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Saudi Arabia
Government and Politics
ABD AL AZIZ IBN ABD AR RAHMAN AL SAUD, who had begun conquering
territory in the Arabian Peninsula in 1902, proclaimed the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia in 1932. It was then, and remained sixty years
later, the only nation to have been named after its ruling family.
Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud, who in 1992 had been ruling for
ten years, was the fourth son of Abd al Aziz to become king since
his father's death in 1953. Although the Al Saud kings ruled as
absolute monarchs, their power was tempered by Islamic law (sharia)
and by the custom of reaching consensus on political issues among
the scores of direct adult male descendants of Abd al Aziz.
Islam was a pervasive social and political force in Saudi Arabia.
Because there was no separation of religion and state, the political
role of religious scholars, or ulama, was second in importance
to that of the ruling Al Saud family. The close association between
the ulama, advocating the strict Islamic interpretations of Muhammad
ibn Abd al Wahhab, and the Al Saud originated in the eighteenth
century and provided the dynasty with its primary source of legitimacy.
The ulama acted as a conservative force in maintaining the traditional
social and political values that characterized Saudi Arabia in
the early 1990s.
Although Saudi Arabia was established as a country based on a
fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, the discovery of vast
petroleum deposits led to significant changes in the role of religion.
Since the 1950s, when oil revenues became abundant, Saudi rulers
have sought to reap the economic benefits derived from oil resources
while trying to minimize the political and social impact of change.
Nevertheless, the transformation of Saudi Arabia from a relatively
isolated, predominantly rural country into a wealthy, urbanized
nation hosting tens of thousands of foreign workers inevitably
produced tensions. From a political perspective, the most significant
development was the emergence of a group of middle-class professionals.
This important and highly educated group of Saudis generally resented
the lack of opportunities for citizen participation in politics.
Beginning in the 1960s, they tried to pressure the monarchy into
creating an elective representative assembly. Saudi kings resisted
demands for political liberalization by strengthening regime ties
with the ulama, who tended to distrust the notion of popular government
because of the implicit assumption that manmade legislation could
be equal to sacred law.
Islam also was a significant factor in Saudi Arabia's foreign
relations. The very close relationship that developed between
the kingdom and the non-Muslim United States after 1945, for example,
was partly a result of Saudi antipathy to the former Soviet Union's
espousal of atheism. Beginning in the late 1950s, Riyadh and Washington
shared similar misgivings about the ties that secular, republican
regimes in the region established with Moscow. During the 1980s,
the Saudis tried to counteract Soviet influence by providing military
aid to Islamic groups that opposed secular governments in such
countries as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the People's Democratic
Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). In addition, the kingdom gave
generous economic assistance to the predominantly Muslim states
of Africa and Asia in the expectation that recipient countries
would support its overall policy goals. Despite this largess,
however, Jordan, Sudan, and the Republic of Yemen (a merger of
the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and the Yemen Arab Republic,
North Yemen), three of the countries most dependent on Saudi foreign
aid, failed to back the kingdom during its 1990-91 conflict with
Iraq after the latter invaded Kuwait.
Saudi efforts to use Islam as a vehicle for rallying diplomatic
support met with indifferent results because other Muslim countries
generally did not base their foreign policies on religion. A notable
exception was Iran, the kingdom's neighbor on the northern shore
of the Persian Gulf. The shared Islamic heritage was not, however,
a basis for Saudi-Iranian cooperation. On the contrary, the 1979
Iranian Islamic Revolution had brought to power Muslim clergy
who espoused a version of Islam that Saudi ulama considered heretical.
Moreover, Iranian officials throughout the 1980s denounced the
Al Saud as corrupt and the institution of monarchy as un-Islamic.
Consequently, the government of Saudi Arabia perceived Iran as
a major threat to both domestic tranquility and regional security.
Although Saudi Arabia remained officially neutral during the protracted
IranIraq War (1980-88), it supported the war aims of its former
political rival, the secular government of Iraq, by providing
Baghdad with loans and grants totaling several billion dollars.
Saudi financial assistance neither defeated Iran nor won Iraq's
gratitude. In 1984 Iran initiated attacks on tankers carrying
Saudi and Kuwaiti oil, justifying its actions on grounds that
the monetary aid extended to Iraq had made both Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait de facto Iraqi allies. As the war spread to the Persian
Gulf, Riyadh began to perceive that the continuation of the conflict
posed a major security threat. The government thus felt relieved
in 1988 when both belligerents, weary of fighting, agreed to accept
a United Nations-mediated cease-fire. However, the cessation of
Iran-Iraq hostilities provided the Saudis only a brief respite
from concerns about regional security. Iraq soon turned on Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia's close ally and neighbor. After Kuwait had resisted
Iraqi demands for more than a year, Baghdad retaliated in August
1990 by dispatching its army to occupy and annex the small, oil-rich
state. King Fahd's government, shocked and frightened, called
upon the United States for help. In an unprecedented development,
thousands of United States troops, under authority of several
United Nations resolutions, were deployed to the kingdom beginning
in August 1990. The country's ulama tolerated their presence after
receiving the king's assurances that the foreign military personnel,
among whom were several thousand women, would have minimal contact
with Saudi civilians and be required to obey Saudi laws such as
the ban on consumption of alcohol.
By the beginning of 1991, it had become obvious that the massive
United States military presence in Saudi Arabia would not persuade
Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The Saudi government and its Arab
allies consequently agreed to join the United States, which also
had obtained support from its European allies, to force a withdrawal.
Iraq's appeals for Arab and Islamic solidarity against the United
States intervention failed to impress the Saudis, who noted that
the sharing of similar religious traditions had not prevented
Iraq from invading Kuwait nor threatening their country. During
the forty-three-day Persian Gulf War, Iraqi missiles struck Riyadh
and several other Saudi towns, and the Saudi armed forces participated
with non-Muslims and non-Arabs in the fighting against Iraq. The
war, which ended with Iraq's military defeat in February 1991,
demonstrated to the Saudis the impracticality of trying to base
foreign policy on their vision of Islam. Convinced that the kingdom's
security interests required the long-term containment of Iraq
and convinced that Iran had the same objective, Riyadh put aside
its reservations about Iran's adherence to Shia
(see Glossary) Islam and began the process of normalizing relations
with Tehran.
Data as of December 1992
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