House of Saud: rotting from the inside

November 28, 1995
Issue 

The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud
By Said Aburish
Bloomsbury Publishing Co, 1995 (pb)
Reviewed by Adam Hanieh
Saudi Arabia is a country that conjures up many varied images. Oil, desert, camels, and Islam combine to form the Western picture of this gulf state. Said Aburish's book is a powerful attempt at clarifying this image of a country that forms an integral part of imperialist influence in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a product of British colonialism. At the end of the 19th century the region stretching from Egypt across the Red Sea and around the Arabian peninsula was critical for British trade. The peninsula formed a buffer to the jewel of all British colonies — India. Coastal towns such as Aden, Mocha and Mecca exported coffee, cotton and incense all around the world. In 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I, Britain controlled Egypt and many of the coastal areas of the peninsula. The interior was under the control of the Ottoman Turks, a crumbling empire that had once included most of the Middle East, Northern Africa, the Balkan states and Hungary. During the war the Ottomans sided with Germany against Britain. It was then that Britain took some interest in the affairs of the local Bedouin tribes that occupied much of the Arabian peninsula. Britain made a deal with two of the local tribal leaders, Sharif Hussein and Ibn Saud, to lead an uprising against their Ottoman overseers. In return they were promised an independent Arabia. At the end of the war both these tribal leaders remained in the pay of Britain. Ibn Saud was the spiritual leader of the puritanical Wahhabi Islamic sect which, in the late 1800s, had conquered much of the eastern Arabian peninsula. Eventually his forces overwhelmed those of Hussein who was removed from the area by Britain and given the protectorates of modern day Jordan and Iraq. Hussein's grandson still rules Jordan, while his progeny in Iraq was overthrown in the 1958 Ba'athist uprising. Saud has often been presented by western historians as an Arab hero and Aburish does us a great service by demolishing that myth. Saud's real record is one of corruption, murder and ignorance — all in the name of his British masters. Aburish documents that Saud ordered the deaths of 400,000 people and over one million refugees. So hated was he, there were at least 28 rebellions between 1916 and 1928. Saud's most popular supporters were the British who paid him a sustainer, awarded him the title of "sir" and made him a "Knight Commander of the Indian Empire". In the worldwide economic slump in 1933 affected Saud's main source of income, the taxation of the hajj (a Muslim pilgrimage). Saud granted an American oil company, Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) and an oil concession. SOCAL later merged with three other oil companies (Esso, Mobil and Texaco) to form the Arabian American Oil company, ARAMCO. ARAMCO and the US government moved in to replace Britain as the major benefactor of the Saudi regime. ARAMCO even hired historians to rewrite Arab history to prove Saud's direct link with the prophet Mohammed. The House of Saud documents in well-researched detail the continuing corruption of Saudi Arabia since Saud's death in 1953. Saudi monarchs still publicly behead anyone who opposes them. Last year over 180 people, mostly foreign guest workers, were subjected to this brutal fate. There is no codified legal system; the "laws" are interpreted by princes from the House of Saud. Most foreign newspapers and books are banned, and one of the most popular methods of distributing opposition messages is through cassette recordings. Recently a 16-year-old Saudi was executed for possessing one of these tapes. Religious minorities and guest workers are regularly persecuted in Saudi Arabia. In 1979, a rebellion led by Shia Muslims occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca for two weeks. The rebellion was brutally suppressed by French troops who were given special dispensation to enter the city. The French flooded the mosque and then applied electricity to the water killing 227 people. In the following weeks 63 Shia clerics were publicly beheaded. In 1988, 400 Iranians were shot dead by Saudi police in demonstrations protesting their mistreatment at the hands of the Saudi government. More than one third of the Saudi population are foreign workers who are treated with contempt and brutality. Many women are enticed to work in Saudi Arabia with lucrative salaries and work that does not exist. They are often sexually abused and cannot get visas to return home without their employer's consent. Suicide rates among women who do not speak Arabic are very high as they are prevented from mixing with their fellow compatriots. In 1987, the law which allowed foreign workers some social security coverage was rescinded. Saudi Arabia has been the willing tool of its Western masters — the British and then the United States. As the largest of the oil exporting countries Saudi Arabia has always complied with Western interests in OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries). Every OPEC meeting is preceded by a contacts between the US and Saudi Arabia. One year after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that inflamed Arab nationalism, many countries were calling for the nationalisation of the oil companies. Saudi Arabia opposed this and instead promoted "participation". In the 1970s Saudi Arabia kept the oil price low so as to supply the US with cheap oil. This was despite a loss of $32 billion in 1979. In 1973, Saudi Arabia was forced into an oil embargo against the West because of the Israeli war, but again they were the first country to lower the embargo. Aburish makes incisive comments on the future of Saudi Arabia and sheds some light on imperialist plans in the Middle East. He paints a picture of a country that is rotting from the inside with huge internal unrest. He traces these problems to the economic crisis faced by the Saudi government after years of pillaging and misrule. The current Saudi debt is around $60 billion which Aburish predicts will rise to $100 billion over the next two years. The government deficit is around $15-20 billion, about 30-40% of government income. Cutting back government expenditure would only increase political tensions; Aburish claims that the gap between rich and poor in Saudi Arabia is the largest in the world. The US has a lot invested in protecting the rotten Saudi regime: Saudi oil accounts for more than 25% of US oil imports, and the price is kept relatively low by compliant Saudi rulers. Saudi Arabia supports a number of corrupt regimes, including Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, to the tune of $3 billion a year. Aburish asserts that the West is able to use Saudi Arabia as a stabilising influence in the region, and also as a base for military activity as was evident by the Gulf War. This goes someway to explaining current US policy towards Iraq which was devastated during the war and with the continued embargo cannot recover. There is no doubt that the embargo on Iraq allows Saudi Arabia to continue to survive despite its economic and political problems. Saudi Arabia is by far the largest player in OPEC and in 1991-92 was producing 8.2 million barrels of oil a day. Iraq has many oil fields ready to come on line but is stymied by the US-led embargo. It is estimated that Iraq could produce at least 2 million barrels a day, as soon as the embargo is lifted, with a potential rise to around 6 million barrels per day with foreign investment. Such an increase in global oil supplies would lower the price of oil and devastate the Saudi economy. It would also challenge Saudi Arabia's prominence in OPEC. Aburish, a leading Saudi dissident, has presented a passionate account of the corrupt and nefarious Saudi regime. House of Saud also reminds us that such a regime exists because of the help given it by imperialism, notably the US and Britain.

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