rule, and to find liberal
princes among them."
William Kristol, editor of
the neo-con newspaper the Weekly Standard, indicated
precisely such a strategy in testimony he gave to
Congress in May 2002. "Only by applying pressure can we
encourage whatever modernizing movement there may be
within the royal family," he said.
In the
absence of a pliant Saudi opposition, no one at the
center of the US administration seems ready to construct
a new paradigm. The fear of what comes after al-Saud is
just too forbidding. The militants aren't exactly the
United States' natural allies, and the Islamic
opposition is largely critical of al-Saud's pro-US
policies.
Al-Fagih suggests that Washington
isn't interested in real democracy in Saudi Arabia
anyway. He contrasts the Turkish parliament's obstinacy
in considering Washington's request to invade Iraq from
Turkish soil with Saudi Arabia's compliance during the
first Gulf War. "Why would they make life for themselves
difficult by encouraging democracy and allowing people
to say 'we don't want American interests in our land'?"
he asked.
That the US-Saudi relationship has
indirectly enriched all of President George W Bush's
senior advisers can only work in favor of the status
quo. Abandoning al-Saud would mean mothballing such
organizations as the Carlyle group that provide beltway
glitterati with a bottomless retirement fund garnered
through Saudi defense and infrastructure contracts. The
kingdom also has sticks to go with those carrots. Saudi
Arabia has about US$1 trillion on deposit in US banks,
and the same in the stock market, according to CIA agent
Baer. A large withdrawal would devastate the US economy.
None of this stops the ideologues fantasizing,
of course. A recent book by neo-con luminaries David
Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil, proposes
championing independence for the largely Shi'ite Eastern
province of Saudi Arabia (where most of the oil is) in
order to put the screws on al-Saud.
To
appreciate why the agenda of the Bush administration's
usual uberhawks is so limited, it should also be
understood that the neo-con critics of al-Saud are
unabashedly pro-Israel, and Saudi Arabia's alleged
funding of Palestinian militants is as important to them
as its alleged coddling of al-Qaeda. Thus the Saudi
Accountability Act focuses mostly on Palestinian
"terrorist" groups. The intent is as much to frighten
the royal family into ending support for Palestinian
groups as Saudi jihadis.
Regardless of the
agendas or prophecies of its many detractors, the House
of Saud has thus far weathered all storms. How sturdy
the throne really is is difficult to discern from
without. All Riyadh's allies in Washington can really do
is support them and hope for the best - or worst,
depending on their bias - and keep waiting for the fall.
Ashraf Fahim is a freelance writer on
Middle Eastern affairs based in New York and London.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
