House of Saud shows its
colors By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The Saudi Arabian government's
heavy-handed response to an Islamist group's call for an
anti-monarchy demonstration shows how little its
attitude toward democratic reform has changed. While the
House of Saud remains reluctant to reform and is
intolerant of any expression of dissent or challenge to
its authority, political activists who were demanding
reform until recently now appear to be calling for a
revolution. Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, is taking full
advantage of the kingdom's chaos.
An
Islamic website has posted an audio-tape message attributed
to bin Laden in which he bitterly criticizes the
Saudi government, blaming it for the ongoing unrest.
Speaking in Koranic verses, the voice accuses Saudi rulers
of "violating God's rules" and being "too close to
the infidel", a reference to the United States. He adds
that the Saudi government is violating people's rights
and misusing the country's wealth, and also criticizes
the government's promise to hold municipal elections
and open a national dialogue on democratization and
other issues.
If the voice on the tape is indeed
bin Laden's, his timing is by no means coincidental,
intended to fuel the undercurrent of discontent fast
breeding in the kingdom. One such group of dissenters,
the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), an
exiled London-based opposition group, had called for
peaceful demonstrations on the streets of Riyadh and
Jeddah on Thursday. To thwart the protest call and
preempt the public expression of challenge to its
authority, the Saudi government deployed a large number
of heavily armed police to prevent activists from
congregating in central Riyadh. Barricades were set up
to block access roads, while helicopters hovering
overhead kept watch for protesters. (Public rallies and
marches are banned in Saudi Arabia.)
MIRA's
planned protest might have failed to materialize, but
the Saudi government's preemptive response to the call
has revealed what MIRA has been saying for some time -
that the House of Saud is "unreformable".
In
October last year, MIRA led a protest march in Riyadh -
the first ever mass public protest in this conservative
kingdom. The demonstration was broken up by police, who
administered beatings and fired shots into the air to
disperse the crowd. About 270 protesters were arrested.
The 2003 demonstration was called to protest the slow
pace of reform and to demand the release of political
prisoners and greater political participation.
The protest rallies planned for Thursday on the
streets of Riyadh and Jeddah were aimed at much more.
The demonstrations were to be part of a "series of civil
activities" that MIRA is organizing that aim at bringing
"total change" in Saudi Arabia. Signaling a new
stridency in MIRA's demands, the organization's
London-based leader, Saad al-Faqih, told the media ahead
of the demonstration: "We are not asking for minor
economic, political or social reform. We are marching to
remove the current regime," he said. "The regime is
unreformable."
Faqih's pessimism about the House
of Saud is not without reason. The country's aged
princes have promised reform but have delivered little.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, governed according
to an extremely conservative interpretation of Islamic
Sharia law. The ruling House of Saud is intolerant of
dissent or any questioning of its authority. Political
parties are banned and the media are under strict
control. The regime has maintained its iron grip through
coercion and repression. Its record on human rights -
especially women's rights - is abysmal.
Demands
for reform have come up from time to time, but the
government has been able to keep the lid on such demands
through brutal crackdowns on dissidents. That changed in
the 1990s when, after the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, the
regime came under pressure from within and outside to
reform. In response, the government announced some
reforms in 1992, the most important of which were the
Basic Law of Government and the establishment of a
consultative council, albeit one whose members were
appointed by the king.
Yet the measures seemed
promising. They provided for an "independent"
legislative body and codifying a constitution that
promised an independent and just judiciary and human
rights. But in practice the reforms amounted to little
as they were accompanied by a simultaneous brutal
crackdown on reformists.
Since the September 11, 2001,
terror attacks, which were carried out mainly by Saudi
nationals, the Saudi government has come under immense
pressure from the United States to reform the system and
provide outlets for political dissent. Pressure on the
government has built up from within the country as well.
Early last year, petitions calling for reform were
submitted to Crown Prince Abdullah. The government
verbally welcomed the petitions. This some read as a
sign of a new willingness in the House of Saud to
initiate change. The government opened a Center for
National Dialogue to encourage the exchange of ideas. On
October 13, 2003, it announced its intention to
establish municipal councils, half of whose members
would be selected through elections, to be held within a
year.
But barely had the announcement been
made when the government showed its true colors. It dealt
far too sternly with peaceful protesters participating
in the demonstration called by MIRA. Its use of
the coercive apparatus to deal with political
dissent signaled that it would brook no challenge to
its authority. More restrictions were placed on
the long-suppressed local media, which were forbidden to
discuss the protests or the government's coercive
response.
Saudi Arabia's road to reform has been
downhill ever since. In fact, many believe that the
reforms have not just stalled, they have gone into
reverse.
In March this year, the
government authorized a semi-official human-rights-monitoring body.
But soon after, a group of reformists calling for a
constitutional monarchy were jailed. Three are still in
custody without charge, while the toothless human-rights
body has done nothing to secure their release. A
recently passed law bans government employees from
signing petitions or publicly questioning or criticizing
the government.
In October, government announced
that elections for the municipal councils, now due in
February, would be for only half of their seats, with
women barred from voting.
After a series of
violent attacks by Islamist militants with links to
al-Qaeda, the Saudi government, in a much-delayed
response to the militant group's extensive network in
the kingdom, launched a crackdown. Over the past year,
hundreds of suspected militants were taken into custody.
Safe houses were identified, weapons caches confiscated
and funding for terror groups tracked down. Extremist
clerics were "re-educated" and school curricula
changed.
While the threat posed by al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula is indeed real, the government has
used the "war on terrorism" to its advantage in dealing
with political dissidents and Islamist moderates.
Several of those who have been arrested in the
"operations against al-Qaeda" are in fact critics and
opponents of the government, people who are demanding
that the corrupt, parasitic House of Saud reform itself.
It is the Islamist reformists who have suffered more
than their secular counterparts in these anti-militant
operations. This is perhaps because the House
of Saud perceives the challenge from the Islamists to
be far more threatening. Unlike the Islamists, the liberals
are for state-led reform and preserving the monarchy,
and they are less confrontationist than the
Islamists, such as those of MIRA, who are calling for
the ouster of the monarchy.
Faqih's detractors
have pointed out that his vision of the state that would
replace the Saudi monarchy is far more conservative than
that of the current regime. They point out that he is in
favor of an Islamic government in Saudi Arabia under the
rule of the ulema (religious leaders) and is
inspired by the same brand of conservative Wahhabism
that reigns in the kingdom. But Faqih says he wants an
elected leadership, one in which women too can vote, to
replace the monarchy with a system that provides
"power-sharing, accountability, transparency and an
independent judiciary, as well as freedom of expression
and assembly". The people would decide on a new
constitution, he says, but the constitution would need
"the stamp of Islamic law".
The Saudi government
has used the "threat of terrorism" to put off reforms.
Prince Nayif, the Saudi minister of the interior who is
head of the intelligence services and chief of police,
is of the view that "the current circumstances are not
conducive to raising or speaking about such matters"
(political reform). Security, he says, is the most
important issue before Saudi Arabia today and change
must not be achieved at the expense of stability.
The challenge posed by
al-Qaeda to the Saudi regime has made the already reluctant-to-reform
House of Saud even more determined not to loosen its
grip on power. But by bolting the doors against
reform and refraining from allowing political
channels for expression of dissent, the regime is in effect strengthening
the hands of the militants, including bin Laden.
By preventing Thursday's
anti-monarchy demonstrations, the House of Saud might have managed
to silence a vocal section of its opponents, but by
denying them peaceful means of articulating their demands,
the Saudi monarchy is pushing them to turn to violence as
an alternative way to have their voices heard.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher
based in Bangalore, India.
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