KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Washington will prop up the House of Saud - for now: Saudi Arabia has descended into a cauldron of hatreds and divisions (Mai Yamani, June 5, 2004, The Guardian)

Already its influence in the Gulf has been badly shaken. The smaller states no longer need Saudi Arabia for protection and security, and no longer look to Riyadh for a lead on the international stage. Moreover, some have clearly replaced the Saudi state in Washington's affections, especially as they move ahead with political and economic reforms, outstripping the kingdom's own meagre efforts.

It is now known that a number of those Gulf rulers have been lining up to tell the Saudis that reform is their only chance of survival, and that it may already be too late. But even those princes who accept that notion - such as Crown Prince Abdullah - no longer appear to hold sway in the cabinet.

In any case, the Saudi state has become such a cauldron of hatreds and divisions - many now highlighted by the war in Iraq - that reforms favouring one group would almost certainly be rejected by another.

Regional rivalries have been sharply exacerbated. The Asir region is viewed by many as partly Yemeni. The Hijazis see themselves as a separate cultural and religious entity. After decades of exclusion from key jobs, the Shia in the oil-rich province are deeply ambivalent about their Saudi identity and feel newly empowered by Shia advances in Iraq.

Conceivably, they could begin to demand their own state. Some even talk about Shia political power as a disease that could spread into Saudi Arabia and engulf it. If Iraq were ever to sink into civil war, the Saudis themselves would be hard-pressed to hold their nation together.

To the Saudi royal family nothing is more troubling than the Shia questions. All Saudi Shia are followers of the Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - so they already look across the border for guidance. Bearded, turbaned and cloaked Shia clerics, now far more visible in Iraq, terrify the minority Saudi Wahhabis. From being the region's big losers over the last few decades, many Shia now feel they can redress the balance, settle old scores and control the oil wealth.

As they review their options, the Saudis have probably concluded that they can live with a Shia-dominated government in Iraq, but only if it contains prominent Sunni faces. All the same, relations won't be easy.

Shia ideology is in direct collision with the Sunni Wahhabi doctrine that underpins the Saudi state and frequently labels the Shia as "heretics".

This much is certain: the future of Arabia is not Wahhabist. The faster the Sa'uds reform to make Sunni Islam as compatible with democracy as Shi'ism already is, the better their chances of retaining some semblance of power--perhaps an eventual constitutional monarchy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 5, 2004 9:54 PM