Written evidence submitted by Neil Partrick,
Senior Analyst, Economist Intelligence Unit, The Economist Group
THE RELEVANCE AND IMPORTANCE OF SAUDI ARABIA
TO THE INTERNATIONAL WAR ON TERRORISM
BASIC PREMISE
Saudi Arabia is a pivotal player in the security
and stability of the Arabian peninsula. However, it is not advisable
for the British government to maintain relations going forward
on the old basis of acceptance that the strategic importance of
Saudi Arabia excuses political sclerosis in the kingdom. There
needs to be continued UK government attention to managing our
relations with Saudi Arabia in a manner most conducive to steady
reform, and therefore kept in line with longer-term British interests,
in the kingdom and the wider Middle East region.
SAUDI AND
THE INTERNATIONAL
WAR AGAINST
TERRORISM
The attack on the US on 9-11 caused significant
reflection by the US government of the basis of its relationship
with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There were some whose closeness
to neo-conservative administration opinion seemingly encouraged
them feel to publicly think outside of the box in a way unimaginable
for much of the previous three decades. In the UK responses were
more measured, with the central assumption that the bases of foreign
policy toward the Arab Gulf states was correct and that the comparatively
gentle encouragement of good governance remained the right way
to proceed. However in practice the US administration did not
evince any willingness to promote radical new policies that might
threaten existing Gulf Arab regimes by belligerent advocacy of
western standards of political accountability, for example. Furthermore,
the commitments to reform that were increasingly given by Saudi
Arabia to its own people, and admonishments to the wider Arab
world to change, and the beginning of practical measures in line
with this rhetoric, suggested that the kingdom was aware of the
need for internal change.
The specific grievance felt by the US authorities
as well as the wider international community over the disproportionate
role of Saudi nationals in the attacks of September 2001 had also
led to practical measures to constrain the comparative ease of
financial relationships between radical individuals inside and
outside of the kingdom. In the context of a Financial Sector Assessment
Programme (FSAP) organised under the auspices of the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF), a long-standing body created by the
IMF and the World Bank to promote better financial management,
experts on money laundering measures from those bodies have visited
Saudi Arabia, along with many other countries internationally,
and recommendations issued. Saudi Arabia's central bank (SAMA;
the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency) began to initiate legal changes
before the FATF visit, but, in the wake of the latter's initial
recommendations, went further. The monitoring of significant bank
deposits and/or transfers is now far more comprehensive, while
charitable giving, formerly a key means for transferring monies
to armed groups, is much more closely circumscribed, with one
notable organisation eventually being prevented from operating.
PRACTICAL LIMITS
ON STOPPING
MONEY FLOWS
One area of residual US concern that continues
to be expressed publicly however is the ongoing role of public
fund raising in the kingdom, despite being taken out of the mosques,
for Palestine, by which monies from telethon appeals have found
their way to the families of militant suicide bombers. However
Saudi Arabia has, through private channels, been a key financial
supporter of Hamas since its inception. (As it was at the time
of the Islamist group's less political antecedents, and as the
kingdom was over three decades for the more secular, Fatah, formerly
the backbone of the Palestinian leadership.) In the wake of the
January 2006 parliamentary election results in the Palestinian
territories, this connection is increasingly contentious. However,
there is a clear and understood difference in the kingdom, and
arguably internationally, between monies for those with a nationalist
agenda, despite how disagreeable their means are judged to be,
and money that hitherto had found its way into al-Qa'ida-related
pockets. SAMA is more efficient in following financial trails
and in limiting the potential for monies to be transferred out
of the country for nefarious purposes than a number of other GCC
countries' central banks. However, there is still a practical,
as well as political, limit to what can be done to prevent money
transfers in either direction. With the operation for example
of the hawala system, which Saudi Arabia and other GCC
countries are very keen to stress they monitor very carefully,
it is very difficult to prevent monies reaching terrorists. The
ease with which this informal transfer system can operate is what
defines it; harsh constraints would render it unrecognisable and
make the transfer of monies by much foreign labour in the kingdom
very difficult.
CONSTRAINING ISLAMIST
RADICALS AT
HOME AND
ABROAD
Saudi Arabia has also taken a number of internal
measures designed to inhibit what hitherto had been the state's
effective promotion of radical Islamism via officials placed overseas
by the ministry of awqaf (Islamic affairs), as well as longer
term objectives evident with the beginning of educational reform
and a less restricted media environment. These developments, and
the practical challenge to ambitious US regional objectives motivating
the invasion of Iraq, subsequently combined to mute any US criticism
of Saudi Arabia. Instead, Washington has exercised political expediency
in talking up what, in political reform terms, were relatively
modest steps (albeit quite dramatic by the standards of the kingdom,
at least judged by developments hitherto from the early 1990s
onwards).
The Saudi leadership had for some time, however,
realised that there was a need for a redirection in its internal
as well as foreign policies, and this was not because of pressure
from the US, the UK or other western governments. A reconfiguring
of the excessive dependence of the country's economy and specifically
fiscal receipts on oil revenues was set as a clear policy objective
in response to the 1998 oil price collapse. That same year, in
his then capacity as crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz al-Saud
spoke plainly to his fellow GCC members. He bemoaned the failure
of an organisation, which had been set up in 1981 to promote economic,
political and security cooperation, to achieve any significant
compromise of national sovereignty in order that collective interests
be more effectively advanced. This, he said, left individual countries
having to rely on outside forces, by which he primarily meant
the US. There is an overlap with the then Crown Prince Abdullah's
desire to reshape the kingdom's internal and external dispensation,
and the call he made in 2003 for Arab countries to embrace political
reform.
INTERNAL PRESSURE
FOR REFORM
The period subsequent to Abdullah's late 1990s
initiatives had obviously seen a shift in the US's perspectives
toward the kingdom in particular. However there were, and there
remain to this day, significant internal forces in the kingdom
that have urged political reform and whose profile has made the
taking of steps in this direction expedient. These were evident
in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war. There was a need then to
balance disparate and what then were more overtly conflictual
internal forces, chiefly consisting of Sunni Islamic radicals
and a broadly "liberal" business and academic class.
This resulted in the Basic Law, the closest the kingdom has come
to a written constitution, and the founding, in common with some
of its GCC neighbours, of an appointed consultative council (majlis
al-shoura). However, the drive for a more accountable decision
making process reflected in the latter's founding in Saudi Arabia,
and in efforts of reformers in the ruling family and without to
secure elections to it today, largely remains a preoccupation
of relative liberals. Islamist radicals seeking a shift in policy
direction, as opposed to the overthrow of the Al-Saud, concentrated
their fire then, as they do today, on the kingdom's relationship
with the US and on concerns about the internal Islamic rigour
of the country, reflected in concerns at corruption and the maintenance
of a strict adherence to Islamic law (shariah).
Today, however, there is a greater coalescence
of objectives among different reformist strands in the kingdom.
This has been expressed in support for petitions that since 2002
have urged a programme of reforms upon the Saudi leadership. These
have drawn support from Sunni Islamic radicals, Sunni liberal
elites, and representatives of the Shia minority. The relative
openness encouraged from the top down by Abdullah, then the de
facto ruler, who was bent on tackling corruption and promoting
transparent decision-making had created an environment in which
he was literally, and publicly, petitioned. However, a year later
this mood had passed, as more cautious voices, embodied in the
person of interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz al-Saud,
targeted the leading petitioners. The petitioners' demands had
grown stronger and events in neighbouring Iraq had compounded
Al-Saud hesitancy in the face of a domestic terrorist challenge
that was seemingly emboldened by the invasion, despite the fact
that the kingdom had no public role in it. In keeping with the
consensual pattern of al-Saud internal decision-making, Crown
Prince Abdullah launched his National Dialogue in 2003 in what
its more ardent liberal Al-Saud promoters sometimes presented
in terms suggestive of a wholly inclusive decision making process,
is in reality what its name says, a dialogue.
LIMITED NATIONAL
DIALOGUE AND
EXISTENTIAL FEARS
The National Dialogue has a physical presence
in Saudi Arabia beyond a series of meetings; it has a permanent
headquarters and a permanent staff. However, it is not underpinned
by any constitutional or other legal authority, nor is there any
obligation on the government to heed the deliberations of National
Dialogue meetings, which is also the case with the majlis-al-shoura.
What has unsurprisingly proven to be largely a discussion forum
on increasingly less pertinent issues, had at least provided a
symbolic inclusiveness which, at its early stages, had seen an
important expression of Shia "acceptability" in the
eyes of the regime, underscored by the sight of radical clerics
associated in the early 1990s with a militant assertion of an
essentially Sunni chauvinism sitting with representatives of the
Shia minority. The latter's exclusion from much of national life
continues to reflect the pivotal role in the Saudi political system
of an ultra-conservative Sunni religious class. Their ascribed
role under the operative legal code in the kingdom in interpreting
Islamic law, and the existence of a historic compact with the
al-Saud, circumscribes the latter's executive authority. This,
and Saudi clerics' (ulema) highly puritanical interpretation
of Islamic theology in which tawhid (or "unity"),
has effectively cast doubt on the Islamic credentials of a number
of key minorities in the kingdom, including the Shia. However,
when influential Sunni clerics had completed the public, as well
as the less photogenic, dialogues with the most senior Shia cleric,
Hassan Al-Saffar and his colleagues, the community of which the
ayatollah is the public focus remains frustrated, even if its
more educated leaders appreciate that some hitherto sacrosanct
ground has been broached. Shia Islamists, at least those of the
more representative cast that almost swept the board in the 2005
municipal election in Qatif (near Al-Khobar), recognise that the
environment in the kingdom is, from their perspective, more accommodating,
but they still see considerable limits.
In essence, the National Dialogue has offered
a more inclusive approach to the Shia and other minorities, raising
the hope rather than providing the guarantee of fairer treatment
for them as fellow Muslims. Their political representatives are
not being brought in as equal discussants, rather the representatives,
for example of the Shia, and of the Ismaili sect, have been taking
part as religious elders. Thus the debate, such as it is, is about
ending individual discrimination; it is not based on a formal
recognition of structural inequality in power. It is not therefore
conceived of as a challenge to the political hierarchy, more as
an exercise in political choreography, which, by bringing such
groups in from the cold, has begun to affect their official treatment.
This though reduces key minorities' desire for political accommodation
within the kingdom to little more than the political expediency
of senior al-Saud.
THE SHIA
FACTOR IN
INTERNAL DECISION-MAKING
Even in this limited respect, the setting back
of the objectives of King Abdullah, and his allies among the more
liberal of the al-Saud princes, reflects existential fears based
on the perceived inter-relation between the political assertiveness
of Saudi Shia and Shia authority in Iraq and Iran, and the influential
role of the latter in southern Iraq and, so Riyadh fears, potentially
in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province in which many Shia
are located. In this, Saudi regime and wider Sunni elite memories
abound of the country's experience in the 1980s Iraq-Iran war,
and the degree of political support among Saudi Shia that the
Iranian revolution engendered. In organisational terms, as well
as popular sympathy, this can link to Iraq, especially under its
new dispensation. Mutual support existed then, and exists now,
between Iran and what for many years was the leading Iraqi Shia
Islamist party, al-Da'wa and its spin off, the Supreme Council
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The leading political
trends among Shia parties in Saudi Arabia have connections and
ideological commonalities with these Iraqi parties. Related to
this is the status of the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, which,
although politically problematic for the Iranian regime under
Iran's present spiritual leader at least, provides the key sources
of emulation (marja'iyya) for Saudi Shia, with Grand Ayatollah
Sistani's status far eclipsing the authority of Ayatollah Hassan
Saffar, who enjoys traditional authority but has comparatively
limited religious credentials.
The reassertion of the Al-Saud's traditional
caution has ended what was shaping up to be a conjoining of the
traditional Gulf practice of a ruler providing an audience for
a broad cross section of the populace to voice their grievances,
with what had been the presentation of fairly concrete political
aspirations. Today senior Al-Saud, whether of a liberal or more
conservative bent, continue to strike different tones on what
had already been an ambiguous leadership commitment to extending
the role of elections, for example. However, the senior al-Saud
agree on the dangers of the war in Iraq and the impact that it
is having on their ability to head off security challenges from
radical Sunni fighters, especially those "schooled"
in the "new Afghanistan" situated just across their
northern border. This is impacting on relations with Iran itself,
and could raise further tensions between members of the Gulf Co-operation
Council (GCC) as attitudes to US and EU policy vis-a-vis Tehran
are liable to vary if the emergent nuclear crisis with Tehran
develops further.
The Iraq war has also emphasised Saudi concerns
about US policy in particular in the region. While Riyadh is pleased
that "strategic dialogue" has recently been formally
institutionalised into a six monthly series of high level meetings,
the kingdom is anxious that, in its eyes, the US and the UK are
preparing to effectively "hand Iraq over" to Shia Islamists
with firm connections with Iran. Saudi Arabia also fears that,
in the medium term, a major drawdown of coalition troops will
occur in Iraq that will not be due to them having helped create
a relatively stable security environment on the ground. Thus Saudi
Arabia may find itself increasingly drawn into a conflict in which
other neighbours of Iraq are vying for influence. From the kingdom's
perspective this may be needed in order to head off a radical
hinterland that would enable a disparate array of forces implacably
opposed to al-Saud rule to operate against it. King Abdullah has
recently been building links to radical Iraqi Shia leader, Moqtada
al-Sadr, in an effort to build pragmatic relations of co-operation
out of their common interest in Iraq not being subject to Iranian
hegemony.
SAUDI ARABIA'S
MISGUIDED JIHAD
EXPORT POLICY
In the aftermath of the coalition invasion of
Iraq, and the ensuing development of greater militant anger inside
the kingdom, Saudi Arabia showed signs of re-running the failed
policy it adopted toward Afghanistan in the 1990s when domestic
radicalism at home was encouraged to find an outlet in territory
removed from the Gulf. Erstwhile militant clerics were allowed
to use public fora on television and the press to effectively
urge angry youth to take the "jihad" to Iraq. While
in 2004 a clampdown was being conducted at home against Saudi
ulema, with a significant number either sacked or "retrained",
fatwas issued without repercussion also legitimised jihad
against the "invading forces" in Iraq. This is not in
overt contradiction, given that senior Saudi officials are becoming
increasingly public in their concern about the consequences for
the kingdom and the wider region of Shia dominance in Iraq. However,
it is understood among Saudi leaders that ultimately this not
a wise policy for the kingdom to pursue, and that the kingdom
is once again playing with fire, given that at some point these
effectively "exported" fighters will return home. Furthermore,
both conservative and more liberal senior al-Saud are aware that
the Iranian dimension that compounded their and the widespread
fears among other Sunni Arab regimes of a Shia regional crescent
cannot be offset by a few thousand foreign Sunni jihadists in
Iraq. Officials keenly wish that the Iraqi/coalition side of
the border could be more effectively policed to prevent the very
"wash-back" that others have effectively encouraged.
SAUDI AND
UK HAVE COMMON
REGIONAL SECURITY
NEEDS
What Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and senior
players in the national security apparatus in the kingdom lack
is a strategy for replacing a coalition drawdown with a role for
neighbours that facilitates internal cooperation, as opposed to
regional conflagration. Saudi Arabia backed away from the seeming
logic of its 2004 proposal that "Muslim forces" be sent
to Iraq, subsequently emphasising that greater security in Iraq
was always meant to be the prerequisite of such an involvement,
and that it had never meant that Saudi forces should be present.
The bottom line of course is that an Iraqi government would have
to invite in any such force. However a role for the forces of
other Muslim states is still possible, even if the contradictory
and controversial involvement of the militaries of Saudi Arabia,
Syria, Iran and Turkey, may be impossible to agree, within and
without Iraq. Ultimately though, a means to provide a framework
for regional cooperation over Iraq, just as Saudi Arabia seeks
such a structure over other regional security issues, is needed.
This provides a coincidence of British national interests with
those of Riyadh, given the UK government's desire to withdraw
its troops from Iraq as promptly as possible.
The enhanced military capability of Iraq's fledgling
national armed forces is the official prerequisite for a UK and
US troop departure. Furthermore, the inevitably embattled new
Iraqi government, assuming one is formed, as scheduled, by April
2006, is unlikely to want anything more than a symbolic drawdown
of coalition troops, at least over the medium term. Therefore
a mechanism should be encouraged by the British government that
can downgrade the western troop presence and gradually introduce
forces of Muslim, possibly Arab states, conceivably under UN "cover",
that are not seen by different sectarian and ethnic interests
in Iraq as overtly partisan. Such forces may have to be confined
to more benign provinces and, central to wider ambitions, to contain
terrorism as part of a combined Iraqi and international border
security force. This would help ally the concerns of Saudi Arabia,
and potential major flashpoints such as the Syrian, Saudi, and,
not least, Iranian borders. Securing an international and Iraqi
national presence on the Turkish border is more complicated, given
the operation of Iraqi Kurdish autonomy. However, the latter could
cooperate with international forces, thereby potentially easing
Turkish disquiet about their border with Iraq.
DOMESTIC TERROR
CLAMPDOWN SHOWS
MIXED RESULTS
While Saudi Arabia considers its options to
be limited regarding the shaping of events inside Iraq, it continues
to pursue a mixture of short term conventional security measures
inside the kingdom against terror attacks, and some steps with
an eye toward shifting the longer term social and economic conditions
in order to tackle the causes of disaffection. There were some
undoubted preventive successes over the 12 months following the
attempted terror attacks in Saudi Arabia in December 2004. Furthermore,
those attempted attacks, at the US consulate in Jiddah, and at
an interior ministry and related facility in Riyadh, suggested
greater desperation on the part of the militants involved than
the efficient operations that were conducted for example against
two residential compounds in 2003. Penetration of the kind witnessed
in two successful attacks in 2004 against energy and petro-chemical
related buildings (as opposed to key infrastructure) was at that
point not an option. However the attack on the US's Jiddah consulate
succeeded in very publicly emphasising the daring of the militants
and their ability to get very close to targets that lacked the
moral ambiguity for many ordinary Saudis of more national targets.
ABQAIQ ATTACK
EMPHASISES VULNERABILITY
Shockingly for the Saudi authorities, in February
2006 two attempted suicide car bombings were conducted at Abqaiq,
near Dhahran, site of the kingdom's major oil processing facility
run by ARAMCO, the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company which
controls all the country's oil and gas facilities. Abqaiq processes
more than a third of the kingdom's daily oil output, from which
it separates associated gas for use in the oil sector or domestic
consumption. Senior spokesmen and those close to the intelligence
establishment emphasised that key alleged al-Qaida-related figures
were killed in the shootout and subsequent clashes. However, other
sources create a more disturbing impression than this apparently
efficient "counter-terror interception" would suggests.
Apparently the first of three perimeter fences of the Abqaiq facility
was broached by men dressed in ARAMCO uniforms and driving ARAMCO
vehicles. Only as they approached the second perimeter fence were
they shot at. The fact that insurgents either had inside assistance
from members of the formal security operation of the state-owned
energy company to the extent that, as was suggested in the attacks
in Yanbu in 2004, they gained vehicles and uniforms, or that security
was sufficiently lapse that these items could be obtained and
entry to the site obtained, is seriously concerning. ARAMCO security
normally provides around 35,000 carefully recruited men, who,
together with state security forces, are responsible for guarding
energy-related infrastructure. This makes the attack all the more
alarming, and emphasises the continued vulnerability of the kingdom.
As failed attempts alone they represent a major psychological
as well as practical blow, and if successful would impact majorly
on oil prices as already limited spare production capacity internationally
would have tightened significantly.
A state of heightened security has in fact remained
an ongoing feature of daily life since 2003, with not just seemingly
tight perimeter security around westerners' residential compounds,
but a succession of roadblocks in the major cities. There are
regular, if until recently reduced, incidents related to the ongoing
terror threat, whether shootouts or intercepted bombs. Much of
this goes unreported in the kingdom and internationally. However
the authorities claimed that the shootout in September 2005 in
Dammam on the Persian Gulf coast prevented what was a plot to
attack oil facilities there. It is unclear how significant that
threat would have been. The Saudis are the first to emphasise
that the security force operating under ARAMCO jurisdiction, together
with the National Guard under King Abdullah's direct command,
are fiercely loyal. As far as oil facilities are concerned, the
security operation of ARAMCO is rigorously policed, tribally incorporated
and devoid of Shia. However, the latter no longer represents the
focus of security concerns, whether infrastructure or other targets.
According to a US investigative reporting programme last year,
Ras Al-Tanoura, on the Persian Gulf, was the target of a conspiracy
that was successfully intercepted. Since the accession of Abdullah
as King in August 2005, despite the traditional caution in political
changes, some senior intelligence and security personnel were
replaced. This contributed to what had been the relative success
of the Saudi security forces in maintaining an absence of actual
or attempted major outrages, but has clearly not ended the security
challenge.
A lot still happens outside of major cities
such as Riyadh, Jiddah, Mecca, Medina and Dammam. Ironically this
was evident in the development of the Saudi intifada in the early
1990s in the province of Qasim in the region of Najd. In Najd,
the supposed "spiritual home" of the Al-Saud regime,
the familiar and relative material sophistication of the capital
and Jiddah are worlds away. Qasim is for many westerners particularly
culturally and geographically remote, where in its towns and villages
the austere values of the unitarian interpretation of Sunni Islam
is a highly pervasive cultural as well as political force. Evidence
persists that, while the more renowned leaders of the first generation
active in the early 1990s demonstrations in Buraidah and Unaizah
especially have been relatively successfully politically incorporated
by the regime, others remain implacably hostile to the rule of
the al-Saud and continue to seek to mobilise this opposition.
This is by no means confined to Qasim and other parts of Najd,
and it can be found throughout the country. Furthermore, the relatively
small number of militant fighters at large in the kingdom, and
their organisation in clandestine cells relies more on effective
communication than territorial bases. Recruitment to such networks
is difficult to define as any one process, but oxygen is effectively
provided by the welter of websites, some produced and managed
outside of the kingdom, whereby dissident clerics continue to
expostulate what are effectively revolutionary views.
TAKING IT
TO THE
RURAL HEARTLANDS
That said, the case of Qasim and other more
remote parts of Najd is an issue in terms of the need for popular
engagement in the well publicised struggle by the state to ensure
that its monopoly of violence is not undermined by a lack of political
legitimacy. Over the last 18 months there has been evidence that
the al-Saud had been able to more effectively police large cities
in less conservative areas. However, the need to ensure cooperation
in areas where the relationship of authority structures to the
state has relied for its legitimacy on the overlap between religious
adherence and al-Saud credibility is more problematic. Part of
the almost secret war (to western eyes and ears at least) is related
to events outside of main towns. On the other hand there is a
clear sense that residents in more rural, as well as urban, areas
are proving more willing to cooperate with security and police
forces in the pursuit of wanted or suspected militants than was
the case two years ago. For one thing, outsiders stand out, always
a factor in the ability for the security apparatus to pursue wanted
militants. However the deeper, more ingrained culture of religious-based
opposition is a more complex challenge that still washes over
with militant opposition and a willingness, at least, to conduct
violence inside the kingdom.
CREDIBILITY GAP
Patently the Saudi "war on terror"
is not just a matter of security force operations, headed by the
"right" personnel. King Abdullah has been at the forefront
of the battle being waged by the Al-Saud for hearts and minds,
beginning when, during his period as de facto leader, terror incidents
were stepped up in the kingdom after the Iraq war. Admonishments
to ordinary Saudis to expel those defined as un-Islamic from their
midst had greater cache in the aftermath of the May 2003 residential
compound attack in Riyadh, and an interior ministry office later
that year in which some Saudis and foreigners seeking passport
or visa renewals were killed along with a few low level employees.
However the al-Saud have a credibility problem that over many
years has developed into a situation where some of the kingdom's
communities have been effectively complicit in the growth of militancy
and in recent years have constituted the pool in which militant
fish have swam. The work that has been done by Abdullah in pressing
the moral case, backed up by pressure on clerics directly and
through more willingness to police their ranks and his success
in securing fatwas in which mainstream ulema as
well as former jihadis explicitly condemn terrorism (albeit
by implication only when conducted in the kingdom as opposed to
Iraq), has been important. The messages that are endlessly conveyed
on TV adverts, debates, newspaper articles; and in large, often
ghoulish, hoardings depicting the after-affects of terror outrages
have played their part too in the culture of condemnation of what
until recently had seemed to seriously threaten the stability
of the country.
THE RIYAL
IN YOUR
POCKET
The bottom line though is that the causes of
discontent that have developed since the first Gulf war in 1991
have revolved around an ideological radicalisation spearheaded
by disaffected ulema in which the al-Saud have been judged
increasingly harshly. Despite the cyclical patronage power of
oil revenue windfalls, radical clerics have been able to exploit
a relative economic downturn that has seen per capita GDP, although
rising again in recent years, remain far below that enjoyed from
the late 1970s to early 1980s. With officially admitted unemployment
running at 10% among a 26 million population rising in excess
of 3% a year, and the state unable to provide meaningful jobs
for its burgeoning numbers of annual school or college leavers,
then economic pressures are likely to continue to cause political
frustrations. In this context radicals are easily able to point
to corruption and the effective political complicity of the al-Saud
leadership in US and UK policies which, at the popular as well
as elite level, are judged to be unconscionable, whether in Iraq
or Palestine. Any increased tension, and even threat of military
action, against Iran would be seen qualitatively differently by
the majority of Saudis to what is happening in Iraq. However it
would certainly run the risk of making the UK's position in Iraq,
and with more traditional Gulf Arab allies, more difficult. Given
the existential dilemmas created by Saudi Shia discontent, it
would certainly weaken our standing among this community as well
as among the majority of Iraqis, which, given the potential for
this relationship to unravel in the south, represents an unwelcome
prospect.
UK-SAUDI RELATIONS
UK policy toward Saudi Arabia should continue
to be based on the strategic significance of the kingdom and the
extent to which the ruling al-Saud are able to continue to serve
as an important ally to this country's interests. This is not
just in terms of the "war on terror", but in some related
aspects including attempts to re-energise the Middle East Peace
Process (MEPP), and in the maintenance of a responsible balance
of national and international commercial interest in sufficient
a surplus of oil on international markets to offset excessive
price pressures. After all, price pressures from geo-political
factors as well as other supply issues affecting non-OPEC countries
and consumer countries' refining capacity, could easily see an
already historically strong oil price rocket further. All of this,
however, emphasises the pivotal importance of Saudi Arabia; not
as a country to simply be appeased and for a blind eye to be turned
toward unacceptable practices, whether fatwas or financial
transfers. Being a "critical friend" also requires the
UK government to encourage realism about the further steps that
may be needed for Saudi Arabia to extend its spare oil production
capacity. This must not be presented in ways that arouse suspicion
that Britain's economic interests are in anything other than a
sufficient international oil capacity surplus over the longer
term. It also requires greater UK government frankness about the
political and administrative changes needed in the kingdom to
enhance accountable and transparent decision-making; a direction
that, if anything, appears to be being setback of late.
FOREIGN POLICY
OPTIONS
Re-energising the MEPP is patently unlikely
to wither violent "jihadi" fighters overnight. King
Abdullah faced major risks domestically and regionally in drawing
up what against Arab resistance in some quarters became known
as the "Arab Peace Plan" underwritten at the Beirut
Arab League summit in 2002. However, the plan's initiation, while
mindful of the immediate flak coming from the US after 9-11, was
done in the longer term awareness of the poisonous impact on Arab-western
relations and on local regimes' ability to manage those relations
that the conflict with Israel continues to present. Those who
saw Abdullah's spelling out of an offer that gave expression to
the long Israeli demand for the Arabs to offer the vision of a
"warm peace" simply as a Saudi attempt to placate the
US administration were somewhat wide of the mark. The Bush administration
never took Abdullah's peace plan seriously, given the political
mood in a Washington reeling from 9-11, but already thinking of
the next phase after Afghanistan, and in an Israel that at the
time was engaging in a military assault on Jenin. The infamous
assault on the West Bank town only emphasised the risks to King
Abdullah in launching the plan in the first place. At the same
time the Israelis' heavy-handed response to the terrorist attacks
upon them in the course of the second intifada only emphasised
the need for the US and for the UK to offset criticism of their
position in the Arab world with a more serious effort to give
the plan some diplomatic ballast. That plan is not dead, however.
In fact it has been resurrected in recent Saudi suggestions of
ways in which Hamas might be eased into international acceptability,
and could, should they be minded, enable Syria to play a role
in the process as Damascus seeks to extricate itself from current
US and European pressure.
IN CONCLUSION
Anglo-Saudi relations would benefit from an
easing of the kingdom's regional unease through more innovative
US and UK approaches to the Iraq question and to the MEPP. These
are plainly not easily done, but they also emphasise how difficult
it is to look at the kingdom in isolation from the regional problems
bedevilling the UK and the US, with whom our policies are closely
linked. Our need to engage with Riyadh on these questions, and
to offer them incentives for greater involvement over regional
issues vital to both their and our security interests, cannot
be separated either from their need to address fundamental problems
at home. In part these are security challenges requiring more
effective interception work by the Saudis, who continue to work
closely with the US and the British in maintenance of effective
intelligence regarding common threats in the region. However,
these are also challenges requiring consistent British pressure
over the pace and nature of political reforms. For the latter
to be effective, attention to popular perceptions of the al-Saud
which feed a climate of delegitimisation, and can thus facilitate
terrorist activity, needs addressing too.
Neil Partrick
Senior Analyst
Economist Intelligence Unit
The Economist Group
March 2006
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