Saudis need their infidel allies but it damages their Islamic credentials, says Girilal Jain
King Fahd’s wholly unexpected decision to change the succession process in Saudi Arabia and link it with the proposed 60-member nominated Majlis as-Shura (consultative council) is still, in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. A meaningful discussion of it must therefore, await the availability of reliable information.
Meanwhile, it is also a matter of speculation whether the move to establish the Majlis is in some way an offshoot of the war against Iraq last year. But such a speculation would be in order, though it would not be proper to draw firm conclusions from it. For all we know, King Fahd may well be a seeking a way out of the problems the war created for the ruling dynasty.
At the time of the war, it was feared that the presence of such a large number of American and other ‘infidel’ western troops (around 500,000) could touch off widespread public resentment or even revolt against the Saudi ruling family. The fear did not materialise. Not to speak of a revolt, there were, as far as we know, no public demonstrations against King Fahd’s decision to invite US and other non-Muslim western forces.
Indeed, if we are to go by surface appearances, the induction of western troops, with a large number of women soldiers among them, can be said to have made a contrary impact on Saudi society. A number of women drove their cars without the traditional veil, in defiance of official prohibition on such ‘exhibitionism’ and ‘manly’ activities on the part of members of the female sex, as if to proclaim the dawn of the new liberal era in the Kingdom.
Of course, no one was rash enough to conclude that women’s emancipation and, therefore, end of rigidly puritanical Wahhabism, was around the corner. But it became fashionable in some quarters to speak of the possibility of pluralism and democracy in respect of Saudi Arabia, in the same way as Kuwait, as if Saddam Hussein alone had stood between that goal and the reality of family rule.
Leading American commentators have since berated President Bush for not insisting on the establishment of democracy in Kuwait as the price for its liberation and movement in that direction in Saudi Arabia.
This demonstration of innocence, however, need not detain us. We are concerned with the impact of the Gulf war on Saudi society. And, there can be little doubt that it was destabilising and disruptive of the status quo.
How disruptive it is difficult to say. But disruptive it was without question. Three points need to be kept in mind in this regard.
First, the Saudi kingdom is a product of the alliance between Bin Saud and the fanatical revivalist Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century. The compact between the Saudi family and the Wahhabis broke down in the late 20s of this century when King Abd al-Aziz felt obliged to make a deal with the then dominant British power in the Gulf, leading to the Ikhwan revolt in 1929 which was crushed. But Wahhabism has continued to serve as the principal source of legitimacy for the Saud dynasty’s rule.
The deal with the British, involving respect for the frontiers of Iraq and Kuwait as delineated by them, and the restraint the King sought to put on Ikhwan raids across those borders, broke Abd al-Aziz’s legend as the new Imam. But, just as that did not prevent him from claiming the divine right to rule, it has not dissuaded his successors from contending that they are leaders of the Muslim world by virtue of being custodians of the two holiest centres of Islam – Mecca and Medina.
They have sought to reinforce this claim by providing millions of dollars for Muslim causes. The public display of dependence on ‘infidel’ powers for the kingdom’ security has weakened this claim.
Secondly, while Saudi society has moved towards modernity since the early 70s, with the oil boom helping to finance vast projects and create an educated middle class, it has also produced great confusion and an acute identity crisis. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia has the religious police enforcing codes of behaviour enshrined in the Koran, the Hadith and the Shariat, and on the other, it has several thousand princes, princesses, their hangers-on and rich businessmen and others wallowing in a lifestyle devoid of any kind of moderation.
Such a gap would be too large to bridge in any society. The task is inconceivable in a Muslim society, especially in Saudi Arabia which, till recently, has been insulated from the modem world and lays claims not only to adherence to pristine purity but also leadership of the Muslim world.
Thus, if it is plausible to suggest that Saudi society has become more sophisticated because, as argued by one commentator, two million Saudis, 17 per cent of them women, travelled abroad in 1989, it is even more pertinent to point out that it is torn by contending forces pulling in opposite directions as never before. That alone can help explain the rise in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia of fundamentalists for whom enforcement of orthodoxy by the religious police is not enough. This phenomenon deserves far greater attention than it has received so far.
Thirdly, the anti-Western current in the Muslim world has perhaps become much stronger now than at any time since the defeat of the Nasser-led Arab alliance at the hands of Israel in 1967. That defeat had led to the decline of Pan-Arab nationalism, which represented an attempt at synthesis of Islam, Arabism and Western influences.
The Iranian revolution in 1979, followed as it was by US-backed Israeli attack on Lebanon, has accentuated the Muslim people’s alienation from the West. It is against this backdrop that the Saudi invitation to US forces has to be viewed.
If Saudi Arabia was a nation-state in the proper sense of term, such an invitation would have been wholly in order. Saudi Arabia is not a nation-state. It justifies its existence in the name of Islam and if spokesmen of Islam, whether moderates or extremists, have rejected any western concept completely, it is that of nationalism. Witness the fact that even Nasser spoke in the name of Arab unity.
Finally, in the very act of taking on the US, Saddam Hussein came to embody deep anti-western stirrings in the Arab-Muslim world, his generally ‘secularist’ approach and occupation of Muslim Kuwait notwithstanding. The demonstrations in his favour, from Algeria and Tunisia to Malaysia, were a clear testimony to his appeal. His defeat in the war silenced the Saddam enthusiasts. But it could not possibly dissipate their antipathy to the West, the US in particular.
Saudi Arabia would have faced a grave challenge from Iran if Saddam Hussein had been overthrown because that would most certainly have meant the secession of the predominantly Shi’a southern Iraq and, therefore, an increase in Teheran’s power and prestige. But the survival of a still-defiant Saddam Hussein poses another kind challenge to the US. It draws attention to Saudi Arabia’s dependence, and collaboration with ‘infidels’. King Fahd is seeking a way out by trying to widen the base of the regime.
Washington, too, faces a cruel dilemma. For one, it does not have a pretext for another military action against Iraq which would not further alienate Muslim peoples all over the world. For another, it cannot be oblivious of the consequences – in all probability throwing more states into the orbit of Iran. As it is, Iran already has considerable influence in Sudan and on the fundamentalist movement in Algeria. Moreover, it is well on the way to becoming a factor in the turbulent politics of the Muslim republics of Central Asia.
That should also help explain the otherwise non-intelligible reports about the Saudi rulers urging Washington to topple Saddam Hussein, excuse or no excuse; President Bush asking the Pentagon to work out options; the CIA chief’s well-publicised visit to West Asia; and Iraqi opposition leaders in exile assembling in Riyadh and promising large-scale defection from the Iraqi armed forces.
It would be wonderful for Washington and Riyadh if Saddam could be frightened into self-liquidation. But he is not likely to oblige. The Gulf war continues by ‘other means’.
Business & Political Observer, 13 March 1992