Are the Saudis in trouble?

"...Saudi Arabia has long been the home and educator of many who today inspire and lead worldwide Islamist militancy (not least, Osama bin Laden). The country’s leaders nevertheless strive to show the world they are ‘modernizing’ and subduing domestic militancy—anything required to keep the country stable and oil production dependable.... foreigners should be wary of the smoke and mirrors game being played in the kingdom..... they also have the advantage of addressing an oil-buying clientele of nation states that want to believe the kingdom is stable. And while this hungry-for-good-news audience includes all Saudi-oil customers, it’s hard to imagine any being as hopeful that all’s well as Asia’s big economic powers: China, Japan, South Korea and India..... long-term Saudi domestic stability is essential for continued economic expansion.

And today, on the surface, all really does seem well...

Yet, while the Saudis have had some stability-protecting successes, there are straws in the wind to suggest importers of Saudi and Arab Peninsula oil shouldn’t take stability for granted.

Last month, for example, Saudi Second Deputy Premier and Minister of Interior Prince Naif claimed his ministry had stopped 230 of 240 planned terrorist attacks in the kingdom. Naif quickly passed over the startling incident total, and said citizens should be proud (but not complacent) about the record....

Naif’s mild warning isn’t unlike those issued by Western leaders. But the fact is that the Saudis’ on-the-ground reality is more threatening than in most non-Muslim countries. After all, Prince Naif’s son, the deputy interior minister, has been the target of four unsuccessful assassination attempts. And despite the much-praised Saudi re-education system, recidivism exists at a time when the kingdom’s educational system is still mostly in the hands of strict Islamists. Riyadh’s ongoing weeding out of militant teachers has so far moved 2000 teachers to administrative positions since 2008 ‘for teaching radical views to students…(and) turning the mission of teaching into a tool for spreading radical and erroneous (religious) thought.’ Riyadh has also jailed 1,400 teachers found to be ‘sympathetic to al-Qaeda.’ 

That’s not all. The Saudi regime is also having trouble reducing the militancy of its large clerical community. Indeed, in June, a major Saudi-controlled daily said that ‘the consecutive successes scored by the security apparatus have not hidden the fact that (the Saudi regime’s) intellectual work has failed in its war against the terrorist organization [al-Qaeda].’ Another paper later said that in an ‘intellectual confrontation’ with militant Saudi scholars, the regime’s chance of prevailing is ‘nearly nonexistent.’

Although the kingdom has a 20-member senior religious council—the Senior Scholars Authority—that’s charged with guiding the country’s religious life, Saudi universities have produced large numbers of qualified Islamist scholars over the past three decades, men whose militant words and writings now drive and justify jihadi activities in the kingdom and worldwide.

Adding to the problem, the Saudi regime has sent many such scholars overseas to be imams (leaders) and teachers at Islamic schools and mosques in Europe, Africa, North America and the Muslim and partially Muslim states of Asia, especially Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. They are, of course, inculcating militancy in their congregations....

the king’s decree signals the regime’s desperation. Trained Islamic scholars are viewed and respected by Muslims as the heirs of the Prophet Muhammad—their job is to make sure Muslim rulers implement only God’s law, and to defy them if they don’t. King Abdullah has upended this hallowed tradition by putting all religious authority in the hands of scholars he controls. He has, in essence, disenfranchised—theologically speaking—an enormous number of the Prophet’s heirs. By doing so, he has assured more, not less, scholarly opposition to al-Saud rule and has worsened the problem by driving the militant and now antagonized scholars underground... the Saudi regime is also confronting its failure to eradicate al-Qaeda’s presence in the kingdom, notwithstanding success in pre-empting attacks and jailing ‘several thousand’ of the group’s fighters and other Saudis involved in culling money and Internet operations for al-Qaeda.

Saudi officials, journalists and professors admit al-Qaeda’s appeal in the kingdom is strong and may be growing, citing their special concern that al-Qaeda is succeeding with plans to recruit Saudi females....

The threat to Riyadh, though, isn’t just from inside—al-Qaeda and its anti-Saudi allies have made substantial progress in ‘surrounding’ Saudi Arabia and its oil-producing neighbours. Before 9/11, al-Qaeda operatives had difficulty entering the kingdom from abroad, as well as in exiting after attacks. Indeed, much of Riyadh’s 2003-06 success in capturing large numbers of militants was due to its control of most entry and exit points.

But this is no longer the case. Al-Qaeda could still try to move fighters into the kingdom via official entry points, but there’s little reason to take the chance now. The post-9/11 growth of safe havens for al-Qaeda and other Sunni Islamists in Yemen, Somalia and Iraq ensures that entry to the kingdom can be made safely on the Saudi-Iraq border, the Yemen-Saudi border and across the Red Sea from Somalia. And the reverse is also true—if al-Qaeda is hard-pressed by Saudi security in the kingdom, it’s relatively quick and easy to retreat to secure safe havens in Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.       

Ultimately, this means that states that depend on secure Saudi oil production should take Riyadh’s well-publicized successes in stopping terror plots, jailing militants, ‘re-educating’ radicals and ‘controlling’ its community of militant scholars with a pinch of salt. In fact, the claims seem more the sign of a growing and intractable problem than a signal the security services have turned the tide in the regime’s favour.

Countries counting on secure, long-term access to Saudi oil would do well to mull the words of Abd-al-Rahman al-Rashid, editor of the London-based, Saudi-controlled newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat. In June, al-Rashid warned that:"…This terrorist organization’s ability to infiltrate the closed society of Saudi women and its infiltration of the centre of Saudi provinces reveals that despite the arrests and hunts for hundreds of al-Qaeda elements, the organization is still active and is spreading like cancer.'

To put it more bluntly, the all-is-well tune Riyadh is now playing for its oil customers may well, in the not-too-distant future, sound a lot more like whistling past the graveyard."