Power
Struggle In Saudi Arabia:
A Sign Of Regional Instability
By Peter Symonds
23 December 2006
World
Socialist Web
The
abrupt resignation of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, Prince
Turki al-Faisal, last week is one more sign of a power struggle underway
in Riyadh. While factional intrigues in the Saudi royal family are undoubtedly
involved, the overriding factor is the deepening instability throughout
the Middle East being fuelled by the aggressive intervention of the
US, above all in Iraq. One consequence has been an intensification of
the traditional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran for regional dominance.
After just 17 months as US
ambassador, Prince Turki announced on December 12 that he was quitting
to spend more time with his family. The reason is obviously absurd.
He gave the same excuse when in 2002 he stood aside as head of the Saudi
intelligence services—a post he held for 24 years and which included
responsibility for providing covert funding in the 1980s to the Afghan
mujaheedin via Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Prince Turki has the highest
connections in the ruling royal family. He is a nephew of King Abdullah
and brother of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the country’s long-serving
foreign minister. According to an article entitled “A Saudi Power
Struggle?” by the US-based think tank Stratfor, Prince Turki returned
home to shore up the interests of the al-Faisal faction and to claim
the post of foreign minister in the event of his ailing brother’s
death.
Prince Turki, however, appears
to face opposition. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the previous Saudi ambassador
in Washington, who returned to Riyadh to head the newly created and
powerful National Security Council, also seems to have an eye on the
key position. All these manoeuvres involve factional calculations as
the various royal clans vie for domination.
The byzantine inner workings
of Saudi politics are far from clear. The royal despots who rule the
country feel no obligation to explain their actions. What is plain,
however, is that the current eruption of tensions in Riyadh is being
fuelled by deep concerns among the Saudi ruling elite about the future
direction of US policy in the Middle East, the disaster unfolding across
the border in Iraq and the potential for rival Iran to fill the political
vacuum created by the US invasion and removal of the Saddam Hussein
regime.
The discussion is couched
in overtly sectarian terms. The Sunni establishment in Saudi Arabia
is alarmed at what it claims is the growing influence of Shiite Iran,
the emergence of a Shiite-dominated government and Shiite militia in
Iraq and the growth of a “Shiite crescent” stretching from
Iran through Syria to Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon. At home, it faces
an increasingly restive Shiite minority.
The divisions in Saudi Arabia
have been intensified by the debate in Washington over the Iraq Study
Group report, which among its recommendations proposed that the Bush
administration engage in direct talks with Iran and Syria. Deeply concerned
that any deal with Tehran would be at their expense, sections of the
Saudi ruling elite have sought reassurances from Washington and warned
that Riyadh may be compelled to support Sunni insurgents inside Iraq
as a means of countering Iranian influence.
In the lead-up to the report’s
release this month, US Vice President Dick Cheney made a special trip
to Saudi Arabia on November 25 to meet for a few hours with King Abdullah.
Cheney epitomises the close links of the Bush administration with the
Saudi monarchy and shares its hostility to any deal with Iran. Media
reports, later officially denied, indicated that Abdullah insisted that
the US had to rein in Shiite militia in Iraq and threatened to actively
back Sunni insurgents if the US began a pull out from Iraq.
Prince Turki and his brother
have taken a more cautious approach in contrast to King Abdullah and
Prince Bandar. According to an article “Princes at odds”
in the British-based Economist, Prince Bandar, as security adviser,
“is said to have advocated a more aggressive foreign policy for
the kingdom, in a break from the quiet chequebook diplomacy long pursued
by the Faisal brothers. He is also said to have pursued initiatives
independent of the now-ailing foreign minister, including a recent unannounced
visit to Washington where he is said to have encouraged Bush administration
hawks to resist mounting calls to engage with Iran and Syria. Prince
Turki, for his part, has called America’s refusal to talk to Iran
a mistake.”
The sharp differences were
highlighted in a comment by US-based Saudi security adviser Nawaf Obaid
in the Washington Post on November 29. Obaid openly warned that one
of the first consequences of any US withdrawal from Iraq would be “massive
Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering
Iraqi Sunnis”. He pointed to a “chorus of voices”—in
Saudi Arabia, from Sunni tribal and religious leaders in Iraq, and the
leaders of Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries—calling
for Saudi Arabia to “provide Iraqi Sunnis with weapons and financial
support”.
To avoid a rupture in relations
with Washington, the Saudi regime, officially at least, has held back
from backing the Sunni insurgents in Iraq who are attacking American
troops. But with discussion in the US of withdrawal, “the Saudi
leadership is preparing to substantially revise its Iraq policy. Options
now include providing Sunni military leaders with the same types of
assistance—funding, arms and logistical support—that Iran
has been giving Shiite armed groups for years.”
Obaid also suggested that
King Abdullah “may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias
through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price
of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending.
But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties
even with today’s high prices. The result would be to limit Tehran’s
ability to continue funnelling hundreds of millions each year to Shiite
militias in Iraq and elsewhere.”
He concluded that Saudi Arabia
could not sit on the sidelines of a burgeoning civil war in Iraq that
threatened to establish an Iranian-influenced, Shiite-dominated state.
“To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be
to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would
undermine Saudi Arabia’s credibility in the Sunni world and would
be a capitulation to Iran’s militarist actions in the region.
To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks—it could
spark a regional war. So be it. The consequences of inaction are far
worse.”
Obaid’s comments were
quickly repudiated in Saudi Arabia and he was sacked as a consultant
by Prince Turki, but there is no doubt that his remarks reflect sentiments
in Saudi ruling circles. While Obaid’s warnings are obviously
aimed at pushing the Bush administration to maintain the US military
occupation of Iraq, they point to the profoundly destabilising consequences
of the US invasion. By ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a puppet
government resting on the Shiite and Kurdish elites, Washington is directly
responsible for fuelling the escalating sectarian war in Iraq, which
contains the seeds of a far broader conflict.
Washington’s alliance
with the autocratic Saudi monarchy has been a cornerstone of US policy
in the Middle East for decades. Saudi Arabia was a key ally in the CIA’s
covert war in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the Soviet-backed regime
in Kabul, viewing it as an opportunity to assert its claims to be a
defender of Islam. Its subsequent support for the US-led Gulf War in
1990-91 and the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia produced sharp
disaffection in Saudi ruling circles, typified by the bitter opposition
of Osama bin Laden. The present regime in Riyadh is acutely aware that
if it fails to back Sunni militia in Iraq, it risks the eruption of
opposition at home from dissident sections of the ruling elite.
The Iraq Study Group noted
that there is already evidence of private Saudi support for Sunni insurgents
in Iraq. A recent Associated Press article interviewed several truck
drivers in Middle East capitals who claimed that Saudis had been using
religious events, like the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, as the cover
for illicit money transfers to Iraqi Sunnis. “They sent boxes
full of dollars and asked me to deliver them to certain addresses in
Iraq. I know it is being sent to the resistance, and if I don’t
take it with me, they will kill me,” one driver said.
Saudi officials insist they
are seeking to prevent money and arms flowing to Iraqi insurgents. The
Bush administration, which routinely accuses Iran of supporting Shiite
militias, has been silent on the issue, not wishing to offend a key
US ally. But a report by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project
(NSAP), which was headed by Obaid, suggests that, at the very least,
advanced preparations have been made to intervene in the Iraqi civil
war.
Details of the NSAP report,
produced in March, surfaced this week in the right-wing Washington Times,
which highlighted the claim that Iran had created a Shiite “state
within a state” in Iraq. It also contained detailed estimates
of the strengths of the Sunni and Shiite militias and concluded that
“Saudi Arabia has a special responsibility to ensure the continued
welfare and security of Sunnis in Iraq”. The newspaper noted that
Saudi intelligence was already working with elements of Hussein’s
old intelligence network, the notorious Mukhabarat, to counter what
it saw as the Iranian threat.
The sharpening rivalry between
Saudi Arabia and Iran is only intensifying the irresolvable contradictions
confronting the Bush administration in Iraq. The US occupation rests
on a Shiite-dominated puppet government with ties to Shiite Iran, but
Washington wants to oust, rather than negotiate with, the Tehran regime.
Washington is seeking the support of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan
to push “moderate Sunni Iraqis” to reach an accommodation
with the US occupation in preparation for a bloody crackdown on Shiite
militias and Sunni insurgents. Such a move, however, threatens not only
to destabilise the present Baghdad regime, but to escalate the war in
Iraq and draw neighbouring countries into the sectarian conflict.
The Bush administration invaded
Iraq in order to seize the country’s massive oil reserves and
establish a base of operations for its broader project of asserting
US domination of the Middle East against its European and Asian rivals.
In doing so, the US has not only created a quagmire in Iraq, but has
set off far-reaching political tremors throughout the region, including
in long-time ally Saudi Arabia.
Last weekend’s Sunday
Times likened the situation to Europe’s bloody seventeenth century
conflict between Catholics and Protestants—the Thirty Years’
War—and warned of a similar protracted sectarian war between Shiites
and Sunnis in the Middle East. “The war is already under way,
and the feckless American president has little chance to arrest or even
guide it. We do not know how profound the destruction might get and
how far the forces of chaos could spread. One thing we know: oil prices
could experience extreme instability. The world economy could be battered,”
the article concluded.
The London-based newspaper
stopped short of making the obvious point. In such a conflict, with
such vital interests at stake, it would be impossible for all the world’s
major powers not to be drawn in.
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