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Saudi Arabia
INTRODUCTION
SAUDI ARABIA OBSERVED in 1992 the sixtieth anniversary of its
existence as a state and the tenth anniversary of King Fahd ibn
Abd al Aziz Al Saud's accession to the throne. Rather than adopting
the title of king, Fahd was styled in Arabic Khadim al
Haramayn, or "custodian of the two holy mosques," thereby stressing
the Islamic aspect of his governance. In this regard, he echoed
the partnership between the religious and political elements of
society established in 1744 by Muhammad ibn Saud, the amir (see
Glossary) in Ad Diriyah near Riyadh, and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab,
the shaykh who had come to the area to promote the doctrine of
the oneness of God in true Islam. As a result of this cooperation
and based on the strict Hanbali interpretation of Islamic law,
political rule was the province of the House of Saud (Al Saud),
whose leader was also given the title of imam, and religious
authority was in the hands of the Al ash Shaykh (the family of
the shaykh, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab). This arrangement,
however, did not give unchecked political power to the ruler because
in accordance with the precepts of Abd al Wahhab, based on the
political theory of Taqi ad Din ibn Taimiya, secular authority
must conform to divine law and produce civil order in order to
be legitimate.
Historically, the collaboration of the Al Saud and the Al ash
Shaykh resulted in the Al Saud dominion in Najd, the central region
of the Arabian Peninsula, for more than two centuries, except
for the brief period from 1891 to 1902 when the Al Rashid exiled
the Al Saud to Kuwait. Because it has never been subjected to
foreign rule and the consequent dissolution of its homogeneity,
Najd has exerted an unusually strong influence on the jurisdiction
of the Al Saud. In addition, because the region lacked large cities
and the strong leadership they could provide, an interdependent
relationship developed among Najdi towns, which paid tribute,
and tribes, which provided protection. Traditionally, Najdi political
power lay with the tribal shaykhs, who, when they became amirs,
or governors of a wider area, endeavored to dissociate themselves
from their tribal roles because they were ruling a more diverse
population.
The prominence of the Al Saud is reflected in the name Saudi
Arabia; the country is the only one to be named for the ruling
family. The present kingdom of Saudi Arabia derives its existence
from the campaigns of its founder, Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman
Al Saud, who initially captured Riyadh with his beduin followers
in 1902. Thereafter, with the aid of the Ikhwan, or brotherhood,
a fervent group of Wahhabi beduin warriors, he retook the rest
of Najd, defeating the Al Rashid forces at Hail in the north in
1921, and in 1924 conquering the Hijaz, including Mecca and Medina.
Chosen as king of the Hijaz and Najd in 1927, Abd al Aziz was
obliged to defeat the Ikhwan militarily in 1929 because in their
zeal the Ikhwan had encroached on the borders of neighboring states,
thereby arousing the concern of Britain, in particular. In 1932
Abd al Aziz proclaimed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which covered
an area approximating to the territory of the present state. The
discovery of oil in 1938 ultimately transformed the kingdom and
the lives of its inhabitants. During his reign, however, Abd al
Aziz sought to obtain "the iron of the West without its ideas,"
as the king phrased it; he sought to make use of Western technology
but at the same time to maintain the traditional institutions
associated with Islamic and Arab life.
Upon Abd al Aziz's death in 1953, his son Saud ibn Abd al Aziz
Al Saud succeeded to the throne. Saud proved to be an ineffective
ruler and a spendthrift, whose luxurious life-style, together
with that of the advisers with whom he surrounded himself, rapidly
led to the depletion of the kingdom's treasury. As a result, the
Al Saud obliged Saud in 1958, and again in 1962, to give his brother,
Crown Prince Faisal ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, executive power to
conduct foreign and domestic affairs. In 1964 the royal family,
with the consent of the ulama, or religious leaders, deposed Saud
and made Faisal king, appointing Khalid ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud,
another brother, as crown prince.
Faisal, a devout Muslim, sought to modernize the kingdom, especially
in regard to economic development, education, and defense, while
simultaneously playing a key role in foreign policy. For instance,
during the October 1973 War between Israel and the Arab states
of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, Faisal helped to initiate an oil
embargo against those countries that supported Israel; the embargo
led to the tripling of oil prices. He supported the education
of girls and the opening of government television stations to
promote education. Tragically, Faisal was assassinated in 1975
by a deranged nephew.
Crown Prince Khalid ibn Abd al Aziz became king (and de facto
prime minister) immediately; his brother, Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz
Al Saud, served as deputy prime minister and another brother,
Abd Allah ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, as second deputy prime minister.
Khalid dealt primarily with domestic affairs, stressing agricultural
development. He also visited all the gulf states, and took a keen
interest in settling Saudi Arabia's outstanding boundary disputes,
including that of the Al Buraymi Oasis with the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) in 1975. (The area near Al Buraymi disputed with Oman had
been resolved in 1971.) Fahd became the principal spokesman on
foreign affairs and oil policy. Khalid's reign was an eventful
one; it saw the attempt by strict Islamists (also known as fundamentalists)
who criticized the corrupting influence of Western culture on
the royal family to take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979,
riots by Eastern Province Shia
(see Glossary) also in 1979 and 1980, and the formation of the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981.
Upon Khalid's death in 1982, Fahd assumed the throne, with Abd
Allah becoming crown prince. Fahd soon faced the impact on the
kingdom of the fall in oil revenues, which ended in the 1986 oil
price crash. Recognizing the need for a more united Arab front,
particularly in view of the deteriorating economic situation,
he reestablished diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1987; relations
had been broken in 1978 as a result of Anwar as Sadat's signing
of the Camp David Accords creating a separate peace between Egypt
and Israel. Fahd also played a mediating role in the Lebanese
civil war in 1989, bringing most of the members of the Lebanese
National Assembly to At Taif to settle their differences.
To understand the forces that have shaped Saudi Arabia in the
early 1990s, one must consider the roles of geographic factors,
tribal allegiance and beduin life, Islam, the Al Saud, and the
discovery of oil. Tribal affiliation has been the focus of identity
in the Arabian Peninsula, approximately 80 percent of which is
occupied by Saudi Arabia. Well into the present century, several
great deserts, including the Rub al Khali, one of the largest
in the world, cut tribal groups off from one another and isolated
Najd, particularly, from other areas of the country. As a result,
a high degree of cultural homogeneity developed among the inhabitants;
the majority follow Sunni Wahhabi Islam and a patriarchal family
system. Only about 5 percent of the Saudi population adheres to
the Shia sect. The Shia, in general, represent the lowest socioeconomic
group in the country, and their grievances over their status have
led to protest demonstrations in the 1970s and again in 1979-80,
that have resulted in government actions designed to better their
lot.
Saudi tribal allegiance and the beduin heritage have been weakened,
however, since the mid-twentieth century by the increased role
of a centralized state, by the growth of urbanization, and by
the industrialization that has accompanied the finding of oil.
At the same time, the impact of Islam on different elements of
the population has varied. Many of the educated younger technocrats
have felt a need to adapt Islamic institutions to fit the demands
of modern technology. Other young people, more conservatively
inclined, as well as a number of their elders and those with a
more traditional beduin life-style, have deplored the alienation
from Muslim values and the corruption that they believe Western
ways and the presence, according to 1992 census figures, of some
4.6 million foreigners (in contrast to an indigenous population
of 12.3 million) have brought into the kingdom. Their activist
Islamism was reflected in the 1979 attempt by extremists to take
over the Grand Mosque in Mecca and by other aspects of the Islamic
revival, such as the prominent wearing of the hijab,
or long black cloak and veil by women, and the more active role
of the Committees for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention
of Vice (mutawwiin) in enforcing standards of public
morality. The government found itself caught between these two
trends. On the one hand, it feared the extremism of some of the
traditionalists, which could well undermine the economic, education,
and social development programs that the government had been implementing
and which also constituted a threat to internal security. On the
other hand, as guardian of the holy places of Islam, the sites
of the annual pilgrimage for Muslims the world over, the government
needed to legitimate itself as an "Islamic government."
The government therefore has sought to achieve political and
social compromises. Repeated announcements have been made regarding
the royal family's intention to create a consultative council,
first proposed by King Faisal in 1964, as a means of giving a
greater voice to the people. On August 20, 1993, Fahd announced
the appointment of sixty men to the Consultative Council. Members
of the council were primarily religious and tribal leaders; government
officials, businessmen, and retired military and police officers
were also included. An additional small step was King Fahd's decree
of March 1992 establishing a main, or basic, code of laws that
regularizes succession to the throne (the king chooses the heir
apparent from among the sons and grandsons of Abd al Aziz) and
sets forth various administrative procedures concerning the state.
Fahd also issued a decree concerning the provinces, or regions,
of the kingdom. Each region is to have an amir, a deputy, and
a consultative council composed of at least ten persons appointed
by the amir for a four-year term. The code does not, however,
protect individual rights in the Western sense, as many professionals
and technocrats had desired. Rather, it says that "the state protects
human rights in accordance with the Islamic sharia."
The Saudi concept of legitimacy is akin to the beduin concept
of tribal democracy in which the individual exchanges views with
the tribal shaykh. Saudi rulers and most traditionalists reject
Western participatory democracy, because the latter establishes
the people as the source of decision rather than the will of God
as found in the sharia and as interpreted by the ulama. Moreover,
in their view, democracy lacks the stability that a Muslim form
of government provides. For these reasons, the government has
tended to repress dissent and jail dissidents. Such repression
applied to students and religious figures who belonged to such
organizations as the Organization of Islamic Revolution in the
Arabian Peninsula, active in January and February 1992 in criticizing
the ruling family and the government.
Socially, the education of girls, although placed under the supervision
of the religious authorities, has led over the four decades that
girls' schools have existed to a considerable number of women
graduates who were seeking employment in various sectors and who
increasingly were making their presence felt. This trend occurred
at a time of rising unemployment for Saudi males, particularly
for graduates in the field of religious studies, and posed a further
potential source of dissidence. In addition, growing urbanization
was tending to increase the number of nuclear as opposed to extended
families, thereby breaking down traditional social structures.
There were also indications that drug smuggling and drug use were
rising; twenty of the forty executions that occurred between January
1 and May 1, 1993, were drug related.
The Al Saud played the central role in achieving the needed compromises
in the political, social, and foreign affairs fields, as well
as in directing the economy with the support of the technocrats
and the merchants. The control exercised by the Al Saud is demonstrated
by the fact that as of 1993 the amirs, or governors, of all fourteen
of Saudi Arabia's regions were members of the royal family. Some
members of the family, such as King Fahd and his full brothers
Sultan, Nayif, and Salman, were considered to be, however, more
aligned with the modernizers; King Fahd's half brother Crown Prince
Abd Allah, was more of a traditionalist. Specifically, the crown
prince enjoyed the support of the tribal elements and headed the
Saudi Arabian National Guard, a paramilitary body composed largely
of beduin soldiers that served as a counterbalance to the regular
armed forces, which were headed by Minister of Defense and Aviation
Amir Sultan ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud. The nation's police force
reported to Minister of Interior Amir Nayif ibn Abd al Aziz Al
Saud.
The crown prince was also considered closer than the king to
the religious establishment, or the ulama. Thirty to forty of
the most influential ulama, mainly members of the Al ash Shaykh,
constituted the Council of Senior Ulama, seven of whose members
were dismissed by the king in December 1992 on the pretext of
"poor health." The actual reason for their dismissal was their
failure to condemn July criticisms (published in September) of
the government by a group of religious scholars who called themselves
the Committee for the Defense of Rights under the Sharia. The
king named ten younger and more progressive ulama to replace them.
In a further move, in July 1993 the king named Shaykh Abd al
Aziz ibn Baz general mufti of the kingdom with the rank of minister
and president of the Administration of Scientific Research and
Fatwa. Abd al Aziz ibn Baz was also appointed to preside over
the new eighteen-member Higher Ulama Council. Based on Abd al
Aziz ibn Baz's advice, instead of the Ministry of Pilgrimage Affairs
and Religious Trusts, the king created two new ministries: the
Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Call, and Guidance and
the Ministry of Pilgrimage; this action gave the religious sector
an additional voice in the Council of Ministers.
In addition to holding conservative domestic views, the crown
prince was more oriented than Fahd toward the Arab world. After
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, he joined the king
and other more pro-Western members of the royal family in asking
the United States to send forces to the kingdom.
In the foreign policy arena, Saudi Arabia historically has sought
to walk a narrow line between East and West. Because of its strong
commitment to Islam, the kingdom abhorred the atheist policy of
the former Soviet Union and therefore tended to be somewhat pro-Western
concerning defense matters. However, Saudi Arabia also strongly
opposed what it considered to be the pro- Zionist policy of the
United States with regard to Israel and the rights of the Palestinians.
At one time, the kingdom had relatively close relations with Jordan,
a fellow monarchy, but Jordan's failure to support Saudi Arabia
in the 1991 Persian Gulf War soured those relations and resulted
in the expulsion from the kingdom of thousands of Palestinians
and Jordanians. In the war, Saudi Arabia also experienced a lack
of support by Sudan and Yemen, both of which countries it had
aided substantially. In 1993 relations with Yemen were somewhat
tense because the kingdom expelled about 1 million Yemenis, as
well, during the Persian Gulf War. In addition, as of late 1992,
Saudi Arabia had revived a dispute with Yemen over an oil-rich
border area.
Initially, Saudi Arabia saw both Iran and Iraq as neighbors posing
potential threats. After the Persian Gulf War, however, Saudi
Arabia's concern over containing Iraq increased, and the kingdom
set aside some of its reservations about Iran's form of Shia Islam
and began to normalize relations. Despite some border disagreements
with its Persian Gulf neighbors, for example, Qatar in 1992 and
early 1993, the kingdom's concern for regional security caused
its closest relations to be with other members of the GCC; certain
tensions existed in the organization, nevertheless, because of
Saudi Arabia's position as the "big brother."
Saudi Arabia had taken the lead in 1970 in establishing the Organization
of the Islamic Conference to bring together all Muslim countries.
In addition, the kingdom followed a policy of supporting Islamic
countries in Africa and Asia and providing military aid to Muslim
groups opposing secular governments in Afghanistan, Ethiopia,
and, formerly, in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (now
part of Yemen).
Saudi Arabia's concern for regional security and its active role
in supporting the GCC were understandable in view of its relatively
small population and the resultant constraint on the size of its
armed forces. To compensate for these limitations, the kingdom
consistently has endeavored to buy the most up-to- date military
matériel and especially to concentrate on developing its air force
and air defense system. For more than twenty-five years, Saudi
Arabia has had the highest ratio of military expenditures in relation
to military personnel of any developing country. Following the
Persian Gulf War, the kingdom increased its 1993 defense expenditures
14 percent over those of 1992. Defense purchases included at least
315 United States M1A2 main battle tanks to upgrade matériel of
the ground forces as well as seventy-two United States F-15C Eagles
and forty-eight British Tornadoes for the air force. Furthermore,
the Saudi navy was considered of good quality in relation to naval
forces of the region, and the navy's facilities were excellent.
In spite of these policies, Saudi Arabia recognized its vulnerability
because it has the world's largest oil reserves and extensive
oil- processing facilities.
The discovery of oil in commercial quantities in 1938 was the
major catalyst that transformed various aspects of the kingdom.
The huge revenues from the sale of oil and the payments received
from foreign companies involved in developing concessions in the
country enabled the government to launch large-scale development
programs by the early 1970s. Such programs initially focused on
creation of infrastructure in the areas of transportation, telecommunications,
electric power, and water. The programs also addressed the fields
of education, health, and social welfare; the expansion and equipping
of the armed forces; and the creation of petroleum-based industries.
From this beginning, the government expanded its programs to drill
more deep wells to tap underground aquifers and to construct desalination
plants. These water sources, in turn, enabled ventures to make
the country more nearly self-sufficient agriculturally; in many
instances, however, such undertakings seriously depleted groundwater.
In pursuit of industrial diversification, the government created
the industrial cities of Al Jubayl in the Eastern Province and
Yanbu al Bahr (known as Yanbu) on the Red Sea . The government
also encouraged the establishment of nonoil-related industries,
anticipating the day when Saudi Arabia's oil and gas resources
would be depleted. Furthermore, the kingdom also has some promising
copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold deposits that have received
little exploitation.
The kingdom's economic plans, including the Fifth Development
Plan (1990-95), continued to emphasize training the indigenous
labor force to handle technologically advanced processes and hence
to enable Saudi Arabia to reduce the number of its foreign workers.
The fifth plan also encouraged the creation of joint industrial
enterprises with GCC member states and other Arab and Islamic
countries and the development of industrial relations with foreign
countries in order to attract foreign capital and transfer technology.
Saudi Arabia's economic goals were reflected in the national
budget announced for 1993, which set expenditures at US$52.6 billion
and revenues at US$45.1 billion, thereby reducing the deficit
from US$8.0 billion in 1992 to US$7.5 billion in 1993. The continued
existence of a deficit, which has characterized the Saudi economy
since 1983, was a source of concern to some observers. Major budgetary
expenditure items were US$9.1 billion for education (including
funds to establish six new colleges and 800 new schools), US$8.2
billion for public organizations (not further identified), and
more than US$3.7 billion for health and social development (including
funds for setting up 500 new clinics). Another major expenditure
announced in March 1993 was that substantial funds, most of which
would be obtained from private borrowing, would be invested in
oil facilities in order to raise the kingdom's oil production
capacity to between 10.5 and 11 million barrels per day by 1995
and its total refining capacity to 210,000 barrels per day.
The major event affecting Saudi Arabia and other gulf states
in the early 1990s was clearly the Persian Gulf War. The effect
of that war on the kingdom has yet to be assessed. Financially,
the cost of the war for the area as a whole has been estimated
by the Arab Monetary Fund at US$676 billion for 1990 and 1991.
This figure does not, however, take account of such factors as
the ecological impact of the war, the loss of jobs and income
for thousands of foreign workers employed in Saudi Arabia and
elsewhere in the gulf, and the slowdown effect on the growth of
the economies of Saudi Arabia and the gulf states. In most instances,
these economies had been growing at a good rate before the war,
which tended to deplete or eliminate any accumulated financial
reserves.
More difficult to measure, however, was the social impact of
the war. Many foreign observers had speculated that the arrival
in the kingdom of more than 600,000 foreign military personnel,
including women in uniform, would bring about significant changes
in Saudi society. However, military personnel tended to be assigned
to remote border areas of the country and were little seen by
the population as a whole. The net effect of their presence was
therefore minimal in the opinion of a number of knowledgeable
Saudis.
As Saudi Arabia entered the final years of the twentieth century,
there were signs, however, that the expression of public dissent,
once unthinkable, was becoming more commonplace. Such dissent
was usually couched within an Islamic framework, but nonetheless
it represented a force with which the Al Saud had to reckon. King
Fahd, now seventy-two, had succeeded thus far in balancing the
demands of modernists and traditionalists domestically and in
pursuing a policy of moderation internationally. Some observers
wondered, however, how much longer Fahd would be able to rule
and how adaptable the more conservative Crown Prince Abd Allah
would be as Fahd's successor.
August 23, 1993
Helen Chapin Metz
Data as of December 1992
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