House of Saud exits cocoon of
denial By Ehsan Ahrari
The
war between the Saudi monarchy and al-Qaeda is fast
becoming a struggle between regime survival and regime
change. The underlying objective is replacement of the
royalist autocrats by puritanical hierocrats. Saudi
autocrats are finally convinced that their regime is
faced with the possibility of extinction. Consequently,
their natural survival instincts have nullified all
previous claims that responsibilities for the
al-Qaeda-related terrorist acts should really be placed
elsewhere.
Reports currently filtering from
Washington and Riyadh state that intelligence agents of
the monarchy and the American democracy are reportedly
joined at the hip - with the creation of one or more
"fusion cells" in Saudi Arabia - to save the autocratic
regime, and to ensure uninterrupted access to world's
largest oil reserves. The unanswerable question is
whether this cooperation will save the oil kingdom, or
has it already become a futile endeavor to save a doomed
cause.
The terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, brought the United States out of its long-standing
denial that the Saudi monarchy, despite its firm
commitment to Wahhabi puritanism and its profound
mindset of anti-Westernism, was not driven by an equally
intense sentiment of anti-Americanism. It was as if
those two mindsets were unrelated. About the same time,
the Saudi monarchy entered its own cocoon of denial, but
of a different sort: that the September 11 terrorist
attacks were not perpetrated by 15 Saudi citizens (and
four Arabs belonging to other countries); that the
al-Qaeda threat was exaggerated by the United States and
its media; that it was anti-Western in orientation; and
that it would certainly not target the Saudi regime.
From September 11, 2001, until approximately the
middle of 2003, Saudi officials repeated the
aforementioned mantras so frequently that they started
believing in them. Al-Qaeda's May 12, 2003, attack
inside Saudi Arabia that killed nine Americans and 26
others should have served as a wake-up call. But it did
not. The suicide bombing of last November 8 that killed
17 people, mostly Muslims, certainly jolted the Saudi
rulers out of their cocoon. Actually, the April 12
car-bomb attack at the police headquarters in Riyadh -
killing six people - should have been interpreted as an
unambiguous signal that the regime was indeed under
attack.
In a highly controlled closed system
like Saudi Arabia's, one has to rely on new and
recurring incidents and symbols or statements from
political dissidents to make reasonable judgments about
shifting political realities. In this instance, Mohammed
al-Massari - a leading Saudi dissident and a
representative of the London-based Council for the
Defense of Legitimate Rights, which is a group
advocating political reforms in the monarchy, referring
to the April 12 attack - said, "This is a quantum leap
by jihadi groups, as they have gone from aiming at
American targets to Saudi security forces." Another
Saudi dissident, Saad al-Faqih, said that incident -
especially since it involved the "nerve center" of Saudi
security - did not happen out of the blue, but followed
"months and years of heavy government campaigning
against those groups fighting for reform".
Considering that al-Qaeda has consistently
established itself as being extremely patient in
planning its attacks, and in its attention to details
before carrying them out, both dissidents arrived at the
right conclusion. The 9-11 Commission Report also
accurately notes this reality in Chapter 2. If these
assessments are indeed correct, al-Qaeda has made a
decision to oust the monarchy, if not when it carried
out terrorist attacks on the US, certainly soon
thereafter. The Saudi regime remained adhered to a wrong
premise - if not wishful thinking - that the terrorist
entity's fight with the autocrats involved only a
specific issue: the presence of Americans in Islam's
birthplace. Once those forces left Saudi Arabia, so
concluded the Saudi rulers, there would be no more
issues of conflict with al-Qaeda.
In emphasizing
the illegitimacy of the Saudi regime, Osama bin Laden
seems to have adopted the Islamist concept of Takfir
expounded by an Egyptian, Shukri Mustafa, of the Society
of Muslims in the 1960s. This doctrine - takfir
wal-hijra, roughly translated as "excommunication
and exile" - advocates withdrawal from the world of sin
or impurity into a pure world, practiced by the Prophet
of Islam when he decided to emigrate from Mecca to
Medina. Mustafa's interpretation of this doctrine
narrowly determines who is a Muslim and advocates for
the elimination of the "unbelievers", ie, those who
believe differently than the followers of the Takfir.
Without getting into its excruciating details, suffice
it to say that bin Laden's practice of the Takfir
doctrine has emerged as a rationale for the sustenance
of the jihad culture at the expense of others, including
all extant Muslim regimes. The Islamist-related violence
against the government of Pakistan is being driven by
these sentiments.
What is becoming clear now is
that al-Qaeda has decided to implement the Takfir
doctrine in Saudi Arabia - given its centrality as a
birthplace of Islam - as a strategy to replace the
current regime and replace itself as the ruling power
and a rightful claimant of Islamic purity. The frequency
of attacks on Saudi government buildings and
identification of members of Saudi royalty as targets of
assassination are definite proofs of that decision. By
the same token, it is also clear that the Saudi regime
has finally understood al-Qaeda's objective and is
equally unwavering about eradicating it.
Consequently, the Saudi and US governments are
finally in agreement on identifying the enemy. But the
issue related to dealing with al-Qaeda remains very
complicated, for a variety of reasons. First, there
remains a high degree of uncertainly, indeed lack of
information, about the depth and breadth of sympathy and
support for al-Qaeda's objectives of creating a more
puritan state than the current one in the Saudi society
at large. A guess - and that's all it is because we are
dealing with a closed system - is that a great majority
of Saudis under the age of 30 are sympathetic to
al-Qaeda and its vision of a pure Islamic state. Since
almost all demographic reports claim that 60% or more of
Saudis fall in this age group, the government has to be
careful about not antagonizing a sizable portion of its
population. Second, at a time when the regime's survival
is emerging as a No 1 threat, no one inside or outside
the oil kingdom can advocate political reforms. Thus, in
all likelihood, reforms - at least radical ones - will
be shelved.
Therein lies the rub. One important
need is to introduce drastic reforms; however, such
reforms would also destabilize the Saudi polity. That is
something neither Riyadh nor Washington desires. At the
same time, merely token political reforms or window
dressing would only prove al-Qaeda's argument that the
current regime is driven primarily by its desire for
sustaining the political status quo and not by its
commitment to Islam. Third, by cooperating with the
Saudi regime to eradicate al-Qaeda from that country - a
highly improbable scenario - the US has to abandon its
own vociferous advocacy of democratizing the region.
Considering how ominous the growing symptoms of
instability for Saudi Arabia appear from Washington,
neither the current nor a new administration would take
the risk of pressing for political reforms.
By
deciding to oust the Saudi monarchy, al-Qaeda has
resuscitated the age-old questions related to the
commitment of a governing entity to Islam in its
birthplace. By entering into a compact with Mohammed
Abdel-Wahhab in 1744, the Saudi dynasty had kept those
issues dormant. Now the Saudi rulers encounter
increasing pressure from within to remain true to
Islamic puritanism. From outside, they are facing
intense pressure not only to create a distance from
those demanding Islamic puritanism, but also to
liberalize Islam. The extreme nature of these competing
demands promises to push Saudi Arabia toward increasing
instability. The greatest challenge for the current
regime is not to find a common ground between these
extreme demands - for such an option is not even tenable
- but merely to keep the implosion of their political
system from happening in the near future.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
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