The House of Saud, between a rock and a hard place

With the debacle in Iraq, the tough talk directed at Syria and Iran, and the current events in Lebanon we don't here much about Saudi Arabia. John R Bradley in The House of Saud's eternal dilemma explains how that country is a powder keg on the verge of exploding.

Descendants of former US president Franklin D Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia's first king, Ibn Saud, celebrated this month in Miami the 60th anniversary of the first Saudi-US summit at the Suez Canal's Great Bitter Lake, where the foundations were laid for a "special relationship" between the two countries based on an oil-for-security alliance.

What no one realized on February 14, 1945, of course, was that the foundations of that "special relationship" were being laid on active fault lines, and that a seismic shift would one day shake it all down to the ground again.

Saudi Arabia is the home of the Wahhabis, the most extremely anti-western anti-Iraeli sect of Islam. While the House of Saud plays nice with leaders of the west they are dependent on Wahhabi religious leaders for their hold on power. Most importantly the Wahhabis control the education system in that country. It is no coincidence that most of the 911 hijackers were Saudi and the product of the Wahhabi controlled education system where hate for the west is a big part of the curriculum. We must not forget that bin Laden really took aim at the United States after US troops were stationed on "holy ground" during the first Gulf War.

One of the aims of that attack was to drive a wedge between the al-Saud and the United States. Since September 11, the eternal al-Saud dilemma - of having to prove its Islamic credentials at home while demonstrating, to the West, its modernizing instincts and eagerness to reform - has grown so difficult as to appear for the first time near impossible.

While pretending to "modernize" and "liberalize" to squash criticism from the west the House of Saud has also found it necessary to give increasing power to the Wahhabis.

The al-Saud regime, which now understands how the Western media works well enough to be able to manipulate it, quietly appointed just one day before the Riyadh elections took place - meaning when everyone was looking the other way - an ultra-conservative religious leader, Abdullah bin Saleh al-Obaid, as the new education minister.

Amazingly, only The Wall Street Journal picked up on al-Obaid's appointment, and even in that article he was mentioned only briefly.

Al-Obaid's appointment was, one would wager, among the most significant political developments inside Saudi Arabia since the September 11 attacks. It showed, first of all, that the local elections, rather than being proof of the spread of democracy in the wake of the war on Iraq, had merely provided a cover for the al-Saud to pacify the Wahhabis by appointing one of their own as the head of what it considers the most important ministry. But it also put the final nail in the coffin of a now truly dead and buried domestic reform agenda.
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The minister al-Obaid replaced, Mohammed al-Rasheed, was a committed reformer who managed to achieve some successes, despite the fact that all the odds were heavily stacked against him. He was regularly damned on Islamist websites as a "secularist" who "took women to Beirut", a city religious hardliners see - and not without some justification - as a cesspit of Western liberal ways. There was, almost needless to say, no substance to either allegation.

In reality, al-Rasheed was hated and smeared because he tried to expunge from religious textbooks material offensive to Christians and Jews, in addition to chapters celebrating jihad; and he had English as a foreign language introduced, despite fierce protests by the Wahhabis.

George W. Bush talk of "freedom" and "Democracy" in the middle east but if they are sincere don't have a clue as to what the result will be and that it won't be to their liking. "Freedom" and "Democracy" in the Middle East will only empower those who hate the United States and the west. We may see that in Saudi Arabia before we see it anywhere else. In the recent elections most of the seats were won, by candidates who were not only avowed Islamists, but were even blessed with the semi-official backing of the religious establishment. This is not unlike the results of the recent election in Iraq where many of the winners had been endorsed by religious leaders. Keep your eyes on Saudi Arabia.