Saudi Arabia’s fragile monarchy

S P SETH

The recent death of 90-year old Saudi king Abdullah added another dimension to an already volatile Middle Eastern powder keg. The old king was considered adept at managing multiple issues impacting on the monarchy and the country during the worst period for the region, arising out of the so-called Arab Spring that erupted early in this decade. The new King Salman, 79, is promising a continuation of the old policies. He is said to have health problems, some even suggesting that he has some form of early dementia. The next in line, Crown Prince Muqrin at 69, is rather young which tells something about the aging of the Saudi monarchy. The founder of the Ibn Saud dynasty King Abdulaziz, who died in 1953, fathered 45 sons and a good number of daughters from 22 wives but the daughters don’t count. Of his 45 sons, only five are said to have ascended the throne so far. Which leaves a lot of scope for intrigue and infighting in the vast royal household, so far kept out of public scrutiny. But that might not last.

Even as this process of succession rolls on into the future, all the royal hopefuls will be pretty old; some of them reaching their use-by-date even before their time comes. In other words, the kingdom is entering a period of even greater uncertainty. It is not just the complexity of the royal household that is problematic, the monarchy is also underpinned by a pact of sorts with the clerical establishment and tribal leaders designed to keep the kingdom under wraps from political, social and cultural challenges. In other words, it is, more or less, frozen in time, with no institutional and popular consensual process for its periodic renewal. Which means that its longevity can only be ensured by systemic oppression now and into the future. And this is a recipe for eventual disaster.   

As it is, Saudi Arabia has too much on its plate. One of its singular features has been to largely support the continuation of the status quo at home and in its neighborhood with friendly and trusted authoritarian regimes. Indeed, one important reason for emerging tensions in the US-Saudi relations early in the decade was Riyadh’s displeasure at Washington’s indifference to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s fate when he was overthrown and put in jail during the revolutionary fervent of the Arab Spring. Even though the successor Muslim Brotherhood regime was much more Islamic in ideology the Saudi monarchy was deeply unhappy, as it tended to upset not only the Egyptian political landscape but was also regionally disruptive.

And when the Sisi-led coup overthrew the elected Brotherhood government inviting US displeasure, including temporarily withholding some aid, Saudi Arabia came to its rescue with a $12 billion aid line. The Sisi government is determined to crush all opposition, throwing most of the top leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood into jail with long prison sentences and death sentences for many of its supporters. But it has the support of the Saudi monarchy, willing to bankroll the new/old order. Indeed, the Sisi government has freed Hosni Mubarak’s two sons from jail and Mubarak should also be a free man soon. It would please the Saudi regime to see their old friend rehabilitated, with Arab Spring increasingly becoming a distant memory.

However, things haven’t gone all the way for the aging Saudi monarchy. For instance, they haven’t been able to bring down the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria they detest with a passion despite all the money and military aid committed by Riyadh to the rebels in Syria. Indeed it has contributed to creating a bigger monster in the so-called Islamic caliphate proclaimed by the ISIL. Besides posing a security threat to the Saudi regime, it has put up its own claim as the ‘legitimate’ leader and guardian of the Islamic world with its so-called caliphate. The situation in Syria and Iraq is now so toxic that the Saudis cannot count on their old methods of throwing money and weapons at their favoured proxies to deliver desired results.

Which brings us to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing strategic and sectarian rivalry with Iran, of which the Iranian-supported Assad regime is a by-product. The rivalry with Iran, though, goes back to the Iranian revolution in 1979, which brought into power the clerical Shia regime regarded with apprehension in the majority Sunni Arab world. The US, Saudi Arabia’s top strategic ally, shared this hostility to the new Iranian regime, and was to keen roll back and/or overthrow Iran’s new clerical political order. And they found in the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein a willing collaborator. Supported with Gulf money and US arms, he started the Iran-Iraq war of the eighties. The war was fought to a stalemate, with Iran suffering huge casualties. Saddam failed to deliver. Instead he became a threat to the Gulf region by invading Kuwait. Which led to the first Gulf War with Saddam-led Iraq comprehensively defeated by the US. In the second Gulf War started by George Bush as part of his global war on terror, the invasion of Iraq went disastrously wrong over time, creating conditions contributing to the emergence of the so-called Islamic caliphate.

Such are the incongruities of the Middle Eastern strategic landscape that the US and Iran now have a shared interest in destroying ISIL. As earlier noted, Saudi Arabia made its own unintended contribution to ISIL’s rise out of all the money and weapons it supplied to rebels with some, if not much of it, making its way to this overarching enemy. Riyadh recognizes this new danger, thus now becoming part of the US-led coalition against the ISIL. But its hostility to Iran is so entrenched that the two countries are unlikely to come together to face, what looks like, a common threat. Saudi Arabia is also not taking kindly to any US endorsement of Iran’s positive role against ISIL. 

Even in the midst of such a dire threat from the so-called Islamic caliphate Riyadh still espouses the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus by arming the anti-Assad rebels, though it is problematic how to vet who is who in the complex web of rebels, radical Islamists, ISIL, al-Nusra front and any number of other militant groups on the ground. And this is mainly because Saudi Arabia regards the Bashar regime as an Iranian proxy in the region. Coincidentally, it shares with Israel a determination to oppose Iran’s nuclear programme that might give it even additional leverage to work its influence in the Gulf and the region.

If this were not enough, Houthi rebels of Shia persuasion, believed to have Iranian support, have overthrown the Yemeni government and taken over in the capital. The situation in Yemen is so complex with an interplay of Houthis, al Qaeda in Yemen, with US using drones targeting al Qaeda leadership, and a separatist movement in parts of the country. And this is all happening right close to Saudi borders. Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman will need all the wisdom and expertise to insulate the country and its aging monarchy from all its internal and external challenges.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact" sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au