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Can Riyadh reform before the royal family falls?
by David Pryce-Jones in the Wall Street Journal. EFL; read it all.[In Saudi Arabia,] 5,000 or more princes control all power and resources, sharing out ministries and governorships and oil revenues as they see fit. Their idea of democracy is to appoint an advisory council and religious leaders carefully vetted to provide a facade of legitimacy. Immemorial tribal custom and the local Wahhabi brand of Islam are defended and perpetuated to create the impression that this is the natural order of things. The Shiite minority forms about 20% of the population, but on the grounds that they are not Wahhabis they are arrested without trial, tortured and often disappear. Rights and the rule of law are only what the ruling family says they are. The Saudi family of course has a large and privileged security and police apparatus at its service. In other words, less like a government than a mob family. No blueprint exists in any of the textbooks for successfully modernizing a society like this one. . . . Sept. 11 forced the U.S. and everyone else to recognize that Saudi Arabia has become a danger to itself and the rest of the world. Lest we forget, almost all the hijackers hailed from the kingdom. Individual Saudis, including some princes and their so-called charities, have sponsored—and continue to sponsor—terror groups, including their homegrown al Qaeda, in some 60 countries. Faced with the evidence, the ruling Saudis have preferred to prevaricate, often refusing to share intelligence, hampering investigations and the pursuit of justice. That only works for a while. Those who gave money to al Qaeda were hoping to buy off Osama bin Laden, insuring themselves against him. But that's not easy. Bin Laden wants to return to a tribal Wahhabi society in its purest form. In his eyes, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia was sacrilege, and he has been threatening to dethrone the Saudi royal family that permitted it. The relocation of U.S. troops elsewhere in the region removes that particular grievance but also leaves the country to its own devices. The ruling family, bin Laden, the Shiites, groups of dissidents and exiles, and everyone else are quite free to struggle for power as best they can without outside interference. "Last one standing gets to claim soverignty." At this late moment, any suggestion of reform looks like weakness, which only invites more of the violence it aims to disarm. In aviation, that's known as a "graveyard spiral." Evidently granting concessions under pressure, the ruling family recently announced that in principle elections could be held for 14 municipal councils. Another unprecedented step was a human rights conference held in mid-October in Riyadh. Hundreds of people took this opportunity to demonstrate, until antiriot police firing tear gas dispersed them. The conference called, among other things, for a greater role for women in a country where they are not allowed to drive a car or even to go out unaccompanied by a male member of the family. "They demand it," in the words of an editorial in an official English-language newspaper, "Saudi Arabia needs it."
. . . until the next time it happens. Unlike the unfortunate Louis XVI, those 5,000 and more princes have a real stranglehold on power, as well as the will for self-preservation. Their security apparatus may well succeed in maintaining for a while longer the peculiar stagnation cherished by the ruling family. Not indefinitely, though. A revolt that becomes a revolution is an irresistible force that sweeps away what once seemed unmovable objects in its path. Faster, please. Posted by: Mike 2003-11-12 |
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