SPEAKING
FREELY Saudi uprising trumps sectarian
card By Zayd Alisa
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
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As popular uprisings
swept the Arab world, many experts stressed that
Saudi Arabia was incomparable to others. It was
immune from turbulence, let alone, regime-ousting
uprisings.
Confident that its internal
front was impeccably secure, the Saudi regime
moved swiftly to achieve its external overarching
goals, which ranged from holding at bay the spread
of popular uprisings clamoring for democratic
change and political reform, to severely
undermining, if not, reversing what it perceives,
as the mounting
Iranian and Shi'ite
influence, and ensuring the survival of other
monarchies.
The Saudi regime offered Ben
Ali, Tunisia's dictator, refuge and has
steadfastly refused to hand him back to face
trial. The Saudi king gave, not just his emphatic
support to Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's tyrant, but also
threatened the US that he was ready to bankroll
him.
Saudi Arabia's tireless effort to
spearhead the counter-revolution suffered its
first setback at the hands of its closest ally the
US, which encouraged the Egyptian army to turn
against Mubarak. The Saudi regime has made
concerted effort to make up for lost ground in
Egypt. It has gained huge influence with the
military council by providing it with $4 billion
in aid, as well as by throwing its weight behind
the extremist Salafi movement, which emerged
second after the Muslim Brotherhood in the
parliamentary elections.
As for Yemen, the
Saudi regime initially supported Ali Abdullah
Saleh, Yemen's dictator, but when his brutal
crackdown spectacularly backfired, it launched its
own initiative to ensure that Saleh was replaced
by another staunch ally, namely his deputy,
Abd-Rabbu Mansour, through a cosmetic election.
Just as important, however, was the Saudi regime's
clear message that uprisings were absolutely
futile, since Saleh was ousted by its own
initiative rather than an uprising.
For
the Saudis, the Bahraini uprising was indisputably
a nightmare scenario that sent shock waves right
across the kingdom. This was hardly surprising,
since Bahrain was a brutal dictatorship governed
by the Al Khalifa family, from the Sunni minority,
while the vast majority of Bahrainis were Shi'ite.
In Saudi eyes any concession, no matter
how insignificant, let alone a triumph by the
Bahraini uprising, would inspire its own Shi'ites
to rebel against the regime. Shi'ites form an
overwhelming majority in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich
eastern province, which is located just some five
kilometers from Bahrain.
Like the Shi'ite
in Bahrain, they have constantly complained of
being subjected to intolerable discrimination and
marginalization. Despite the undeniable failure of
their supposed "day of rage" in March last year,
it nonetheless unnerved the Saudi regime.
In response, the king announced
unprecedented measures ranging from billions of
dollars in benefits and new jobs to a stern
warning that security forces would pull no punches
in confronting protestors. He also gave massive
rewards to the Wahhabi Salafi religious
establishment and,
Most ominously, gave a
green light for the Saudi army to invade and
occupy Bahrain. Within 24 hours of the occupation,
Bahraini forces backed by Saudi forces unleashed a
ferocious onslaught against the peaceful
protesters in Manama's Pearl Square.
In
another strenuous attempt to placate the dramatic
escalation in exhortations for political reform,
the king suddenly declared last September that
municipal elections supposed to be held in 2008
would finally take place. Not surprisingly the
turnout was hugely disappointing - 1.08 million
Saudi men of the country's 18 million population
registered to vote - since it is abundantly clear
that the council is a powerless body.
Behind such machinations a pivotal role
was being played by the radical and regressive
Wahhabi Salafi religious establishment in propping
up and lending religious legitimacy to the Saudi
regime, which in turn provides it with the vital
funding to propagate and export its extremist
ideology.
According to the Wahhabi
ideology it is strictly forbidden to oppose the
ruler. Far from questioning the highly contentious
actions of the Saudi regime, the religious
establishment has issued religious fatwas to back
them up. These fatwas were utilized by the
Interior ministry headed by Nayef, to declare last
February that these protests were a new form of
terrorism that would be confronted with an iron
fist, as was al-Qaeda. It also indirectly blamed
Iran for the protests.
The peaceful
protests in the eastern province entered a highly
perilous phase in October 2011, when the savage
crackdown turned into a campaign of cold-blooded
murder. The dramatic escalation coincided with the
death of Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the heir to the
throne and the appointment of Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz
Al Saud, who died on June 16 this year, as a
replacement.
The Saudi regime's overriding
priority has always been to establish and bolster
its position and image as the indisputable
guardian of Sunni Islam, even though it firmly
endorses the Wahhabi ideology.
Ever since
1979 - when the Iranian revolution toppled the
shah - the Saudi regime has vigorously endeavored
to portray and present all major events and
conflicts in the region as an integral part of an
ongoing existential sectarian war waged against
the Sunnis by the Shi'ites, namely Iran, in order
to become the unrivalled power in the region.
As the uprising began in Bahrain, the
Saudi regime started deliberately ratcheting up
sectarian rhetoric in order to instigate
inter-religious strife which would stave off any
uprising by the Sunni majority.
However,
media reports in July have confirmed that that
open dissent and protests have spread far beyond
the eastern province to Sunni areas in Hejaz, and
even to the Saudi regime's heartland and powerbase
in the capital Riyadh.
The United States,
which considers Saudi Arabia as a central pillar
of its Middle East policy, must be holding its
breath as Saudi Arabia's uprising surmounts the
regime's impregnable shield: sectarian divisions.
Among the principal reasons behind the
increasingly deepening cracks in the Saudi
regime's internal front are: first, the
inescapable reality that the regime has
emphatically supported brutal dictators in
crushing uprisings by the Sunnis in Egypt, Tunisia
and Yemen.
Second, the inconsistent
position of the regime in unequivocally backing
secular monarchies like Morocco, Jordan and
secular establishments like the Egyptian military
against Sunni Islamic movements.
Third,
the inexcusable failure by the king to activate
the much-trumpeted allegiance council - set up by
him as a showcase of reform - to select the heir
to the throne twice within eight months, prompting
senior figures from the royal family to bitterly
criticize the lack of consultation. This, has
evidently, not only consolidated the widespread
perception that the royal family is in the midst
of a vicious power struggle, but also added weight
to the argument that this is a royal family that
marginalizes its senior members, never mind, the
ordinary citizens.
Fourth, the undeniable
success of people in other countries, such as
Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, and to a lesser
extent Yemen in ousting their dictators and
democratically electing new leaders.
Fifth, the sheer hypocrisy in the King's
call on the Syrian president, Bashar Al-Assad, to
implement genuine reform and halt the killing
machine, while he has spectacularly failed to lead
by example.
Sixth, the failure of the
authorities to tackle chronic problems, such as
unemployment, corruption and poor housing, despite
the billions of dollars in oil revenue.
Seventh, foreign-educated Saudis are
beginning to question the legitimacy of such a
rigid dictatorship.
Eighth, the mounting
fears that the ruthless crackdown in the eastern
province would dramatically intensify the
increasingly vocal demands for secession. Finally,
the death of Nayef and his replacement by Salman
bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is perceived as more
sympathetic to reform have laid bare that even
though Nayef was a hardliner, he was nonetheless
used by the regime as the perfect pretext for not
undertaking meaningful reform.
Although it
has been more than a month since Salman took over,
but there are absolutely no reforms in the
pipeline. Even more revealing, however, has been
the dramatic surge in the regime's savagery, which
has reached an unsurpassed level, especially with
the arrest and alleged torture of Shi'ite
religious leader Nimr Al Nimr.
The US
should be deeply concerned about the rapidly
deteriorating situation in Saudi Arabia, not only
because its implacable support for the Saudi
regime has made a mockery of its pretention of
defending democracy and human rights, but, more
menacingly, Saudi Arabia was the country where the
vast majority (15 out of 19) of the 9/11 suicide
bombers came from, never mind, the mastermind,
Osama Bin Laden. This is also where nearly all
fatwas giving religious legitimacy to al-Qaeda's
atrocities emanate from. Now is the time for the
US to stand on the right side of the present and
future of Saudi Arabia, by extending the
oil-for-protection deal to an (oil and concrete
democratic reforms-for-protection deal).
Zayd
Alisa is a political analyst and a writer
on Middle East affairs.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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