Friday, January 23, 2015

The Death of King Abdullah: "Change You Can Believe In"? Let's See What Happens Now in Yemen

The spate of articles in today's paper announcing the death of Saudi King Abdullah at the age of 90 might lead a reader to believe that the monarch of the United States has just passed. And this belief would not be that wide of the mark.

What makes the plethora of stories (I count four) in the Gray Lady incongruous is that for the most part Saudi Arabia receives little attention in the "newspaper of record," particularly compared with "official" adversaries like China or Russia (or Venezuela when Chavez was still alive). The rare large article usually accentuates the positive, such as Dionne Searcey's "A Conundrum for Saudis: Women at Work." The NYT sticks to a respectful tone, the theme being that the Kingdom is a rich, traditional society making gradual changes to incorporate modern values.

And this is pretty much what one gets in the anchor article by Douglas Martin and Ben Hubbard, "King Abdullah, a Shrewd Force Who Reshaped Saudi Arabia, Dies at 90," a reverential appraisal that does not obscure a legacy of mendacity and intolerance:
. . .[Abdullah] was also mindful that his family had, since the 18th century, derived its authority from an alliance with the strict Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. He accordingly made only modest changes to the kingdom’s conservative clerical establishment. When Islamic State forces conquered vast stretches of Syria and Iraq, imposing a creed linked to Saudi Arabia’s own, the kingdom was slow to respond.
*** 
Abdullah did make changes that were seen as important in the Saudi context. He allowed women to work as supermarket cashiers and appointed a woman as a deputy minister. At the $12.5 billion research university he built and named for himself, women study beside men.
However, he did not fulfill a promise made to Barbara Walters of ABC News in his first televised interview as king in October 2005: that he would allow women to drive, a hugely contentious issue in Saudi Arabia.
Although he ordered the kingdom’s first elections for municipal councils in 2005, a promised second election, in October 2009, in which women would vote, was postponed until September 2011. Then in March of that year, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs announced that the question of women voting would be put off indefinitely “because of the kingdom’s social customs.”
***
Perhaps Abdullah’s most daunting challenge arrived in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with the revelation that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. The royal family at first railed at what it called a vicious smear campaign against the kingdom, then ruthlessly suppressed known militants — not least because the monarchy itself was a main target of Al Qaeda.
Striking a balance was almost always Abdullah’s preference. He strove to keep oil prices high, but not so high that they prompted consumers to abandon petroleum, then hedged his bets by investing billions in solar energy research. In 2008, he convened a meeting of world religious leaders to promote tolerance, but held it in Madrid rather than Saudi Arabia, where the public practice of religions other than Islam is outlawed.
Yet Abdullah could, and did, take strong positions. He denounced the American-led invasion of Iraq as “an illegal occupation”; proposed a comprehensive peace plan for the Middle East that included recognition of Israel by Arab nations; and urged in a secret cable that the United States attack Iran, Saudi Arabia’s great rival. “Cut off the head off the snake,” he said. 

The three other stories have to do with the Kingdom's role as a regional hegemon paranoid about Iran (Anne Barnard and Alan Cowell, "New Saudi Ruler Pledges Continuity After Death of King Abdullah"); the impact of Abdullah's death on the Saudi-engineered oil-price drop (Stanley Reed, "King Abdullah’s Death Unlikely to Upset Saudi Oil Goals, Analysts Say") and an opaque assessment of Abdullah's successor Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud (Ben Hubbard, "Salman Ascends Throne to Become Saudi King").

Long story short, nothing is going to change as far as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia goes. Salman has been ruling as Crown Prince for some time due to Abdullah's poor health, The problem for the Saudis is next door in Yemen. The resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his cabinet is a move that could not have happened without the approval of the United States and the Saudis. Hadi's government is a fiction, window dressing for Saudi and U.S. wirepullers, but one that cannot project power even in its own capital city; the Houthis, the Hezbollah-like Shiite movement, can and have. The resignation of Hadi is a bluff by the U.S./KSA to bring the Houthis to heel. The Houthis as a Shiite sect, the thinking goes, don't have the wherewithal to keep the Sunni-majority nation of Yemen intact, and the Houthis want to keep Yemen whole. So concessions will be made to Hadi or another Hadi-like figurehead in order to maintain Yemen in its present boundaries.

If this gambit fails then the country splits, with the south already showing signs of breaking away. That the Kingdom would reprise its Bahrain performance is unlikely. The Saudis aren't dealing with young urban protesters here. The Houthis can fight. The Kingdom would just as soon ramp up its support for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Meaning down the road more Charlie Hebdo massacres.

I think "Change You Can Believe In" is indeed coming our way, and not just in the form of an election campaign slogan. The Arab Spring was rolled back but at huge ongoing yet-to-be-tallied cost. Things are about to shift.

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