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.
| How many on the list of 26 terrs, most of whom are still at large, have had their heads chopped off? How many holy men have had their heads chopped off? |
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. 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.
| Better crush them quick, then. |
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.
| Somehow, I don't put that remark down to ignorance... |
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.
| Ditto. Neither is ignorant. |
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.
| He's looking at the problem from a distance, which makes all those trees look remarkably like a forest. Betcha his money's moved to a distance, too... |
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.)
| You mean if they keep doing what they've been doing, they're gonna be history in... ummm... five years, outside? |
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. 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.
| But a hefty minority dons the brown shirt and is willing to explode, though more usually they're "surrounded" and get away. There's not that much danger in being a Bad Guy, and lotsa teen-age style peer group respect to be gained. 18 of the 26, last I looked, were still on the loose. |
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.
| And prompted others to dig in their heels and reach for their guns... |
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 inbreeding intermarriage.
| I often wonder how much of international terrorism is the result of inbreeding. I suspect it may be in the same category as buck teeth and hemophilia... |
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.
| Ummm... You've got hideously high unemployment among a poorly qualified workforce of young Soddy men. Then you open the job market to women, who're more used to working and probably aren't too dignified to actually do something. The boys' honor won't be able to take it. They'll be having fistfights to get to the turban and automatic weapons counters... |
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.
| The resistance to any iota of change in the curriculum should be instructive. Who the hell wrote this? Pollyanna? Professor Pangloss? |
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.
| Professor Pangloss is missing the point: wahhabism is the state religion. |
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.
| That's what I said. They've passed the tipping point. They're toast. |
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. |