Saudi Arabia has gone on the offensive against Iran to protect its
interests. Their involvement in Syria is the first battle in what is going
to be a long, bloody conflict that will know no frontiers or limits.
Ongoing disorders in the island kingdom of Bahrain since February 2011 have
set off alarm bells in Riyadh. The Saudis are convinced that Iran is
directing the protests and fear that the problems will spill over the 25
kilometer-long causeway into oil-rich Al-Qatif, where the bulk of the 2
million Shia in the Kingdom are concentrated. So far, the Saudis have not
had to deal with demonstrations as serious as those in Bahrain, but success
in the island kingdom could encourage the protestors to become more violent.
Protecting the oil is the first concern of the government. Oil is the sole
source of the national wealth and is managed by the state-owned Saudi Aramco
Corporation. The monopoly of political power by the members of the Saud
family means that all of the wealth of the Kingdom is their personal
property. Saudi Arabia is a company country with the 28 million citizens the
responsibility of the Saud Family rulers.
The customary manner of dealing with a problem by the patriarchal regime is
to bury it in money. King Abdullah announced at the height of the Arab
Spring that he was increasing the national budget by $130 billion to be
spent over the coming five years. Government salaries and the minimum wage
were raised. New housing and other benefits are to be provided. At the same
time, he plans to expand the security forces by 6,000 men.
While the Saudi king seeks to sooth the unrest among the general population
by adding more government benefits, he will not grant any concessions to the
8 percent of the population that is Shia. He takes seriously the warning by
King Abdullah of Jordan back in 2004 of the danger of a Shia Crescent that
would extend from the coast of Lebanon to Afghanistan. Hezbollah in Lebanon,
Assad in Syria, and the Shia-controlled government of Iraq form the links in
the chain.
When the Arab Spring reached Syria, the leaders in Riyadh were given the
weapon to break the chain. Appeals from tribal leaders under attack in Syria
to kinsmen in the Gulf states for assistance could not be ignored. The
various blinks between the Gulf states in several Syrian tribes means that
Saudi Arabia and its close ally Qatar have connections that include at least
3 million people out of the Syrian populations of 23 million. To show how
deep the bonds go, the leader of the Nijris Tribe in Syria is married to a
woman from the Saud Family.
It is no wonder that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in
February that arming the Syrian rebels was an "excellent idea." He was
supported by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who said, "We
should do whatever necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including
giving them weapons to defend themselves." The intervention has the nature
of a family and tribal issue that the prominent Saudi cleric Aidh al-Qarni
has turned into a Sunni-Shia war by promoting Assad's death.
The Saudis and their Qatar and United Arab Emirate allies have pledged $100
million to pay wages to the fighters. Many of the officers of the Free
Syrian Army are from tribes connected to the Gulf. In effect, the payment of
wages is paying members of associated tribes.
Here, the United States is not a welcomed partner, except as a supplier of
arms. Saudi Arabia sees the role of the United States as being limited to a
wall of steel that protects the oil wealth of the Kingdom and the Gulf
states from Iranian aggression. In February 1945, President Roosevelt at a
meeting in Egypt with Abdel Aziz bin Saud, the founder of modern Saudi
Arabia, pledged to defend the Kingdom in exchange for a steady flow of oil.
Since those long-ago days when the United States was establishing Pax
Americana, the Saudis have lost their trust in the wisdom and reliability of
U.S. policy makers. The Saudis urged the United States not to invade Iraq in
2003, only to have them ignore Saudi interests in maintaining an Iraqi
buffer zone against Iran. The Saudis had asked the United States not to
leave a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad that would threaten the
northern frontier of the kingdom, only to have the last U.S. soldiers depart
in December 2011. With revolution sweeping across the Middle East,
Washington abandoned President Mubarak of Egypt, Saudi Arabia's favorite
non-royal leader in the region.
Worried by the possibility of Iranian-sponsored insurrections among Shia in
the Gulf states, the Saudis are asserting their power in the region while
they have the advantage. For 30 years, they have been engaged in a proxy war
with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria is to be the next battlefield, but
here, there is a critical difference from what were minor skirmishes in
Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere. The Saudis, with the aid of Qatar and the UAE,
are striking at the core interests of Tehran, and they have through their
tribal networks the advantage over an isolated Islamic Republic.
Tribal and kinship relations are being augmented by the infusion of the
Salafi vision of Islam that is growing in the Gulf states. Money from the
Gulf states has gone into the development of religious centers to spread the
fundamentalist belief. A critical part of the ideology is to be anti-Shia.
Salafism in Saudi Arabia is promulgated by the Wahhabi School of Islam. The
Wahhabi movement began in the 18th century and promoted a return to the
fundamentalism of the early followers of the faith.
The Sauds incorporated the religious movement into their leadership of the
tribes. When the modern state of Saudi Arabia was formed, they were granted
control of the educational system and much else in the society in exchange
for the endorsement of authoritarian rule.
When the Kingdom used its growing wealth in the 1970s to extend its
interests far from the traditional territory in the battle against the
atheistic Soviet Union, the Wahhabi clergy became missionaries in advancing
their ideology through religious institutions to oppose the Soviets. More
than 200,000 jihadists were sent into Afghanistan to fight the Soviet forces
and succeeded in driving them out.
There is no longer a Soviet Union to confront. Today, the enemy is the
Islamic Republic of Iran with what is described by the Wahhabis as a
heretical form of Islam and its involvement in the Shia communities across
the region. For 13 centuries, the Shia have been kept under control. With
the hand of Iran in the form of the Qud Force reaching into restless
communities that number as many as 106 million people in what is the heart
of the Middle East, the Saudis see a desperate need to crush the foe before
it has the means to pull down the privileged position of the Saud Family and
the families of the other Gulf state rulers.
The war begins in Syria, where we can expect that a successor government to
Assad will be declared soon in the Saudi-controlled tribal areas even before
Assad is defeated. The territory is likely to adopt the more fundamentalist
principals of the Salafists, as it serves as a stepping stone to Iran
Itself. It promises to be a bloody, protracted war that will recognize no
frontier.
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Received on Tue Sep 04 2012 - 18:11:58 EDT
