What do experts think of Saudi Arabia's growing influence?

The Atlantic Monthly polled 39 Middle East experts to find out what they thought about Saudi Arabia's growing role in the region. Here are some of the findings:

Only twenty-three percent thought Saudi Arabia would be able to contain Iranian influence in the region. As one expert told the Atlantic:

“Remember, the great advantage the Saudis have (beyond money) in the region is that they are Arabs the Iranians are Persians. This alone limits the power the Iranians have over the entire region and is a tremendous demographic asset for the Saudis.”

But only sixteen percent thought Saudi involvement would increase sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias and five percent thought that Saudi Arabia's growing role could actually heighten the possibility of a conventional war between Iran and the Sunni Arab states.

Only two percent thought the Saudis could contain Iran's influence in Iraq.

Sixty-nine percent thought that Saudi Arabia would remain "friendly enough" to U.S. interests over the next five years.

Many seemed to indicate that King Abdullah was an important factor in the good relations.

As one expert reportedly said: "Saudi Arabia under King Abdullah is a very responsible and important nation. They remain better friends to the United States than we deserve.”

Another expert had this to say:

“Riyadh has no illusions about what Iran's ascendancy means for the region--or why it [needs] the United States as an ally. So the House of Saud won't venture too far from Washington's side.”

Another suggested that any good will on either side is only the result of each countries' oil dependence:

“Saudi Arabia is good on oil and bad on virtually everything else. As long as we're so addicted to that oil, it—and, sadly, we—are friendly enough.”

Are the Saudis now being used to bash Condoleeza Rice?

Speaking about how messages can be misinterpreted (see post below), here's what seems to me to be an example of how garbled things can get when one has an agenda.

Now you are going to have to bore down somewhat in agreements that may seem, well, irrelevant, but actually, I don't think they are as if you understand this background, you'll have an easier time following the news coming from Egypt this week. So try to bear with me here.

First recall the Mecca accord, the February letter agreement from President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, at long last authorizing him to form the government. Here was the translation of that letter as provided by the Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune:

In my capacity as the head of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the president of the Palestinian Authority, and after reading the Basic Law, and in accordance with my authorities:

a) I designate you to form the upcoming Palestinian government within the time specified under the Basic Law (five weeks).
b) After forming the government and presenting it to us, it should be presented to the Palestinian Legislative Council for a vote of confidence.
c) I call upon you as the head of the upcoming Palestinian government to commit to the higher interests of the Palestinian people, to preserve its rights and to preserve its achievements and to develop them, and to work in order to achieve its national goals as were approved by the Palestine National Council, the clauses of the Basic Law and the National Reconciliation Document and the decisions of the Arab summit.

Based on this, I call upon you to respect international resolutions and the agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Note in particular this last line - and clause c). This was how the Saudi King, who brokered this agreement, was able to get Hamas to implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist. This is because on September 9, 1993, for example, Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the PLO, stated the following to the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (via The Jewish Virtual Library):

The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era in the history of the Middle East. In firm conviction thereof, I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments:

The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.

But now see how David Samuels at the Atlantic Monthly bungles what was actually agreed upon in the Mecca accord:

This past February, King Abdullah, tired of seeing Palestinians fighting Palestinians (and concerned that Hamas was drifting toward Iran, which had been providing Hamas with money, weapons, and military training), invited Hamas and Fatah to Saudi Arabia, where he brokered a power-sharing deal known as the Mecca agreement. Saudi Arabia also promised to deliver $1 billion to keep the new Palestinian government afloat. The Saudi deal is widely seen as a defeat for Rice, because it created a Palestinian unity government that does not recognize past agreements with Israel and whose prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, a member of Hamas, proclaims the Palestinian “right” to “resistance in all its forms, including popular resistance to occupation,” which extends to suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. [Emphasis added.]

Now how could Samuels - not to mention the venerable Atlantic Monthly - have so botched the reporting here? Allow me to speculate.

I think Samuel's real intent was to undercut the Secretary of State. I say this because early on in the piece, he quotes Richard Armitage (and others), who essentially characterize her as a lightweight.

“I didn’t know that she had any strong views,” Armitage, Powell’s deputy, is quoted as saying. Then after describing him as someone "who did not think highly of her performance," Samuels allows Armitage to deliver the knock-out punch: “I mean, she was an expert in one country that no longer exists."

So to facilitate his storyline that Secretary Rice doesn't know what she is doing in the Middle East, I think Samuels thought he could mischaracterize the efforts of the Saudi king. This is a reasonable tact as very few people are eager to defend the Saudi monarchy after 9/11. In this way, he could demonstrate that the Secretary was naive for having been silly enough to trust King Abdullah's good faith.

This you see would reinforce Samuel's personal view which he divulges in a subsequent interview posted on the Atlantic Online. In response to the question: "You seem to like and respect the Secretary of State. Do you have confidence in her ability to bring stability to the Middle East?" this is what he says:

No. I do not. I don’t think that America can bring stability to other places in the world, any more than we can bring democracy. We are not Prometheus, bringing the gift of fire to man. We are a nation, with a particular history and a system of government that has worked well for us, so far, despite some pretty big bumps along the road. To say anything more than that strikes me as a kind of insane arrogance for which the Gods will have their revenge.

I don’t believe for a minute that humanity is moving towards a future global order of liberal states that will practice American-style democracy, and in which Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Chinaman and Jew will live in harmony with their neighbors. I don’t think the future of the planet will look like Bethpage, Long Island, on a global scale. I think it’s more likely that someone will wake up tomorrow morning and turn his neighbor into cat food.

Whether or not he's right or wrong about this cat food business, Samuels is by no means the first person to have thought of using the Saudis to bash the Bush administration. In fact, it's a fairly well established tactic, as this blogger reported earlier (again, scroll down for details).

Promises, promises...Now is the time for all good men...

The Jerusalem Post reports that despite Saudi promises to end its boycott of Israeli-made products, Saudi Arabia has yet to fulfill its pledge - and one of the conditions of its being granted membership to the World Trade Organization in 2005.
As the Post notes:

The WTO, which aims to promote free trade, prohibits members from engaging in discriminatory practices such as boycotts or embargoes.

..."Goods made in Israel are not allowed here in Saudi Arabia," Khaled A-Sharif, assistant manager of the Saudi Customs Department at King Abdul Aziz Airport outside Jidda, told the Post by phone. "Of course it is not permitted," he said.

Given that Saudi Arabia is trying to lead a Middle East peace process whereby in exchange for concessions from Israel, the 22 Arab nations promise to normalize relations with the Jewish state, it would seem that Saudi Arabia should be eager to demonstrate its good faith by carrying out promises that it has already made, would it not?

Saudi fashionistas: The real freedom fighters

In Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer-prize winning Middle East reporter Karen Elliot House reports from Saudi Arabia:

The abaya [the black robe Saudi women wear in public] is something of a barometer of the status of women in this conservative Islamic society. In the late 1970s, when I first came here as a reporter, most Saudi women bowed to the demands of the religious authorities and covered themselves. But a growing number of young, educated Saudi women declined to wear abayas or even ankle-length dresses. Things turned much more restrictive in the '90s. The ruling royal family, seeking to appease religious leaders angry at the presence of U.S. troops, whom they branded as infidels polluting the heart of Islam, pretty much gave the so-called "morals police" free rein to harass women who dared not shroud themselves in black. Soon even Western women also were wearing abayas.

It is a subtle sign of the desire of Saudi women -- recently supported by King Abdullah -- for some small measure of independence and individuality that in recent years women have begun overwhelmingly to wear fitted abayas, many lavishly decorated with colorful embroidery or beads or both. This is despite complaints from the religious authorities that such decoration calls attention to women and undermines the very purpose of an abaya: to make a woman largely invisible.

So fashionistas, wherever you are, the next time someone tries to insinuate that you are a mere fashion victim, tell them: "No, actually I'm a freedom fighter."

Is Saudi Arabia reforming?

Arab News reports:

Interior Minister Prince Naif yesterday urged the Saudi community not to endorse the culture of segregation between men and women. The remarks were met with applause from members of the audience where the prince was speaking.

"Segregation of men and women is not correct," Naif told an audience consisting of officials, academics and media persons, who were attending an annual communication forum organized by the Saudi Association for Media and Communication here.

The prince also spoke about extremism in the Kingdom in his remarks, saying, according to the Arab News that "those who were brainwashing young Saudis had 'corrupt moral backgrounds' and were losing ground in the Kingdom."

To appreciate what would seem to be Prince Naif's new position you have to understand something about the dynamics in the kingdom.

In a 2004 article in Foreign Affairs, Middle East expert Michael Scott Doran described the situation this way:

The Saudi monarchy functions as the intermediary between two distinct political communities: a Westernized elite that looks to Europe and the United States as models of political development, and a Wahhabi religious establishment that holds up its interpretation of Islam's golden age as a guide. The clerics consider any plan that gives a voice to non-Wahhabis as idolatrous. Saudi Arabia's two most powerful princes have taken opposing sides in this debate: [Crown Prince] Abdullah tilts toward the liberal reformers and seeks a rapprochement with the United States, whereas [Interior Minister] Nayef [alternative spelling of Naif] sides with the clerics and takes direction from an anti-American religious establishment that shares many goals with al Qaeda...

Getting Riyadh to divorce itself from radical Wahhabism will be as great a task as getting the Soviet Union to renounce communism. Clearly, there are forces in the kingdom who would be willing to support the efforts of a Saudi Gorbachev, but it is not clear when or whether one will appear.

Perhaps Prince Naif's apparent change of heart regarding the status of women, among other hardline positions he has held that seem to have softened, heralds the the possibility that Abdullah, now king, may well be the Saudi Gorbachev.

More hope for King Abdullah's peace plan?

Aside from Thomas Friedman column in today's New York Times, there is this hopeful news regarding the Saudi king's peace proposal in the Washington Post:

The United States has quietly joined Israel in urging Arab leaders to reformulate their 2002 peace offer in an effort to end the decades-long Middle East conflict, Arab diplomats said Thursday. So far, some Arab heavyweights are publicly resisting the idea.

"The Saudi initiative is interesting, and has many sections that I would be willing to accept _ though, understandably, not all of them _ and it could certainly be a convenient basis for continued dialogue between us and Arab moderates," Olmert is reported as saying.

The Wapo recaps what this plan offers:

The offer, initiated in 2002 by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, offers Israel recognition and permanent peace with all Arab countries in return for full Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It also calls for setting up a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and allowing Palestinian refugees to return to former homes in Israel.

As the Post reports, "Israel rejects full withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and it strongly opposes the influx of large numbers of Palestinian refugees into the Jewish state."

So how much room will Israel have to move on this plan? According to the Post's sources:

Egyptian and Saudi leaders have said they want the offer to stand as is, and Syrian Vice President Farouk al Sharaa has been touring Arab countries urging no changes.

But Jordan's King Abdullah II, a key partner in the peace efforts, has called for "Arab consensus on moving the peace process forward" _ widely interpreted as a sign of flexibility on Israeli demands.

"Nobody is talking about returning 5 million Palestinians to Israel," Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa's chief of staff, Hesham Youssef, is reported as saying. "But giving into one-sided demands will be a strategic blunder."

Can Saudi Arabia lead the region to lasting peace?

Thomas Friedman asks an interesting question in his New York Times column this morning: "Is Saudi Arabia becoming the new Egypt?"

What he is wondering is whether Saudi Arabia, led by King Abdullah, is replacing Egypt as the traditional leader of the Arab world. Friedman cites the reasons why he asks this question:

In recent months, we’ve seen Saudi Arabia publicly blast Hezbollah for launching an unprovoked war on Israel; we’ve seen King Abdullah forge a cease-fire between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza; we’ve seen him try to tame Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and there are rumors that a top Saudi official met with Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert. That meeting was apparently in preparation for the Arab summit in Riyadh, March 28-29, which King Abdullah will be hosting to revive his February 2002 peace overture to Israel of full normalization of relations in return for full withdrawal from the occupied territories.

By contrast, he writes, "Egypt, for now, seems to be adrift."

Friedman suggests that what King Abdullah needs to do to give the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks an "emotional breakthrough" is "fly from the Riyadh summit to Jerusalem and deliver the offer personally to the Israeli people."

Friedman, with his typical optimism, suggests that this single move "could end this conflict once and for all."

Friedman is encouraging the Saudi king to do at this juncture is make four stops:

His first stop should be to Al Aksa Mosque in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. There, he, the custodian of Mecca and Medina, could reaffirm the Muslim claim to Arab East Jerusalem by praying at Al Aksa.

From there, he could travel to Ramallah and address the Palestinian parliament, making clear that the Abdullah initiative aims to give Palestinians the leverage to offer Israel peace with the whole Arab world in return for full withdrawal. And he might add that whatever deal the Palestinians cut with Israel regarding return of refugees or land swaps — so some settlements might stay in the West Bank in return for the Palestinians getting pieces of Israel — the Arab world would support.

From there, King Abdullah could helicopter to Yad Vashem, the memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. A visit there would seal the deal with Israelis and affirm that the Muslim world rejects the Holocaust denialism of Iran. Then he could go to the Israeli parliament and formally deliver his peace initiative.

Friedman thinks that King Abdullah could be the person who can turn Hamas around and make it back away from its stated goal to destroy the state of Israel. As Friedman points out: "It is one thing for Hamas to reject the Oslo peace accords. But how could it reject a peace overture to Israel presented by Saudi Arabia?"

Friedman reminds the reader that it was to him that King Abdullah first unveiled his peace proposal back in 2002. Friedman recalls that day:

As we sat by his desk, he told me he was motivated to propose full peace for full withdrawal to the Israelis because “I wanted to find a way to make clear to the Israeli people that the Arabs don’t reject or despise them. But the Arab people do reject what their leadership is now doing to the Palestinians, which is inhumane and oppressive. And I thought of this as a possible signal to the Israeli people.