Is Saudi Arabia on the verge of a revolution? Can the royals control their population and stop the attacks agsinst the oil industry?
I think that it is just a matter of time, and a short period of time at that, before there is a revolution in Saudi. There is unrest and unemployment amoung the younger generation(s). There is unrest with in the Royal family itself. They cannot buy off the dissidents, which used to work.
The scary thing is that the only group in Saudi with enough motivation, drive, and passion to accomplish a revolution in Saudi Arabia is the ultra-extremist Wahhabis. The Saudi military is not up to tying their own shoelaces, let alone performing any military function. Joe Average Citizen is probably politically naive and ignorant, with the media controlled there, and of no use in any political revolution one way or the other. The professional and intellectual classes in Saudi Arabia are mostly composed of foreigners. The only motivated and organized group not bought into the system is the ultra-Wahhabis. Truly scary.
The really scary question is: why haven’t the terrorists attacked the oil infrastructure? The vast network of pipelines through the desert are supremely vulnerable (as demonstrated by continuous sabotage in Iraq) yet, so far, the wahhabist extremists haven’t touched them. A few simultaneous hits could potentially destroy SA’s economy, throw the country into full blown chaos and cripple the world economy. $10 a gallon, anybody?
Surely, the Wahhabis know this so why haven’t they done it? Is it because they want to inherit the infrastructure intact? Some sort of shady backroom deal with the Sauds?
Obviously the House of Saud maintains its power through profits from the oil industry and would eventually collapse if that money stopped throwing, but what would the extremist Whhabis accomplish by destroying it? The entire country is dependant on oil money to maintain the economy and to bring in food and other manufactured goods that aren’t produced there. Destroying the oil industry would turn the majority of the population against the religious extremists.
Would it be un-PC of me to refer to these individuals as Joe… Camel?
If Saudi arabia collapses via an islamic revolution, it will not be surprising to me. First, forget about how rich the country is…the fact is, there are MILLIONS of saudis who live in dire poverty, in a state of purpetual welfare. All of the professional jobs (and many of the service jobs like hotel workers, waiters, clerks) are done by foreign contract workers, from India, pakistan, and the Phillippines. Second, there is a small elite, who have been educated abroad (in Europe and the USA) these people have money in Switzerland, and are ready to pack their bags and GO! These people have NO illusions about what a Wahabist-governed Saudi Arabia would be like…and thus they have NO interest in reforming the government.
I give the Saudis about 10, no more than 15 years…and when the oil starts to run out, then it will be curtains for the kingdom.
The big question is whether or not the U.S. would intervene to prevent it. I think it probably would, considering that there are 135,000 soldiers next door. And the U.S. would probably get the support of countries like France and Germany. No one wants to see an islamic revolution in Saudi Arabia.
And the U.S. is of course, even as I type, demonstating how capable it is at combatting insurgency in an occupied Middle Eastern country.
Why are they “not bought into the system”? I thought Wahhabi Islam was Saudi Arabia’s official religious ideology and always had been.
ralph, Saudi Arabia is already Wahhabi-governed. Has been since it was founded. The threat is from the ultra-extremist wing of Wahhabism, which has already attacked the more pragmatic leadership twice with the intent of overthrowing it: in 1929 and in 1979.
Brain Glutton, by “the system” I mean the present leadership of Saudi Arabia, which consists of a political sector led by the Al Sa‘ud (Al means ‘family’) and a religious sector led by the Al al-Shaykh. These guys are the establishment. The Al Sa‘ud decided beginning in 1914 to ally themselves with western powers, first Great Britain and then the United States. The Al Sa‘ud are pragmatists in this regard. The Al al-Shaykh accommodates them by giving the rubber stamp of religious approval to the Al Sa‘ud and in return gets to keep their privileged positions in the religious establishment. This accommodation between the two families dates back to the mid-18th century.
But the Wahhabi doctrine is extremist and uncompromising by nature; if one takes its teachings literally, pragmatic alliance with western powers is heresy and must be wiped out by force. When these teachings infect the minds of religiously indoctrinate but unbalanced young hotheads who do not have much of a stake in the system, they will feel urged by these extremist teachings to overthrow the system and install a “pure” religious-political order based on taking their indoctrination literally. Pragmatism means nothing to these extremists. As noted, they already tried to rebel once in 1929, and some of those rebels’ descendants were among the plotters in the attempter putsch of 1979. This wild bunch has not gone away. Extremists like them are behind the terrorist attacks going on in Saudi Arabia right now.
Theory is that the Sauds were funneling money to the terrorists in exchange for not atacking their interests. Maybe the US gov has convinced the Sauds to stop doing this so the terrorists have no incentive not to attack.
Thing is, Jomo Mojo, the Al ash-shaykh are the Wahhabists. They’re the descendants of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, to whom Muhammad ibn Saud gave protection in the eighteenth century.
Suffice it to say, IMO, that any ‘revolution’ by Wahhabists would amount to nothing more than a palace coup, since you can’t really get much more right-wing that the current situation in Saudi Arabia. No political parties, no elections, God alone knows what sort of human rights violations towards women and minorities. It certainly wouldn’t be a revolution from below.
I’m with O on this one. My thought was that it would be more of a ‘new boss same as the old boss’ thing instead of a real revolution.
Quick nitpick - according to my Arabic texts, al doesn’t mean ‘family’ - it’s the definite article. So as-sa:uud (al -> as due to assimilation) simply means ‘the Sauds’. Admittedly, I can’t thus explain ‘al ash-shaykh’, since that appears to be a double use of the definite article, but perhaps one of our native Arabic speakers can step in.
You guys are still not getting it. It must be my fault for not making this clear. I’ll restate it.
The ruling establishment of Wahhabism is made of a pact between the Al Sa‘ud family, going back to the original Ibn Sa‘ud, a tribal chieftain in the Najd region of Arabia circa 1745, and the Al al-Shaykh family descended from Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a religious extremist who preached that anyone who didn’t follow his narrow interpretation of Islam was an infidel and must be killed. (This goes against the entire consensus of mainstream Islam throughout history.) Ibn Sa‘ud offered to use his military force to conquer people and convert them to Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrine, or else kill them. The pact between these two wreaked terror on the Arabian peninsula for nearly 70 years, until Egyptian troops, acting on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, destroyed the first Saudi state in 1818.
A descendant of Ibn Sa‘ud, named ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman Al Sa‘ud, conquered the fortress of Riyadh in 1901 and then began to drive the rival family of Al Rashid out of his ancestral region of Najd. The Rashid were supported by the Ottoman Empire, who had crushed the first Saudi state some 90 years earlier. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz was approached by the British at the beginning of the First World War, who were using desert Arabs to maneuver against the Ottoman back door. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz made a pragmatic decision that the British support would allow him to eliminate his bitter rivals, the Rashid, so he supported the Allies in the war. As a result of getting arms, funds, and military advisors from Britain, he was successful in conquering most of northern Arabia. He drove the Sharif out of Mecca in 1924, and in 1926 he founded the Kingdom of Najd and Hijaz. After taking the territory of ‘Asir in the south, he founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
In order to build a fighting force, he enlisted Bedouin tribes and indoctrinated them with Wahhabism in order to inflame them to fight fellow Muslims. What’s important to understand is that ‘Abd al-‘Aziz himself, while an observant Muslim, does not seem to have been impressed by the extremist tendencies of Wahhabism that insists you have to hate and kill everybody who doesn’t convert to Wahhabism. He was pragmatic and knew you can’t build a nation-state on such a nihilist dogma. He only used Wahhabism to build a disciplined fighting force and whip them into a fighting fury. When he began to practice less conquest and more statecraft and diplomacy in the 1920s, a rebel faction of mad-as-hell Wahhabis broke away and attacked him. He put them down in a very nasty little civil war. Their lingering resentment continued to simmer.
‘Abd al-‘Aziz cared less about Wahhabi puritanism and more about power and wealth. To this end, he signed oil exploration contracts with first the British and then the Americans. However, as part of the original 18th-century deal, he allowed the Al al-Shaykh to rule the religious life of the kingdom, provided they acquiesced to his state power. Thus the Wahhabi mullas in the employ of the state have had the power to deny women’s rights, impose puritanical restrictions, etc., but in return their end of the bargain is not to rock the boat politically and to legitimate the Saudi kingdom.
The extremist Wahhabis, in other words al-Qa‘idah and groups emulating al-Qa‘idah, reject the Saudi state’s pragmatism in making alliances with infidel western powers. If they took over, you would see the furor of the 1979 Iranian revolution all over again, anti-Americanism aflame, and all hell breaking loose in the Middle East. There is no question that the world oil market would be severely shocked, regardless of how much oil infrastructure is actually destroyed. Attacks on Americans would probably bring about a war in which Americans invade Saudi Arabia (except that it wouldn’t be called “Saudi” if the Al Sa‘ud family were overthrown), and American forces would invade Mecca and Medina. The extremist Wahhabi rebels would hole up in the two sacred mosques of Mecca and Medina, and if American troops attacked them there, the whole Islamic world would be outraged. It isn’t a pretty scenario. As bad as the Saudi regime is (and it is very bad), the alternative is nightmarishly worse. Saudi Arabia is under the surface the most fucked-up country in the world, and it’s hard to see how a good outcome will result from this. If they had moved toward liberalizing their society and diversifying their economy decades ago, who knows… Now, I hope it isn’t too late, but it’s starting to look like it is too late.
You need to understand the major difference between the pragmatic Wahhabi establishment and the extremist Wahhabi rebels. You might as well argue that the Shah of Iran was a Shi‘ite, and Khomeini was a Shi‘ite, so if one replaced the other, what’s the big deal? They’re both Shi‘ites, right?
O, perhaps you need a better Arabic dictionary. The word al- (attached to the following word, with a short vowel a) means ‘the’. But the word Âl (written separately, with a long vowel â) means ‘family’. In Arabic script they can’t be confused. Therefore Âl al-Shaykh means ‘the family of the Shaykh’.
The first half of that statement is correct only if you postulate a seizure of power by the Al al-Shaykh, who were long ago co-opted into the Saudi system ( and who are de facto one of numerous branches of the royal family, related to them by both blood and political ties ). However I don’t believe JM meant to imply that they would be the source of revolution as a group ( though elements of them might be under the right circumstances ). There is a difference between the official clerical establishment of Saudi Arabia, run in part, as with most elements of the Saudi government, as a family fief, and the clerical opposition. The latter loathe the former. The Al-al-Shaykh are by and large the status quo - they’d be overthrown with the rest of the government ( though due to their aura of religiosity, some might be capable of jumping ship in extremis ).
The second half is just incorrect, period. As JM notes, the extremists ARE worse than the status quo, even if only by degree. To better understand the dynamics of current unrest in SA, this analysis is not a bad place to start ( note that are non-violent clerical elements in opposition as well, as violent elements ):
http://www.saudi-american-forum.org/Library/2002_11_27_Cordesman.pdf
Jomo Mojo: Where I might disagree with your characterization would perhaps be in your implication that SA government is a binary organization, divided into co-equal civil and religious spheres. I think it is more aptly described as multi-segmented. For one thing the civil = royal family and religious= Al al-Shaykh is not necessarily a clearcut division. But also the Al al-Shaykh are not noticeably more internally influential than any of a few other royal branches, like the Al Sudairi or bin Faisal.
- Tamerlane
Nitpick: Al-Qaeda (I prefer the spelling most American newspapers use) might be a Wahhabi extremist organization, but that’s not all they are. I read in the Utne Reader a few months ago that Osama bin Laden is an Asiri – that is, he comes from the southern province of Asir, which borders on Yemen and has more in common, culturally, with Yemen than with Nejd or Hejaz. And, as you recounted, Asir was not part of the Saud family’s original power base but was acquired by conquest around 1932. According to this article, when it was founded, al-Qaeda was mainly an organization of Asiri nationalists discontented with Saudi rule. Since then it has developed a more religious and pan-Islamic orientation.
If, on the other hand, the American forces did not actually assault the cities of Mecca and Medina, but simply surrounded them and placed them under siege, that would make it impossible for pilgrims to visit the cities for religious purposes – and the Wahhabis would have to share the blame for that situation, wouldn’t they? The whole Islamic world might get pissed at them. Pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
Matter of fact, the Hajj actually was canceled one year circa 1800, when the Wahhabis took over Mecca (and slaughtered many of its inhabitants). As you said, it earned them a lot of international ill will, and the Muslim world felt relieved when the Egyptian forces sent by Muhammad ‘Ali drove them out of Mecca back into the desert, and then crushed their power entirely. It sprang up again like a noxious weed, though.
Tamerlane, I never meant to imply that the Al al-Shaykh held sway over the government. Rather, they have been given their own area of influence, religion and morals policing, in exchange for validating the state. This makes them part of the status quo.
I don’t buy the theory that al-Qa‘idah (I prefer the more accurate Arabic spelling used by the U.S. intelligence community) originated as ‘Asiri nationalists. Usamah bin Ladin is not of ‘Asiri origin; whoever wrote that got it wrong. His father came from Yemen. Many of the tribes of Yemen are closely related to the tribes of ‘Asir, of course, so ‘Asir was a natural place for him to go recruiting, and that explains why so many tribesmen from ‘Asir were involved in the 9/11 attack. That plus the extremist ultra-Wahhabi preaching that has been going on openly in ‘Asir for some time now, and its provincial backwardness and unemployment, far removed from the centers of power in Riyadh and the oil fields.
The origin of al-Qa‘idah was the Afghan mujahidin war against the Soviets, when lots of Arab fundamentalists (not all of them Wahhabis; many came from al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin and other such Sunni fundamentalist groups) converged on Pakistan to fight alongside the Afghans. The Arab regimes were happy to get these troublemakers out of their countries and send them off someplace where they were likely to get killed. Those who didn’t get killed became more and more extremist, and when the Afghanistan action was over and these guys were looking for someone else to fight, the blowback bit lots of countries on the ass. Especially Algeria, Egypt, and now the United States.
The ‘Asir connection has more to do with tribal relations between the Yemeni Bin Ladin family and the nearby ‘Asir tribes, but al-Qa‘idah is still fundamentalist religion in nature; nationalism does not form part of the fundamentalist Muslims’ worldview.
Are there any factions or forces in SA that want a secular democratic republic? Or even a liberalized constitutional monarchy like Jordan has?
Sure. They just are not as influential and tend to be accomodationists. To quote Cordesman:
*Saudi Arabia does have its “modernizers.” Many Saudi princes, educators, technocrats, businessmen, Western educated citizens and more progressive Islamists have favored more rapid social change than has been possible in the face of from Saudi Islamic extremists and conservatives can influence large elements of Saudi society has often delayed progress. Such elements in Saudi society differ significantly over their vision of Saudi Arabia’s future, but most reject an ultra-conservative or radical interpretation of Islam. They support educational and economic reform, and Saudi Arabia’s opening to the outside world – both Arab and Western spheres. Many favor the creation of a more representative and active Majlis, and the eventual creation of an elected assembly. Many complain about nepotism and the abuse of power and legal rights by members of the royal family, other leading families, and officials.
Many also support the liberalization of current religious restraints on subjects such as commerce, the role of women, and soother practices. For example, such modernists and reformers petitioned the King at the time of the Gulf War, and Saudi women have carried out protests for women’s rights by driving their own cars.
Yet most Saudi “modernizers”—which include significant numbers of deeply religious Saudis—recognize that Saudi religious practices and traditions can only evolve slowly over time. A few businessmen, technocrats, and Western-educated professionals have been arrested, or have had difficulties with the authorities, for such activities. However, such incidents are relatively rare. Most “modernizers” understand that the Royal family and Saudi technocrats offer a far more practical evolutionary road toward change than opposition to the regime. Intelligent “modernizers” understand they are in a minority, and must work within the system.*
One of the problems is that the SA government has traditionally pandered more to the reactionaries than the modernists to buttress their rule. Consequently the extremist branch of the Islamists find it easier to gather support than the modernists, who are drawn from a much more circumscribed group in Saudi society.
- Tamerlane