Saudi Arabia’s rulers are keeping a strict check on the flow of information. As such it is difficult to find out what has been happening there. One has to piece together sketchy reports that manage to leak out to form any kind of picture. The resulting scenario is inevitably incomplete and it must be subject to revision as one gets more information. It is risky to make an assessment on so shaky a basis. The assessment can be fairly wide off the mark. But despite these and other qualifications it does seem that Saudi Arabia is headed for a period of uncertainty and tension, if not of serious trouble. The seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by armed men variously estimated at between 200 and 1,000 on November 20 and the struggle they put up against the overwhelmingly stronger national guard were themselves a warning that unrest was beginning to assume significant proportions in the kingdom. It could not have been dismissed as an event of no great consequence even if it had turned out, as was at first widely suspected, that the assailants belonged to the minority Shia sect. For the Shias form a sizeable portion of the population in the oil-rich eastern provinces in the Gulf and can, therefore, play havoc if they seek to emulate Iran’s example and come to be effectively organised and armed by Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters. As it happens, the so-called Mahdists came from central Arabia, that is the same region which produced Wahabism, the present ruling dynasty, and the fanatical Muslim Brothers. This made the warning truly loud and clear, leaving little scope for doubt that ill winds were beginning to blow over Saudi Arabia.
On top of it all comes the report that the Shias in the eastern provinces have not been quiet either. They have held a number of pro-Khomeini and anti-American demonstrations and clashed with troops who have been rushed there. Western diplomats have confirmed the report which has appeared in a Beirut paper, though they are not able to say anything either about the size of the demonstrations or the number of casualties. They are also not sure whether the demonstrations were inspired essentially by religious (they more or less coincided with Moharram last week) or political considerations. The picture is thus blurred. It is also impossible to say whether the disaffection among the Sunnis in central Arabia and among the Shias in the eastern provinces will reinforce each other or cancel each other out. But some points are reasonably clear. The old alliance between the West, especially the United States, and the forces of conservatism and orthodoxy in West Asia has come under strain. While the Saudi rulers can either wish to place a distance between themselves and America or become even more critically dependent on it for pr1otection, the chances of the former appear greater. Though the contradiction between Washington’s support for Israel and need to cultivate the Arabs has become more patent than ever before, it cannot be resolved by bringing pressure to bear on Tel Aviv in view of the sweep of Islamic fundamentalism and the apprehensions it is bound to arouse in Israel.
The Times of India, 5 December 1979