When Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al Faisal, stepped to the podium at the
Arab-US Policymakers Conference on October 30, 2006 the audience in the Ronald Reagan Building and across the C-SPAN television network was prepared to hear him address �A Vision for the Future of U.S. Saudi Relations." Instead they heard him speak about a current event that had not received much attention in the media up to that point. He said, "I was going to speak initially at this conference on a vision for the future of Saudi-U.S. relations, but I changed that because of an event that took place last week in Saudi Arabia, which was the formation of the Bay�ah Council, which is an important constitutional revolution in the governing of Saudi Arabia." He continued with an address he called, "Saudi Arabian Constitutional Evolution" that described the process for addressing succession in the Kingdom.
Thomas Lippman, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, veteran journalist, author of "Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Relationship with Saudi Arabia,"
and occasional contributor to SUSRIS, took a look at the question of succession in the Kingdom and the establishment of the "Bay'ah Council." We are pleased to share his insights today.
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So, right now, we are in something of a crossroads because they recognize that they are entering a phase when there could be rapid turnover of rulers. So, this one was smooth, but there is no guarantee that the next one will be.
-- MSNBC News Report, Aug 2, 2005 - On the occasion of King Abdullah's Ascension
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Solving the Saudi Succession Puzzle
Thomas W. Lippman
If there is one thing the ruling princes of Saudi Arabia have shown they are good at, it is self-preservation. They demonstrated their skill once again last month with an adroit political maneuver that drew little media notice in this country because of the carnage in Iraq, but could have long-term significance for the Gulf region and for the United States.
King �Abdullah announced a new system for choosing future kings, designed to ensure smooth continuity whenever the monarchy is vacated. He issued a new
�Allegiance Institution
Law� designed to cover every eventuality: death of the king; simultaneous death of the king and crown prince; temporary incapacity because of illness; and long-term disability.
This news can only be encouraging to those who wish to see long-term political and economic stability in that vital country. But it will not be encouraging to those who believe in promoting democratic reform in the Arab world because the purpose of �Abdullah�s move was to fortify the monarchy, not to open up the country�s political process. Its aim is not to give the Saudi people any voice in selecting their leader, but rather to codify the existing informal system in which the king and his brothers have the absolute power to designate the next in line for the throne, without any explanation of their decision.
The new procedure is more like the selection of a Roman Catholic pope, chosen in a secret conclave by princes of the church, than it is like any democratic system. Just as some cardinals are deemed �papabile,� or suitable to become pontiff in the event of a vacancy, a handful of the many sons and grandsons of Saudi Arabia�s founding King, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, are understood to be in the running as future kings.
No one outside the House of Saud has any real knowledge of who might be on the list. Any speculation by scholars or think-tank analysts about the line of succession is just that -- speculation.
Saudi Arabia�s ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal -- sometimes mentioned himself as a possible future king --
told a Washington audience on October 30 that the new law represents �a contract between the ruler and ruled. The ruler obliges himself to protect, promote and enhance the lives and property of the ruled; and the ruled oblige themselves to protect, promote and obey the ruler in everything but that which counters the teachings of God.� He did not say how the �ruled� took on this obligation to obey; in fact they have no choice in the matter.
This won�t matter much to American policymakers, to whom the new law will come as something of a relief because it eliminates a possible source of trouble in Saudi Arabia. Public input is irrelevant. It has been clear since
�Abdullah met with President Bush at his Texas ranch in April 2005 that Washington was not going to press the Saudis for political liberalization because the Saudi regime is too valuable on other fronts. The Saudi regime has persuaded Bush and his advisers that it is part of the solution on the �war on terror,� not part of the problem, and therefore stability trumps reform, as it almost always has in the 60 years of the US-Saudi alliance.
In case anyone doubted that the Saudis regard themselves as beyond the reach of Bush�s quest for democratization in the Arab world, Prince Turki proclaimed it:
�We are not in a hurry to experiment with foreign interpretations of democracy or methods of
government,� he said.
Until the new law was issued, the question of who would become king after �Abdullah and his designated successor,
Defense Minister Prince
Sultan, was a gnawing point of concern about the Kingdom�s future. Both men are more than 80 years old, Sultan has reportedly been treated for cancer, and no one has been selected to become ruler after them.
They and other senior princes -- all sons of King Abdul Aziz -- have many sons of their own in positions of influence who might aspire to take over after Sultan passes from the scene. To outsiders, the potential jockeying among the princes of this �grandsons generation� has raised questions about the cohesion of the House of Saud and thus about the stability of the country.
There appears to be no other imminent threat to the ongoing rule of the al-Saud family. The wave of extremist violence that broke out in 2003 has receded. The perpetrators of the bombings that wracked Riyadh and other cities and frightened foreigners out of the country have been killed or rounded up by the security forces, and they never gained support among the general Saudi population. Moreover, because �Abdullah has curbed the corruption that inspired popular anger and has reached out to the country�s Shi�a Muslim minority and other marginalized groups, the House of Saud is less unpopular than it appeared to be before �Abdullah took over last year.
The al-Saud family has ruled what is now Saudi Arabia since the 1920s, when Abdul Aziz overpowered rivals from other tribes and unified the country. The root of the succession problem lies in the fact that Abdul Aziz fathered some 45 sons, of whom 23 are still alive, and did not specify how his successors were to be chosen. Until now it has been an informal process among the princes; it is not based on birth order, but upon negotiation and compromise within the family.
Thus, the most serious threat to stability appeared to be the possibility that the princes would split in a power struggle, as they did in the 1960�s. The contest of that decade pitted two other sons of Abdul Aziz, Faisal and Saud, against each other and traumatized the family. Ever since then such matters have been thrashed out among the princes, out of public view. When �Abdullah became king upon the death of his half-brother Fahd last year, he promptly named another half-brother, Sultan, as crown prince. Many Saudi-watchers believe the likeliest candidate after Sultan is Prince Salman, a half-brother of �Abdullah and a full brother of Sultan. Salman, aged 70, is the longtime governor of Riyadh.
Under a 1992 law, �Rule passes to the sons of the founding king.. ..and to their children�s children. The most upright among them is to receive allegiance in accordance with the principles of the Holy Koran and the tradition of the Venerable Prophet,� Muhammad. But the law also gave the king the power to choose his successor. What would happen if other princes did not accept the designated heir as the �most upright� was not clear.
Now King Abdullah has established a more formal system. He created a committee of princes, called the �Allegiance Institution,� to designate future crown princes. Because Sultan has already been chosen as next in line after Abdullah, the new system will take effect only after Sultan becomes king. Once that happens, and in all future cases, the new king is to nominate one, two or three candidates to be his successor. Committee members may accept a nominee or reject all three. �If the committee rejects all the nominees, it will name a Crown Prince whom it considers to be suitable,� according to a translation provided by the embassy.
This process is to be completed within 30 days. In the past, long intervals of uncertainty have sometimes ensued as a new king has delayed naming a successor.
Perhaps more important, the new law specifies the procedures to be followed if the king is incapacitated. This is clearly intended to avoid a repetition of the uncomfortable period between 1995 and 2005, when Fahd was disabled by a stroke. �Abdullah was de facto ruler, but his power was limited because he was not king; many important reforms were delayed or set aside because of that vacuum.
Some Saudis have said the new law is important also for what it does not say. There is no mention of the country�s religious leadership, or ulema. The law does not preclude consultation with the religious leadership, traditional partners in power of the House of Saud, but neither does it command it. Some analysts believe this is part of a gradual process in which the senior princes have been almost imperceptibly separating their power from the often troublesome input of the ulema.
The official announcement of the new system does not answer all questions -- it says members of the Allegiance Institution must be �capable and known for their integrity� but does not say how those qualities are to be determined, nor does it specify what happens after the passing of all the grandsons, many already approaching old age. Nevertheless, given the way the House of Saud operates, it can be assumed that �Abdullah issued his decree only after extensive discussion with his brothers and probably some of the key nephews, and that they have signed off on it. That means the family will not allow or encourage any aspirant to stake a claim outside the system when the time comes.
Once again the House of Saud displays its talent for survival.
Tom Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the
Middle East Institute. A former Middle East bureau chief of the
Washington Post, he is the author of �Inside the Mirage: America�s Fragile Relationship with Saudi Arabia."
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