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LONDON: Saudi Arabia’s ageing rulers face an increasingly tough balancing act in the polarized world which emerged from the September 11 attacks, analysts say.
Anti-US sentiment, fuelled by Washington’s “war on terror” and strong support for Israel, is growing just as the royal family comes under Western pressure to curb a religious establishment which some say has nurtured Islamic militancy.
“The dichotomy between being Islamic at home and a friend of the West at the same time has been exposed by September 11. It no longer works,” said Said Aburish, author of “The Rise, The Corruption, and The Coming Fall of the House of Saud.”
Observers say the dilemma facing de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah is that to stem the growing anger in his kingdom, he has had to appeal to the same religious leaders that Washington — the kingdom’s strategic ally — wants put on a tighter leash.
The crown prince’s options for addressing dissent are also limited by manoeuvring in the extended royal family over the succession after Abdullah takes over from the ailing King Fahd.
“The United States is saying to Saudi Arabia: Change your education system, stop the Wahhabi anti-Western teachings,” said Mai Yamani of London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs. “But the al-Saud (ruling family) need the Wahhabis more than ever.”
In a sign of growing Western unease with Saudi Arabia, which for years has used its huge oil production to back US efforts to maintain stable oil prices, a US think tank recently advised military planners to consider Saudi Arabia an adversary.
Saudis were “active at every level of the terror chain from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader,” the report said.
SAUDI PROTESTS: Domestic anger in Saudi Arabia boiled over in March and April into street protests — in open defiance of a ban on demonstrations — after Israel’s military reoccupation of Palestinian West Bank cities.
Saudis took to the streets outside the US consulate in the eastern city of Dhahran and in northern towns near the border with Jordan. In a rare move in the conservative kingdom, even women in the western Hijaz region came out to protest.
Many other Saudis have been radicalized by the September 11 attacks, analysts say, and by the US campaign in Afghanistan against Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, blamed in Washington for the attacks with hijacked airliners on New York and Washington.
Osama has accused Saudi Arabia’s rulers of betraying Muslims by allowing the United States to station troops in their country, home to Islam’s holiest sites as well as the world’s largest oil reserves.
“Since the Palestinian intifada and September 11, it looks like people have become more politicized,” Yamani said. “They all have a political opinion. They are all discussing jihad”.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis, mostly from the kingdom’s southern and south-western provinces, where analysts say many people feel marginalized by a ruling elite which emerged from the central desert heartlands.
ABDULLAH’S INITIATIVE: In February, Abdullah floated a land-for-peace initiative aimed at ending Israeli-Palestinian violence. But his attempt to resolve a conflict that has fuelled domestic unrest simply stoked anger against the West in some quarters, Yamani said.
“The conservatives and Imams in the mosques and religious establishment said this is another compromise imposed from the United States,” she said. “Even the Imam of the great mosque (in Makkah) said something against it.”
Faced with the emergence of a radical new generation of dissent, Abdullah has relied increasingly on support from religious leaders, reinforcing an alliance which has been the bedrock of modern Saudi Arabia.
“The religious establishment are needed more and more to counteract the new opposition coming out,” Yamani said.
Further complicating Abdullah’s delicate position is the issue of succession within the ruling family.
Abdullah, a half-brother of King Fahd, is under pressure to pick his heir from one of the monarch’s six full brothers — who include the powerful Interior Minister Prince Nayyef and Defence Minister Prince Sultan.
“They are all manoeuvring,” said one observer. “There is a power struggle within the ruling family”.
One indication of differences noted by observers was the failure of any of the full brothers, known collectively as the Sudairi Seven, to speak out in favour of Abdullah’s peace plan.
“There was a silence of the Sudairis,” said Yamani. “They did not get involved.”—Reuters
