On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future (41 page)
Read On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future Online
Authors: Karen Elliott House
Tags: #General, #History, #Political Science, #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #World, #Middle East, #Middle Eastern
•
Outcasts
1.
Surprising as it may seem:
Study, not public, quoted to author by senior officials in two different ministries.
2.
As the Saudi population:
“Saudi Arabia, Statistics, Demographic Indicators,” UNICEF,
www.unicef.org/infobycountry/saudiarabia_statistics.html#78
.
3.
“I need this job”:
Umm Turki, interview by author, Riyadh, January 19, 2010.
4.
“Who among people deserves”:
Sahih al Bukhari,
Book of Good Manners
, vol. 8.
5.
“I pray to God”:
Divorcee, interview by author, Riyadh, January 19, 2010.
6.
“My life with my husband”:
Widow, interview by author, Riyadh, January 19, 2010.
7.
“I don’t want people”:
Umm Muhammad, interview by author, Jeddah, October 19, 2009.
8.
The chamber of commerce also:
Basmah Omair, interview by author, April 6, 2009.
9.
“There are a lot”:
Abdullah, interview by author, Riyadh, October 26, 2009. Abdullah declined to give his family name.
10.
“O you who have believed”:
Koran 2:264.
11.
“If you disclose your”:
Koran 2:271.
12.
My guide for the visit:
Mekhlef bin Daham al Shammary, interview by author, April 23, 2010.
13.
“Life was better”:
Author visit to imam of Al Athla, a village near Jizan, April 11, 2009.
14.
“He is not a perfect Muslim who”:
Sahih Bukhari,
www.ahya.org/amm/modules.php?name=Sections&op=printpage&artid=151
.
•
… and Outlaws
1.
The prince, still holding:
Dr. Abdulrahman al Hadlag, general director of Ideological Security Directorate, Ministry of Interior, interview by author, October 10, 2009.
2.
Khalid fit the profile:
Ibid.
3.
“I missed my family”:
Khalid Sulayman al Hubayshi, interview by author, Jeddah, October 18, 2009.
4.
“I was not religious”:
Khalid al Bawadi, interview by author, Riyadh, January 16, 2010.
5.
“I smoked”:
Muhammad Fozan, interview by author, Riyadh, October 13, 2009.
6.
“So long as they”:
Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, deputy minister of interior, interview by author, Riyadh, February 6, 2007.
7.
“If you just cut”:
Jamal Khashoggi, interview by author, January 21, 2010.
8.
As a result, the government now is paying:
Dr. Abdulrahman al Hadlag, interview by author, Riyadh, October 20, 2009.
9.
The men, who live:
Visit to Prince Muhammad bin Nayef Care Center by author, Riyadh, October 12, 2009.
10.
“Art in Saudi Arabia”:
Awad al Yami, interview by author, Riyadh, October 12, 2009.
11.
“When radicalism goes underground”:
Thomas Hegghammer, interview by author, Princeton, N.J., June 23, 2010.
12.
“No one recruited me”:
Hegghammer,
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism Since 1979
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 139.
13.
“near enemy”:
Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli,
Al Qaeda in Its Own Words
, trans. Pascale Ghazaleh (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 158.
14.
“Liberating the Muslim”:
Ibid., p. 205.
15.
“Take not for friends”:
Koran 4:138–39.
16.
“God prohibited”:
Kepel and Milelli,
Al Qaeda
, p. 212.
17.
“We saw the noblest”:
Ibid., p. 207.
18.
“Democracy is a new religion”:
Ibid., p. 184.
19.
“Terrorism is criminal”:
Saudi Gazette
, March 3, 2010,
www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2010022063962
, accessed March 12, 2012.
20.
More terrorist cells:
Hegghammer,
Jihad
, p. 216.
21.
“The only way of repelling”:
Kepel and Milelli,
Al Qaeda
, p. 49.
22.
Three of the first:
Bernard Lewis,
The Arabs in History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 59–64.
•
Succession
1.
The second Saudi state:
Alexei Vassiliev,
The History of Saudi Arabia
(New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 187.
2.
“Join hands across”:
Robert Lacey,
The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 318.
3.
In a kingdom that then:
David Howarth,
The Desert King
(London: Quartet Books, 1980), p. 198.
4.
As the king drove:
Lacey,
Kingdom
, pp. 300–302.
5.
When Faisal went:
Ibid., p. 323.
6.
“Have you got enough”:
Ibid., p. 351.
7.
Immediately after the fatwa:
Ibid., pp. 353–56.
8.
The new king, Faisal:
Ibid., p. 356.
9.
With that history in mind:
“King Abdullah Names Members of the Allegiance Commission,” Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, December 10, 2007,
www.saudiembassy.net/latest_news/news12100801.aspx
, accessed May 17, 2011.
10.
Abdul Aziz fathered some:
Simon Henderson, “After King Abdullah: Succession in Saudi Arabia,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy (August 2009), Policy Focus no. 96, p. 3.
11.
Her eldest son:
For more on the Sudairis, see ibid., p. 6, and Joseph A. Kechichian,
Succession in Saudi Arabia
(New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 6–8.
12.
“I pledge to Allah Almighty”:
“King Abdullah Addresses Princes,” Leadership News, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, December 10, 2007,
http://mofa.gov.sa/sites/mofaen/ServicesandInformation/news/statements/Pages/NewsArticleID72858.aspx
,
accessed March 29, 2008.
13.
That 2009 appointment, made without:
Henderson, “After King Abdullah,” p. 8.
14.
“I call on the royal court”:
“Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Questions Saudi Succession Plan,” Reuters News Agency, March 29, 2009,
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/prince-talal-bin-abdul-aziz-questions-saudi-succession-plan-1.60019
, accessed May 21, 2011.
•
Saudi Scenarios
1.
He dispensed $130 billion:
Muhammad Ibrahim, “SR500bn Social Spending Package Outlined,”
Arab News
, March 18, 2011,
arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article321419.ece?service=print
, accessed March 26, 2011.
2.
“If Saudi Arabia adopts democracy”:
Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, governor of Riyadh Province, interview by author, Riyadh, April 28, 2010.
3.
A new survey of Arab youth:
“3rd Annual ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey,” March 2011, p. 15,
www.asdaa.com
.
4.
The new pan-Arab youth survey:
Ibid., p. 18.
5.
One way to postpone:
Samuel Huntington,
Political Order in Changing Societies
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 187.
6.
Al Saud “will lose some”:
Ibid., p. 191.
7.
One such Saudi:
Khalid al Nowaiser, “An Open Letter to King Abdullah,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 18, 2011.
8.
“We are blind”:
Khalid al Falih, interview by author, Dhahran, March 21, 2009.
•
Pins and Needles
1.
“This is why we”:
Rachael Bronson,
Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 118.
2.
“north of $75 billion”:
David Ottaway,
The King’s Messenger
(New York: Walker, 2008), p. 185.
3.
Indeed, a meeting:
Ibid., p. 186.
4.
“Human beings are created”:
“Principle of Justice Is Key,”
Arab News
, November 13, 2008,
http://archive.Arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=116308&d=13&m=11&y=2008
, accessed September 7, 2010.
5.
China, Japan, South Korea:
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Country Analysis Briefs, “Saudi Arabia Oil Exports and Shipping,”
http://204.14.135.140/countries/cab.cfm?f.ps=SA
., accessed March 14, 2011.
6.
Abdullah also reached out:
“Saudi King Holds Talks with Russian President, Says Relations ‘Stronger,’ ”
BBC Worldwide Monitoring
, February 12, 2007.
7.
“not competitors but”:
“Russia’s Strategic and Economic Alignment with the Arab States,”
Globalia Magazine
, September 26, 2008.
8.
“It’s a Muslim marriage”:
Ottaway,
King’s Messenger
, p. 226.
9.
“We talk to some”:
Prince Turki al Faisal, interview by author, Riyadh, March 31, 2009.
10.
Saudi Arabia, however, is:
Robert Baer,
The Devil We Know
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008), p. 138.
11.
The kingdom’s military spending:
milexdata.sipri.org/result.php4
, accessed September 14, 2010.
12.
Repairing the Saudi oil fields:
Baer,
Devil We Know
, p. 138.
13.
“It would not be as clear-cut”:
Prince Turki, interview by author, Riyadh, March 31, 2009.
14.
Indeed, James Schlesinger:
Bronson,
Thicker Than Oil
, p. 107.
15.
“Well,” asked Kissinger:
Kissinger Telephone Transcripts, at
foia.state.gov/documents/kissinger/0000C284.pdf
.
16.
“I did not threaten”:
Henry Kissinger, interview by author, New York, July 13, 2011.
17.
“I don’t know if what”:
Prince Turki, interview by author, Riyadh, March 31, 2009.
18.
“I don’t recall such”:
Kissinger, interview by author, New York, July 13, 2011.
19.
“The Saudis learned that”:
Dr. James Schlesinger, interview by author, Washington, D.C., September 28, 2010.
20.
If this trend continues:
“Saudi Arabia Looks to Solar, Nuclear Power to Reduce Its Oil Use by Half,” Bloomberg, April 3, 2011,
www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-03/solar-nuclear-energy-to-reduce-Saudi-oil-demand-official-says.html
, accessed July 19, 2011.
21.
The kingdom has announced plans:
Brad Bourland, “Saudi
Arabia’s Coming Oil and Fiscal Challenge,” Jadwa Investment, July 2011, p. 19.
22.
Then in 1988 Saudi ARAMCO:
Matthew R. Simmons,
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
(Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), p. 273.
23.
In production since 1951:
Ibid., p. 152.
24.
“The death of this great”:
Ibid., p. 179.
25.
But since 1970:
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Petroleum and Other Liquids, Annual U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil,
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&sMCRFPUS2&f=A
, accessed May 19, 2011.
26.
“We are not good”:
James Schlesinger, “Energy Security,” keynote at Association for Study of Peak Oil, Cork, Ireland, September 2007.
27.
“Since the 1970s the world”:
Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling,
The Impending World Energy Mess
(Eugene, Ore.: Mud City Press, 2010).
28.
“ ‘It’ is the oil wealth”:
“New Oil Fields Saved for Future Generations: King,”
Saudi Gazette
, September 7, 2010.
29.
“The question is should we”:
Khalid al Falih, interview by author, Dhahran, March 21, 2009.
•
Endgame
1.
“made up from different”:
Alexis de Tocqueville,
The Ancien Regime and the Revolution
(London: Penguin Group, 2008), p. 112.
2.
“it had been much simpler”:
Ibid., p. 111.
3.
“Only a great genius”:
Ibid., p. 175.
4.
“still looked unshakeable”:
Ibid., p. 200.
5.
A confident President Ahmadinejad:
Neil MacFarquhar, “Iran’s Leader Warns U.S. as He Rebuts Criticism,”
New York Times
, September 22, 2010,
www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/middleeast/22iran.html
, accessed September 25, 2010.
6.
“We have to go step”:
Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, interview by author, Riyadh, May 11, 2008.
7.
“Kennedy, no fan of”:
Lacey,
The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud
, p. 345.