Hi Lawry,
At 18:55 12/08/02 -0700, you wrote:
<<<<
Hi, Keith,
The "RAND Report" isn't a RAND report. Rather the presentation that you are
referring to is by a short-term French 'analyst' who is working out of RAND.
I don't have a great opinion of RAND's political analysis generally, finding
it sadly superficial and commercial, but in all fairness to RAND, I don't
think we can blame the organization for this one-person show. I see the
presentation (made to Perle's advisory group) as being part of the concerted
effort to demonize Saudi Arabia.
>>>>
I suppose the fact that the report used language such as "evil" betrays a
single author. I didn't know that. I assumed it was a typical Rand
think-tank report. Nevertheless, I can't imagine that the report was
without some foundation or else it wouldn't have proceeded further.
However, all this (and our exchange so far) shows that it's difficult, if
not impossible, to come to a balanced view of a country where visitors are
simply not allowed to travel around -- except for a few highly supervised
tourist groups. (One of the pieces of evidence that registered with me was
a documentary of about a year ago where a TV journalist attached herself to
a German tourist group and at great danger to herself made forays in
various cities to meet "dissidents" she'd made contact with originally via
the Net. It was she who came across evidence of riots by young jobless men
that never made it into the censored press.)
<<<<
Can you say more about the 'bonded labor'? Are these workers who are brought
in by Saudi employers for fixed periods and who out of their earnings have
to pay off the cost of their tranportation? I know of this pattern in South
America. Is this what you are referring to?
>>>>
Yes.
<<<<
I know Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries for the last 3-4 decades
via visits, academic study, participation in several projects there, and
being part of the community of US-based Middle Eastern specialists, but
Saudi Arabia after the 1930s has not been a focus of any of my studies, so I
do not consider myself an expert on it.
>>>>
The comment that can be made here is that the Muslim countries of the
Middle East are as different from one another as, say, west European
countries still are, despite almost parallel industrial develoment for a
century or more.
However, I think most scholars would agree that the common feature of them
all is that, for subtle reasons that no-one has yet adequately explained or
agreed upon, the Muslim Empire -- highly civilised, liberal, prosperous,
inventive, with great trading routes from Spain through to Asia -- started
retreating 500 years or so ago and has subsequently reacted with increasing
anger against western civilisation rather than being able to reform (with
the possible exception of Turkey -- where the secularisation brought about
by Kemal Ataturk is now in some danger even after half a century of being
implanted).
The reaction in most instances has taken the form of falling back to an
intensely puritanical form of Islam as the only way of retaining their
dignity and self-respect. We've seen this fairly recently in the case of
the rapid rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan -- which, I suggest, is far
from being defeated (I notice, most women are still wearing burkas!)
This is particularly so in Saudi Arabia where, indeed, the present Saudi
royal family came to power by mounting a jihad in 1902 with the assistance
of the Wahhabi sect, and have been indebted to them ever since. There's no
shortage of members of the 5,000 strong Saudi royal family who want to
bring about reform but they can only do so with the active support of the
Wahhabi clerics. Some progress has been made but even in the universities
of Riyadh only 2% of graduates have training in modern disciplines such as
engineering or architecture. The rest are what you might expect from a
school system that is strictly supervised by the fundamentalist clerics
where rote learning of the Koran predominates from the earliest ages.
("Give me a child for seven years . . ." etc!)
In attempting to reform, the Saudi royal family -- or, rather some elements
of them, such as Crown Prince Abdullah -- are in hock to the Wahhabi sect
which brought them into existence in the first place. King Fahd, when
active, and now Abdullah, can only rule via the sect. I think it's
difficult for us in the west, where the state and the church are separate,
to realise just how government and religion are intertwined in some Moslem
countries -- most notably Saudi Arabia and Iran.
In this way, Saudi Arabia is similar to China that, in trying to bring
about reform, the government has to operate via another channel -- the
Chinese via the Communist Party (the present-day equivalent of the
traditional Confucian bureaucracy), the Saudis via the Wahhabi mullahs.
Obviously, the permission of the mullahs is not expressly sought, but the
effect of every decision has to be considered carefully. Unlike the CP of
China, the Wahhabi are more extreme in recent years than they ever were.
The US and Europe were able to control Saudi Arabia from about the 30s/40s
via the western-owned oil companies, in turn via the royal family. It lost
this more-or-less direct control when SA took over the oil wells (in the
1960s -- I can't remember precisely), but were still able to influence the
new owners (that is, predominantly the Saudi royal family) simply because
the US was such a big customer and could also supply the expertise to run
the industry.
It's been thus ever since -- except that attempts to bring SA into the 20th
century have only been minimally successful because of the great weight of
Wahhabi control over almost every aspect of ordinary people's daily lives.
One result of this is that almost all young men (the young women don't
count in SA) who are employed are in government service and almost all
young men in private employment are foreignors, simply because most young
Saudis have no marketable skills whatsoever. Those who are totally
unemployed -- at least a million and possibly two -- simply hang around the
coffee shops or flirt with the girls (that is, the daughters of the foreign
shop-keepers) -- with absolutely no hope of earning money or being able to
save for a bride dowry. And the numbers of the young unemployed are growing
swiftly. Altogether, the average income in SA has halved in the past 15
years or so, and will undoubtedly continue, considering the birth rate.
This is an explosive situation -- sooner or later. The point is when. My
understanding of the situation is that it is very close indeed, and my
guess is that Perle, Wolfowitz and co in the State Department have realised
that when King Fahd dies then Crown Prince Abdullah (himself a 79 year-old)
will likely lose control to one of the five leading princes (or any of the
other 100 senior princes). It's a recipe for mayhem and the successful
contender is likely to be one who has the closest connections with the
Wahhabi.
In other words, remembering that 15 of the 19 terrorists of September 11
were Saudis, there is the distinct danger that another Al Qaeda attack will
almost certainly occur given the fanaticism of many young men who've been
indoctrinated from an early age. How can Bush do otherwise than get enough
troops into the Middle East to be on hand if Saudi Arabia goes even more
extremist than now? The American public would never forgive him. He only
just got away with it since 11 September, considering that a great deal was
known, or suspected, about Al Qaeda long before then. (A new attack by Al
Qaeda, even if Osama bin Laden is dead, is even more likely today than ever
before, considering that the Israeli situation is worsening.) Bush can't
come out with his real reason for sending troops because that itself would
probably spark off a revolution in SA -- and, just as seriously, intensify
the Al Qaeda network in Iran (where, according to the last Sunday Telegraph
they have recently established training camps).
As I've suggested before, unless anything dramatic happens before then, I
think that Bush will announce troop movements to Kuwait on September 11
coming -- to great public acclaim -- and will keep on building those up
(and the Qatar airbase) until King Fahd dies and a succession is brought
about -- either peacefully or not. If the succession is peaceful and Saudi
Arablia seems to be stable (and more friendly to the US) then Bush *might*
start to move against Iraq. But that itself might spark off a revolution in
SA.
Almost whatever scenario is envisaged, something near to catastrophic loss
of life will almost certainly occur in the Middle East in the fairly
nearish future. Given the present administration, America can do no other
in order to protect its oil supplies. It would require a President of
extraordinary stature and persuasiveness to chart a different peaceful
course. Even so, such a President would still have to accept that the nasty
regimes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc -- particularly nasty as to
half their populations (their womenfolk) -- would have to continue for at
least two or three generations longer before their culture changes to
anything approaching a fair and decent society.
<<<<
Your description of the British who are in jail caught me by surprise; I
hadn't realized that they had been there so long or under the conditions you
describe. There is an incongruence here; it has notbeen a Saudi pattern to
treat foreigners the way you describe, and so I am wondering whether there
might not be more to the story than we know?
>>>>
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Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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