Arabian Fights

The house of saud has negotiated the royal succession. Crown Prince Abdullah, de facto ruler since King Fahd was felled by a stroke in 1995, has been confirmed as the new king and his brother, Prince Sultan, is anointed as second in line.

But an uneventful transition now doesn’t tell us much about the future. On the death of the 81-year-old Abdullah, the House of Saud will, in all probability, face a long-delayed showdown over who in the next generation will become Guardian of the Two Holy Places. The winner could well determine not only Saudi Arabia’s future but the future stability of the Persian Gulf.

Saudi Arabia was “constructed” by Ibn Saud, the legendary founder of the House of Saud. Originally, the Al Sauds were tribal rulers near the present city of Riyadh. In 1901, Ibn Saud employed Wahhabism, among Islam’s most conservative theologies, to mobilize a Bedouin army against his rivals. By 1932, he had pulled his hard-won territories together into “Arabia of the Sauds.”

Like a tribal sheik, Ibn Saud governed through alliances with other tribal leaders sealed by marriage with their daughters. When he died in 1953, he had produced 42 sons and transformed Saudi Arabia from a collection of miserably poor people into a country poised to reap the benefits of its vast petroleum reserves.

On his instructions, the leadership of Saudi Arabia was to pass through his sons in the order of age. The oldest, Saud, succeeded his father. Faisal, the next-oldest eligible son, became king in 1964. In 1975, Khaled became king, and Fahd was given the newly created title of crown prince. Fahd was duly named king on Khaled’s death in 1982.

The mechanics of succession never worked with the ease envisioned by the patriarch. In 1964, Saud was deposed by the family for incompetence. Muhammad, next in line after Faisal, renounced his place in the succession in 1965 under pressure from the family.

During Fahd’s first decade of rule, rumors abounded about whether the next-eldest son, Abdullah, would ever become king. Fahd’s mother had been Ibn Saud’s favorite wife, and he had six more brothers, including Sultan, the minister of defense; and Naif, the minister of interior. The Sudairi clan was well-positioned to take over the succession.

Yet after Fahd’s stroke, the House of Saud handed power to Abdullah, who was not only next in line but had more legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

It was a wise decision. Abdullah was not deeply stained by corruption. He has carefully tended to tribal allies and observed the dictates of Wahhabism. For the last 10 years, he has earned some credit with Saudi Arabia’s modernizers by pushing through limited economic and political reforms.

But Abdullah’s age dictates that his tenure as king will be short. When he dies, all the pieces will be in place for a crisis for the House of Saud.

Crown Prince Sultan is next in the order of succession. He is generally despised by his people, suspected of making money on every defense contract ever executed by Saudi Arabia. He has flaunted his wealth and failed to tend to his religious credentials. The perception of his younger brothers is not much better. And all are advanced in years. Sultan is 78; Ahmad, the youngest, is 60. Even if one or more becomes king and if the monarchy survives, the House of Saud is going to have to move to the next generation of descendants sooner rather than later. Yet Ibn Saud left no instructions about which among his grandsons would be king.

There are intense rivalries among the branches of the royal family, tribal conflicts engendered by the kinship groups of the various mothers of Ibn Saud’s sons, competing financial interests and differing definitions of the future of Saudi Arabia. All of the senior princes have plugged their sons into their own ministries or other key government positions. Most are already mobilized for a grab for power.

There are multiple potential players, none of whom come without questions of legitimacy. Perhaps the most interesting is Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The son of the newly named crown prince, Bandar recently resigned his longtime position as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. That raises the question of whether he will return to Saudi Arabia to stake out his claim for leadership in the next generation. And if he does, will the Saudi people ever accept a thoroughly Westernized member of the House of Saud as their king and the Guardian of the Two Holy Places? Or will they reject the royal family entirely?

The tensions within the Saudi monarchy reflect the stresses in Saudi society as a whole. Like the people they rule, the House of Saud is faced with relentless change, with defining the Saudi nation and with executing the difficult process of moving themselves from exclusively family interests to the interests of the common good. What happens matters not only to the Saudis but also to a world that runs on oil.