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EDITOR'S NOTE:
This article originally appeared in The
Washington Post on Sunday, June 13, 2004 and is reprinted with
permission. A day after this item appeared Mr. Lippman participated in
an on-line discussion titled "Outlook:
Fall of the House of Saud," through the Washington Post web
site. The introduction to the session and a link are included below.
The
Crisis Within
In Saudi Arabia, Rebellion and Reform Seize Center Stage
By Thomas W. Lippman |
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Saudi Arabia is beginning to look
like a society under siege.
At
Riyadh's trendiest shopping mall on a quiet afternoon last month, security
officers were stopping vehicles entering the parking garage, opening hoods and
trunks in search of explosives. At the Marriott Hotel, near the Petroleum
Ministry, and at other hotels in the capital that cater to Westerners,
ground-floor windows have been bricked up and Jersey barriers installed across
driveways. At the airport, the fence around the Royal Terminal, which serves
the king and the princes of the House of Saud, is topped with razor wire. On
Riyadh's main boulevards, and on the causeway connecting the kingdom with
Bahrain, police have set up security checkpoints.
These
are surprising sights in a country that has always prided itself on its
law-and-order, crime-free environment. They reflect the unhappy fact that
for
the past 13 months, Saudi Arabia has been afflicted by an escalating wave of
terrorist violence aimed at bringing down the regime, purging the country of
Western influence and choking off the nascent liberalization of Saudi society.
Scores of people have died in bombings and shootings at housing compounds
where foreigners live and at oil industry facilities, including the
May 29
attack in Khobar that claimed 22 victims. Yesterday, an American was shot and
killed outside his home in a Riyadh suburb. Newspapers report frequent
shootouts between security forces and suspected terrorists whose arsenals of
weapons and explosives are distressingly large.
The
desperadoes are Saudis, nurtured in an extremist environment that the
government itself has long fostered. They are linked to al Qaeda and
sympathetic to their countryman Osama bin Laden -- which has predictably
stirred speculation about the stability of the kingdom. Bin Laden and his
followers have made clear that they are committed to overthrowing the House of
Saud. Given the increasing audacity of the terrorists, the country's swelling
ranks of unemployed malcontents and the apparent indecisiveness of the senior
princes, it might appear that the insurgency could indeed bring down the
regime or at least ignite a civil war.
Yet
forecasting the demise of the Saudi monarchy would be premature at best -- and
probably wrong.
The
ruling princes are skillful, ruthless when necessary, unconstrained by the
niceties of civil liberties, and connected by marriage and business ties to a
huge percentage of the population, which secures them support and loyalty. The
family history is one of alternately accommodating and crushing the religious
militants whom the kings have used as allies -- except when they defied royal
authority.
This
balancing act has defined the internal politics of the kingdom since the
1920s. In 1929, when the religious zealots known as the
Ikhwan challenged the authority of the country's founder, King
Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, he killed or exiled most of them, despite their earlier
efforts to help him unify the kingdom. When armed extremists took over the
Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979, the regime showed them no mercy, publicly
beheading 62 men in eight cities. Self-preservation is the first law of the
House of Saud.
This
is not to minimize the problem the regime faces today. There appears to be a
large pool of poorly educated, narrow-minded, violence-prone men who are
steeped in the religious absolutism that the regime itself promoted for 20
years, principally to reestablish its Islamic religious credentials after the
mosque takeover.
These
militants are willing to take up arms, attack women and children, and die for
the illusory cause of an Islamic state culturally and spiritually similar to
the one created by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century.
The
messages they hear from the country's xenophobic religious establishment --
anti-Western, anti-Semitic, anti-feminist -- reinforce their convictions.
Indeed, even Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, reinforced the
venomous rhetoric by blaming "Zionists" for the Khobar attacks. His
powerful half-brother, Prince Nayef, the interior minister, had earlier held
"Zionists" responsible for the attacks against the United States on
Sept. 11, 2001.
More
than a thousand of the most inflammatory preachers have been removed from
their pulpits since then, but the senior princes are still reluctant to
confront the religious leadership because alliance with it is the foundation
of the regime's legitimacy.
 Recognizing
this contradiction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the
United States and a grandson of the founding king,
called this month for the
ruling princes to stop blaming others for the country's troubles and urged a
total mobilization of the country's resources for what he depicted as a war to
the death.
If
the regime treats the terrorists the way Abdul Aziz treated the Ikhwan
-- that is, destroys them -- the House of Saud will prevail, he said; if the
rulers treat them as "Muslim youths who have been misled . . in the
hope that they will come to their senses," the House of Saud will be
destroyed. (Excerpts from Bandar's manifesto appeared in last Sunday's
Outlook.)
Still,
even with its history of corruption and autocratic rule, Saudi Arabia does not
face the conditions that have provoked revolution in other developing
countries. It cannot be compared, for example, to Iran in 1978, where a
society was united in its desire to get rid of the shah, who was perceived as
a usurper who devalued Islamic culture.
It
is not like Vietnam in 1963, where the National Liberation Front could claim
to represent legitimate nationalist aspirations. It bears no resemblance to
the Lebanon of 1975, where a weak state collapsed in the face of a
Muslim-Christian conflict. Never having been colonized, Saudi Arabia offers
the insurgents no veneer of anti-colonial motivation.
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That
is why the militants have gained little if any political traction among the
majority of Saudis; on the contrary, their brutality appears to have rallied
the population around the government, according to Saudi journalists and
independent analysts, both Saudi and foreign. Even Saudis critical of the
monarchy and hostile to the United States say they do not want the religious
totalitarianism promised by bin Laden's brownshirts.
There
is indeed a revolution taking place in Saudi Arabia, but so far at least it is
not the kind that unfolds at gunpoint. More and more, and with increasing
openness, Saudis are demanding reform, and the country's rulers are
responding. A wave of collective introspection, which began with the
realization that 15 of the 19 hijackers responsible for the 9/11 terrorist
attacks were Saudi, has prompted their countrymen to question their
traditions, their laws and their attitudes; the result is change at an
accelerating pace.
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There
is indeed a
revolution taking place
in Saudi Arabia, but so
far at least it is
not the
kind that unfolds at
gunpoint. More and more,
and with increasing
openness, Saudis are
demanding reform, and
the country's rulers are
responding.
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Self-styled
"reformers" and advocates of greater political openness are sending
petitions to the crown prince and agitating for change in the increasingly
vocal press, often risking arrest. Even these activists, however, seek change
within the existing structure, acknowledging that the monarchy is the glue
that holds together a fractious society.
During
a visit last month, I heard for the first time Saudis talking openly about
societal ills that were taboo subjects in the past -- child abuse,
wife-beating, drug addiction among women and birth deformities attributable to
intermarriage. No longer do the Saudis smugly assume that theirs is a perfect
society, in harmony with God's directives and Islam's traditions.
Much
of this change appears to be inspired by the new generation of educated women
clamoring for a larger place in the country's economic -- and even its
political -- life. New areas of employment, even in factories, are being
opened to women, and Saudi officials say women will be permitted to vote in
the upcoming municipal elections, the country's first since the 1960s. Laws
are being rewritten to encourage women to start businesses and invest their
considerable capital. In April, the government abolished a rule requiring
women who wished to enter business to be represented by male guardians when
dealing with officials, and two weeks ago the government directed that land in
industrial zones be set aside for operations run and staffed by women.
Of
course, opening new areas of employment to women may compound unemployment
among Saudi men, but the government has committed itself at least on paper to
addressing that problem by expanding the private-sector economy and
restricting the use of foreign workers in some workplaces, such as travel
agencies. Saudi business executives, government officials, members of the
appointed consultative assembly and prominent journalists talk optimistically
about the reformist tide rippling through the society. They say it is now
inevitable that the political system will become more inclusive, women will
have greater rights, school curriculums will be modified to eliminate hatred
and fanaticism, and the economy will be opened up. The only argument, they
say, is about pace and timing.
Yet
pace and timing are crucial, because each step toward modernizing the society
provokes a backlash, sometimes violent, among the extremists of doctrinaire
Islam known as Wahhabis, who even now are permitted to spread their
fascist-style message through the country's mosques and schools.
As Muqtedar
Khan, a professor at Adrian College in Michigan, wrote after visiting the
kingdom in April, "Wahhabi ideas are now so deeply embedded that neither
the ruling elite, who had abdicated their normative responsibilities until
now, nor the religious elite, who are afraid of what they have created, can
rein it in. Any attempts at sudden reforms may upset the delicate balance
within the society and empower" the terrorists.
Saudi
forces will win their gun battles with the terrorists. The greater challenge
before the House of Saud is to satisfy the aspirations of the majority -- and
maintain their security and economic ties with the United States -- without
further inciting the religious extremists whose rhetoric gives cover to the
terrorists. The task is especially difficult because the royal family's sole
claim to legitimacy is its role as the upholder of Islam. To the extent that
the regime embraces social progress that can be depicted as un-Islamic, and
especially if it appears to do so at the behest of the United States, the
backlash could elevate the violence of the past year into a full-scale
insurrection.
Outlook:
Fall of the House of Saud? (Live
Discussion)
Thomas W.
Lippman, 4:00 PM June 14, 2004
Do the recent deadly terrorist attacks in
Saudi Arabia suggest that the House of Saud's grip on power may be weakening?
In a word, No, writes Thomas W. Lippman
in his Sunday Outlook piece, The
Crisis Within. Lippman, the author of "Inside the Mirage:
America�s Fragile Partnership With Saudi Arabia," has just returned
from the kingdom. He argues that Saudi security forces will win their battles
with the terrorists, who are linked to al Qaeda and sympathetic to fellow
Saudi Osama bin Laden. Lippman notes that the greater challenge before the
monarchy is to satisfy the aspirations of the majority -- and maintain its
security and economic ties with the United States -- without further inciting
the religious extremists whose rhetoric gives cover to the terrorists.
Lippman, a former Washington Post
correspondent in the Middle East and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East
Institute, [was on-line June 14] to discuss his article.
[Complete
discussion]
Related
Articles:
 Thomas
W. Lippman, a former Washington Post correspondent in the Middle
East, is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Inside
the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Westview
Press). He has recently returned from a week-long visit to the kingdom.
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