It is the place where God and mammon meet, the Arab
state where fabulous wealth and western values vie for
power with Islam. But, in the face of increasing
anti-Americanism and the war on terror, how long can
Saudi Arabia remain stable? Edward Pilkington visits
the kingdom that rarely opens its doors to journalists
Tuesday July 2, 2002
The Guardian
Saudi Arabians have a colloquial name for the people
of Buraydah. They call them mutawwa. A respectful
translation is "deeply devout Muslims". The phrase is
formally applied to the religious police who enforce
the kingdom's strict moral code. A less flattering
interpretation, given privately by westernised
liberals and expats, is "fanatics".
Buraydah sits at the very heart of the Saudi kingdom,
an oasis surrounded by nothing but desert for hundreds
of miles in all directions. The terrain is harsh,
pounded by a sun that will push the temperature to an
extreme 50 degrees within the next few weeks. The
residents - Bedouins whose lives only 50 years ago
were entirely dependent on the camel - hold views that
match the fierce terrain. For decades the town
resisted the introduction of the radio and telegraph
as un-Islamic. When the Saudi royal family began
educating girls for the first time in the early 1960s,
they protested so forcefully that the army was brought
in.
Now there is a new focus for their sun-baked
resistance. We are sitting in the shade of a date palm
on a farm that lies on the edge of the desert. The sun
is beginning to fall, taking the edge off the searing
heat. A group of six prominent local religious men are
growing animated as they sip sweet mint tea and coffee
suffused with cardamom.
"This is the centre of Saudi Arabia," the owner of the
farm declares. (Like the others, he requests anonymity
- though the regime is very slowly relaxing
censorship, an ill-considered comment can still invite
a late-night visit from the ministry of the interior.)
"It is pure here. There is no mixing with other
cultures."
A quietly spoken, bookish man who leads prayers at his
local mosque says they have nothing against the west.
But nor will they let their religion be infected by
western materialism. "We allow all sorts of winds to
come to us, but we don't let them blow us into the
air. Mixing is one reason why people stray from
righteousness. It is our duty to make sure that we
bring our religion back to purity."
It is their duty, too, to protect their fellow Muslims
wherever they are threatened. The group is angry now.
Voices are raised. Fists clenched. They have a new
enemy.
"Bush is the puppet of Israel, and he is killing our
brothers," a teacher says. "We want a jihad to save
our brothers in Palestine."
The conversation turns to September 11. "Who shall
bear the blame for what happened on that day? America.
Suppose you put a cat or a dog into a room and beat it
over and over again. What would happen? It would bite
you. That is what happened on September 11: the dog
bit back."
I ask the farmer, was the attack good or bad? "When I
see what America has done all over the world since the
attack happened, yes, I start to think this was a good
thing." The teacher butts in: "Osama bin Laden. Now he
is a hero, for all the oppressed, all over the world."
September 11 came as a great shock to the Saudi
kingdom. A country that prided itself on its unique
blend of deep religious conviction and western-style
development suddenly appeared to have a problem. Not
only were 15 of the 19 hijackers Saudis (and Bin Laden
himself Saudi-born), but many of their convictions
were based on precisely those austere fundamentalist
Islamist views of purity and jihad that are so
staunchly adhered to in Buraydah and which have formed
an essential part of the Saudi state since its
creation.
Saudis are still largely in denial about the events of
that terrible day, as a rare tour of the country known
for its secrecy and usually closed to foreign
journalists, has shown. From all parts of the country,
and at all social levels, there is a refusal to accept
any real responsibility. "You cannot judge 12 million
people by the behaviour of 15"; "Bin Laden chose the
15 as a ruse to discredit the royal family"; "How come
there were no Jews in the twin towers - did Mossad do
it?" people said.
But the question of why Saudis were so central to the
attack will not go away. Last week the Saudis revealed
they had captured 13 men linked to al-Qaida who were
believed to be planning attacks on US installations.
There were reports of missiles and launchers being
found near the main US military base at al-Kharj. A
few days before that three Saudi men, suspected of
being a "sleeping" al-Qaida cell who were planning
attacks on on British and US ships, were arrested in
Morocco.
There have been 10 successful or attempted bomb
attacks against British and other western expats in
Saudi Arabia in the past 18 months. Five Britons are
in jail facing sentences ranging from 18 years to
execution for the bombings, which the Saudi
authorities blame on a mafia war between illegal
British drinking gangs. But the latest killing of a
Briton, 10 days ago, combined with a bomb planted in a
US couple's car on Saturday, has prompted new fears
that Saudi insurgents lie behind the attacks.
If all that should give intelligence chiefs in
Washington and London food for thought, there is more.
Hatred of America as a result of its support for
Israel has reached such a pitch that liberal
commentators fear the country is being destabilised
and that a whole new generation of potential bombers
is being spawned.
At the centre of this heady swirl is the austere
strain of Islam that characterises the Saudi state and
which the people of Buraydah best personify. It is the
original Islamist fundamentalism, created in the 18th
century by a Saudi priest called Sheikh Mohammed bin
Abdul Wahhab, who believed that the faith had strayed
from the pure path.
Wahhabism, as it is known in the west (Saudis do not
recognise the term - they use Salifism), has been
umbilically connected to the Saudi state from its
inception. Sheikh Mohammed's daughter married one of
the founding fathers of the royal house of Saud and
the Al Sheikh and Al Saud families have since
frequently interbred. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was
united in 1932, largely through the military might of
the holy warriors of Wahhabism.
In return for their support, the first king, Ibn Saud,
entered a pact with the Wahhabi clerics, a covenant
under which the imams would be left in charge of all
personal morality, law and culture, while the royal
family would have a free hand in running the
government, economy and foreign policy. When oil came
six years later, and with it fabulous wealth, the
royal house of Saud forged ahead with a development
programme of breathtaking daring, converting villages
into modern cities, desert paths into motorways,
camels into Cadillacs (gold ones in the case of the
princes).
The infrastructure of the country was transformed
beyond recognition in just half a century. Yet, under
the covenant, the mindset of the Saudis - the preserve
of the religious men - remained embedded in the stony
desert austerity of Wahhabism.
The result is a country of astonishing contrasts.
Riyadh is a hyper-modern city with ancient social
customs. It is Dallas, Texas, policed by the Taliban.
Women entirely shrouded in black abayas , with even
their eyes covered, go shopping at a Harvey Nichols
inside a Norman Foster building. Men pour into the
mosque under an enormous neon sign advertising Sony,
as if they were entering an electrical goods sale
rather than a place of worship. McDonald's is
seemingly on every street corner, and yet it closes
its doors five times a day for prayers - making Saudi
Arabia unique as a country where the most powerful
franchise on earth bends its knees in front of an even
stronger brand: Allah.
Staggering contradictions run deeply through the
kingdom's relations with the outside world too. There
is only one power that matters for Saudi, and that is
the US. It was America that backed the country's
initial oil explorations, and it is America that still
bankrolls the economy with $100bn a year in oil
revenues. In return, the house of Saud sends its sons
and daughters to American universities to learn
western ways. Saudi has spent $45bn on US fighter jets
and other military equipment, and tolerates the
presence of 5,000 US troops stationed here since the
Gulf war. This is more than a marriage of convenience.
It is love.
And yet ask an average Saudi to define where the
kingdom sits globally and he will say that it is the
centre of the Muslim world. For much of the past 20
years Afghanistan, not America, has been the focus for
the mutawwa of Buraydah and their countrymen. The
state actively encouraged about 10,000 young Saudis to
go to Afghanistan during the 1980s and 90s to fight
the Soviet invasion in the name of jihad and purity.
They were led by Bin Laden, a man seeped in the
teachings of Wahhabism, who then enjoyed official
favour. Among them were 15 young Saudis - many from
good middle-class families, most of whom had been
through religious training at one of the 60 Saudi
schools and colleges dedicated to Islamist teaching -
who went on to become the September 11 hijackers.
There was no perceived problem with this at the time.
As an Islamist state, it was the duty of the kingdom
to fight the kafir or infidel wherever he threatened
Muslim brothers - in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
But then September 11 came along, and the chickens
came home to roost.
It is 4.30am in al the Nahda district of Jeddah,
Saudi's second-largest city, and about 200 men are
shuffling into the mosque for dawn prayers spluttering
and hawking as they come. A fundamentalist Salafi
cleric called Sheikh Adnan Zhrani, begins to call in a
fine baritone voice. He is a huge bear of a man, so
rotund that when he gets on his knees and prostrates
himself to Allah it marks a considerable physical
achievement. "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," (God is
great God is great), he chants, the sweet sing-song
words floating from loudspeakers on the minaret across
the neighbourhood.
After prayers, he takes me to his small dishevelled
office, which has a pile of old clothes in the corner
awaiting shipment to the Palestinian occupied
territories. Like everyone else in the kingdom - from
prince to pauper - Sheikh Adnan is angry with America.
"A child is not born aggressive. But if you give him
something and tell him it is his, then snatch it away
from him, he will react. That is natural."
America is the world's only superpower, he goes on to
say, so it should behave towards other countries as
father to child, not master to slave. It is guilty of
double standards - supporting the strong (Israel)
against the weak (Palestinians).
Sheikh Adnan has publicly spoken out against the
September 11 attacks, and he continues to argue for
peace. But he says that he is losing the argument. "If
you ask me, 'Does the man in the street side with Bin
Laden?' the answer is absolutely, yes. Today, if you
criticise Bin Laden people will look at you as if you
are mad. They think Bin Laden is good."
Could another attack happen? "Bin Laden's network has
been smashed, so it is no longer so easy. But if the
organisation existed and people had the power to
attack then yes, they would."
There is chilling confirmation from outside the
mosque. It is 5am now and the men of prayer are
shuffling away into the gloom, still spluttering and
hawking. An older man with a salt-and-pepper beard who
spent two years in England ("I loved the Guardian, it
was my paper") gives an insight into what Sheikh Adnan
calls the views of the man on the street. "For 20
years America has been sucking the blood of the
Muslims. I respect the American people, but not the
government. It is under the power of the Jews."
He claims to have known two of the hijackers. So what
does he think of Bin Laden? "He is a great man. I am
glad about what he did to demolish America. We now
know that America is the first enemy of the Muslims."
Rhetoric, certainly. Bravado, probably. But it is
repeated so many times and in so many places that
there is no dismissing it. And it is set against
worrying economic and demographic statistics that can
only heighten the sense of alarm. On the one hand are
stagnant oil prices, which make up 75% of Saudi's
income, on the other hand a massive population
explosion, among the fastest in the world. More than
half of the population of 15 million Saudis
(discounting an additional 5 million expats) is now
younger than 20.
The combination produces an unemployment rate of 30%
among men (95% for women because of the Wahhabi
injunction against women in the workplace). Every
year, 400,000 more young men graduate into immediate
joblessness. Add to that the prevailing fundamentalist
religious climate and a white-hot wave of anger
towards America over Palestine, and you have a
cocktail that is lively, perhaps even explosive.
Dr Khalil al Khalil, a lecturer at Riyadh's main
Islamic university, teaches 600 students a year and
estimates that more than half are pro-Bin Laden. "We
want our young people to be the raw material for a
better future. But if they are left with no guidance,
with no positive way forward, then yes, they will be
the raw material for violence."
Dr Khalil despairs at the Bush adand he continues to argue for
peace. But he says that he is losing the argument. "If
you ask me, 'Does the man in the street side with Bin
Laden?' the answer is absolutely, yes. Today, if you
criticise Bin Laden people will look at you as if you
are mad. They think Bin Laden is good."
Could another attack happen? "Bin Laden's network has
been smashed, so newspapers are daily filled with graphic
descriptions of Palestinian deaths and of the
American-made Apache helicopters and tanks that caused
them. The reverberations are being felt at every
level. Big Saudi investors are threatening to pull
their money out of the US and redirect it to China. A
consumer boycott of US businesses has spread
throughout the country, hitting outlets such as
Starbucks and McDonald's.
The boycott is playing itself out in curious ways. A
young man dressed in jeans and T-shirt in an internet
cafe in a relatively cosmopolitan part of Jeddah told
me that he had just bought a new car. He had wanted a
Chevrolet but at the last minute switched to a
Mercedes because of the boycott. That one purchase
will not cause Chevrolet executives any loss of sleep.
But if America is serious in its struggle to protect
itself from further attacks, then the hatred of this
most westernised of Saudi youths should give someone
in the beltway some pause.
It is one of the great ironies of the war on terrorism
that in trying to hold at bay this tide of Saudi anger
against the US, the Bush administration is having to
rely on one of the world's most feudal political
systems. The house of Al Saud rules the kingdom as a
family fiefdom. It is monarchy as we knew it pre-1688,
except that power is not passed from father to son but
from brother to brother. And there are plenty of them.
No one knows the exact figure, but there are thought
to be about 7,000 princes in this most archaic of
autocracies.
It is a regime famed, since the advent of oil money,
for its ostentatious wealth and corruption. Saudis
rarely talk with disrespect about the princes, but
just occasionally someone will open up and reveal
their deep resentment. A retired schoolteacher took me
for a ride through the outskirts of Jeddah. He drove
through a huge swath of derelict land. He explained
that it had been grabbed by a group of princes for
their own profit - they were selling it off plot by
plot for homes at prices most families could scarcely
afford. Further on we drove past a succession of
walled palaces. The teacher's commentary grew
progressively more bitter.
At the top of this princely heap sits King Fahd, an
ailing and fading figure who has passed day-to-day
running of the kingdom to the heir apparent, Crown
Prince Abdullah. In the post-September 11 world, the
prince's job must rank as one of the least desirable.
He is beleaguered from all directions. America glares
down at him and demands, in the name of the war on
terror, that he reins in the Islamists. To the side of
him there are his brothers (there are plenty of them
too: his father, Ibn Saud, hardly a model of family
planning, had 34 sons) jostling and vying for power.
And below him is the seething mass of young unemployed
men, inspired by the hardline religious ideals of
Wahhabism and inflamed with anger towards America. The
good news is that if anyone can hold things together
it is Prince Abdullah. He commands loyalty among many
Saudis because of his own devout religious beliefs and
because he has tried to put an end to the more
outrageous excesses of his relatives.
To some extent, September 11 has helped him shore up
popular support, drawing public attention away from
the corruption and iniquity of the regime. The
country's dissidents and pro-western reformers have
abandoned their dreams of democracy because they now
fear elections would return a government of bearded
extremists.
So much for the good news. The problem is that, as
hatred of America grows, the regime's intimate
association with the US looks daily more precarious.
Prince Abdullah has taken steps to distance himself
from Washington - he refused to allow the al-Kharj
base to be used in the bombing of Afghanistan and has
similarly rebuffed any talk of an attack on Iraq. He
also launched his own ambitious peace plan for the
Middle East, which would see Arabs accepting Israel in
return for the creation of a full Palestinian state
along pre-1967 borders. All that needs to be done is
for Bush to reciprocate by forcing Israel to end its
occupation.
There's the rub. Bush's response has been a terrible
silence, broken only by his denunciation of the
Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, which has merely
intensified most Saudis' feelings of righteous
indignation. The longer Bush allows the Middle East
crisis to slide, the greater the anger of the Saudi
people, the closer the kingdom creeps towards the
edge.
So how bad could it get? A deterioration in
already-strained relations could put an end to the
50-year-old American love story. If Prince Abdullah
has to choose between losing the trust of his own
people and throwing out the US military, he will throw
out the US military. His advisers consistently deny
it, but if he has to go further and wield the
notorious "oil weapon" - as happened with such
devastating effect in 1973 - he may be tempted to do
that too.
More ominous still, there are signs that the religious
hardliners, the followers of Wahhab, are on the march.
No one mentions it by name, but the historical
precedent of a monarchy being overthrown through a
popular anti-American insurrection is omnipresent. It
sits in the corner of the room, like a familiar but
unwelcome dog: Iran.
"This is a time-bomb ticking away," says a leading
liberal dissident. "The evidence points in one
direction: the religious people are the coming power.
One day they will reach a point when they will go
public - and that's when the real problems begin."
"Israel's actions, with the US behind them, are
putting Saudi stability at risk," says a western
diplomat. "They are exposing the strains and
weaknesses of the system."
King Fahd's nephew, Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin
Turki, fears that if the Bush administration keeps on
its current pro-Israeli course, if it keeps conducting
its Middle East policy "in absolutely the wrong way",
it will "swing the opinion of the silent majority into
thinking that the west is just playing tricks. It will
demoralise people. We do not have long."
The sun has set now in Buraydah, and the last of the
day's five prayers have been said. I am taken to see a
radical sheikh who is well known in the kingdom as a
firebrand and a thorn in the side of the royal family.
He sits at one end of a large carpeted room,
surrounded by his followers and students, as large
white fans turn slowly above us. I ask him whether he
think it is time for religious figures such as himself
to formally enter politics. "Religious people have a
natural ability and right to be involved in politics.
They are the right people to lead."
There is a deep rumbling going on underneath the
surface of Saudi society, he says. "There is so much
anger and so much hatred in people's hearts towards
America that they are losing their balance. This is a
place where people can do anything. Nothing can be
predicted any more."
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