After Fahd, Abdullah. But then?

Aug 1st 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

With the death of Saudi Arabia’s ailing, octogenarian King Fahd, his only slightly younger half-brother, Abdullah, takes over the desert kingdom. Though things may continue much as before in the short term, the new ruler will have to cope with strong—and conflicting—pressures for change

FOR the past ten years, an increasingly infirm King Fahd has continued as Saudi Arabia’s monarch in name only, while in practice the desert kingdom has been run by his half-brother crown prince, Abdullah. So King Fahd’s death, on Monday August 1st, and Abdullah’s immediate proclamation as his successor, would seem unlikely to change much in the short term. Members of the royal family and Saudi-watchers predicted there would be no change in the country’s close relationship with America, nor in its crackdown on the militant Islamists who have killed hundreds in attacks across the country. Nor are changes expected in Saudi Arabia’s policy as guarantor of the world’s oil supply—though this did not stop the oil price from touching a new record of just over $62 a barrel on Monday.

However, such are the internal and external pressures that Saudi Arabia faces that it may prove a struggle for the newly crowned King Abdullah—at 80, only slightly younger than the man he replaces—to continue with business as usual. America, which over the 20th century replaced Britain as the main foreign power backing the House of Saud, has recently reversed its longstanding policy of pursuing stability at the expense of democracy in the greater Middle East and is now pressing its autocratic Arab allies to offer their subjects some basic political liberties. At the same time, home-grown radical Islamists have been seeking to take Saudi Arabia in entirely the opposite direction. The radicals, steeped in the country’s fundamentalist Wahhabi form of Islam, are virulently opposed not just to the West and its influence on the Muslim world but also to the Saudi royal house itself.

The attacks on America on September 11th 2001, by mainly Saudi-born terrorists inspired and directed by a scion of the Saudi establishment, Osama bin Laden, prompted a serious rethink by some of President George Bush’s “neo-conservative” backers. Had the Saudi monarchy in fact produced the promised stability, they wondered, or become a main cause of world instability? With its combination of harsh repression of all forms of opposition and its promotion of a fiercely fundamentalist strain of Islam—including the financing of new mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) to preach Wahhabism across the world—the Saudi regime now stands accused, by some Western critics, of creating breeding-grounds for jihadis.

Mr Bush is likely to be more cautious than some of his backers would like in pressing democratic reforms on the new Saudi king. Any serious changes might in the short term increase internal unrest, thereby intensifying the threat to the continued flow of Saudi oil, on which the world economy so depends. The current high oil price has greatly boosted the government’s finances, making it easier for King Abdullah to buy off any domestic discontent rather than respond with serious reform. Nevertheless, Mr Bush does seem to be serious in his new-found belief that democracy is the long-term cure for the cancer of terrorism in the Middle East. He is therefore unlikely to let the subject drop now that King Abdullah has assumed the throne.

Besides badgering from Mr Bush and his officials, there are other pressures on Saudi Arabia to reform. The country’s business leaders are keen for liberalisation, at least of the economic sort; international television channels and the internet are exposing Saudi citizens to developments in neighbouring countries—the recent granting of votes to women in Kuwait, the contested Palestinian presidential election, the popular uprising that forced Syria’s troops out of Lebanon, and so on.

There have been some moves towards democratisation, albeit modest ones. In 1993, King Fahd oversaw the creation of a Shura (advisory council), whose membership was subsequently increased to 150 by Abdullah after he took over as de facto ruler. Though it is an unelected and consultative assembly, it has over time begun to find its feet, and its debates can be feisty—within certain limits. Earlier this year, the first-ever elections were held, for half the seats on municipal authorities. Only men could vote and political parties remain banned. But open campaigning by the candidates was permitted and there was genuine competition for the seats—many of which were won by religious conservatives.

Would-be reformers see all this as setting a precedent for broader democratic participation. However, the Saudi regime’s cautious liberalisation has been offset by its continuing repression not just of radical Islamists but of those calling, even in moderate terms, for further democratisation. In May, three prominent Saudi liberals were jailed for between six and nine years, after calling for the country to become a constitutional monarchy. Last year, the government banned its employees, which means most adult Saudi males, from criticising the state.

Some of the things that had most enraged Saudi militants changed towards the end of King Fahd’s reign. The American troops which he controversially welcomed onto Saudi soil in 1991, after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, have now departed—so the radicals can no longer rant about the presence of infidel soldiers near Islam’s holiest shrines. Though King Fahd had backed the first American-led invasion of Iraq, in 2003 Abdullah—by now firmly in charge as regent—was able to take advantage of the West’s divisions and oppose the second invasion, publicly at least.

However, as shown by the steady stream of Saudi jihadis committing suicide attacks in Iraq, support for radicalism remains strong. There is a fear that those Saudis who survive their participation in the Iraqi insurgency will eventually return home and pose an even greater threat than those who returned from Afghanistan in the 1980s. Despite the new ruler’s cautious distancing of Saudi Arabia from American foreign policy and the security services' success in containing the militant threat, King Abdullah may find that it has become no easier to reconcile his country’s pro-Western external policy with its internal alliance to a largely anti-Western Muslim clergy.

In addition to the conflicting demands to liberalise or Islamise, King Abdullah may find that he is not such an absolute monarch after all. His ability to govern may be constrained by the power of other elderly Saudi princes, including his half-brother Sultan, whom he has named as his new crown prince. King Abdullah’s ascetic lifestyle—in sharp contrast to the playboy youth and heavy smoking of the late King Fahd—means that he has ascended to the throne in good health. But age may nevertheless sap his energy, and he will need plenty to deal with all the pressures he will face, from within and without the royal household.

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