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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / The Saudi Kings, in All Their “Glory”

The Saudi Kings, in All Their “Glory”

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The NYTimes reports that President Obama will skip the Taj Mahal, curtailing his visit to India to “pay his respects to the [Saudi] royal family” in Riyadh. As the Times phrases it, “Mr. Obama has not often flown to other countries to pay his respects after the deaths of their leaders,” comparing this to the President’s attendance at Nelson Mandela’s state memorial. Of course Mandela had his own royal roots, but the comparison hardly flatters the late Saudi king… or his successor(s).

The Guardian has a wide-ranging obituary for “King Abdullah… whose reign saw the spread of division, corruption and strife, and was saved only by ‘black gold’”:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who has died aged 90, promised much but accomplished little. By the time he came to the throne in 2005, he was 81 years old. And though he had gained considerable experience as acting monarch after his brother King Fahd’s stroke, he was beset by numerous difficulties – dynastic, democratic, religious, ideological, regional and global – and, with only rising oil revenues in his favour, found himself unable to address them to any significant extent.

Abdullah’s succession as Saudi Arabia’s sixth monarch resulted from his father King Abdulaziz ibn Saud’s strategy of marrying the daughters and widows of defeated enemies. It was hoped that Abdullah’s birth in Riyadh would end the enmity between the ousted northern Hail emirate and the newly emerging Saudi kingdom. Abdullah’s mother, Fahda bint Asi al-Shuraim, was the widow of Saud ibn Rashid, who ruled over the emirate before its collapse at the hands of Saudi forces in 1921. Abdullah continued the tradition of his father and included, among his 30 or so wives, daughters of the Shaalan of Aniza, al-Fayz of Bani Sakhr, and al-Jarba of the Shammar tribe…

He had inherited a kingdom torn by ideologically opposed groups, beset by unemployment, corruption, insecurity and terrorism, yet basking in a second oil boom. After a period of deceptive calm following the suppression of the 1979 siege of the Mecca mosque by the radical Islamic cell of Juhayman al-Otaibi, a violent Islamist opposition made its presence felt. Through the 1990s, Saudi Arabia paid a high price for the decision to invite foreign troops to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s occupation. So it was that in 1995, Abdullah’s national guard in Riyadh came face to face with terrorism, when a key building used by Americans providing military training support was blown up. More attacks followed in the oil-rich eastern province in 1996. This was the beginning of a campaign that erupted into further violence after 11 September 2001…

… During the last years of his reign, Abdullah ruled over a country with incredible economic resources that failed to guarantee him regional influence. Saudi foreign policy was in fact mostly reactive to events beyond its control. Like many expired authoritarian rulers, he promoted himself as the champion of women’s rights in a desperate attempt to appeal to sceptical audiences at home and abroad. His development projects, new universities and industrial cities generated more controversy than solutions to real economic problems. However, Abdullah was perhaps the first Saudi ruler to seek a new legitimacy, this time emanating from serving the people rather than simply applying divine law.

Like other Arab leaders, Abdullah was surprised by the Arab uprisings of 2011 and feared the power of peaceful protest reaching the quiet kingdom. Within months, the Shias of the eastern province copied the methods of protesters abroad and began to demonstrate in their own neighbourhoods. Under Abdullah, hundreds of Saudi reformers, activists and human rights defenders were rounded up and put in prison, where they are serving long sentences. The reformer king failed to initiate a single item of a political reform agenda…

The Daily Beast on “Salman, the Family Sheriff“:

… Now King Salman, born Dec. 31, 1935, who is also defense minister, has been chairing cabinet meetings for several months and handling almost all foreign travel responsibilities for the monarchy since he became the heir in 2012. He has visited China, Japan, India, Pakistan, the Maldives, and France since becoming crown prince after the death of his predecessor, Prince Nayif… Before becoming crown prince, Salman was governor of Riyadh province for 48 years. When he became governor in 1963, Riyadh had 200,000 inhabitants; today, it has more than seven million. Salman presided over this remarkable transformation with a record for good governance and a lack of corruption. Since most of the royal princes and princesses live in Riyadh, he was also the family sheriff, ensuring any transgressions were dealt with smoothly and quietly with no publicity. He knows where all the bodies are hidden…

Salman has his own health issues and has had a stroke. (Persistent rumors of dementia are denied by the palace.) His successor was announced in February 2013 to ensure continuity. Second Deputy Prime Minister Prince Muqrin was born Sept. 15, 1945 and was educated at the Royal Air Force College in England before becoming a pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force. Later, he was governor of Medinah province and then head of Saudi intelligence. Muqrin is now crown prince…

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    Good Sweet Allah. We’ll be lucky if all our kids don’t all die after this transition nightmare.

  2. 2.

    ThrowawayAccount

    I lived in Riyadh in the 2000s. King Abdullah was indeed a good man. The idiots bashing him on various sites for being oppressive are extremely naive. Saudi Arabia is a country where, in the early 2000s, bin Laden had a 50% approval rating. The country has absolutely no concept or history of democracy. The vast majority of Saudis, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, oppose the right of women to drive. At the same time, it’s one of the safest countries that I, an American, ever lived in. Next to no violent crime. No weapons held by criminals. The healthcare system is without a doubt one of the best in the world. Their hospitals literally have excess CT and MRI machines laying around. Every year, tens of thousands of Saudis are sent to American and European universities on full scholarships to study. There is very little visible poverty, and many charitable foundations to take care of the actual Saudi poor.

    Instead of slamming Abdullah as being an oppressive patriarch, Americans need to realize he has done far more for women’s rights and local democracy in Saudi Arabia than any prior monarch. The alternative to his rule isn’t liberal American values – it’s ISIS.

    Also, for every moron that suggests we should have bombed Saudi Arabia for 9/11 – why? Did we bomb Mexico when their nationals killed Americans in border cities?

  3. 3.

    Pogonip

    The House of Saud’s greatest achievement was to have been sitting on top of a whole lot of oil.

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    The new Crown Prince is 70 next birthday. These guys are way too old to be in power as absolute monarchs. (Saudi Arabia, if I’m not mistaken, is almost the very last such monarchy in the world.) They should have passed the throne to one of the grandsons long ago.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    @Pogonip:
    They have also been in possession of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which gives them a shitload of otherwise unearned prestige and influence in the Muslim world.

  6. 6.

    Hildebrand

    It is a pretty bizarre line of succession – from brother to brother? Yeesh. Lining up old men, all past their prime, seems a recipe for disaster. Sounds like either the Mormons or the Republican Party.

  7. 7.

    rmirth

    If they just had the holy sites and no oil bonanza, wonder how much “prestige” they’d have now. The kingdom is the biggest sponsor of radical Islam and have bankrolled madrassas and staffed imams all across the world. They’re not responsible for the Sunni-Shia war but their obsession with Iran has not helped. It’s among the top 5 evil regimes in the world in my book.

  8. 8.

    scav

    @Hildebrand: Well, at one point a point in that system’s favor is that you didn’t end up with toddler kings. When the king actually led in battle, actually actively ruled, it was advantageous (Regents not generally a great thing). Elective monarchies where you choose from a pool of candidates instead of taking the first available (male) gumball also avoided the problem, but with the fracas of electioneering, possibly with swords.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    @rmirth:
    I wouldn’t dispute any of that. But the prestige from having the birthplace of Islam isn’t small, at least in the Muslim world where the House of Saud is seen by many (though by no means all) as a guardian of the faith. It’s a shame that Saudi Arabia wields such prestige when it is one of the most socially and politically backward countries in the world.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    @raven:
    The royal family denies that. And I doubt the House of Saud would approve a crown prince with senile dementia, even if he were next in line.

  12. 12.

    Anne Laurie

    @Hildebrand:

    It is a pretty bizarre line of succession – from brother to brother?

    The explanation I’ve seen is that this “ancient royal tradition” was codified in the 1920s, so that the younger sons of Abdullah’s generation didn’t start endless Game of Throne civil wars against the lucky throne-winner.

    Problem is, what with modern medical technology, there were a dozen or so serious contenders in Abdullah’s generation, who bred 40 to 60 eligible sons, who now have several hundred “royal princes” living off feudal welfare & potentially ready to take over. Talk about your baby boomers…

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    We invaded the wrong countries in the wake of 9/11, if we really wanted to do something about radical Islam.

    But since the Bush Crime Family and the Bandit House of Saud are bosom buddies, well, that was off the table.

  16. 16.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    And demented, right?

    No, that’s the new King, who is 79 and rumored to have Alzheimer’s. The 70-year-old Crown Prince is next in line.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Anne Laurie: They didn’t want replays of how the Ottomans worked out succession issues. Brothers killing brothers to get any rivals out of the way.

    This is coming, there are something on the order of 4000 princes with a claim to the throne waiting in the wings. Polygamy can really fuck things up.

  19. 19.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid:

    But the prestige from having the birthplace of Islam isn’t small, at least in the Muslim world where the House of Saud is seen by many (though by no means all) as a guardian of the faith.

    We’re Americans, Amir — you need to compare the sacred Saudi sites to Jerusalem if you want us to get the analogy. Plenty of Americans who couldn’t find Israel on a map are willing to die, or at least to force lots of other people to die, to defend the birthplace of their God-Prophet. And Israel doesn’t even have oil, just “scriptural authority”.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Anne Laurie: Israel plays heavily in the warped pseudo-Revelations based modern fundie theology, if you can even call it that. As we discussed in a thread earlier this week, most of it was formed up in the last two centuries, like other grifting schemes.

  23. 23.

    MomSense

    This generation is only going to last another 5-8 maybe 10 years. If they are smart they will start appointing successors in the next generation now.

    Kind of interesting that the House of Saud wouldn’t have sorted out succession given what a problem succession disputes have been historically.

  25. 25.

    Corner Stone

    @rikyrah:

    I never had a problem going to war after 9/11. But, it should have been Saudi Arabia.

    It should never have been a call to war. Not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq and not in SA.
    We could have, and IMO should have, punched down through the needed places with surgical precision.

  26. 26.

    Ken

    @scav: About twenty years ago, the British Royal Family had almost the same structure as the Yorks in 1475: three sons and a daughter, with the eldest son having two young boys. Sadly, they did not take the opportunity to stage the all-time must-see production of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

  27. 27.

    Pogonip

    @ThrowawayAccount: That’s a great explanation! Liberals have a hard time understanding that not everyone wants democracy, much less liberalism. I hope all the Juicers read your comment and think about it.

  29. 29.

    scav

    @MomSense: It’s not as though our election system and successions of power are exactly perfected, painfree and entirely unable to throw up preternatural idiots into positions of high authority. We manage reasonably well, but a little humility when judging other systems doesn’t seem inappropriate.

  30. 30.

    Hildebrand

    @MomSense: Whenever I read ‘House of Saud’, my goofy brain immediately leaps to the description of Disney as the ‘House of Mouse’.

  32. 32.

    Hildebrand

    @Anne Laurie: Gotcha. My guess is that until it becomes an actual problem (as it might be right now), they won’t feel the need to address the problem of decrepit succession.

    This does seem to be a perfect explanation for the Bush clan, though.

  33. 33.

    sm*t cl*de

    The country has absolutely no concept or history of democracy.

    Partly due to the clan of shitweasels doing everything in their power to prevent such a concept or history, preferring to run the oilwells as a dynastic theocracy.

    The healthcare system is without a doubt one of the best in the world. Their hospitals literally have excess CT and MRI machines laying around.

    I am not convinced that such a massive level of corruption and incompetence is a sign of quality.

  34. 34.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Amir Khalid: I still haven’t wrapped my head around the connections between the Wahhabi sect and the Saudi royal family. This seems to be a decent summary, but I’m no expert:

    Accordingly, when Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab arrived in Ad Diriyah, the Al Saud was ready to support him. In 1744 Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab swore a traditional Muslim oath in which they promised to work together to establish a state run according to Islamic principles. Until that time the Al Saud had been accepted as conventional tribal leaders whose rule was based on longstanding but vaguely defined authority.

    Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab offered the Al Saud a clearly defined religious mission to which to contribute their leadership and upon which they might base their political authority. This sense of religious purpose remained evident in the political ideology of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.

    Muhammad ibn Saud began by leading armies into Najdi towns and villages to eradicate various popular and Shia practices. The movement helped to rally the towns and tribes of Najd to the Al Saud-Wahhabi standard. By 1765 Muhammad ibn Saud’s forces had established Wahhabism–and with it the Al Saud political authority–over most of Najd.

    After Muhammad ibn Saud died in 1765, his son, Abd al Aziz, continued the Wahhabi advance. In 1801 the Al Saud-Wahhabi armies attacked and sacked Karbala, the Shia shrine in eastern Iraq that commemorates the death of Husayn. In 1803 they moved to take control of Sunni towns in the Hijaz. Although the Wahhabis spared Mecca and Medina the destruction they visited upon Karbala, they destroyed monuments and grave markers that were being used for prayer to Muslim saints and for votive rituals, which the Wahhabis consider acts of polytheism (see Wahhabi Theology , ch. 2). In destroying the objects that were the focus of these rituals, the Wahhabis sought to imitate Muhammad’s destruction of pagan idols when he reentered Mecca in 628.

    If the Al Saud had remained in Najd, the world would have paid them scant attention. But capturing the Hijaz brought the Al Saud empire into conflict with the rest of the Islamic world. The popular and Shia practices to which the Wahhabis objected were important to other Muslims, the majority of whom were alarmed that shrines were destroyed and access to the holy cities restricted.

    It seems as though Mecca and Medina were in danger of being destroyed by an Islamic sect that was deadly serious about prohibitions against shrines and idols. It boggles the mind (mine anyway).

    That little excerpt seems to do a lot to explain the enmity between the Saudis and Iran/Shias, even today. :-(

    It would be very interesting if some future Saudi king made a pact with a different Islamic sect, (finally) cutting the Wahhabis out of the bargain.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  36. 36.

    Big R

    @Amir Khalid: There was an article in last year’s American Political Science Review that found that monarchies with primogeniture succession were more stable with less turnover than agnatic dynasties or elective monarchies. Point being, You Haz a Science to back up that assertion.

  37. 37.

    FlyingToaster

    @Anne Laurie:
    @Villago Delenda Est:
    @MomSense:

    The succession is already worked out.

    The remaining sons of Abdulaziz formed a committee (called of all things the Allegiance Commission) in 2007, which recommends the “Deputy Crown Prince” to be appointed.

    The new Crown Prince (previously Deputy Crown Prince) is Muquin bin Abdulaziz, the youngest son of the founder of the current kingdom; 70 years old, yes, but bypassed 9 older brothers.

    The Deputy Crown Prince is Muhammed bin Nayef; the eldest son of one of the crown princes who died before accession. He’s 55.

  38. 38.

    sm*t cl*de

    Every year, tens of thousands of Saudis are sent to American and European universities on full scholarships to study.

    Abdullah had time and money to turn Saudi universities from cesspools of nepotism into a functioning educational system. It’s almost as if he was happier to keep the country ignorant.

  39. 39.

    rmirth

    @ThrowawayAccount:

    Also, for every moron that suggests we should have bombed Saudi Arabia for 9/11 – why? Did we bomb Mexico when their nationals killed Americans in border cities?

    Yeah but we didn’t bomb Venezuela or Argentina either …

  41. 41.

    sharl

    I remember Lawrence Wright’s New Yorker article about his 2003 three-month stint in Jeddah – he was hired by a newspaper there to help train new Saudi reporters – and that was quite an eye-opener. Wright saw the country through the eyes of his young charges and their reactions to his story assignments. That New Yorker article is now pay-walled, though you can access it here (you may have to use your browser’s zoom feature to change font size; I had to enlarge it a bit to render it readable to my aging eyes).

    Wright’s story came out when Saudis still denied to themselves and anyone else that it was their own fellow KSA citizens who did 9/11, and before such terrorism came home to roost for them.

    I suppose it is entirely possible that the recently deceased king was a reformer, at least by KSA standards. That place has so far to go that any reforms would not be readily apparent to us outsiders who don’t live in that hidebound culture.

    Rereading Wright’s account, I got pissed all over again about that tragic Mecca girls’ school fire in 2002 where so many students perished needlessly. Did Abdullah actually ever try to reign in the religious police, many of whom were described to Wright by Saudis as “ex-convicts who would be unemployable except for the fact that in prison they memorized the Koran?” THAT would have been a sign of true reform, if it in fact happened.

  42. 42.

    mdblanche

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: “It seems as though Mecca and Medina were in danger of are being destroyed by an Islamic sect that was deadly serious about prohibitions against shrines and idols.”

    FTFY. See the links above.

    ETA: The links that seem to be stuck in moderation. I could have sworn there weren’t too many.

  43. 43.

    scav

    @MomSense: Well, then, for that matter, how many “Christian” nations have reorganized their system perfectly based on the historic succession issues in the papacy (who managed to juggle three at a time once all busy excommunicating each other)? They’ve got their system, kinks and all as we have ours, with different kinks.

  45. 45.

    Another Holocene Human

    @ThrowawayAccount: You make two very good points. One is that apparently despite all the overseas education there are lots of people who agree with the way things are more or less although frankly you could say that of a lot of places that have democracy. There’s no reason they couldn’t have some local devolution of powers instead of just king’s bureaucrats everywhere. The English did this, the French didn’t, look at the relative amounts of corruption in their systems and I think the English win here.

    ETA: prior to revolution, and even so, still a big contrast, although I wonder if French aren’t right not to refuse to devolve police powers to little hamlets as the English system and therefore US does

    The other point is that violent crime IS very low in SA. Okay, so we have no reliable info on how things are for women in the home, relatively, so there is probably a lot of unreported crime or not reported as crime. However, in the US most murder victims are young males. It’s hard to conceal murder rates in a time of peace and as a tip of the iceberg figure it speaks of a very peaceful society. I hate the stupid American common wisdom that “they’re always fighting each other over there”. Bullshit! Saudi Arabia probably seems like an awesome place compared to Louisiana (another oil state). Unless you’re a woman. They’re not, actually, people.

    And there has been some thawing of the ice on women in the last ten years, I doubt the man was against it.

    Now, here’s the problem: the Saud family has been bankrolling extremists for years. Why? (And yes, can ask same question of US. I would.)

  47. 47.

    Another Holocene Human

    @sm*t cl*de:

    Partly due to the clan of shitweasels doing everything in their power to prevent such a concept or history, preferring to run the oilwells as a dynastic theocracy.

    For a minute, I thought you were talking about Texas.

  48. 48.

    srv

    King Abdullah… whose reign saw the spread of division, corruption and strife,

    If I were to categorize Abdullah, I would say he was the last progressive hope. He was the Al Gore of KSA.

    Let the head choping begin.

  51. 51.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @FlyingToaster: When you run out of the immediate sons of Saud, what happens then?

    There are literally thousands of potential heirs all living in close proximity.

  53. 53.

    sharl

    @Villago Delenda Est: Via Steve Coll, here is news of an announcement from the new king that doesn’t appear to have garnered much media attention:

    …The real news lay in a secondary announcement that Salman made upon becoming King. He named his nephew Muhammad bin Nayef as the Deputy Crown Prince, meaning that he is third in line for the throne. For the first time in modern Saudi Arabian history, a grandson of the kingdom’s first ruler, rather than a son, has a place in the order of succession.

    Assuming this decision is not susceptible to palace or royal family intrigues, it looks like that lot fully intends to keep it in the family; no surprise there, except that apparently the oldest generation has finally decided to face the reality of mortality.

  54. 54.

    My Truth Hurts

    Screw these people. Screw every President including Obama for kissing their asses. What a joke. Any country that does business with them while claiming to be defenders of speech and human rights are also jokes. That includes the United States.

  55. 55.

    My Truth Hurts

    @ThrowawayAccount: STFU you idiot. They executed a woman for her husbands crimes just last week. Beheaded her in public. A blogger is receiving 20 thousand lashes over 20 weeks for his writings. What a “good” man he was. What a “beautiful” culture they have.

  56. 56.

    My Truth Hurts

    @Pogonip: Just because some don’t want freedom or democracy it doesn’t mean they are right. There are certain inalienable human rights and just because some humans have been brainwashed into believing something else or are simply scoring political points doesn’t negate those rights.

  57. 57.

    sm*t cl*de

    When you run out of the immediate sons of Saud, what happens then?

    I can only hope for a bloodbath. Essentially this is an old-school crime family who managed to wipe out the competition and carve out their own country, one which turned out to be rich in resources. If the various claimants get all assassinationy, I for one am cheering them on.

  58. 58.

    Gretchen

    “strategy of marrying widows and daughters of defeated enemies”. So how much say did these women have about whether they married the guy who had their dads and husbands killed? They were suddenly in love? Come on.

  59. 59.

    Zinsky

    Let’s not forget Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Wahhabism, which has given us al-Qaeda and all of its offshoots. Holding 12th Century ideas in the 21st Century ensures conflict and friction with other nations. Our own religious fundamentalists in America (Santorum, et al) cause us conflict and heartburn. Education is probably the answer but until the old guard dies off, things will never change. We should cheer the passing of this old fart, not mourn it.

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