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A lecture
by Dr Madawi Al-Rasheed*
Delivered
to the Gulf Cultural Club on 18th March,
2004-03-19
Introduction:
Dr Saeed Shehabi: Welcome to another meeting of the Gulf
Cultural Club where we discuss important topics and issues
that of concern to us all whether as Arabs, Muslims or human
beings. The aim is to create an atmosphere of dialogue,
discourse, debate. The hope is to be able to over our
differences in a civilised way and avoid misconceptions,
stereotyping and prejudice.
The events in
the Middle East have always been topical and a source of
irritation to international politicians. Of course they are
more of an irritation to the people themselves of the
region.
If you ask any
person what is the most critical problem in the Middle East
apart from the Arab-Israeli conflict, apart from the ups
and downs of the oil market democracy will always be in the
forefront of concerns in the region. Iraq has changed now,
the United States is promising to make Iraq as an icon of
democracy in the Middle East. Colin Powell two days ago
stressed this point again. He promised the world that the
Middle East would start democratising along the experience
of Iraq – whether that will happen or not we do not know. We
hope, of course, that Iraq will settle down and we will have
a good democratic example in that big country. The events in
Iraq have given have had an effect on the region and Saudi
Arabia is one of the most important countries to feel these
reverberations. The rulers of the Saudi Kingdom are aware of
the dangers surrounding the whole region, if democracy does
not take place.
Last week
there was a delegation from the Saudi Shurah Council to this
country. The came, they met people, they spoke to the press
they went to the House of Commons and they spoke to
politicians. The aim was to give a rosy picture, of course,
of what is going on in the Saudi kingdom. Saudi Arabia is a
very important country – it is central to the Arab world and
to the Muslim world and to whole world. It is taken as an
indicator of the tendencies in the region. So whatever
happens in Saudi Arabia will determine the future of
democracy in the Middle East. As a person from the Gulf I
would take it as an indication of how serious the USA is
with regards to democracy in the Gulf.
I would
challenge anyone who can come and tell me today that there
is democracy in the Gulf. Yes, there may be some
experimentation in Kuwait but is that democracy? I do not
think we have reached a position where anybody can claim
that there are democratic institutions. We are really
calling for a Westminster style democracy but we are calling
for what the people of the region have been calling for – a
degree of freedom, a degree of respect for the intellect of
the people – especially the new generation which has been
exposed to the West, modern values, to the degree of freedom
that is available in the West and in the world.
We do not want
to be alienated from our culture, we do not want to oppose
Islamic values and Islamic culture and we do not want to
believe that Islam as a culture and with regard to values is
contradictory to the values of freedom of expression and
various other freedoms.
r Al-Rasheed:
Those of us who have made Saudi Arabia our profession in
the sense that there are among us historians, social
scientists, anthropologist, political scientists they have
never been so busy in their lives. It seems that Saudi
Arabia has been in a coma for a very long time and suddenly
it woke. When this happened it has been extremely difficult
of us to concentrate on our teachings, our research without
becoming involved in every day current affairs specifically.
So we find ourselves thorn between writing our books and
between following the news because there is a lot happening.
What has been
happening in Saudi Arabia? Over the last year we have had
several activities that are rather unusual in a country like
Saudi Arabia. We have had petitions – I call it the
petition syndrome. The petitions themselves are not new. We
have had them throughout the history of the country but they
have never been so regular as they have been over the last
year.
Some of you
may have heard the flashy titles of the petitions: How
we co-exist which was submitted in April 2002? Another
was A Vision of the Present and Future of the Country,
submitted in January 2003. In September 2003, There
was also A Call for the Leaders and the People.
This was one of the main documents submitted last year
calling for a constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia. More
recently in February we had another of these petitions
Together on the Road which was submitted and signed by
900 people.
What does this
mean? It means a lot of things. First of all it means that
there are people working in the country who are trying to do
something. They have used the method of the petition whereby
they get together, they sign a letter and they address it to
the ruler of the community.
Let us look at
the people who sign the petitions. Unfortunately some of
them are in prison tonight and there are six or seven people
who were imprisoned on Tuesday and almost all of them took
part in the various petitions that were submitted throughout
2003 – 2004. Those people, the ones who are in prison
tonight and the ones who are free (and I don’t know how long
they will be free for) include what we might call Islamists
which is a label which has become very popular. They also
include people who call themselves liberals or are
so-called by others. There is a new category of people –
the Islamist liberals. It is almost like somebody who is in
between – neither an Islamist nor a liberal but somebody who
is trying hard to combine the two. They also include men and
women and religious minorities – people who in the past had
never taken part in a formal ‘joint venture’. They have done
their own thing and here I particularly refer to the Shia
communities. They have done their own thing in the past,
they have staged their own opposition but throughout the
last year we have seen they have come together and taken
part in a joint activity with the mainstream society.
What are they
demanding? They are demanding basically and simply
political participation, certain freedoms that people living
in this country and in other parts of the Middle East enjoy
to a certain extent. It is only a matter of degree. What
kind freedoms are they asking for? The freedom to say what
they want to say, freedoms to come together and organise
themselves in associations and unions, human rights to be
respected, a change in the form of state from an absolute
monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. This means that the
ruling group is kept at the top level but the everyday
running of the state would be taken by people. They are also
calling for a separation of powers so we do not have a
judiciary that receives orders from people high up. They are
calling for all these reforms because it is a critical
moment in the history of Saudi Arabia.
When I was
writing on Saudi Arabia in the 1990s I thought the Gulf War
(the first, second or third depending on which language you
use) the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 –91 was one of the
cataclysmic events that actually changed the character of
Saudi Arabia. It has polarised the discourse and it has also
contributed to the decline in the credibility of ruling
group for reasons I do not want to go into now because this
is history. Let us concentrate on the 21st
century.
One might say
are all these demands not what America is asking for. And
here is the problem: this internal move towards greater
freedoms (freedom of association, an independent judiciary,
the limitations on the powers of the ruling group) happen to
be the rhetoric of the United States. And here comes the
problem. When democracy or even in other kinds of discourse
when shurah is an American demand what happens to this
demand? America’s democracy through the great Middle East
project, has been popularised in the Arab media and outside
the Arab world. Unfortunately this has generated what I call
a primitive and superficial nationalism on behalf of Saudis.
Obviously if America calls for it then it must be bad. This
superficial and primitive nationalism has been capitalised
on by the ruling group. We are the indigenous reformers, we
are the local reformers, we reform according to our own
historical and cultural specificity – so nobody can dictate
reforms from outside. But in doing that they have generated
a kind of solidarity around the ruling group which does not
actually exist and does not deserve to exist.
This has been
translated by some Saudis as greater support for the
leadership and the problem arises from the fact that there
are different interpretations of the causes of the problem
or the crisis. Unfortunately there are three visions of the
problem. One vision, that is America’s vision, which also
happens to coincide with the vision of the state, with the
ruling group in particular and that is that the problem lies
in religion. We heard that throughout probably the last 20 –
30 years anybody who has observed the Middle would find out
America considered Shia Islam the idea of martyrdom, the
idea of dying for faith as the ultimate satan, the ultimate
threat to the international world order. So for America and
also for the Arab world, the Sunni majority in the Arab
world, Shia Islam in the Khomeini version, was regarded as
the real threat.
Things have
changed since then. We find that now Sunni Islam is
considered to be the ultimate threat to world order,
security and stability in the world. So let us not fool
ourselves. I do not think religion is the problem. The
problem in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world is
neither Shia nor Sunni Islam. It is neither Wahabi Islam or
another type of Islam. It not Arab Islam which verses some
other form of Islam (Asian or African) which is more
tolerant or Sufi Islam. The problem in our country
and in the rest of the Arab world is political oppression.
Political oppression yields some kind of theological
orientation that thrives on the basis of being to close to
the centre of power. So whatever America says and whatever
the Saudi ruling group says, the problem is not in religion.
It is in the political oppression that generates theology
which is out of touch with this world. Let us not forget
that religion has become subservient to the Saudi state
since its creation. I documented this in a book. Since 1930
religion does not exist as an independent field as Saudi
Arabia.
Who shares
this vision of the problem. The liberals in our own society.
They have actually internalised this discourse and have
accepted it as a fait accompli. This is the way things are.
The problem lies in Wahabi Islam or in any other type of
Islam. Today it is Wahabi Islam but in 1979 in was Shia
Islam. You can go back to the press in the West and in the
Arab world to see how the religious shade changes with
political developments and contexts.
So let us
not fool ourselves by putting the problem on religion.
Religion thrives in an environment. So as long as Saudis
prove to America that they are fighting terrorism and
changing a few religious books here and a few suras there
then they can actually guarantee that America would support
them. America does not care who rules Saudi Arabia as long
as America has access to the resources of the country.
America has never worried about democracy in Saudi Arabia.
America has in fact supported throughout the last 60 years a
kind of regime that has no respect for human rights, has no
respect for freedom of expression or religious diversity in
all its forms. But unfortunately we live in world where the
media is supreme and the voices of those people who try to
explain and provide an academic input are marginalised or
are simply not listened to.
Let us remind
ourselves that imperial powers never come into a region
without a slogan. Let are remember that the French colonised
Algeria under the pretext of civilising the Algerians. The
British colonised India and several parts of the world
under the pretext of free trade and access to economic
resources. The USA today will have a different kind of
imperialism. It wants to establish an empire under the
pretext of democratising us.
Let us go
back to Saudi Arabia. Once we understand this context we
could actually talk about the models of reform that people
have put forward. There are two models. One model I call the
model of tarmim al bait – the repairs that one does on the
house. This has come from the state itself. It is very much
in support of tarmin al bait, in terms of repairing it after
they realised it has reached a point of no return. A group
of Saudis, what we might call the liberals, support this
process, this understanding of the problem that the house
has cracks and it needs to be pumped up and solidified.
So what does
tarmin al-bait mean? It means some kind of lip service to
political participation. It does not mean that all Saudis
will take part in the affairs and the running of their
country. It means that certain groups of people, who are
already close to power, are going to be incorporated in the
political process. It means again lopsided civil society.
Civil society that is chosen by the state under its control
like what happened last week, when the state announced the
formation of a committee for human rights. They have
appointed the director of this organisation and chosen the
members. Anybody who knows anything about civil society
would conclude that this is not civil society. This is
lopsided liberalisation.
What about
elections the magical word as if we had not known elections
in the Arab world. How many elections have taken place in
neighbouring countries when the results were 99.9 percent.
When the group from majlis al shurah came to Britain they
talked with great enthusiasm about women being given the
right to vote in the local municipal elections that are
going to take place in October this year. Obviously
journalists in the West were very enthusiastic about this.
Women can’t have basic rights but they are going to be
allowed to vote. How can we vote when we do not elections.
We cannot vote without freedom of speech, without people
being able to organise themselves in associations. How are
those people going to campaign for elections. Elections in
this particular case are going to give a false legitimacy to
a system that does not actually believe in political
participation.
But again
some Saudi liberals have accepted that and have bought the
elections as major achievement. What has happened is that
those people who have accepted that confuse liberalisation
with democracy. Some people are sensitive about using the
word democracy and they prefer shurah. Whatever we word we
use there are basic common grounds. They may refuse it on an
ideological basis or on terminological basis because the
word is Western and they want something local and
indigenous. But again there are certain common grounds and I
hope there are some serious reformers who will investigate
that.
Those
liberals are not a cohesive force and they reflect various
trends. Today they are called liberals but 40 years ago some
of them were called communists. Some of them were Baathists
or Nasserists. Today they are recasting themselves as
liberals. That is fine – changing political opinion reflects
flexibility and an ability to engage with the reality and
this is basically politics. We are not talking here about
principles that are rigid and fixed – they can re-cast
themselves.
We have a new
trend now – some of them understand democracy in a very
lopsided, distorted way. Let me read you a dialogue I have
been having with one of these indigenous democracy. This
person calls for democracy. He says democracy means loss of
control over families, women, offspring and singular
decision-making. It encourages self-reliance, individualism,
independence and freedom of choice for all. It discourages
obedience, unearned respect, nepotism, historic claims to
good blood, tribe and riches. It increases competition over
everything. It forces people to work harder, longer hours
and produce results. In short, to say it brutally, democracy
means the survival of the fittest. Here our democrat is
actually confusing Darwinism and evolution with democracy.
How many among us will accept that? We should promote this
democracy as we know it. And then he goes on to say we also
know that the nations that have prospered, advanced, lived
in comfort with each other are those who lived by democratic
rules.
I have never
seen more historical distortions than this. Throughout the
20th century it was not the dictatorship that
launched two major world wars. They were democracies that
waged to major conflicts. It was not a dictatorship that
killed people in Vietnam – it was an elected government. So
basically our democrat has disgraced himself by now learning
any lessons from history. But some democrats think this is
democracy – this is what we should have in Saudi Arabia.
There is also
a confusion between liberalisation and democracy. People
confuse market forces, liberalism at the level of the market
with political liberalisation. In Saudi Arabia we do have
economic liberalisation up to a certain extent.
So basically
at this stage we have a problem because our friend wants
other people who work on Saudi Arabia to endorse this vision
of democracy. The problem that some of these so-called
democrats have, and they share this characteristic with
other Arab liberals – is how to impose their views on
others. Liberals risk being confirmed in their status as
loyal opposition, as more and more of them are incorporated
into the state machinery they are actually part of what I
call a loyal opposition. The state is willing to tolerate
some people as loyal opposition. Although there are
contradictions in these terms it is a possibility. An
opposition that does not cross certain red lines is
tolerated.
So the problem
arises from this kind of confusion. Then we have another
that has been very effective since the 1990s in putting
demands. These people do not use the word democracy, they
use Shurah and I think you know who I mean. They are the
Islamists in Saudi Arabia. Today the Islamists are divided
between those who prefer to work with the regime and to
avoid what they think is fitnnah(discontent, or discord).
They have increased in number especially after the events of
September 11th and American plans for Saudi
Arabia. They prefer to postpone the battle with the state
until the Americans leave Iraq or some kind of arrangement
is secured in Iraq.
But among the
Islamists there are those people who do not want to engage
in termin al bait (repairs). They want a complete demolition
and rebuilding. Those people do not dare say that in the
country and most of them have actually left. They conduct
their campaign from outside Saudi Arabia.
The problem
for those who are willing to engage in dialogue and who have
some kind of clear understanding of a programme for reform
is that they reject the word democracy and prefer shurah. In
order to make themselves accessible to the majority of
Saudis how can democracy be converted to Islam. This is a
good question. They have to think about that. Some argue
that it does not need to be converted because we have our
own indigenous system – shurah. But in the 21st
century they need to come up with an operational definition
of this shurah. How is the leader of the Muslim community
going to be elected. Is election going to be limited to the
group of people who control or is it going to be an
operation that involves the participation of everyone in the
country? Again how long would baya last. Do we have a leader
forever even if he is elected, do we wait until he dies to
change him or do we change him regularly.
I am getting
at the operational definition of shurah and the steps that
it takes – its manifestation. However there are several
messages to both Islamists and the Liberals that they need
to take into account. Both of them should be convinced that
the worst enemy of Islam is not democracy but authoritarian
and coercive regimes which enslave the religious scholars
and makes puppets out of them. Authoritarian rule has used
and abused Islam. It has created misfits who have drowned in
oil and power. They have suppressed reason and encouraged
blind imitation. This is not specific to the Sunni
tradition. From my reading they also exist in Shism – those
who retreat from taking full responsibility for what is
going on in the countries where they live.
In the
majority of cases this political oppression and
authoritarian rule had deformed Islam in the name of the
ruler and engaged in unacceptable practices on his behalf.
One side of this is the tradition of takfir which has
existed from the first decades of Islam. But takfir itself
– that is taxing people with blasphemy has always been
practised. But who practised it? It has been historically
confined to the ulema who described each other as kafir.
The problem arises when the sultan and the mob interfere,
when you have a political authority taking takfir seriously
and when takfir reaches the people with lower knowledge.
So it is time
for both Islamists and Liberals to see that shurah
democracy is the best protection for Islam and society from
the abuse of political power. Also the worse enemy of Islam
is not America – America is a threat to the natural
resources of the country. It is perhaps a threat to our oil
but it is not an enemy or a threat to Islam. Why? Islam
existed before America and it will continue to exist after
America. Islam survived to early wars, it survived in the
context of political fragmentation, it survived with the
caliphate or without it. Islam also survived before and
after the Mongol invasion. It survived in for decades in the
face of outside aggression in medieval times. It survived
the Crusades. It modern times it survived the onslaught
during the colonial period. It survived during times of
affluence and prosperity. So there is no danger that Islam
will become extinct. Sociologists of religion are puzzled
by the survival instinct of Islam as text and society. After
all of the crisis I have mentioned Islam emerged stronger
than before and flourished in the hearts and minds of
people.
There will
never be secularisation in Islam. Those so-called democrats
of the Arab world, if they think there will be
secularisation, however you define it, I think they will be
kidding themselves. We will not have that because of
sociological reasons and not because of ideological reasons.
Even in the so-called secular West we find that theorists
of secularisation – those who advocated the death of God –
have been proved wrong. Religions have been the most
resistant social fact in human history.
So let us come
to the reforms. I believe the reforms in Saudi Arabia are
cosmetic reforms: the municipal elections in October, the
women voting, possibly within three years even Shurah
Council elections, committees for controlling charity
organisations and what we might call organisations of civil
society. We will see reforms of the religious curriculum
and the educational system. It is very ironical that when
the state itself talks about reforming the educational
system it imprisons the teachers in this system. One of the
people who was imprisoned on Tuesday, Dr Matruk Al Fallah,
is a university lecturer and a political scientists. He has
written several books. But as we are trying to reform the
educational system we imprison the lecturers.
We will also
have economic liberalisation because Saudi Arabia has no
choice in this. It will encourage open markets and foreign
investment. Whether it will get it is a different matter.
Also under the title of economic reforms we will have what
is called the Saudisation programmes which have been in
place for several decades but now the matter has become very
urgent. What does Saudisation mean so far? It has meant
that the security forces walk into private businesses and
arrest all the foreign workers, shave their hair and throw
them in prison. But the same security men will not go to
private businesses owned by the princes because they would
lose the cutting edge in economic terms. So the private
tourism sector has been suffering and we have had reports
about it in the local press.
We will also
have national dialogue centres. One of them has been
established and I think two meetings took place so far and
the next one is coming soon. Again the national dialogue is
under the auspices of the state so we have royal patronage
of dialogue as much as we have royal patronage of research
and learning, not to mention the media.
What we need
is for all these reforms to move from rhetoric to reality –
real reforms, real freedom of speech not freedom to
complain for example about the sewage system or the level of
drug addiction. Everybody knows that the sewers do not work
in Jeddah and that the hospitals are full of drug addicts
awaiting rehabilitation. We all know that. Without
addressing the real problem – the problem of the failure
behind the sewerage system, the problem behind the failure
of society, the problem behind the failure of society, the
problem of unemployment which may lead to drug addiction and
other social ills. Without the real freedom of association
we cannot continue and society cannot function anymore.
Without dismantling authoritarian rule there is no hope for
Saudi Arabia.
The reforms
proposed by the government legitimate the regime under a
new guise and enforce this authoritarian rule after it has
lost its classical legitimation formula, that is religion.
We already have several reform proposals. Those of liberal
Islamists and lately in 2003 a joint petition which is
behind the arrest of several people during the past three
days. Those people were arrested not because they called for
a constitutional monarchy or they wanted to set up a human
rights organisation outside the one set up by the state.
They were arrested because they represented a joint national
front against the state. This is the danger. Historically
the state has been able to play the game of divide and rule.
They have at certain times encouraged the Islamists to
attack the Liberals, when it suited them. Then at different
times such as during the 1980s when all the takfir
traditions started Islamists started throwing these labels
at people who wrote books, novels etc At other times they
have allowed the liberals to attack the Islamists.
But the people
who signed the December 2003 petition come from a cross
section – it is a hybrid group which means it is a
coalition, Islamists and liberals hence the danger. Who is
going to attack this joint coalition?
Anybody who is
looking for serious reforms in Saudi Arabia will be
disappointed. What we are going to have is liberalisation
without democratisation. In fact we can see that more
oppression will take place and we have actually begun to see
that. I have a model which I call the cycles of
authoritarian rule in Saudi Arabia. In constitutional
monarchies you assume you have one king. But in Saudi Arabia
we do not have one king. What we have is a headless tribe.
The ruling family which used to be family is coming to
resemble a tribe more and more – a tribe without a head. So
we have the Al’s – the Al Fahd, Al Salman, Al Naeif, Al
Faisal etc We have a kind of of quasi pluralism at the very
top level. It means that we have several blocs or clusters
of power that are centred around the first five princes,
their sons and their entourage. This authoritarian rule is
then based on checks and balances.
We hear a lot
of talk about the opposition and the conflict between the
Crown Prince Abdallah on the one hand and Naief and Sultan
(what is called the Sudiri Seven) on the other hand. This is
a complete misunderstanding of Saudi politics. We do not
have two blocs – we have several blocs each competing and
co-operating in order to guarantee or maintain the rule of
the whole family.
This quasi
pluralism is accompanied by a clash of reputations rather
than a clash of fundamentalisms or reputations. Each prince,
each bloc, the Al’s try to build a reputation. We have one
bloc which in the 1990s was depicted as the guardian of Arab
nationalism representing patriarchal authority, tribal
values etc. Today the bloc is described as the avant garde
in modernisation and refomrs – rijel al hiwar. So the
reputation changes from being a patriarch someone upholding
tribal values to a reformer.
Another bloc
is based on a kind of reputation of Islamic modernity. This
bloc tends to be highly educated and combines Western
education with the Islamic heritage so they are regarded as
bastion of Islamic modernity. These reputations are in
conflict. The situation is aggrevated by the age of these
blocs. If we have a horizontal succession from brother to
brother rather than from brother to son we have situation
where all the contestants are almost of the same age and as
such the competition because everyone wants to be the king
before they die.
Then the cycle
goes from this authoritarian rule to liberalisation.
Liberalisation did take place but at the economic level: we
have the Economic Council and some minor steps that are very
cosmetic. In 1993 this was characterised by the
establishment of majlis al shourah and the basic law of
government. They were not serious reforms – if they were we
would not be here talking about these issues.
Then we have
the impression that there is liberalisation but the purges
follow. The purges vary. The Islamists were purged in the
1990s. Hundreds of them were put in prison, some of them
opted for exile and then we had the emergence of a violent
religious opposition. At the same time we have co-operation
between some Islamist forces along with the state reaching
other groups, for example the reconciliation with the Shia
in 1993 was an attempt to show there was increasing
liberalisation. But some of them knew better.
Then at the
bottom of the cycle we have the rhetoric of reform, a kind
of false glasnost and this started in 2001 following the
events of New York and it is still going on. We have a
consolidation of a royal liberal opposition that is not
meant to cross the red line. I call them the constitutional
monarchists, we have petitions, royal patronage of dialogue
between different sections of society, state-sponsored human
rights organisation. In October when Saudi Arabia hosted a
human rights conference a demonstration was held outside the
building and the demonstrators were arrested. This
contradiction does not need further comment.
We also have
what is called freedom of speech which is interesting. We
boast about the number of newspapers we have and the ability
of people to say what they say. But at the same time we
have editors who have lost their jobs.
We also have a
witch hunt and the repentance syndrome. It reminds me of
the reformation in Europe where people are labelled or
described in very negative terms and everybody is trying to
find the witch. The repentance syndrome refers to people who
have taken certain positions such as for example the ulema
who were paraded on Saudi television. They were supposed to
be the ulema al takfir who issued fatwas against the
Americans and anybody who co-operates with the Americans in
Afghanistan and later on in Iraq. They are put in prison
then they are paraded on television after they have
declared their repentance. This is basically part of the
witch hunt.
We also have
individuals how have moved from extremes. There is a very
interesting case of a man called Mansour Al Kaidan who was a
follower of a very extreme Islamist group and after the
bombings in Riyadh he moved to the other extreme. He was
allowed a platform to show how he repented. He is now
telling us through the press that he is reading Nietsche.
Next he will be listening to Wagner and I don’t know what
follows.
So these
kinds of cases, people who move from extremes are actually
a product of that society. There is no middle way because
you are less interesting. There is one particular area of
Saudi Arabia that has actually produced these kinds of
trends. Abdullah Qasimi, he came from Qasim and he went to
Egypt to study religion. He was preparing for a religious
career and then he switched to atheism. The Qasimis have a
tradition of contact between Saudi Arabia and India. People
from this area had contact with Iraq, they created colonies
in Zubair and they had a tradition of contact with other
peoples. So there is nothing intrinsic about the people of
Qasim just as there is nothing intrinsic about the people of
the Hijaz as liberals. These are constructions. There is
nothing in the Hijazis that makes them more liberals than
the Nejdis and there is nothing intrinsic to the Nejdis
that makes them radical. There is political oppression and
authoritarian rules that produces this kind of extreme.
I would like
to read something that throws light on what is happening in
the region and the American physical presence in the
Middle East today. It is report by Stratford a kind of
independent intelligence source that is used by Western
governments and businesses. They have written something
about Iraq and the Americans dilemma in Iraq. On Saudi
Arabia they say the Saudis have consistently miscalculated
since September 11th As a result they are moving
to their worse nightmare, a domestic insurrection, rising
Shia power and a hostile United States. From the standpoint
of Riyadh things can’t get much worse. The Saudis have three
choices: they can ally with the jihadists and face the
United States and Iran together.(The author assumes that
Iran and Saudi Arabia are getting closer). Not a good idea.
The Saudis can try to make a deal with Iran and face the
jihadists and the Americans – an even worse idea. Or they
can turn back to the USA and use American power to crush the
jihadists at home and serve as shield against Iran. Not a
great choice but the best of a bad lot. It is the choice
they will have to make. In the end the United States can
turn lemons into lemonade. Having miscalculated on the
guerrilla war having been forced to rely on the Shias and
the Iranians the United States if it is both nimble and
implacable can wind up running the table. We are in the new
phase of the war and the eyes are now turning back to the
original target, Saudi Arabia.
So America
has actually sacrificed the Iraqi population because it did
not want to confront Saudi Arabia after 11th
September. And according to this report America will not
turn its attention to Saudi Arabia – the original target.
* Madawi Al-Rasheed
is a senior lecturer in social anthropology at King’s
College, University of London. She has worked on Saudi
Arabia, history, society and politics. She has also carried
out research on Iraqi immigrants in London and more recently
she worked on Gulf trans-national connections. Her books
include Politics in an Arabian Oasis (1991), Iraqi
Assyrian Christians in London (1998), A History of
Saudi Arabia (2002), Counter Narratives: History,
Contemporary Society and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen
(2004). | 
