Saudi Duty

Saudi Arabia remains the number one supplier of high-grade, easy-to-extract oil and gas on earth, although their supplies are far from inexhaustible. It is large in land mass, but small in population, overwhelmingly reliant on foreign workers – from the lowest laborers (Bedouin pride does not allow Saudis to do many of these functions) to high-level engineering and financial experts – and represents one of the most conservative versions of Islam on earth: Wahhabism, a fundamentalist Sunni interpretation of God and the Quran born of the harsh life of the Bedouin living and surviving in an unforgiving desert. They are the keepers of the Holy Shrines in Mecca, to which every faithful Muslim, Shiite or Sunni, is required to visit at least once in their lifetime (the Haj).

Roles of men and women, carefully defined in centuries of desert living at the edge of survival, seem horribly out-of-step with most of the rest of the world. Women can’t drive, must be appropriately covered in their dress, cannot mix with men not of their family, need to be escorted in the outside movements by male family members, and it takes two women in court to function as a witness where only one man is required. Women are cared for and protected by their families, which are honor-bound to this duty, but their freedoms are otherwise fairly limited. A harsh Sharia law dominates, replete with penalties involving caning and lashing, cutting the hand that stole in public, decapitation for a litany of offenses, stoning for adultery and the acceptance of honor killings that few in the West remotely understand. But it is their way, and surprisingly, the vast majority of Saudis, even women, don’t want it any other way. Not yet anyway.

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, but one that cannot simply rule with impunity, ignoring religious authorities and implementing whatever they will. As a regional power, Saudi Arabia is also short on an ability to defend itself from any major attack from within or from an outside force. Uncomfortable with the American military umbrella – they watched as the U.S. let the Shah of Iran get shoved out of that nation in 1979, ignoring its treaty obligations to defend that royal family – they use their oil money to buy peace from neighboring forces as a substitute for a military they cannot mount, even with modern tanks and jets supplied by the United States. As the United States has resumed its place as a major producer of oil and gas, the Saudis are deeply concerned that protecting Saudi Arabia is now a much lower priority to the United States than ever before.

The Saudi Royal family has also seen regional genocidal extremists identify the Saudi monarchy at targets to be destroyed and replaced. ISIS, al Qaeda (despite much “secret” support from highly-placed Saudis with plenty of guilt money to spend), Boko Haram, etc. have made clear their direct animosity for the high-flying Saudi rulers. Desirous of an elusive regional peace, including a cessation of explosive violence in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, nonetheless the Saudis cannot risk regional Arab antagonism by openly supporting a solution to that Israeli issue. It would seal their fate, they fear.

The Saudi King still functions in the capacity of the nation’s Sheik, a ruler charged with finding justice and resolving dispute among his own people. To this day, the King continues the tradition of the Majlis (literally “a place of sitting”) where his subjects can directly approach the King with their grievances, requests and needs to resolve disputes among and between themselves. The King is the protector of the people, resolver of differences and keeper of the faith. Old tribal ways remain very much a part of contemporary Saudi Arabia.

Even in this period of contracted oil prices, the Saudis have exceptionally deep pockets. As increasing numbers of Saudis get solid educations, often in the West, there is a new middle class with modern values, but with skills that have not been provided by Saudis until very recently. With the massive remaining reliance on foreign workers, Saudis in general, under the watchful eye of the King, try desperately to shelter their culture, values and religion from threats from every direction. The Saudi King who fails to adhere to these conservative values will be removed and replaced, the lot of King Saud who was forced by religious leaders and the royal family to renounce the crown in 1964 for precisely these reasons.

The King is dead, long live the King. With the passing of 90-year-old King Abdullah, there’s a new ruler in Saudi Arabia, as his younger brother (79), Crown Prince Salman (pictured above), takes the throne. We often envision Saudi rulers as callous and imperious, but that is very far from the truth. In fact, Saudi Kings in a threat-filled modern era are master politicians and strategists, balancing life between factions with irreconcilable differences. That the Kingdom is intact – building industries for a distant future where oil is either depleted or no longer rules, low income housing, schools and hospitals, and managing to survive with so many rather direct threats to destroy that monarchy – is a testament to the skills of the Saudi Royal Family to mediate and rule in this environment. The Arab Spring was a severe wake-up call, one that prompted the monarchy to spend even more money elevating the lives of its own people.

King Abdullah walked the line exceptionally well, keeping his people happy with their economic lot in life, moving the country into increasing modernity while appeasing the religious elite, respecting Bedouin traditions while providing new educational opportunities and medical facilities for all his citizens, and avoiding myriad direct threats to the monarchy itself. He presided of the greatest period of change in Saudi history, making Saudi investments one of the world’s most powerful sources of capitalism.

The new King, Salman, appears to be cut from the same cloth as his older brother. As Abdullah’s failing health limited that monarch’s ability to govern fully, Salman was already assuming some of the basic functions of leadership. “The new king of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, has spent more than a half-century among the top echelons of one of the world’s most powerful families and is known to serve as mediator and peacekeeper between its often competing factions.

“Best known for overseeing the development of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, during his nearly 50 years as its governor, he became the country’s defense minister in 2011 as a series of uprisings were shaking Arab leaders who had long been Saudi allies…. While Salman is popular inside the kingdom and in the ruling family, he ascended the throne after the death of his brother Abdullah on [January 23^rd] amid increasing strains on the kingdom.

“The drop of world oil prices has hurt the country’s economic base; the jihadists of the Islamic State have questioned its status as the global lodestar of Islam; and new civil strife is shredding Yemen, its southern neighbor.

“Analysts said that those challenges would most likely keep the new monarch from making any sudden changes to policy… ‘There will be a strong emphasis on continuity,’ said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. ‘Especially at a time when the price of oil is low and there is lots of turmoil in the region, the last thing they need is to get their people riled up.’” New York Times, January 22^nd.

Few Americans will ever understand or condone the Saudi culture and the treatment of women; it is deeply alien to our view of the earth. Critics of American policy frequently point to our support of this severely conservative Muslim fundamentalist government as a continuation of the American hypocrisy of convenience, giving comfort to a culture known for repressing both women and political dissent. But women have slowly fared better under King Abdullah, a monarch who did as much as he could under the judgmental eyes of the religious leaders he was forced to respect.

Remember, every power that threatens to overthrow this monarchy will be even harsher, more repressive and will not open the world to more freedom for women. King Salman is probably Saudi Arabia’s best bet for a locally acceptable progressive movement, albeit far slower than Western values would demand. But Saudi Arabia is facing new threats to its very survival, and it may not be able to thread that needle in a very hostile region. Time will tell, but they are indeed a lynchpin to regional stability.

I’m Peter Dekom, and taking a moment to try and understand this complex and confusing nation is probably in the interest of every voting American.