Thousands Enlist in Saudi Forces; Size Could Double

Tens of thousands of men have flocked to military recruiting centers over the past two weeks in a major public mobilization that could eventually double the size of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces and place at least six new divisions along its most vulnerable borders.

The recruitment effort comes amid controversy within King Fahd’s government and widespread public dissatisfaction over Saudi Arabia’s historic reliance on a relatively small army paired with a well-equipped, technologically sophisticated air force--a combination that proved alarmingly inadequate when 170,000 Iraqi troops threatened the kingdom on its northern border with Kuwait.

Military officials have sketched a new political map of the troubled Persian Gulf region that now shows potentially hostile frontiers not only with Iraq but with Jordan and Yemen as well. Moreover, they see the kingdom facing a 1-million-strong Iraqi army that must be countered not only with sophisticated jet fighters, the flashy mainstays of the Saudi military, but also with infantry and tanks.

Over the past few weeks, senior officials and outside military advisers have begun discussing a military buildup that would triple the size of the 37,500-member army and give Saudi Arabia an overall force of at least 120,000 men--nearly twice the 67,500 men now in the field with the army, the national guard and the air force.

Some consultants are calling for an armed force as large as 300,000 men, with new divisions deployed to counteract potential threats from Yemen and Jordan, both of which have provided some backing to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the conflict over Kuwait.

“We are living in times when anything can happen,” one Saudi official said. “People are saying, ‘We spent billions of dollars building this whole country up, and now we can’t defend it? What is this”

Controversy within the Arab world over the deployment of U.S. forces in the kingdom also has pointed up potential weaknesses in the Saudis’ quiet confidence that the United States, Canada, Western Europe and other nations dependent on Saudi oil could be counted on to send troops in the event of trouble--an unwritten pact that has guided Saudi military policy to a surprising degree in recent decades.

“A lot of Saudis are suspicious of foreigners,” a Western diplomat said, “and they’re very suspicious of foreigners in their country with lots of weapons, and they’re especially worried about a large American force that is growing stronger every day in an area that is most vital to them--the eastern oil fields.”

Saudi Arabia found itself without a single complete division when Iraq began massing troops on the Saudi border after its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

The deployment of three divisions, or about 36,000 men, at Hafr al Baten, Saudi Arabia’s northern military base, would have been enough to counter Iraq’s initial movement of seven divisions into southern Kuwait, some analysts said.

“It would have taken Saddam Hussein nine divisions to give us a good fight,” one said. “It would have meant we could have probably held him off for weeks, if not more, instead of this situation where we found ourselves with absolutely no defense against him.”

Saudi Arabia’s military policy grew out of a decision at the beginning of the historic oil boom to spend the bonanza on developing the kingdom, rather than building a large army.

The thinking at the time, according to Saudi officials, academics and outside analysts, was that Yemen and South Yemen provided the only credible border threats, and those, before unification, were negligible.

Iran grew into a menace after its Islamic revolution in 1979, and Iraq had hinted on occasion that it had designs on the kingdom. The ill-fated solution to both problems was to spend billions arming Iraq as an ally against Iran.

“I don’t think it’s a secret that there was a debate in Saudi Arabia about the size of the army, and many people felt we should have a much larger army than we ended up with,” said Dr. Bakr Abdullah Bakr, rector of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and one of the most influential personalities in Saudi Arabia’s powerful Eastern province.

“Some said we are surrounded by friendly nations, and there are more important things to spend our money on than building up a massive war machine. I think this argument has won in the past, but I’m not sure it will in the future.”

Saudi Arabia spent $536 billion between 1975 and 1985 building an elaborate array of highways, airports, universities, skyscrapers, industrial facilities and communications systems. And while it put large outlays into equipping an air force rivaling most others in the world, the number of ground forces was kept relatively small--much smaller than the armies of nearby countries in the region, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

Some outside analysts say Saudi monarchs deliberately kept the army small and separate from the national guard, which reports directly to the crown prince, to avoid potential military threats to the monarchy. One Saudi official said that was indeed a factor in keeping the two forces divided through the 1960s, but he and several other officials denied that it played any role in present-day decision making.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia wagered that it would be able to counter most likely outside threats by building a series of large military facilities in the north, south and east of the kingdom from which a well-equipped air force could be deployed, depending on the direction of the threat.

A key part of the strategy was an unwritten expectation that outside forces, particularly U.S. forces, could be called on in the event of major trouble. To accommodate outside help, huge military cities at Hafr al Baten and in the Eastern province were built far larger than would ever be needed by Saudi forces alone, several analysts said. And the Saudis over the years developed a quiet strategy of acquiring U.S. military equipment, spare parts and training that, according to one U.S. official, has made the armed forces of the two countries virtually “interoperable.”

“We always knew our friends in the United States would help us,” a Saudi official said. “The only question was when, and how fast. Now we know.”

One Western diplomat equated the Saudi expectations with the kingdom’s huge importation of foreign labor to handle many high-tech jobs and do much of the manual labor for which it is difficult to recruit Saudis.

“The Saudis have always done that,” he said. “They just buy people. The whole country is made up of slaves.”

But Saudi officials bristle at any suggestion that the multinational force now deployed in the Saudi desert consists of hired hands. One government official said Saudi Arabia was willing to finance a large portion of the U.S. military deployment from the beginning but was slow about offering direct payments to avoid the perception that the Americans were being bought.

“The Americans don’t like to be thought of as mercenaries,” he said.

Bakr, the university rector, said the relationship was more comparable to the historic, interdependent working relationship between the Americans and the Saudis in the oil industry.

“The relationship between America and Saudi Arabia has been, throughout the past five decades, a contractual relationship, where the Saudis employed American expertise to help them develop and paid them well for that,” he said.

“We don’t want to overburden the American economy, if it is within Saudi Arabia’s ability to share in the cost. We are beneficiaries here, and it’s only fair to lessen the burden on the American taxpayer,” he added. “We don’t want to be like the Israelis and just be a sinkhole for American aid at the expense of American taxpayers.”

In the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and subsequent outside military buildup, all these policies are being reexamined.

“Definitely there has been a change in the thinking, and not only at the level of the king and Prince Sultan (ibn Abdulaziz, the defense minister). It has been at the level of the people on the street,” said one Saudi official close to the defense minister.

“The people in the military all are convinced now the armed forces have to be increased in number. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to have a reasonably large number. Definitely it’s going to increase, and it’s going to increase by a pretty large number.”

King Fahd recently ordered the opening of recruitment centers and also called for the mobilization of women in some military-related jobs. In the first week, 10,000 men volunteered in Eastern province, and another 40,000 have signed up in Riyadh. Recruits are in four-week training courses throughout the kingdom and afterward will return to their regular jobs to await possible call-up. The king has stopped short of announcing any formal increase in the size of the armed forces.

“I’m convinced they’ve made a decision in their mind, but the political leadership, when they make a decision, they like to be very slow and very deliberate,” a Saudi close to the government said. “They hate to be seen as reacting to a crisis.”

Some outside analysts say that despite the overwhelming early volunteer response, the Saudis may have difficulty in recruiting a large permanent army. The oil boom accustomed many Saudis to seeking jobs as bankers and businessmen, not infantrymen, they said.

“People like to be officers,” a Western diplomat said, “but do people like to be enlisted men? It’s the type of thing that I think Saudis are really going to have to get used to.”

“We always had a problem recruiting people in the army, because the Saudis don’t like wearing uniforms,” a senior Saudi official conceded. “We don’t like to be organized. We’re better implementers than organizers.”

A Saudi recruit with a high school education can expect to earn about 4,000 riyals a month, or about $1,050. But some Saudi officials said housing and children’s education benefits provide attractive incentives, particularly for desert tribesmen who see military training as an honorable pursuit.