Toby C. Jones: High Anxiety
[Toby C. Jones is assistant professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University. He is author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia and an editor at Middle East Report.]
Saudi Arabia's ruling elders are anxious. Recent decisions in Riyadh, including dispatching a Saudi military contingent to help violently smash the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, suggest that the kingdom's elites are more than a little unsettled by the unraveling of the old order in the Middle East.
They seem equally troubled by the prospect of political unrest at home. So far, the kingdom has weathered the storm that has blown across the region. But it is clear that the ruling Al Saud are not entirely comfortable, even though many observers in the West keep uttering assurances that their regime is stable and mostly invulnerable to serious shocks. In reality, Riyadh is struggling to find ways to fend off the possibility of popular dissent -- while strengthening reactionary forces at home and exacerbating tensions in the region in the process....
The one thing the kingdom's rulers have so far proved unwilling to seriously consider is political reform, which is precisely what their critics at home are asking them to do. King Abdullah, who is about as popular as an aged autocrat can be, came to power in 2005 with the reputation of a reformer, someone whom many Saudis believed would pry open a corrupt political system. He has not. Abdullah has more often than not used the language of reform to shore up his family's grip on power. Amid the current crisis, Saudi Arabia's rulers have demonstrated even greater resolve in holding on tightly to their prize. They have also demonstrated a willingness to resort to well-established political strategies to avoid parting with control.
In addition to issuing threats and doling out cash, the ruling elite are also looking to burnish its relationship with its traditional power base, the religious establishment. While many assume the Al Saud have always relied principally on the clergy for support, the truth is that the relationship has often been contentious. By the late 1970s, amid the oil boom, the clergy had been partially marginalized as a political force. Over the course of the 20th century, the Saudis' primary objective was building a strong centralized state. While the clergy had been useful to the process of imperial expansion in the first part of the century, it was seen as an obstacle later on.
Events in the late 1970s brought the clergy back to the fore. Confronted with the siege of the Mecca Grand Mosque in 1979 by a group of religious militants -- a serious assault on the ruling family's political authority -- Saudi Arabia's rulers sought direct help from the establishment clergy. To outmaneuver potential criticism and end the siege, they asked for and received religious sanction to use force inside the mosque and drive the rebels out. In exchange, the Saudis rewarded the religious establishment with an influx of financial and political support. The political cost was high. The kingdom's ruling elite had to reinvent itself and restore its credibility as custodian of Islam's holy land, and it has been compelled to accommodate the clerics' interests ever since....
Read entire article at Foreign Policy
Saudi Arabia's ruling elders are anxious. Recent decisions in Riyadh, including dispatching a Saudi military contingent to help violently smash the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, suggest that the kingdom's elites are more than a little unsettled by the unraveling of the old order in the Middle East.
They seem equally troubled by the prospect of political unrest at home. So far, the kingdom has weathered the storm that has blown across the region. But it is clear that the ruling Al Saud are not entirely comfortable, even though many observers in the West keep uttering assurances that their regime is stable and mostly invulnerable to serious shocks. In reality, Riyadh is struggling to find ways to fend off the possibility of popular dissent -- while strengthening reactionary forces at home and exacerbating tensions in the region in the process....
The one thing the kingdom's rulers have so far proved unwilling to seriously consider is political reform, which is precisely what their critics at home are asking them to do. King Abdullah, who is about as popular as an aged autocrat can be, came to power in 2005 with the reputation of a reformer, someone whom many Saudis believed would pry open a corrupt political system. He has not. Abdullah has more often than not used the language of reform to shore up his family's grip on power. Amid the current crisis, Saudi Arabia's rulers have demonstrated even greater resolve in holding on tightly to their prize. They have also demonstrated a willingness to resort to well-established political strategies to avoid parting with control.
In addition to issuing threats and doling out cash, the ruling elite are also looking to burnish its relationship with its traditional power base, the religious establishment. While many assume the Al Saud have always relied principally on the clergy for support, the truth is that the relationship has often been contentious. By the late 1970s, amid the oil boom, the clergy had been partially marginalized as a political force. Over the course of the 20th century, the Saudis' primary objective was building a strong centralized state. While the clergy had been useful to the process of imperial expansion in the first part of the century, it was seen as an obstacle later on.
Events in the late 1970s brought the clergy back to the fore. Confronted with the siege of the Mecca Grand Mosque in 1979 by a group of religious militants -- a serious assault on the ruling family's political authority -- Saudi Arabia's rulers sought direct help from the establishment clergy. To outmaneuver potential criticism and end the siege, they asked for and received religious sanction to use force inside the mosque and drive the rebels out. In exchange, the Saudis rewarded the religious establishment with an influx of financial and political support. The political cost was high. The kingdom's ruling elite had to reinvent itself and restore its credibility as custodian of Islam's holy land, and it has been compelled to accommodate the clerics' interests ever since....