Fahd bin Abdul Aziz
Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz
Naef Bin Abdul Aziz
Salman Bin Abdul Aziz
Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz
Saudi Arabia needs a face-lift, The Economist, January 1, 1996
Prince Abdullah could be the man to clean up the family firm
ULTRA-CAUTIOUS to the last, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has sort-of abdicated, ducking a
family row but creating ambiguity along the way. The 74- year-old monarch is sickly;
people in the know say he has suffered a stroke and is unlikely to resume the control he
has turned over for an undefined period to his half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, while
he ``enjoys a rest''. The transfer was orderly, causing no ripple in the sands. But if the
kingdom, not just its king, is to be eased into health, his successor needs to be monarch,
not caretaker. He also needs to be bold.
The inner workings of Saudi Arabia, run by sons and grandsons of its founder, Ibn Saud,
are heavily veiled. Yet it hardly needed last November' s bomb, which blew up a military
building in the centre of Riyadh, to point up the pressures. The Saudi princes, permitting
no power- sharing, let alone opposition, are challenged by disgruntled citizens- -radical
Islamists and middle-class modernisers--whose aims and methods diverge but who are united
in their dislike of the unaccountable and deeply corrupt way that the family firm is run.
Leading Islamists are carted off to prison. The bleak absence of free expression is
underlined by Saudi pressure on Britain to deport a Saudi dissident, Muhammad Massari, who
has been circulating samizdat faxes from his base in London.
In the years of high oil prices there was enough money in the kingdom' s coffers to bury
most of the dissent beneath feather beds and Mediterranean villas. The 1996 budget,
published the same day as Prince Abdullah was given his new duties, forecasts a rise in
the fiscal deficit and makes plain that last year's spending cuts are to continue. Money
is uncomfortably short. While several thousand princes remain on an undocumented civil
list, for non-royals unemployment is high, particularly for Saudis educated at local
universities but unqualified for the jobs they think they deserve in private business.
Is Prince Abdullah, a conservative traditionalist only a couple of years younger than King
Fahd, the man to bring about change? Funnily enough, he could be. He is known, so far as
such things can be known, for his personal probity. His strength lies in the Nejd, the
tribal heartland of Saudi Arabia, and in the powerful National Guard that he commands. He
has distanced himself from the regime's clash with revivalist Islamists. It cannot be said
of him--a prince versed in Bedouin tradition, who spends his holidays in Morocco, does not
speak English and has good links with the Syrians--as it is said of several of his
half-brothers, that he is in America's pocket. He would neither want to, nor could, bounce
Saudi Arabia into democratic ways. But, if he so chooses, he has the reputation and the
background to start spring-cleaning his family's affairs.
This reform is a vital prelude to opening the country up. The family, or some of it, will
resist. Prince Abdullah's main rival is another elderly man: Prince Sultan, minister of
defence and generally thought to be the next to succeed, after Abdullah. Sultan, like King
Fahd, is a Sudeiri--one of the seven sons of Ibn Saud's favourite wife. Between them they
control most things that matter in Saudi Arabia. And abuse their power, say critics, of
whom there are many. The tentative manner of King Fahd's abdication may have been a way of
keeping Prince Sultan in line--but until Prince Abdullah's authority is confirmed, he will
be shackled by the Sudeiris and their vested interests.
Try, before it is too late
Prince Sultan (whose son is ambassador in Washington) was once a western favourite and may
still be so with many. But he is vulnerable to the taunt that he is unpopular at home and
under western influence abroad. A steadier path might be dug by Prince Abdullah, whose
loyalties are obscurer than his brother's but who now has good contacts with the United
States. And next? The House of Saud tends to die in its early 70s or late 60s. So, unless
it was too much of a jump to youth for the Saudis, it could, fairly soon, be on to the
next generation: one talented ``youngster'' is Prince Saud, the foreign minister, son of
the late King Faisal and himself already a grandfather.
The West counts on continuing Saudi stability to keep open the oil- tap--and an
ever-greedy market for western arms, goods and services. Attempting to keep things much as
they are, including Saudi greed for extravagant toys, does not guarantee lasting
stability. Nor of course does reform: history shows that changes, little and late, can
hasten an explosion. But if Prince Abdullah sets about lessening the resentment that
Saudis feel for their rulers, the West would be wise to back him, quietly.
- WASHINGTON, July 25 (COMPASS) - One month after the bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen, the Clinton administration is holding a series of meetings to assess U.S. policy in the kingdom. Several meetings have taken place recently within the White House and among other governmental agencies to review U.S. policy in Saudi Arabia. The talks are examining not only the security of U.S. troops deployed there but also the stability of the Saudi regime, according to senior U.S. officials. The meetings included discussions on the future of the U.S. presence in the kingdom and the sensitive issue of succession in the royal al-Saud family, the officials said.
- Following the June 25 truck bomb attack at the military housing complex near Dhahran, and the earlier bombing of a U.S.-run military training facility in Riyadh last November, the Defense Department has been looking into ways to reconfigure troops in Saudi Arabia, including moving them to more remote areas. American officials and intelligence agencies have also stepped up their monitoring of Saudi dissidents and are taking the Saudi opposition more seriously, despite reassurances from the Saudi government, which downplays the opposition, about the country's stability. At the U.S. intelligence community's request, a series of studies were conducted on Saudi opposition leaders and their political views.
- Two religious scholars in Saudi Arabia, Salman al-Auda and Safar al-Hawali, are still detained for criticizing the government. Their beliefs -- Auda's in particular -- are finding an audience among Saudi youths. A poem Hawali wrote in prison after he learning of the death of his young son found its way out of the prison and was widely circulated in the kingdom. The incident generated support for the jailed scholar even among the middle class and non-religious elements. After the first bombing in Riyadh, which killed five Americans, Saudi officials quickly declared the attack an isolated incident. However, the second attack has put them in an awkward position -- they have a lot of explaining to do to Washington, while at the same time they must keep an eye on the growing anti-Western sentiments in the oil-rich kingdom.
- A month after the Dhahran bombing, U.S. investigators are still not allowed to interview witnesses, the senior U.S. officials said, and Saudi authorities' failure to arrest the perpetrators of the attack has raised doubts about their ability to lead the investigation. In addition to the friction created by denying American investigators access to witnesses, Saudi officials are worried that giving U.S. agents freedom in interviewing Saudis will damage the ruling family's credibility. According to Western diplomatic sources, several members of the al-Saud family criticized Saudi Ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan for taking the F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh to see King Fahd bin Abdel Aziz and his brother, Interior Minister Prince Nayef. The sources said allowing American officials of that rank to meet with Saudi leaders undermined the ruling family's prestige and put them in a position where they could not say no to U.S. requests. In public, U.S. officials praise the Saudi government and refrain from making any statements expressing their deep and real concerns about the situation in the kingdom. However, this attitude may change as the November U.S. presidential election approaches and no arrests are made.
THE ATTACK IN SAUDI ARABIA, Los Angeles Times - JOHN DANISZEWSKI, June 27, 1996
In Tightly Controlled Kingdom, Level of Discontent Hard to Gauge; Mideast: Experts see attack on U.S. military as product of religious and political opposition to ruling family
CAIRO--In retrospect, Communique 43, put out three weeks ago by a London-based Saudi opposition group, looks prophetic:
"CDLR warns that the United States is viewed, by the public at large, as an accomplice of the Saudi tyranny . . . and as an unjust racist imperial power in general," said the statement from the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, distributed worldwide by the group's sophisticated fax network.
"Many young, disappointed men and women may resort to violence and bloodshed, which cannot be prevented by harsh 'security' measures."
Although there is no credible claim of responsibility yet for the truck bomb that ripped apart a housing complex for U.S. military personnel near Dhahran on Tuesday night, killing 19 Americans, there was little doubt among experts familiar with the desert kingdom that the violence was an outgrowth of extreme religious and political opposition to the House of Saud, the 64-year-old ultraconservative dynasty that controls the world's largest known oil reserves.
In a tightly controlled society, where political parties do not exist and punishment for lawbreaking is as swift and sure as the executioner's sword, it is difficult to judge how widespread are the feelings of dissatisfaction with the government and its relationship with the United States.
The consensus among Western experts is that the kingdom is under no immediate threat, but the situation bears watching. In two dramatic attacks in less than a year, the shadowy extremists have shown that they are potent enough to shatter the monarchy's former reputation as an oasis of stability in the roiling Middle East.
What makes the latest assaults even more disturbing is that they take place during a sensitive transitional time for the kingdom, when the aging and ailing absolute monarch of the last 14 years, King Fahd, 75, is believed to be about to cede power to his half brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, who is 73.
Compared to Fahd, who forged strong ties to the West, Abdullah is a pious traditionalist less enamored of the country's close military and political connections with the United States and more inclined toward the Arab world.
The U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia was introduced quietly in the 1970s and 1980s but came out into the open with the Persian Gulf War--which at its height saw more than half a million foreign troops on Saudi soil to launch the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.
Now there are about 5,000 U.S. troops deployed in the country and the U.S. 5th Fleet cruises offshore, guarding the kingdom's oil riches against the twin security threats posed by Iraq and Iran.
But even this relatively small number of U.S. service personnel, kept isolated in the east of the kingdom, is seen by the political opposition as a desecration of the Muslim holy land and an infringement on the country's sovereignty. It has become one of the main causes of criticism against the ruling family from dissidents abroad, who claim that the United States is propping up a corrupt oligarchy to control the region's oil wealth.
Both arguments, political and religious, are dismissed by supporters of the Saudi government. "In the West . . . [opposition groups] fight for human rights and champion democracy. . . . At home they feed terrorism," said Othman Omeir, editor of Asharq al Awsat, a government-linked Saudi newspaper.
The Nov. 13 bombing of a U.S.-run military training center in the capital, Riyadh, in which seven people were killed, was the most serious terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia's history. The government initially focused its suspicions on foreign subversion, but the four men apprehended turned out to be Saudis, not known to be affiliated with any major group.
Three unknown groups claimed responsibility for the attack last year, and that pattern was repeated Wednesday with a call claiming the latest bombing was the work of an unknown organization, "The Legion of the Martyr Abdullah al Huzaifi."
Whether any of the groups actually exist, some insight into the thinking of the regime's radical opponents can be gleaned from the most prominent Saudi dissident, Mohammed Masari, who leads CDLR.
Interviewed Wednesday by the daily newsletter Mideast Mirror, he denied he was involved in Tuesday's blast but warned the U.S. that it will continue to suffer casualties unless the "illegitimate" U.S. presence in his country is removed.
"I imagine that they [the bombers] now consider themselves in a declared state of war with the Americans," he said.
Careful to indicate that he himself is not advocating violence, Masari--whom Saudi officials tried unsuccessfully to have deported from Britain last year--said that violence can also be moral. "Another point of view of the Islamic law . . . which has its own respectability [is] that a foreign force which is not called in by a legitimate regime is illegitimately there and . . . a target."
If Americans stay in Saudi Arabia to defend U.S. financial interests and control the oil fields, they must "pay the price," he said. "They have to pay 20, 30, 100, 200, 1,000 dead."
Such sentiments show how there is "fire simmering under the sand" in Saudi Arabia, said Riad Rayyes, a Lebanese-based authority on the Persian Gulf. That the perpetrators of both terrorist attacks chose U.S. installations, rather than easier civilian targets, shows a high level of organization and confidence, suggesting the attackers may be linked to the moujahedeen, Arabs who volunteered to take part in the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet army in the early 1980s, he said.
Omeir, the editor of Asharq al Awsat, denies that the political opposition in Saudi society is very widespread.
But the government offers no legal outlet for opposition, and neither it nor its opponents show any sign of changing their ways.