June 20, 2012
Tensions in the House of Saud
By RAY TAKEYH
It all seems civilized and predictable. An aging crown prince passes away and his successor is promptly chosen: Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, another son of the founder of the Saudi kingdom and long-time governor of Riyadh, becomes the new successor to the reigning monarch, King Abdullah.
.But beneath the veneer of stability and consensus, the House of Saud is facing problems that neither the princes nor the international community are paying much attention to.
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Given the political convulsions that have rocked the Middle East over the past two years, Saudi Arabia may appear as an island of stability. The seeming tranquility, however, belies deep-seated structural changes that may yet destabilize the monarchy.
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Saudi Arabia continues to suffer from a high unemployment rate while inflation persistently erodes purchasing power. And with approximately two-thirds of the population under 30 years of age, the kingdom faces the same demographic problems that have bedeviled other states in the region.
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The Saudi government’s policy of fanning sectarian cleavages in the region is having an impact on its own Shiite minority. Some two million Shiites, or about 8 percent of the overall population of 26 million, live in the kingdom, many of them in the oil-rich eastern province. Their demands are hardly revolutionary as they call for greater political participation and religious tolerance. Yet for much of the country’s history, Saudi rulers and clerics have disparaged the Shiites as heretics, at times even denying their physical existence.
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For a while, the situation appeared to improve as King Abdullah seemed genuinely interested in ending the systematic discrimination against the Shiites. But the Shiite community’s hope that Abdullah would usher in tolerance and pluralism is dissipating in the sectarian tensions that have spread through the region.
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For much of its history, the House of Saud has predicated its authority on religious legitimacy and economic development. This is a dangerous brew — relying on reactionary Islamist forces only engenders extremism of the type that can potentially threaten the monarchy itself.
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Thus far, the Wahhabi clerical class has complied with the monarchy’s frequent requests to sanction its various measures. However, such compliance has come at a price: the imposition of austere cultural measures that are alienating the growing middle class, which is demanding a relaxation of some of the country’s strict social traditions.
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Trading financial rewards for political passivity contains its own set of risks, should oil prices decline. Given the state’s existing financial burdens and growing demographic challenges, higher volumes of oil production may be required just to sustain its existing budgetary allocations.
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Although this may not seem like an urgent problem, in the next two decades, Saudi Arabia will have to move toward a more rational fiscal policy involving reduced state expenditures and even taxation to ensure its essential solvency. At this point, a political basis for such measures does not exist, so the monarchy has to rely on the simple outlay of funds.
The irony of the current situation is that the monarchy can still afford to liberalize without losing power. Saudi politics today are no longer a simple contest between violent Islamist extremists and the monarchy. A political center has evolved over the years with a moderate intellectual cohort and an equally moderate religious class coming together in issuing various petitions for greater liberalization of the state.
.This scenario does not involve the disbanding of the monarchy, but rather an elected parliament, an independent judiciary and an end to official corruption. The mistake that many Arab regimes have made is to smother calls for incremental reform by promising more money. That is a trap the Saudi monarchy is finding itself in as it responds to calls for change with a combination of more repression and more financial benefits in the shape of increased salaries and housing allowances.
The security and stability of Saudi Arabia is a major concern for the United States. The typical advice to Washington is not to be judgmental and not to push the kingdom to reform, given the need to forge a common policy toward Iran. But such pragmatism may increasingly prove counterproductive. The stability of the House of Saud cannot be guaranteed through religious militancy and economic rewards to a restive citizenry.
.The function of an ally is to stress the implausibility of such an approach, and not to sanction it under the banner of expediency. This may require tough and frank diplomacy. But that is the way that both American and Saudi interests would best be served.
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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