Saudi Arabia, reform or retrenchment?
(ISN):Saudi Arabia's new monarch, King Abdullah, is praised by some for his open-mindedness, while others criticize him for being illiberal. With al-Qaida on the run and skyrocketing oil prices, the kingdom and the royal family may be overcoming the crises of recent years. But some observers say that the new oil boom and the possibly receding terrorist threat may mask the importance of growing social problems and prevent urgently needed reforms.
By Heiko Flottau in Cairo for ISN Security Watch (26/12/05)
Upon his ascension to the throne in 2005 Abdullah immediately released three well known dissidents from prison, later freeing around ten others.
In another initiative, he gathered seventy handpicked intellectuals, half of them women, in the town of Abha to participate in the fifth round of the King Abdel Asis Center for National Dialog. Abdullah personally founded this institution in 2003 when still crown prince.
The title of the three-day meeting, which was broadcast for the first time in full on national television, was “We and the others” and it was intended that the forum focus on the Saudi relationship to the West and Muslim and non-Muslim peoples.
According to some observers, the discussion, during which men and women in compliance with Saudi culture were seated in separate rooms, communicating with each other via closed circuit television, got out of hand.
Instead of talking about the connections between Saudi citizens and people outside the kingdom, the controversial subject of relations between the Sunni majority and the country's Shia and Ishmaelite minorities was the main topic of the meeting.
Although conservative clerics argued that, given the “aggression of the West in Palestine and Iraq”, Saudi citizens should unite and refrain from talking about inner divisions, the majority did not back this stance, passing a resolution, which by Saudi standards had, as one diplomat put it, “almost a western humanistic touch”.
The resolution argues that all men are the children of Adam and Eve and that jihad does not always refer to military action in pursuit of the spread of Islam but, more importantly, asks Muslims to fight the bad and struggle for the good. The delegates concluded that Saudis must start to participate in international cultural exchanges and expose themselves to other value systems.
Reactions to the new approach of King Abdullah and to the National Dialog vary. A Western diplomat in Riyad, who did not wish to be named, told ISN Security Watch that, in a society which is by no means used to the exchange of different views, the National Dialog constituted a tiny first step towards developing a civil society.
He added that the Dschidda Chamber of Commerce recently elected three female members to its board of directors, thus improving the social position of women und contributing to diminishing their isolation in an otherwise male-dominated society.
However, a female journalist in the Eastern Province argued that instead of lengthy discussions, “we want real actions of reform, such as bringing more women into the political process, improving the educational system and tackling the problem of the growing number of poor people”.
The journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, told ISN Security Watch: “Due to high oil prices we are flooded with cash, but it is still almost impossible for low and middle-income people to build a decent house. Poverty is growing.”
She said that she welcomed all actions taken by the new monarch, but “King Abdullah is by no means a liberal.” Nobody in the kingdom was allowed to discuss his age and the time he has left to make urgent changes, she noted. The king is 82-years old.
However opinions vary. Nadia Hazza, a female engineer at state oil company Saudi Aramco, in the Eastern Province, told ISN Security Watch: “I hold great love, respect and admiration for his (Abdullah) courage to bring many subjects, including women issues, to the surface effectively, which made it easy for us to demand true Islamic rights that were overshadowed by culture and traditions which are misunderstood in the West as Islamic."
Toby Jones, a Bahrain-based analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG), is more critical of the National Dialog and the approach of the new king. He told ISN Security Watch that the last meeting was “more of the same - disagreement among the delegates and a final resolution that offers little to no policy guidelines, at least none that will be acted on by the king.”
Jones added that it was important that the Shi'ites continue to speak out and challenge the ideological orthodoxy in the kingdom.
Al-Qaida
Liberals in the kingdom find it difficult to compete with the influence held by orthodox clerics. There are 42,000 mosques in the kingdom, each of which has an Imam (prayer leader) and a Khatib, who delivers Friday sermons.
All of them preach the traditional Wahhabi interpretation of Islam with its strict puritanical rules for the conduct of daily life and almost claustrophobic fear of foreign influence. More than a few were attracted to al-Qaida.
A Western ambassador in Riyad told ISN Security Watch, on the condition that his name not be mentioned, that the Saudi authorities “have realized that the followers of al-Qaida are not just - as argued when al-Qaida attacks began - a bunch of stubborn, uneducated kids who have nothing to do with the Wahhabi clerics”.
The diplomat said that the government had started to take the threat posed by al-Qaida seriously: “The authorities found growing support in large sectors of the population without which the security forces could not have destroyed such a considerable number of terrorist cells.
The ambassador concluded that al-Qaida, “is on the run in the kingdom.” Guido Steinberg of Berlin's German Institute for International and Security Affairs told ISN Security Watch that it is likely that many Saudi members of al-Qaida have left for Iraq to fight the US occupation.
However, Jones warns that al-Qaida may well regroup and found new cells of activists in Saudi Arabia.
A symbiotic union
The ideological challenge posed by al-Qaida and the hard line Wahhabi clerics remains. Here is where the new king plays a key role, according to analysts.
The ambassador related: “He is well connected with the tribes and the clerics. He knows how to deal with both of them and he has improved relations, especially with the clerics." He added that the Wahhabi establishment was on the payroll of the royal family and therefore had to compromise.
Historians argue that the monarchy and Wahhabi clerics are dependant on each other. The Grand Mufti of the kingdom usually still has to be a descendant of Abdul Ibn Wahhab, a religious reformer who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, established the connection with the family of the Al Saud.
Abdul Ibn Wahhab used the military power of the Al Saud to spread his version of Islam, while the Al Saud accepted Wahhabism, utilizing it as an ideological justification for their conquest of large parts of the Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of the twentieth century. Analysts say that this intertwined connection remains the royal family's power base.
US-Saudi relations
While reining in at least some of the most conservative clerics, who threatened this coalition by clandestinely supporting al-Qaida, King Abdullah is simultaneously working to strengthen another recently endangered pillar of Saudi power - relations with the US.
This alliance was formed in the 1940s when the vast oil reserves of the kingdom caused President Roosevelt to declare that Saudi Arabia was vital for US interests. The strategic relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia came under strain when it was discovered that 15 of the 19 terrorist involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis.
Saudi diplomats say that official relations between the countries returned to normal after a meeting between President Bush and King Abdullah last summer.
To improve relations on a broader level, the Saudi government has approved hundreds of scholarships to encourage Saudi students to study in US universities.
However, a journalist from the Arab News newspaper, who also wished to remain anonymous, criticized the implementation of the scheme: “The processing of visa application takes months. Sometimes applicants even wait many months only to fix an interview with an official in the US consulate.”
The journalist added that because visas do not arrive in time many students who were already accepted by US universities have lost their right to admittance. The reason for the slow procedures of US consulates in the kingdom, according to the journalist is a “general suspicion” of Saudi citizens after the 9/11 attacks.
Analysts say that a degree of mutual aversion remains, while many fear that the new oil boom will encourage the monarchy to return to its traditional complacency, neglecting the urgent need for reform.
Although the budget surplus of US$82 billion, will be partly used to repay Saudi Arabia's huge US$126.7 billion public debt and to improve infrastructure and the national educational system, analysts note an apparent lack of desire for movement on democratization and social innovation.
Moreover, although they praise these fiscal plans, many observers say that, aside from members of the ruling family, hardly anyone in the kingdom knows the amount of money which goes directly into the bank accounts of Saudi princes and is not registered within the official budget.
Steinberg says that when Abdullah was ruling the country as crown prince, during the long illness of the late King Fahd, he only initiated reforms at a time of low oil prices and al-Qaida threats. He did so because he feared that financial strains and security problems might threaten the traditional powerbase of the monarchy.
The analyst said that he has a high estimation of King Abdullah, but that unfortunately the king is already 82-years old. Steinberg expressed concern that the king's eagerness for reform could be suffocated by the new oil boom, leaving things where they stood before the new petrodollars flooded into the kingdom.
Heiko Flottau is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent for Egypt. He wrote for many years for Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Belgrade, Warsaw, and Cairo. Heiko is the author of "From the Nile to the Hindukush - The Middle East and the new World Order" (German, 2004).
By Heiko Flottau in Cairo for ISN Security Watch (26/12/05)
Upon his ascension to the throne in 2005 Abdullah immediately released three well known dissidents from prison, later freeing around ten others.
In another initiative, he gathered seventy handpicked intellectuals, half of them women, in the town of Abha to participate in the fifth round of the King Abdel Asis Center for National Dialog. Abdullah personally founded this institution in 2003 when still crown prince.
The title of the three-day meeting, which was broadcast for the first time in full on national television, was “We and the others” and it was intended that the forum focus on the Saudi relationship to the West and Muslim and non-Muslim peoples.
According to some observers, the discussion, during which men and women in compliance with Saudi culture were seated in separate rooms, communicating with each other via closed circuit television, got out of hand.
Instead of talking about the connections between Saudi citizens and people outside the kingdom, the controversial subject of relations between the Sunni majority and the country's Shia and Ishmaelite minorities was the main topic of the meeting.
Although conservative clerics argued that, given the “aggression of the West in Palestine and Iraq”, Saudi citizens should unite and refrain from talking about inner divisions, the majority did not back this stance, passing a resolution, which by Saudi standards had, as one diplomat put it, “almost a western humanistic touch”.
The resolution argues that all men are the children of Adam and Eve and that jihad does not always refer to military action in pursuit of the spread of Islam but, more importantly, asks Muslims to fight the bad and struggle for the good. The delegates concluded that Saudis must start to participate in international cultural exchanges and expose themselves to other value systems.
Reactions to the new approach of King Abdullah and to the National Dialog vary. A Western diplomat in Riyad, who did not wish to be named, told ISN Security Watch that, in a society which is by no means used to the exchange of different views, the National Dialog constituted a tiny first step towards developing a civil society.
He added that the Dschidda Chamber of Commerce recently elected three female members to its board of directors, thus improving the social position of women und contributing to diminishing their isolation in an otherwise male-dominated society.
However, a female journalist in the Eastern Province argued that instead of lengthy discussions, “we want real actions of reform, such as bringing more women into the political process, improving the educational system and tackling the problem of the growing number of poor people”.
The journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, told ISN Security Watch: “Due to high oil prices we are flooded with cash, but it is still almost impossible for low and middle-income people to build a decent house. Poverty is growing.”
She said that she welcomed all actions taken by the new monarch, but “King Abdullah is by no means a liberal.” Nobody in the kingdom was allowed to discuss his age and the time he has left to make urgent changes, she noted. The king is 82-years old.
However opinions vary. Nadia Hazza, a female engineer at state oil company Saudi Aramco, in the Eastern Province, told ISN Security Watch: “I hold great love, respect and admiration for his (Abdullah) courage to bring many subjects, including women issues, to the surface effectively, which made it easy for us to demand true Islamic rights that were overshadowed by culture and traditions which are misunderstood in the West as Islamic."
Toby Jones, a Bahrain-based analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG), is more critical of the National Dialog and the approach of the new king. He told ISN Security Watch that the last meeting was “more of the same - disagreement among the delegates and a final resolution that offers little to no policy guidelines, at least none that will be acted on by the king.”
Jones added that it was important that the Shi'ites continue to speak out and challenge the ideological orthodoxy in the kingdom.
Al-Qaida
Liberals in the kingdom find it difficult to compete with the influence held by orthodox clerics. There are 42,000 mosques in the kingdom, each of which has an Imam (prayer leader) and a Khatib, who delivers Friday sermons.
All of them preach the traditional Wahhabi interpretation of Islam with its strict puritanical rules for the conduct of daily life and almost claustrophobic fear of foreign influence. More than a few were attracted to al-Qaida.
A Western ambassador in Riyad told ISN Security Watch, on the condition that his name not be mentioned, that the Saudi authorities “have realized that the followers of al-Qaida are not just - as argued when al-Qaida attacks began - a bunch of stubborn, uneducated kids who have nothing to do with the Wahhabi clerics”.
The diplomat said that the government had started to take the threat posed by al-Qaida seriously: “The authorities found growing support in large sectors of the population without which the security forces could not have destroyed such a considerable number of terrorist cells.
The ambassador concluded that al-Qaida, “is on the run in the kingdom.” Guido Steinberg of Berlin's German Institute for International and Security Affairs told ISN Security Watch that it is likely that many Saudi members of al-Qaida have left for Iraq to fight the US occupation.
However, Jones warns that al-Qaida may well regroup and found new cells of activists in Saudi Arabia.
A symbiotic union
The ideological challenge posed by al-Qaida and the hard line Wahhabi clerics remains. Here is where the new king plays a key role, according to analysts.
The ambassador related: “He is well connected with the tribes and the clerics. He knows how to deal with both of them and he has improved relations, especially with the clerics." He added that the Wahhabi establishment was on the payroll of the royal family and therefore had to compromise.
Historians argue that the monarchy and Wahhabi clerics are dependant on each other. The Grand Mufti of the kingdom usually still has to be a descendant of Abdul Ibn Wahhab, a religious reformer who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, established the connection with the family of the Al Saud.
Abdul Ibn Wahhab used the military power of the Al Saud to spread his version of Islam, while the Al Saud accepted Wahhabism, utilizing it as an ideological justification for their conquest of large parts of the Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of the twentieth century. Analysts say that this intertwined connection remains the royal family's power base.
US-Saudi relations
While reining in at least some of the most conservative clerics, who threatened this coalition by clandestinely supporting al-Qaida, King Abdullah is simultaneously working to strengthen another recently endangered pillar of Saudi power - relations with the US.
This alliance was formed in the 1940s when the vast oil reserves of the kingdom caused President Roosevelt to declare that Saudi Arabia was vital for US interests. The strategic relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia came under strain when it was discovered that 15 of the 19 terrorist involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis.
Saudi diplomats say that official relations between the countries returned to normal after a meeting between President Bush and King Abdullah last summer.
To improve relations on a broader level, the Saudi government has approved hundreds of scholarships to encourage Saudi students to study in US universities.
However, a journalist from the Arab News newspaper, who also wished to remain anonymous, criticized the implementation of the scheme: “The processing of visa application takes months. Sometimes applicants even wait many months only to fix an interview with an official in the US consulate.”
The journalist added that because visas do not arrive in time many students who were already accepted by US universities have lost their right to admittance. The reason for the slow procedures of US consulates in the kingdom, according to the journalist is a “general suspicion” of Saudi citizens after the 9/11 attacks.
Analysts say that a degree of mutual aversion remains, while many fear that the new oil boom will encourage the monarchy to return to its traditional complacency, neglecting the urgent need for reform.
Although the budget surplus of US$82 billion, will be partly used to repay Saudi Arabia's huge US$126.7 billion public debt and to improve infrastructure and the national educational system, analysts note an apparent lack of desire for movement on democratization and social innovation.
Moreover, although they praise these fiscal plans, many observers say that, aside from members of the ruling family, hardly anyone in the kingdom knows the amount of money which goes directly into the bank accounts of Saudi princes and is not registered within the official budget.
Steinberg says that when Abdullah was ruling the country as crown prince, during the long illness of the late King Fahd, he only initiated reforms at a time of low oil prices and al-Qaida threats. He did so because he feared that financial strains and security problems might threaten the traditional powerbase of the monarchy.
The analyst said that he has a high estimation of King Abdullah, but that unfortunately the king is already 82-years old. Steinberg expressed concern that the king's eagerness for reform could be suffocated by the new oil boom, leaving things where they stood before the new petrodollars flooded into the kingdom.
Heiko Flottau is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent for Egypt. He wrote for many years for Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Belgrade, Warsaw, and Cairo. Heiko is the author of "From the Nile to the Hindukush - The Middle East and the new World Order" (German, 2004).
posted by Marko at 12/26/2005 10:15:00 AM
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