It is the place where God and mammon meet, the Arab state where fabulous wealth and western values vie for power with Islam. But, in the face of increasing anti-Americanism and the war on terror, how long can Saudi Arabia remain stable? Edward Pilkington visits the kingdom that rarely opens its doors to journalists Tuesday July 2, 2002 The Guardian Saudi Arabians have a colloquial name for the people of Buraydah. They call them mutawwa. A respectful translation is "deeply devout Muslims". The phrase is formally applied to the religious police who enforce the kingdom's strict moral code. A less flattering interpretation, given privately by westernised liberals and expats, is "fanatics". Buraydah sits at the very heart of the Saudi kingdom, an oasis surrounded by nothing but desert for hundreds of miles in all directions. The terrain is harsh, pounded by a sun that will push the temperature to an extreme 50 degrees within the next few weeks. The residents - Bedouins whose lives only 50 years ago were entirely dependent on the camel - hold views that match the fierce terrain. For decades the town resisted the introduction of the radio and telegraph as un-Islamic. When the Saudi royal family began educating girls for the first time in the early 1960s, they protested so forcefully that the army was brought in. Now there is a new focus for their sun-baked resistance. We are sitting in the shade of a date palm on a farm that lies on the edge of the desert. The sun is beginning to fall, taking the edge off the searing heat. A group of six prominent local religious men are growing animated as they sip sweet mint tea and coffee suffused with cardamom. "This is the centre of Saudi Arabia," the owner of the farm declares. (Like the others, he requests anonymity - though the regime is very slowly relaxing censorship, an ill-considered comment can still invite a late-night visit from the ministry of the interior.) "It is pure here. There is no mixing with other cultures." A quietly spoken, bookish man who leads prayers at his local mosque says they have nothing against the west. But nor will they let their religion be infected by western materialism. "We allow all sorts of winds to come to us, but we don't let them blow us into the air. Mixing is one reason why people stray from righteousness. It is our duty to make sure that we bring our religion back to purity." It is their duty, too, to protect their fellow Muslims wherever they are threatened. The group is angry now. Voices are raised. Fists clenched. They have a new enemy. "Bush is the puppet of Israel, and he is killing our brothers," a teacher says. "We want a jihad to save our brothers in Palestine." The conversation turns to September 11. "Who shall bear the blame for what happened on that day? America. Suppose you put a cat or a dog into a room and beat it over and over again. What would happen? It would bite you. That is what happened on September 11: the dog bit back." I ask the farmer, was the attack good or bad? "When I see what America has done all over the world since the attack happened, yes, I start to think this was a good thing." The teacher butts in: "Osama bin Laden. Now he is a hero, for all the oppressed, all over the world." September 11 came as a great shock to the Saudi kingdom. A country that prided itself on its unique blend of deep religious conviction and western-style development suddenly appeared to have a problem. Not only were 15 of the 19 hijackers Saudis (and Bin Laden himself Saudi-born), but many of their convictions were based on precisely those austere fundamentalist Islamist views of purity and jihad that are so staunchly adhered to in Buraydah and which have formed an essential part of the Saudi state since its creation. Saudis are still largely in denial about the events of that terrible day, as a rare tour of the country known for its secrecy and usually closed to foreign journalists, has shown. From all parts of the country, and at all social levels, there is a refusal to accept any real responsibility. "You cannot judge 12 million people by the behaviour of 15"; "Bin Laden chose the 15 as a ruse to discredit the royal family"; "How come there were no Jews in the twin towers - did Mossad do it?" people said. But the question of why Saudis were so central to the attack will not go away. Last week the Saudis revealed they had captured 13 men linked to al-Qaida who were believed to be planning attacks on US installations. There were reports of missiles and launchers being found near the main US military base at al-Kharj. A few days before that three Saudi men, suspected of being a "sleeping" al-Qaida cell who were planning attacks on on British and US ships, were arrested in Morocco. There have been 10 successful or attempted bomb attacks against British and other western expats in Saudi Arabia in the past 18 months. Five Britons are in jail facing sentences ranging from 18 years to execution for the bombings, which the Saudi authorities blame on a mafia war between illegal British drinking gangs. But the latest killing of a Briton, 10 days ago, combined with a bomb planted in a US couple's car on Saturday, has prompted new fears that Saudi insurgents lie behind the attacks. If all that should give intelligence chiefs in Washington and London food for thought, there is more. Hatred of America as a result of its support for Israel has reached such a pitch that liberal commentators fear the country is being destabilised and that a whole new generation of potential bombers is being spawned. At the centre of this heady swirl is the austere strain of Islam that characterises the Saudi state and which the people of Buraydah best personify. It is the original Islamist fundamentalism, created in the 18th century by a Saudi priest called Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab, who believed that the faith had strayed from the pure path. Wahhabism, as it is known in the west (Saudis do not recognise the term - they use Salifism), has been umbilically connected to the Saudi state from its inception. Sheikh Mohammed's daughter married one of the founding fathers of the royal house of Saud and the Al Sheikh and Al Saud families have since frequently interbred. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was united in 1932, largely through the military might of the holy warriors of Wahhabism. In return for their support, the first king, Ibn Saud, entered a pact with the Wahhabi clerics, a covenant under which the imams would be left in charge of all personal morality, law and culture, while the royal family would have a free hand in running the government, economy and foreign policy. When oil came six years later, and with it fabulous wealth, the royal house of Saud forged ahead with a development programme of breathtaking daring, converting villages into modern cities, desert paths into motorways, camels into Cadillacs (gold ones in the case of the princes). The infrastructure of the country was transformed beyond recognition in just half a century. Yet, under the covenant, the mindset of the Saudis - the preserve of the religious men - remained embedded in the stony desert austerity of Wahhabism. The result is a country of astonishing contrasts. Riyadh is a hyper-modern city with ancient social customs. It is Dallas, Texas, policed by the Taliban. Women entirely shrouded in black abayas , with even their eyes covered, go shopping at a Harvey Nichols inside a Norman Foster building. Men pour into the mosque under an enormous neon sign advertising Sony, as if they were entering an electrical goods sale rather than a place of worship. McDonald's is seemingly on every street corner, and yet it closes its doors five times a day for prayers - making Saudi Arabia unique as a country where the most powerful franchise on earth bends its knees in front of an even stronger brand: Allah. Staggering contradictions run deeply through the kingdom's relations with the outside world too. There is only one power that matters for Saudi, and that is the US. It was America that backed the country's initial oil explorations, and it is America that still bankrolls the economy with $100bn a year in oil revenues. In return, the house of Saud sends its sons and daughters to American universities to learn western ways. Saudi has spent $45bn on US fighter jets and other military equipment, and tolerates the presence of 5,000 US troops stationed here since the Gulf war. This is more than a marriage of convenience. It is love. And yet ask an average Saudi to define where the kingdom sits globally and he will say that it is the centre of the Muslim world. For much of the past 20 years Afghanistan, not America, has been the focus for the mutawwa of Buraydah and their countrymen. The state actively encouraged about 10,000 young Saudis to go to Afghanistan during the 1980s and 90s to fight the Soviet invasion in the name of jihad and purity. They were led by Bin Laden, a man seeped in the teachings of Wahhabism, who then enjoyed official favour. Among them were 15 young Saudis - many from good middle-class families, most of whom had been through religious training at one of the 60 Saudi schools and colleges dedicated to Islamist teaching - who went on to become the September 11 hijackers. There was no perceived problem with this at the time. As an Islamist state, it was the duty of the kingdom to fight the kafir or infidel wherever he threatened Muslim brothers - in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. But then September 11 came along, and the chickens came home to roost. It is 4.30am in al the Nahda district of Jeddah, Saudi's second-largest city, and about 200 men are shuffling into the mosque for dawn prayers spluttering and hawking as they come. A fundamentalist Salafi cleric called Sheikh Adnan Zhrani, begins to call in a fine baritone voice. He is a huge bear of a man, so rotund that when he gets on his knees and prostrates himself to Allah it marks a considerable physical achievement. "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," (God is great God is great), he chants, the sweet sing-song words floating from loudspeakers on the minaret across the neighbourhood. After prayers, he takes me to his small dishevelled office, which has a pile of old clothes in the corner awaiting shipment to the Palestinian occupied territories. Like everyone else in the kingdom - from prince to pauper - Sheikh Adnan is angry with America. "A child is not born aggressive. But if you give him something and tell him it is his, then snatch it away from him, he will react. That is natural." America is the world's only superpower, he goes on to say, so it should behave towards other countries as father to child, not master to slave. It is guilty of double standards - supporting the strong (Israel) against the weak (Palestinians). Sheikh Adnan has publicly spoken out against the September 11 attacks, and he continues to argue for peace. But he says that he is losing the argument. "If you ask me, 'Does the man in the street side with Bin Laden?' the answer is absolutely, yes. Today, if you criticise Bin Laden people will look at you as if you are mad. They think Bin Laden is good." Could another attack happen? "Bin Laden's network has been smashed, so it is no longer so easy. But if the organisation existed and people had the power to attack then yes, they would." There is chilling confirmation from outside the mosque. It is 5am now and the men of prayer are shuffling away into the gloom, still spluttering and hawking. An older man with a salt-and-pepper beard who spent two years in England ("I loved the Guardian, it was my paper") gives an insight into what Sheikh Adnan calls the views of the man on the street. "For 20 years America has been sucking the blood of the Muslims. I respect the American people, but not the government. It is under the power of the Jews." He claims to have known two of the hijackers. So what does he think of Bin Laden? "He is a great man. I am glad about what he did to demolish America. We now know that America is the first enemy of the Muslims." Rhetoric, certainly. Bravado, probably. But it is repeated so many times and in so many places that there is no dismissing it. And it is set against worrying economic and demographic statistics that can only heighten the sense of alarm. On the one hand are stagnant oil prices, which make up 75% of Saudi's income, on the other hand a massive population explosion, among the fastest in the world. More than half of the population of 15 million Saudis (discounting an additional 5 million expats) is now younger than 20. The combination produces an unemployment rate of 30% among men (95% for women because of the Wahhabi injunction against women in the workplace). Every year, 400,000 more young men graduate into immediate joblessness. Add to that the prevailing fundamentalist religious climate and a white-hot wave of anger towards America over Palestine, and you have a cocktail that is lively, perhaps even explosive. Dr Khalil al Khalil, a lecturer at Riyadh's main Islamic university, teaches 600 students a year and estimates that more than half are pro-Bin Laden. "We want our young people to be the raw material for a better future. But if they are left with no guidance, with no positive way forward, then yes, they will be the raw material for violence." Dr Khalil despairs at the Bush adand he continues to argue for peace. But he says that he is losing the argument. "If you ask me, 'Does the man in the street side with Bin Laden?' the answer is absolutely, yes. Today, if you criticise Bin Laden people will look at you as if you are mad. They think Bin Laden is good." Could another attack happen? "Bin Laden's network has been smashed, so newspapers are daily filled with graphic descriptions of Palestinian deaths and of the American-made Apache helicopters and tanks that caused them. The reverberations are being felt at every level. Big Saudi investors are threatening to pull their money out of the US and redirect it to China. A consumer boycott of US businesses has spread throughout the country, hitting outlets such as Starbucks and McDonald's. The boycott is playing itself out in curious ways. A young man dressed in jeans and T-shirt in an internet cafe in a relatively cosmopolitan part of Jeddah told me that he had just bought a new car. He had wanted a Chevrolet but at the last minute switched to a Mercedes because of the boycott. That one purchase will not cause Chevrolet executives any loss of sleep. But if America is serious in its struggle to protect itself from further attacks, then the hatred of this most westernised of Saudi youths should give someone in the beltway some pause. It is one of the great ironies of the war on terrorism that in trying to hold at bay this tide of Saudi anger against the US, the Bush administration is having to rely on one of the world's most feudal political systems. The house of Al Saud rules the kingdom as a family fiefdom. It is monarchy as we knew it pre-1688, except that power is not passed from father to son but from brother to brother. And there are plenty of them. No one knows the exact figure, but there are thought to be about 7,000 princes in this most archaic of autocracies. It is a regime famed, since the advent of oil money, for its ostentatious wealth and corruption. Saudis rarely talk with disrespect about the princes, but just occasionally someone will open up and reveal their deep resentment. A retired schoolteacher took me for a ride through the outskirts of Jeddah. He drove through a huge swath of derelict land. He explained that it had been grabbed by a group of princes for their own profit - they were selling it off plot by plot for homes at prices most families could scarcely afford. Further on we drove past a succession of walled palaces. The teacher's commentary grew progressively more bitter. At the top of this princely heap sits King Fahd, an ailing and fading figure who has passed day-to-day running of the kingdom to the heir apparent, Crown Prince Abdullah. In the post-September 11 world, the prince's job must rank as one of the least desirable. He is beleaguered from all directions. America glares down at him and demands, in the name of the war on terror, that he reins in the Islamists. To the side of him there are his brothers (there are plenty of them too: his father, Ibn Saud, hardly a model of family planning, had 34 sons) jostling and vying for power. And below him is the seething mass of young unemployed men, inspired by the hardline religious ideals of Wahhabism and inflamed with anger towards America. The good news is that if anyone can hold things together it is Prince Abdullah. He commands loyalty among many Saudis because of his own devout religious beliefs and because he has tried to put an end to the more outrageous excesses of his relatives. To some extent, September 11 has helped him shore up popular support, drawing public attention away from the corruption and iniquity of the regime. The country's dissidents and pro-western reformers have abandoned their dreams of democracy because they now fear elections would return a government of bearded extremists. So much for the good news. The problem is that, as hatred of America grows, the regime's intimate association with the US looks daily more precarious. Prince Abdullah has taken steps to distance himself from Washington - he refused to allow the al-Kharj base to be used in the bombing of Afghanistan and has similarly rebuffed any talk of an attack on Iraq. He also launched his own ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, which would see Arabs accepting Israel in return for the creation of a full Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders. All that needs to be done is for Bush to reciprocate by forcing Israel to end its occupation. There's the rub. Bush's response has been a terrible silence, broken only by his denunciation of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, which has merely intensified most Saudis' feelings of righteous indignation. The longer Bush allows the Middle East crisis to slide, the greater the anger of the Saudi people, the closer the kingdom creeps towards the edge. So how bad could it get? A deterioration in already-strained relations could put an end to the 50-year-old American love story. If Prince Abdullah has to choose between losing the trust of his own people and throwing out the US military, he will throw out the US military. His advisers consistently deny it, but if he has to go further and wield the notorious "oil weapon" - as happened with such devastating effect in 1973 - he may be tempted to do that too. More ominous still, there are signs that the religious hardliners, the followers of Wahhab, are on the march. No one mentions it by name, but the historical precedent of a monarchy being overthrown through a popular anti-American insurrection is omnipresent. It sits in the corner of the room, like a familiar but unwelcome dog: Iran. "This is a time-bomb ticking away," says a leading liberal dissident. "The evidence points in one direction: the religious people are the coming power. One day they will reach a point when they will go public - and that's when the real problems begin." "Israel's actions, with the US behind them, are putting Saudi stability at risk," says a western diplomat. "They are exposing the strains and weaknesses of the system." King Fahd's nephew, Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki, fears that if the Bush administration keeps on its current pro-Israeli course, if it keeps conducting its Middle East policy "in absolutely the wrong way", it will "swing the opinion of the silent majority into thinking that the west is just playing tricks. It will demoralise people. We do not have long." The sun has set now in Buraydah, and the last of the day's five prayers have been said. I am taken to see a radical sheikh who is well known in the kingdom as a firebrand and a thorn in the side of the royal family. He sits at one end of a large carpeted room, surrounded by his followers and students, as large white fans turn slowly above us. I ask him whether he think it is time for religious figures such as himself to formally enter politics. "Religious people have a natural ability and right to be involved in politics. They are the right people to lead." There is a deep rumbling going on underneath the surface of Saudi society, he says. "There is so much anger and so much hatred in people's hearts towards America that they are losing their balance. This is a place where people can do anything. Nothing can be predicted any more." |