Saudi Arabia and Iraq

For a while now, I haven't been too happy with the conventional buzz about Saudi Arabia, which seems to make the key mistake of assuming the Saudi royal family is a monolith secretly dedicated to destroying Western civilization. So I was glad to see this Foreign Affairs article giving a more complex account of the interaction between certain groups of Saudi royals, Saudi Arabian reformists, the Wahhabi establishment, and militant groups such as al-Qaeda.

Anyone seriously interested in Saudi politics needs to read this in full. For now, though, I want to call attention to two key points. One is the fact that the conservative Prince Nayef turned on the militants after the May 2003 terrorist bombings in Riyadh. Before that, he had seen them as useful tools in countering Saudi reformists. Bear in mind that the reformists are a key constituency of Crown Prince Abdullah, who as seen by his title is one of the leading contenders to succeed King Fahd. So Prince Nayef's relationship with the militants is a two-way street - yes, they rely to an extent on his largesse, but he also relies on them as a key domestic constituency in intra-Saudi power struggles.

Now take a look at the discussion of the Shi'ites. Wahhabi ideology considers Shi'ites to be worse than Jews. They believe Shi'ism is a perversion of true Islam inspired by Judaism, and that Jews, Shi'ites, and Americans are looped together in some sort of conspiracy to destroy the Islamic world. Crown Prince Abdullah has been reaching out to Shi'ites as part of his reform efforts. Conservatives, on the other hand, are ratcheting up the anti-Shi'ite rhetoric.

In the middle of all this, the United States invaded Iraq, tossing out Saddam Hussein and placing power in the hands of secularizers and Shi'ites. These conservative Wahhabi clerics and militants have to see this as a vindication of their suspicions. However, what I want to link this to at the moment is my sense that the Bush administration is preparing to abandon Iraq. Because if people like Prince Nayef want to find a way to hurt the reformers that doesn't threaten the entire Saudi establishment, it goes something like this: Put them to work against the "Judeo-Shi'ite threat" on their northern border. Sour relations between Saudi Arabia on the one hand and the U.S. and IGC on the other. Keep the anti-Shi'ite forces in Iraq strong - I'm guessing that Sunni leaders who took money from Saddam won't object to getting it from the Saudis. And keep portraying Saudi Arabia's Shi'ites as in league with Iraq's, an integral part of the "Evil Global Conspiracy" that also oppresses the Palestinians and takes whatever measures the U.S. is taking against the guerrillas in Iraq. Crown Prince Abdullah's hand is thus badly weakened, and Prince Nayef and Co. gain greater influence and potentially the throne.

This is something we should worry about. For one thing, lots of people will die as violence in Iraq continues. You'd also probably see the creation of areas for al-Qaeda operation within the Sunni-dominated region of the country. In addition, if we want to go about breaking the Saudi-al-Qaeda connection as part of the War on Terror, it almost has to start by ensuring the success of the faction which opposes them already, rather than one partially dependent on them and their ideology. Hopefully, the Bush administration is doing something quietly here we just don't know about. But I'm not sure I have faith.

UPDATE: I should add a mention here that someone knowledgeable just mentioned to me they disagreed with several of the points in the Doran article, though they didn't mention specifics.