Bush Worried about Saudi Fragilities

April 25, 2005 | US President George W. Bush walks hand-in-hand with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah among Texas Bluebonnet wildflowers on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush met Abdullah to take steps to relieve record-high oil prices, but the world's largest exporter insisted global supplies were adequate and offered a long-term plan to increase production.
(Photo: Jason Reed / Reuters)

By Philippe Gélie
Le Figaro
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042505I.shtml
Monday 25 April 2004

Since Ariel Sharon's visit two weeks ago, the Crawford ranch is in the process of changing its function within the Presidential arsenal. While offering the eyes of the world a favorable treatment reserved for the most distinguished visitors, his retreat in Texas also allows George W. Bush to conduct a "quiet diplomacy" in which pressures can be all the more direct for being exercised in an informal and private setting.

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince should be testing that experience today. On the menu of his discussions with the American president are several tense subjects: the rise in oil prices, the struggle against Islamic terrorism, and the rhythm of reforms in the Kingdom.

The first case is likely to be the most urgent, with an escalation of prices at the pump (by over 50 cents a gallon in a year). If George W. Bush's reelection is no longer threatened by consumer disgruntlement, his popularity quotient feels the impact, having fallen to 44% in the latest polls. Riyadh, which supplies only 15% of American imports, has already made an effort by increasing its production in March to 155,000 barrels/a day and by holding out the prospect of further increases in production. Bush, "concerned," even as he admits he doesn't have a "silver bullet," will not fail to remind the Saudi leader of his promise.

However, a partner this important and complicated is not to be rushed. Involved in the democratization of the Middle East, the American president will have to reiterate his encouragement of the House of Saud's timid process of opening up. In his State of the Union speech in February, Bush had called upon Riyadh to "demonstrate leadership in the region by expanding the people's role in the determination of their future." The recent elections to local councils, which notably excluded women, are not cited as an example in Washington, but the White House insists on the right of each country to advance "at its own pace."

For two tendencies above all worry Americans: the regime's presumed instability and its sloth in interrupting the financing of a radical Islam that nourishes terrorism.

According to a survey by the magazine US News, the Saudis have spent 7 billion dollars over the last twenty-five years to propagate Wahabism, a strict and Puritanical version of Islam. They have built more than 1,500 mosques all around the world, 500 Islamic seminaries, and some 2,000 schools in non-Muslim countries. They have also financed paramilitary training camps, as well as the recruitment of jihadist militants in around twenty countries.

According to the NGO Freedom House, Riyadh also used its mosques and cultural centers in the United States to diffuse a hateful and intolerant ideology, an accusation denied by the Saudi embassy in Washington, which has spent over 20 million dollars since September 11, 2001 to rectify the Kingdom's image in American public opinion: fifteen of the nineteen authors of the attacks on New York and Washington were Saudi. Last year, Congress highlighted the absence of a reaction from successive American administrations, which chose to favor the oil and geo-strategic alliance with Riyadh by tolerating its militant Islamism. George W. Bush has departed from this attitude slightly, but with caution.

Dominant opinion in Washington does not give the monarchy of the sands long to survive. Former Secretary of State, James Baker, gave it five years, but that was already two and a half years ago. Since the "arrangement" concluded with Osama bin Laden blew up, Arabia has become a target for attacks in its turn. According to a study by a "think-tank" close to the Pentagon, "Bin Laden is convinced that the dynasty's weakness is such that he can (...) overthrow the House of Saud and pocket the oil fields, the petrodollars, the holy sites and the Kingdom's up-to-date weapons systems' stocks."

In the face of such a risk, the White House extols the reinforcement of anti-terrorist cooperation with Saudi Arabia. However, the US Navy and American Coast Guard patrol the waters of the Gulf to protect the oil sites and Washington keeps an eye on Arabia's shifting sands.

Go to Original

Saudi Arabia Votes, but Votes Islamist
By Christophe Ayad
Libération

Monday 25 April 2005

Muslim Brotherhood allies win the Municipal elections conceded by the monarchy.

A ballot boxful! After the capital Riyadh in February, after Damman in the east in March, Jeddah, the great trading port on the Red Sea, has massively voted for Islamists in the first municipal elections in the history of Saudi Arabia. According to the results reported Saturday, the seven seats to be filled have all gone to candidates recommended by a group of ulemas led by the very charismatic and radical Safar al-Hawali.

Limited Scope

With the Thursday vote, the first electoral test of any kind in the absolute and theocratic monarchy of the Saudi Kingdom has been completed. The governing power did everything possible to limit the election's scope, confining it to Municipal councils deprived of any real power (half of whose members are still named by the government), by prohibiting women from voting, and finally, by refusing to allow the formation of political parties.

In spite of all that, a few lessons can be discerned. The vote took place without incident, even though the country has been subject to a wave of violence by Al-Qaeda that has caused some 200 deaths the last two years. Participation, at around 50%, remained weak, in view of the fact that only one Saudi out of five was registered to vote. On the political level, the test turned into a crash for the "liberals," who wanted a forced march reform of society towards a western model. Businessmen and tribal chiefs also did not count for much in the face of better organized and better mobilized Islamists.

However, in a country where religion is practically the only intellectual and political referent, there are Islamists and Islamists. "These are moderates, technocrats with an Islamic pedigree," explains Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Qassem, a liberal Islamist. In fact, most of those elected belong to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, incarnated by Hamas in the Palestinian territories, by the Party of Islamic Action in Jordan, or the historic - illegal, but tolerated - brotherhood in Egypt.

Their emergence into the open is a lucky break for the government, at least right now. Most of those who inspired this movement (the Sheikhs Salman al-Awda, Safar al-Hawali, Awad al-Garni) were imprisoned during the 90s for having signed a petition demanding the establishment of a Constitutional monarchy immediately after the Gulf War in 1991. Released for the most part in 1998, they have begun a rapprochement with the government, which, for its part, is trying to integrate them.

Ferocious Repression

With the municipal elections just completed, the government has made a big step towards the cooptation of social strata that had escaped it up until now: the newly elected Islamists come from an electoral pool composed of the middle classes, employees, low level officials. It is useful then that demographic pressure and the constraints of the world economy are making themselves felt more and more on Saudis' standards of living. Confronted the last two years with an ultra-radical opposition incarnated by Al-Qaeda that it has succeeded in reducing through ferocious repression, the Saudi Royal family desperately needs to enlarge its circle of "clients" and "obligateds."

Especially during a period of "reforms" more asserted than real and of American pressure to democratize. The government may therefore congratulate itself that Awad al-Garni, one of the principal Islamic intellectuals in Saudi Arabia, should have made voting a quasi religious duty and pleaded for women's participation.

Entry

As far as the Muslim Brotherhood is concerned, it is making its entry into a system that had been closed to it. On the basis of this first launch, the Islamists are counting on obtaining at least some of the seats to the Majlis al-Choura, which has just gone from 120 to 150 members: this consultative council, named in its entirety by the king, is the closest thing to an eventual legislative body in the kingdom: which might, in the long run, open the door to a Constitutional monarchy. The only problem: the long term does not exceed five years in a country where power is de facto exercised by 81 year old Crown Prince Abdullah...

Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042505I.shtml
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