How secure is Saudi royal family?

Press, 11 July 1980, Page 12

How secure is Saudi royal family?

By

PATRICK SEALE

The House of Saud is determined to remc’n in the saddle. It has taken security measures of two bi. d sorts, the first diplomatic, the second designed to strengthen the family’s hold on every lever of power in the kingdom.

On the diplomatic front, the most striking recent development is that Saudi Arabia is now rebuilding its bridges with Egypt, eighteen months after it, along with other Arab States, consigned President Sadat to political quarantine because of his treaty with Israel. Breaking with Egypt had thrust Saudi Arabia into the arms of its powerful radical Gulf neighbour Iraq. It was a tough decision for the kingdom to take, and one strongly contested within the royal family. It is known that King Khalid overruled the counsels of Crown Prince Fahd in insisting on the public breach with Cairo.

Now the kingdom is doing some prudent back-tracking. The Saudis appear to have concluded that, in the present troubled times, they cannot afford a souring of relations with Washington nor a permanent alienation from Egypt. Egypt is, after all, . a strong, stable. Muslim country w’t’Ji, in'" 4 - relevantly for Saudi Arabia, has no ambitions in the Gulf. Moreover, Iraq’s undoubted ambitions in the Gulf, now given scope by the collapse of Iranian power, have revived Riyadh’s ancient distrust of Bagdad. The most overt sign so far of Saudi Arabia’s reconciliation with Egypt was Prince Fahd’s recent interview with the “Washington Post,” in which he declared that if Israel were to announce its intention to withdraw from the occupied, territories the Saudis would do all they could to invob-e the Arabs in the peace process. This was clearly a gesture to Sadat, and a blow to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which the Prince significantly failed to mention.

The Saudis, who fundamentally dislike taking sides and making enemies, clearly want to regain their role as conciliators of interArab disputes — a role which offers the best promise of security. But can a country so wealthy and of such global importance continue to be run by a family? The answer is that the House of Saud is no pushover. Numbering more than

4000 princes, with carefully fostered tribal links and elaborate -patronage, the family is like a network of arteries, veins and capillaries circulating through the body politic of Saudi Arabia. No department of state no centre of influence, no major project is without its directing prince. In a very real sense the family is the state.

Moreover, it has long practised taking sensible precautions against external and internal challenges. The most important single precaution which it has taken over the years is to draft royal princes into the armed and thus ensure its control of this traditional instrument of Middle East revolution.

In imposing “national service” on its sons — at least 50 princes are serving officers — the family

learned from the unhappy experience of ruling elites in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, who left the army to the lower orders and were overthrown by them in time. One of the finest fruits of this Saudi policy is the 31-year-old Prince Khalid binSultan. At the age of 16 he was directed towards a military career, first as an officer cadet at Sandhurst, later at Leavenworth Staff College, Kansas. Last month he passed out with distinction from America’s prestigious Air War College at Montgomery, Alabama — the only member of any royal family ever to go through its hoops. Simultaneously he took an M.A. in political science at Auburn University. Prince Khalid, a colonel in the Saudi army, is the kingdom’s air defence chief, in command of a country-wide network crucial to both internal and external security. In view of the vastness of its deserts, Saudi Arabia scarcely risks being invaded by land, and its infantry is relatively puny. The main threat to its cities and the vital oilfields is from the air.

Report has it that this large young man with the confidence and somewhat foppish elegance of a maharajah is being groomed as a future commander of the entire armed forces of the kingdom. Not only is Prince Khalid the eldest son of the powerful Defence Minister, Prince Sultan, whose department last year spent some $lB billion, roughly a third of the total Saudi budget, making the kingdom the seventh biggest defence

spender in the world; but Khalid is also the eldest of all the sons of the seven brothers who constitute the heart of the Saudi power system.

The brothers are variously known as the al-Fahd brothers, after the first among them. Crown Prince Fahd, or as “the Sudeiri Seven,” after the family name of the mother who bore them to the founder of modern Arabia, King Abd al-Aziz.

To be the eldest of the second generation is itself a claim to prominence in a family where age dictates precedence. Besides Khalid at air defence, a triad of his cousins control the air force (Prince Fahd al-Abdallah), the heavy armour (Prince Khalid bin-Bandar), and external intelligence (Prince Turki bin-Faysal). These are second echelon princes, well positioned in strategic jobs across the kingdom. High policy is in the hands of their fathers and uncles.

The ultimate source of authority lies in an “inner circle” chaired by Crown Prince Fahd (Prime Minister), and including Prince Abdallah (head of the National Guard), Prince Sultan (Defence), Prince Naif (Interior), Prince Salman (Governor of Riyadh), and Prince Saud al-Faysal (Foreign Minister). • King Khalid is of course senior to the lot of them, but he pulls rank only rarely. He is well liked, although without much charisma, and, somewhat in the manner of a Western constitutional monarch, he sees his job as being concerned with protocol, -with making the family visible to his subjects, with being a figure head to be looked up to and to take the blame when things go wrong.

He is not a political challenge to Fahd, but he can and does overrule his brothers when he feels strongly about an issue, as he did over breaking ties with Egypt.

It is no secret that the King, who has had open heart surgery, is in poor health, not improved by his resort to traditional bedouin medicine. Last February he fell gravely ill after taking a heart stimulating herb. Earlier, when he came to London for a hip operation, his doctors detected severe inflammation — caused by “ironing” the limb, the bedouin notion of heat treatment to relieve pain.

Some alarmist Western reports have suggested that the King’s passing may usher in a family power

struggle, with unpredictable consequences. The truth is both more humdrum and more reassuring. It can be said with more certainty than about most countries that the transition of power is predetermined: Fahd, now 58, will become King, Abdallah, 56 — next in line — will become Crown Prince. In time, if death does not muddle the pattern, Abdallah will be King and his Crown Prince will be Sultan, now aged 52. When King Faysal, the dominant figure of his country, was assassinated in 1975, the transition was swift and smooth. There is no reason to believe it will not be so again. Precedence is rigidly observed in the family, and precedence depends on age. Even a day’s seniority makes a difference, which each prince knows and accepts, conscious that the passing years will inevitably float him upwards. Obedience is automatically given to one’s elders and age even determines the order in which the princes enter a room. The fact that everyprinceling plays by the rules gives the whole enterprise stability.

Each of the three top princes in the line of immediate succession to King Khalid has a distinct personality. Fahd, a consummate political animal with 25 years of experience in world affairs, has matured perceptibly in the last six years into the powerful chief executive of “Saudi Arabia, Inc.,” as cool, tough, abrasive and as hard-working as the boss of any giant corporation. Abdallah is more openhearted and more traditional. He prides himself on being a bedouin. He is more critical than Fahd of United States policy and Western ways, and has little time for the subtle games of diplomacy. He suffers from a severe

stutter, a handicap for a man in public life. The rising star of the triumvirate is Prince Sultan, whose popularity increases daily. He is active, reads widely about politics and international strategy, and. as the family trouble-shoot-er. heads all the key committees, not only in defence matters but in other areas of high policy, including oil. During the 11-year reign of the late King Faysal, Prince Sultan shadowed the King, accompanying him on all his trips, acting as his closest adviser. This gave Sultan a sense of leadership and earned him the admiration of younger members of the royal family, as well as that of top technocrats. « Among the advisers to the inner circle, the most prominent are three able commoners, the Oil Minister, Zaki Yamani, the Industry Minister, Ghazi al-Gosaibi, and the Planning Minister, Hisham Nazer. The rumour is that the last two are gaining still greater importance, while Yamani, so wellknown in the West* may shortly be kicked upstairs into a consultative post. However skilled, however respected in the West, such commoners must defer to the family which employs them.

Such are the men who are responsible for steering the kingdom through the threats that menace it.

Essentially the threats come from three sources: the large population of immigrant workers excluded from the more splendid benefits of the Saudi welfare state: the minority of Shia’s Muslims, concentrated in the

oil producing Eastern Province, who in this Sunni Muslim country are in many ways second-class citizens; and, most importantly, the dissension between modernists and traditionalists about the future course of Saudi society. On the whole the royal family is on the side of modernism, united in wanting to use the exploding oil wealth to endow its country with twentieth century — which really means Western — benefits. But in this bastion of Islamic orthodoxy, guardian of the holiest Muslim shrines, the force of religious conservatism are of course strong.

Religion is taken very seriously by the governing princes, but most of them agree that Islam is compatible with modern progress, that the Koran and the microchip are not in conflict.

The seizure of the. Mecca mosque by Muslim fanatics focused their minds on this

issue. Clearly, the clash between traditional and modern visions of the country’s future could, if left unchecked, tear Saudi society apart. So far the family’s reaction has been to tighten security measures, on the one hand’, and on the other to inject money into the tribal areas where' unrest has been brewing. There is also cautious talk of introducing a consultative assembly of notables to widen the range of advice reaching the top. But security comes first. Internal security, which used to be run in harness with external intelligence by Prince Turki, has been hived off and put under a commoner. the competent General Angari. The family has further consolidated its grip on remote areas of this far-flung kingdom by posting yet more sons of the great Abd al-Aziz as provincial governors.

The youngest of his 33 sons, the 36-year-old Frince Mugrin, a former Ligtning pilot, has been sent to govern Hail in central Arabia (from where many of the Mosque rebels came). Other appointments are Prince Abu Illah to Tabuk, site of a major military base near the Jordan border, Prince Abd al-Majid to Shurura in the south, and Prince Majid, a disciplined, modest, pious man, to take over as governor of Mecca itself where his predecessor had clearly fallen down on the job. Most central of all, measures ar being taken to limit the security problems posed for Saudi Arabia by the pilgrimage, which last year brought in 1.5 million people from all over the world — some of whom showed a worrying tendency to stay. Given the near-impossibil-ity of screening this vast throng, the Saudis are asking the pilgrims’ home governments to do preliminary screening for them, and to persuade devout Muslims that one trip to Mecca in a lifetime is enough.

Most native Saudis like to see the House of Saud taking its responsibilities seriously and coming to grips with the problems. They identify their new prosperity with the family which presides over the country’s fabulous wealth and does so much to distribute it. But for the foreseeable future, the main protection of the regime must be the continued discipline of the family, and the continued conviction of even its youngest and rashest mem-be'-s that they hang together or hang separately. — Copyright — Observer.