Saudi Arabia

The excellent New York Times journalists David K. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim have an article tacking stock of the nine-day old Saudi-led air campaign against Houthi and Houthi-affiliated fighting forces in Yemen. On the evening of the first airstrikes, the White House revealed that the United States was aiding this intervention: “President Obama has authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]-led military operations.” Unclear as to why the Obama administration hastily and enthusiastically endorsed and supported the air campaign, I wrote a piece analyzing the justifications that U.S. officials were offering (I counted seven). Most disturbing were two acknowledgments by Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command—the geographic region containing the Persian Gulf. First, he said, “I don’t currently know the specific goals and objectives of the Saudi campaign, and I would have to know that to be able to assess the likelihood of success.” Austin also admitted when asked when he learned of the intervention, “I had a conversation with the CHOD [the Saudi Chief of Defense] right before they took action, so it was shortly before.” So the military commander responsible for providing the logistical and intelligence support to the intervention did not know its goals or objectives, and only learned of it right before it began. It was with this background and understanding of the air campaign so far that I then came across this passage in Kirkpatrick and Fahim’s article this morning: American officials said they supported the Saudi campaign mainly because of a lack of alternatives. “If you ask why we’re backing this, beyond the fact that the Saudis are allies and have been allies for a long time, the answer you’re going to get from most people—if they were being honest—is that we weren’t going to be able to stop it,” said an American defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was discussing internal government deliberations. “If the Saudis were willing to step in, the thinking was that they should be encouraged,” the official said. “We were not going to send our military, that’s for certain.” So if the United States cannot stop a misguided intervention by its partners into a proxy civil war ten thousand kilometers away, the only alternative is to join them? Surely the unnamed Pentagon official is aware that the intervention is directly at odds with other, allegedly more pressing, U.S. foreign policy interests in the region: making Yemen an even more unstable country, as evidenced by the prison break that included members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and assuredly diverting the already meager GCC air assets participating in the coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. Rather, since the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen was inevitable, America’s support for it was predetermined. This is especially puzzling since none of the countries bombing Yemen are mutual defense treaty allies with the United States, so there is no obligation, even under the most tortured self-defense justification, to support them. Moreover, even when allies undertake foreign military misadventures, that should not mean that U.S. support is mandatory. In 1974, when Turkey invaded Cyprus, President Richard Nixon was surprised but provided no support and, in 1982,  when the United Kingdom went to war with Argentina over the Falklands Islands, President Ronald Reagan remained neutral. Quotes by anonymous officials are not formal policy declarations, but they often accurately capture the honest thinking of those who work to develop and implement foreign policy. Recall the “presidential advisor” who, in the New Yorker, admiringly described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” The defense official quoted above has articulated a far more troubling doctrine of America being led into war by a nervous Gulf monarchy, and the White House lacking the agency to do anything about it, other than to climb on board and offer the unmatched U.S. military enabling support for this war. Finally, this intervention is going terribly based upon all of the courageous reporting from those in the country. Per usual, the victims of the war will be innocent non-combatants. Just this morning, UN under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos released a statement warning: “Reports from humanitarian partners in different parts of the country indicate that some 519 people have been killed and nearly 1,700 injured in the past two weeks–over 90 of them children.” Why did the White House so eagerly sign up to back the Saudi-led intervention that has such unclear goals and is causing such obvious destruction and death?

Lorenzo Kamel examines how the Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia attempts to differentiate itself from the ideology of ISIS. Jay Ulfelder finds that recent events in Yemen challenges traditional conceptions of the state and the international system. Jadaliyya interviews Yemeni activist Hisham al-Omeisy about the unfolding situation in Yemen.

During one of my last semesters in graduate school, I was a teaching assistant for a course called “How Do You Know?” The goal of the class was to expose students to the way different disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and hard sciences evaluate evidence. It was a terrific course. The students loved it and the instructors loved it. I hope the University of Pennsylvania still offers it because many of the people writing about Saudi Arabia after King Abdullah’s death on Friday morning (Saudi time) should enroll. It may not help, however. In too many instances commentators, be they declared “experts” or run-of the-mill pundits, are not dealing with any evidence at all. They are just repeating rumors or making up deep-sounding pronouncements after apparently crash-watching David Lean’s 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, which, by the way, had nothing to do with the al-Saud family, but rather their Hejazi rivals, the Hashemites. Here is my advice: Let’s everyone step back from their metaphorical desert tent, take a deep breath, sip some cardamom coffee, munch on a date, and understand—as best we can—what has and what has not happened in Saudi Arabia. Shortly after King Abdullah was admitted to a Riyadh hospital on December 31, there was a flurry of instant analyses indicating that Saudi Arabia was headed for a succession “crisis” with dire implications for the United States. Everything is always a crisis when you have to beat a rival pundit to the punch, but the reality of Saudi Arabia’s leadership change was much different, of course. The mechanics of now-King Salman’s succession was smooth. Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud was elevated to crown prince and Mohammed bin Nayef—a grandson of the founder of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman bin Faisal al-Saud—was named deputy crown prince, setting in motion a generational change in Saudi leadership. There may have been politics around all of this, but no one outside the royal family could see it, and once the princes came to a consensus on how things would go once Abdullah died, they closed ranks. There was no disruption in U.S.-Saudi relations, though ties have been under strain lately. To reinforce the importance of the relationship, President Barack Obama announced he is traveling to Riyadh on Tuesday to pay his respects. Of course, Abdullah’s death comes at a challenging moment for Saudi Arabia with the combination of the ISIS threat, Yemen’s apparent fall to Houthi tribesmen—who the Saudis regard as agents of Iran—Syria’s continued civil war, Iraq’s fragmentation, Egypt’s instability, and low oil prices. “Don’t speak ill of the dead” is a proper and decent admonition that well-meaning people should follow. At the same time, we should not lionize the deceased when they do not necessarily deserve it. I am perfectly willing to accept that people in Saudi Arabia supported King Abdullah, but the press reporting would suggest that he was “popular.” How would anyone actually know that? I am not aware of any reliable metric of public opinion in Saudi Arabia that would lead anyone to draw that conclusion. In addition, let’s be clear that the departed monarch’s accomplishments in twenty years in power—initially as de facto ruler while his predecessor, King Fahd, was incapacitated and then as king in his own right—were rather limited. I know, I know: Change is frustratingly slow and incremental in Saudi Arabia. Building consensus among the royals and the religious establishment is a painstaking process, but even so, two decades is a long time. There were persistent stories alleging that Abdullah was a reformer, but no one could ever articulate for me what he actually stood for and wanted. It seemed to me that he wanted what everyone in the Saudi royal family wants—stability and business as usual. Maybe top-down social and political change in Saudi Arabia is just too hard, but Abdullah failed in other areas as well. I remember attending the Jeddah Economic Forum in early 2006 where I attended a presentation on Abdullah’s plan to construct five new, high-tech smart cities—the centerpiece of which would be the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC). About sixty miles north of Jeddah along the Red Sea coast, the city is supposed to be an economic center and a place where Saudi Arabia’s notorious social strictures are relaxed. When I had the opportunity to visit KAEC four years later, the developers—the Dubai-based Emaar Middle East—put on a good show, but it was clear that they were scaling their grand plans way back, focusing on activity around the King Abdullah Port, which is not yet complete. Things were so bad that Emaar was forced to accept leaseback agreements to the few people who bought into the KAEC dream early on. There has been progress at KAEC since I visited, but it has fallen short of what Abdullah promised. Of the other four cities, one has been shelved, there is some infrastructure development at the site of Jazan Economic City, and the other two—Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Mousaed Economic City and Knowledge Economic City in Medina— remain big ideas enshrined in marketing materials. When considering Abdullah’s legacy, let’s also keep in mind that he presided over a society that produced the majority of the September 11 hijackers. As I have written elsewhere, al-Qaeda was, in its earlier incarnations, a largely Egyptian organization that benefitted from Osama bin Laden’s personal wealth. Still, there is no denying that the Saudis under Abdullah had an extremism problem about which they were apparently in abject denial until terrorists started targeting them in 2003. More recently, Abdullah oversaw the beheading of eighty-seven individuals in 2014, mostly poor guest workers that no one cares about. So far this year, which is only twenty-six days old, Saudi executioners have separated ten more people from their heads. Perhaps King Salman—who the British journalist Robert Lacey, author of the widely owned, but critically panned book The Kingdom, hilariously (but not in a good way) described as a “tall, upright son of the desert”—will end this gruesome practice, but it is not likely. Saudi Arabia is a complex society whose politics are notoriously obscure and thus difficult to comprehend. The newspapers stories, columns, editorials, and instant analyses of all types do not help. If folks want to understand it better, I recommend reading these: Rachel Bronson, Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Stephane Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). Toby C. Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).

Georgia Travers considers the implications of rumors about Sultan Qaboos’ health on Omani political society. Faten Bushehri assesses the state of Bahrain on the eve of its parliamentary elections. Roberto Iannuzzi argues that the dangers facing Saudi Arabia’s political elite are their own doing.

Significant Developments Turkey-Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on the U.S.-led coalition to supply arms and training to opposition ground troops in Syria, arguing that “Kobani [was] about to fall” to ISIS. Erdogan nonetheless refused to commit Turkish ground forces. The Turkish leader’s decision to withhold ground troops, stemming primarily from a refusal to engage with affiliates of the PKK, sparked clashes between Kurdish protesters and security forces throughout Turkey. More than 19 people were killed and 36 injured in the confrontations Tuesday night and Turkish authorities imposed curfews in six provinces. Meanwhile, ISIS is poised to take the town of Kobani, where over 12,000 Kurdish civilians are currently trapped. The U.S.-led coalition has conducted 11 airstrikes against ISIS troops around Kobani this week, but Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby said today that, “airstrikes alone are not ... going to save the town of Kobani.” Egypt. The Sinai-based extremist Islamist group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, released a video on Monday showing members of the group beheading three Egyptian nationals and shooting to death a fourth. The group accused the three Egyptians who were beheaded of collaborating with Israeli Intelligence. The Egyptian who was shot dead reportedly confessed to serving as an informant for the Egyptian military. The video also included clips of recent speeches by ISIS leaders, implying that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis may be forging closer ties with the group. Egyptian military officials yesterday claimed the army killed 16 members of the group in operations targeting the militia’s hideouts. U.S. Foreign Policy UAE-Turkey-Saudi Arabia. Vice President Joseph Biden called Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi on Sunday to apologize for comments made during a foreign policy speech at Harvard last Thursday. Biden had told a questioner that the United States’ biggest issue in its fight against ISIS and Syria was “America’s allies in the region.” He further accused the UAE of “funneling” weapons to Syrian rebels, enabling them to fall into the hands of extremists. It was the second apology of the weekend for Biden, who called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday to make amends for comments made during the same speech about Turkey allowing foreign fighters to cross its borders. A senior White House official confirmed on Monday that Biden was also reaching out to apologize to Saudi Arabia. Iraq-Syria. U.S. Central Command released figures on Monday indicating that the Pentagon has spent over $1.1 billion on U.S. army and navy operations in Iraq and Syria since the middle of June. Officials speculate that daily costs have totaled between $7 and $10 million dollars since then. Costs increased noticeably once U.S. airstrikes began over Iraq in August and continued to rise when military operations were extended to Syria in September. Israel. The White House responded strongly on Monday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion the day before on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that criticism of Israel’s settlement activity was contrary to “American values.” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest retorted that “American values” were responsible for providing “unwavering support to Israel” and that U.S. funding for the Iron Dome had ensured the safety of Israeli citizens from Hamas rockets in the Gaza conflict this summer. President Barack Obama had warned that the building of new settlements risked “poison[ing] the atmosphere” with Palestinians and the Arab World. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Yemen. Houthi rebels rejected the nomination of Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak as new prime minister on Tuesday. The Houthis did not consider him sufficiently independent since he is a top aide of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. In other news, security officials in Yemen reported today the occurrence of six simultaneous attacks on security bases and government offices in the south of the capital, Sana’a. The blasts, which killed twenty-nine people, have been attributed to alleged al-Qaeda militants. Iraq. Dutch F-16 fighter planes carried out their first strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq on Tuesday in support of the U.S.-led coalition. The strikes allegedly destroyed several vehicles, and may also have succeeding in killing ISIS fighters. Meanwhile, the Canadian parliament voted to join the international coalition in airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. Israel-ISIS. Police in Nazareth retrieved around two dozen flags bearing the ISIS logo from the city’s industrial area. Police have begun investigating potential uses and owners. Israel officially banned forging relationships with anyone affiliated with ISIS in September. Israeli police recently apprehended two ISIS supporters: a 24 year old teacher, who confessed to smuggling ISIS and jihad-related material from Jordan; and a Palestinian woman prisoner who praised ISIS to other prisoners. Israeli officials complained to the Swedish ambassador to Jerusalem on Monday to object to Sweden’s new prime minister’s decision to recognize a state of Palestine. The new center-right government, led by Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, would be the first member of the EU to recognize a Palestinian state. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “counter-productive,” while officials in Washington called the announcement “premature.” Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed responsibility yesterday for planting a bomb on Lebanon’s southern border that injured two Israeli soldiers. The explosion came two days after Israeli soldiers fired at a Lebanese Army post. In retaliation, the Israeli army fired artillery close to residential areas along the border. Today the U.S. embassy in Beirut in Lebanon called on Hezbollah and the Lebanese army to support the United Nations peacekeeping efforts to maintain quiet on the ground.

David Roberts, lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, based at the Joaan Bin Jassim Staff College in Qatar, offers expert insight into the recent tensions among the major GCC states. “I love all the countries of the Gulf, and they all love me.” With this less than subtle statement, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the vocal Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood scholar tried to do his part to repair regional relations in the Gulf that have badly frayed in recent weeks. Long-brewing discontent erupted in early March with the unprecedented withdrawal of the Saudi, Emirati, and Bahraini ambassadors from Qatar. Subsequent mediation from Kuwait’s Emir has led the protagonists to the cusp of a modus vivendi, and a vague document has been agreed upon. But core differences remain. Qatar is alone in the region in providing financial, material, and rhetorical support for popular governance around the Middle East. It can do this because its domestic security is strong and, without internal restrictions to speak of such as a strong Parliament, its elite is unusually unconstrained and capable of pursuing unusual foreign policy tangents such as assiduously supporting the new movements in the wake of the Arab Spring. Such aid, which has been frequently channeled through Brotherhood connections, resonated favorably across much of the region. This allowed Qatar to play an important role in emerging popular revolts, keeping the autocratic monarchy with no meaningful elections on the right side of wider public opinion, while also laying the foundations for new, potentially close regional relations. Qatar’s Gulf neighbors, however, without as pliant a domestic context and driven by the intention of thwarting new Islamist actors, seek the firm reinstatement of the regional status quo ante. In November 2013, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah presented Qatar’s new, 33-year-old Emir – a man one-third his age – with a document demanding a total reorientation of Qatar’s foreign policy under the guise of promoting regional security. In the face of conflicting interests between Saudi and Qatar, this was Abdullah’s attempt to cow Qatar and get its renegade regional foreign policy under control; something he had tried but failed to do for decades with Tamim’s father, Hamad. Tamim demurred, but  Abdullah was nevertheless led to believe that the Emir had acquiesced to the Saudi leader’s way of thinking. Yet Qatar’s rhetorical support of the Brotherhood continued and Qaradawi stoked ire across the region in early 2014. In January he accused Saudi Arabia’s leaders of not believing in sharia law and he also declared that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has “always been against Islamic rule” prompting its foreign ministry to summon the Qatari ambassador to explain the lack of an official denunciation or apology. In March of this year, Qatari representatives facilitated the release of thirteen Greek Orthodox nuns held in Syria since in December 2012 with – according to some reports – a ransom of $67 million. From the Saudi perspective this was a clear example of Qatar adversely intervening in the conflict and further fermenting a petri dish in which jihadi groups grow, prosper, and strengthen. Saudi authorities also see Qatar fermenting similar problems in Saudi’s own backyard in Yemen where Doha stands accused of channeling its support through the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Al Islah party. Despite their own material and financial support for suspect groups in such conflicts, Riyadh clearly believes that Qatari actions encourage jihadism, which represents a threat to Saudi security. Given the bitter Saudi experience with domestic terrorism in the mid-2000s and its large, relatively porous borders with Yemen and Iraq, fears are growing in the Saudi elite of the impact or ‘blowback’ of returning, more radicalized, and battle-tested jihadis. This is the reason that the remit of Minister of the Interior Muhammed bin Nayef has recently been extended to cover Syria and Yemen and why the Saudi leadership issued a decree in February making it illegal for their citizens to fight in regional conflicts. The withdrawal of the ambassadors from Doha had little practical effect. Gulf diplomacy is conducted at a much higher level, but it was a public and unprecedented rebuke. Leaks to the press about the potential Saudi escalation including the cancellation of an impending airline deal by Qatar Airways in Saudi Arabia or potentially closing the land border to Qatar, added to a sense of near naked extortion. The nature of the mooted compromise agreement that the Kuwaitis hammered out does not augur well for long-term stability. The agreement is thought to demand that Qatar curtails funding for a range of media organizations in the Middle East that are critical of the policies of the Gulf States; expels Brotherhood members currently living in Doha; halts its support of the Brotherhood and the Houthis in Yemen; and stops naturalizing Gulf citizens fleeing states as opposition members or Islamists. Though Qatar has, according to reports, now agreed to implement these statutes, it is difficult to see how Doha could possibly do so without fundamentally shifting its foreign policy, something it is most unlikely to do. Since the late 1950s Qatar has provided various kinds of support for the Brotherhood. Even without a meaningful religiously based commonality – Qatar being theoretically closer, ironically, to the Saudi interpretation of Islam – Qatar often found Brotherhood members both available and sufficiently qualified to staff its emerging bureaucracies. This filled a basic need, while also allowing the Qataris to diversify away any existing dependency on Saudi Arabia in such matters. The Brothers, who settled in Qatar over the decades, whether notable ideologues like Qaradawi or those with the loosest of affiliation to the group, found Doha to be a safe and secure location. These relationships came into their own during the Arab Spring, when their potential for influence increased, for a time at least. Though the Brotherhood is once more deeply repressed across much of the region and should never be seen as a group in “Qatar’s pocket,” there is an unusually deep connection that has been cultivated over decades. Qatar enjoys this relationship because neither the Brotherhood nor any similar groups poses a challenge to the country. Indeed, the local Brotherhood branch disbanded itself in 1999. Additionally, Qatari society is so small and close-knit, and the socioeconomic bargain so strong, that the ruling elites feel entirely and understandably comfortable supporting a group that offers an alternative arrangement of government. Saudi Arabia, however, does face a challenge from the Brothers in two ways. Firstly, the Brotherhood offers a competing form of Islamic government, one that was realized for a time in Egypt and that directly challenges Saudi Arabia as the beacon of Islamic governance. Secondly, Saudi Arabia faces politicized Islam as an oppositional force: Discord throughout the Kingdom could be channeled by the Brotherhood and used to confront the royal family. The UAE has similar fears, stemming from the disparities in wealth between Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the northern Emirates. The government also insists that it has rooted out dozens of Brothers who were planning to disrupt the status quo. Equally, the UAE’s de facto leader, Mohammad bin Zayed, is known to have a deep distrust and dislike for the group that directly shapes the state’s policy. Given that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have recently labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, there is no turning back the clock; their antipathy is now institutionalized state policy. In the aftermath of the ambassadorial withdrawal, dozens of Qataris changed their Twitter profile pictures to photos of the Emir.  Qataris - even those who do not support the Brotherhood – were clearly signaling that they would not be  bullied into changing their policy. So while Qatar could theoretically change tack and join the bandwagon, such an about-face would be seen as a capitulation and would be received poorly back in Doha. Also, aside from the legacy of the policy toward the Brotherhood in Qatar, if there has been a central theme in the country’s foreign policy in the last twenty-five years it has been one of unambiguously asserting Qatar’s independence from Saudi Arabia. Reasonable accommodation has been made in the past, such as in 2008 when Qatar controlled to a greater degree Al Jazeera coverage of Saudi Arabia to ensure the return of the Saudi ambassador to Doha after a six year absence, but the current proposals seek strategic change. Part of the mooted accord attempting to resolve this latest crisis hints that once more Al Jazeera’s coverage might be on the table and Qaradawi is, for the time being at least, cooperating by toning down his rhetoric. But without precisely the kind of meaningful change that Qatar cannot undertake, relations seem set for an extended cold snap, punctuated by personally-led spurts of anger, potentially peripatetically lurching relations from one mini-crisis to the next.

Karl Sharro discusses Lebanese politics and the role of satire in political analysis of the Middle East on Karl Morand’s Middle East Week Podcast.   Pascal Menoret’s photographic journey of the city of Riyadh.   Andreane Williams speaks to Lebanese Red Cross volunteers for NOW.