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Saudi Arabia [Paperback ed.]
 0801494842, 9780801494840

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Saudi Arabia

The Ceaseless Quest for Security

SAUDI ARABIA The Ceaseless Quest for Security

NADAV SAFRAN

CORNELL UNIV ERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 1985, 1988 by Nadav Safran All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, m ust not be reproduced in any form w ithout permission in w riting from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published, Cornell Paperbacks, 1988 by Cornell University Press. Second printing 1991. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Safran, Nadav. Saudi Arabia : the ceaseless quest for security / Nadav Safran. p. cm. 1. Saudi Arabia—National security. 2. Saudi Arabia—Defenses. 3. Saudi Arabia—Armed Forces. 4. Saudi Arabia—Military policy. I. Title. UA853.S33S24 1988 355'.0330538—dc 19 87-26016 ISBN 0-8014-9484-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) © The paper in this book meets the minimum requirem ents of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

To Liz, Abby, Nina, and Anita

Preface to the Paperback Edition

I set out to w rite this book about Saudi A rabia in 1978 because I have been a lifelong stu d en t of the M iddle E ast an d intern atio n al politics, and Saudi A rabia cam e to occupy an im p o rta n t place in both. My reasons for choosing to focus on the issue of security and adopting the ap p ro ach I did are explained in the Introduction. W hen I began m y w ork, I could not think of a b e tte r place to do the w ork th an m y hom e in stitu tio n , H arv ard U niversity, whose re­ sources an d facilities continue to am aze m e after m ore th an th irty years of using them . No field research w as necessary for my subject, except perhaps in c e rtain spheres th a t are usually b a rre d to aca­ dem ic investigators even in countries th a t have "right to know" law s. After living w ith m y subject for m ore th an five years and com pleting a satisfactory d raft, I did feel the urge to visit the K ingdom , to get som ething of its flavor a t first h and. W hen I was ready to go, how ever, I could not, and w hen I received an invitation to a tte n d an academ ic conference, tim e a n d c ircum stances were not convenient. I still hope to visit the K ingdom in the future. There is a notion a b ro ad th a t "having been" to S audi A rabia is a w a rra n t of validity for one's w ork, regardless of w h at one did w hen one w as there. I like to think th a t o th er qualifications, such as fam iliarity and em pathy w ith the culture, coupled w ith the m ethods used by certain types of histo rian s and social scientists, can be far m ore im p o rta n t th an a visit o r a sojourn in yielding an u n d e rsta n d ­ ing of the co u n try 's recent history. I leave it to the read er to assess the validity of this proposition. I am gratified th a t the review s of the first edition have generally confirm ed it.

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Preface to the Paperback Edition

For the academ ic y ear 1979-1980 I w as aw arded a Rockefeller F oundation Fellow ship, w hich afforded m e the leisure to advance m y project to the point of no retu rn . The R and Corporation provided su b sta n tia l su p p o rt for research, w hich led to a p relim inary p a p e r on defense an d security allocations a n d Saudi defense concepts. In 1982, three years into my project, the research b ran ch of the U.S. C entral Intelligence Agency offered m e a g ran t aim ed a t ac­ celeratin g the progress of my w ork by buying m e free tim e an d research assistance. I checked the u niversity's policy on the m a tte r an d , after com plying w ith the relevant requirem ents an d satisfying m yself th a t the integrity of my w ork w ould be secure, I accepted the offer an d su b m itte d the c o n tra ct to the Dean. The agency p ro ­ vided no m aterial of any sort, classified o r open, m ade no suggestion regarding substance o r conclusion, a n d exercised no censorship of any kind during the process of research a n d w riting. The c o n tract contained a sta n d a rd clause requiring agency perm ission to publish, b u t am en d m en ts th a t I h ad secured satisfied m e th a t this w ould be no m ore th an a m ere form ality. Such proved to be the case, as perm ission w as tacitly g ran ted by the lapse of th irty days w ithout agency response to m y request. I su b m ited the result of my w ork to H arv ard U niversity Press and along w ith it notification of all the su p p o rt funds I received, in­ cluding the agency's. S hortly afte r H arvard U niversity Press p u b ­ lished the book, a s tir developed ab o u t the funding from the CIA, in the course of w hich m any unfounded allegations w ere m ade. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts a n d Sciences conducted a thorough inquiry, an d the results, w hich w ere m ade public in Ja n u ary 1986, vindicated my actions. I am grateful to all the in stitu tio n s th a t supported my long effort, b u t I b e a r sole responsibility for the content and form of the book. I am m ost heavily indebted to generations of students, g rad u ate and un d erg rad u ate, Saudi an d other, w ho p a rticip a te d in m y sem inars a n d co n trib u ted through th eir perspectives and insights m uch m ore th an they realized. Of these students, four who becam e my assistants deserve m y m ost profound g ratitu d e . Gary Sam ore has since earned a d o cto rate for his w ork on the Saudi royal fam ily; Lauri M ylroie has earned hers for w ork on security in the Persian Gulf; and Gregory Gause for w ork on Saudi A rabia an d the Yemens. Arie Ofri has done his reserch in the general field of security policy analysis, for w hich he, too, earn ed a doctorate. Though not a M iddle E ast specialist, he w as a w izard a t ferreting out an d m aking available to me de­ classified docum entary m aterial I did not suspect existed. The dedi­

tx

Preface to the Paperback Edition

cation an d en th u siasm of these young collaborators sustained m e in the inevitable m om ents of n ear despair. The long lab o r on this book deprived m y fam ily of m uch of my tim e a n d a tte n tio n to w hich they w ere rightfully entitled . T heir quiet unw avering su p p o rt d u ring the trib u latio n s th a t followed its first ap pearance w as invaluable. In gratitu d e, I rededicate this book to them . N adav S afran

Cambridge, M assachusetts

Contents

Conversion of Hijra years and fiscal years to Gregorian dates, 1380-1400 HY. xvii Map of Saudi Arabia xx Introduction

1

Part One The Origins of Saudi Arabia 1 The Rise and Rail of the First Two Realms The First Realm 9 The Second Realm 14 Lessons from the First Two Realms 20

7 9

2

The Third Realm: Creating an Empire, 1902-1932 Early Reconquests 29 Overpowering Peninsular Opponents 36 Mastering the Ikhwan and Rounding Off the Empire 49 Observations on the Creation of the Third Realm 55

28

3

Preserving the Empire, 1932-1953 Defense and Foreign Policy during the Lean Years Defense Establishment and Strategy 68 Defense and Security Allocations 69 Conclusions 71

57 58

Contents

Part Two The Reign of Saud, 1953-1964 4

Tribulations under the First Successor Muddling Through 77 lacing the Contradictions 88 Defense Establishment and Policy 103 Defense and Security Allocations 107 Conclusions 110

77

Part Three The Reign of Faisal, 1964-1975 5

Strivings and Probings, 1964-1973 Consolidating Power 117 Managing the Yemen Conflict 119 Dealing with Proliferating Problems

113 117

122

6

The October W ar and Its Aftermath, 1973-1975 The Embargo 152 Saudi Arabia after the Embargo 167

7

The Defense and Security Perspective, 1963-1975 Defense Allocations: Fluctuations, Trends, Significance Strategic-Military Concepts and Programs: Scope, Aims, Results 196 Conclusions 212

1 51

1 80 180

Part Four The Reign of Khaled, 1975-1982 8

A Time of Change: Overview Changes at the Power Center 217 Strategically Relevant Domestic Developments 220 Political-Strategic and Strategic-Military Developments: Two Stages 227

9

The Arab-Israeli Arena, 1975-1979: The Cairo and Damascus Connections Sinai II 241 The Lebanese Civil War 245 The Geneva Project 251 Sadat's Initiative and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace 256

10

73

The Gulf Arena, 1975-1979: Balancing Baghdad and Tehran

215 217

240

265

Contents 11

12

13

xiii

The Yemens, Oman, and the Horn of Africa, 1975-1979: Accommodation and W ar

282

The American Connection, 1975-1979: Shifting Interdependence Successful Management of the New Relationship 296 Mutual Disappointments and Strains 298 Crisis and Seeming Collision Course 303 The Arab-Israeli Arena, 1979-1982: Opposite Pulls Family Reconciliation and Policy Compromise 311 Attempting American-PLO Dialogue 313 Averting Baghdad-Core Pressures: The 1979 Tunis Summit The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and Arab Polarization The Gulf War and Arab Polarization 322 Keeping Egypt at Arm's Length 324 Strategic Consensus, U.S. Arms Deal, and Sequels 327 The Fahd Plan and Fiasco 332 Coping with the 1982 Lebanon War 341

295

309

315 318

14

The Gulf Arena, 1979-1982: Crosscurrents and Uncertainty Initial Redefinition of Positions 353 Setbacks and Adjustments 357 Gulf War Perils, Relief, Opportunities 364 New Perils and Anxious Temporizing 375

352

15

The Yemens, 1979-1982: Living with the Problem

386

16

The American Connection, 1979-1982: Ambivalence, Improvisation, Drift Crisis and Turning Point 401 Flawed Reconciliation 403 Faltering Strategic Cooperation 406 Open Strategic Cooperation in the Face of Danger 410 Reversion to Ambivalence as the Danger Subsides 412 Opting for Syria and Relapsing into Improvisation 416

17

The Defense and Security Perspective, 1975-1982 Defense Allocations: Trends, Fluctuations, Significance Strategic-Military Concepts and Programs: Scope, Aims, Results 430

398

420 420

XIV

Contents Conclusions: Retrospect and Prospect Khaled's Reign and the Quest for Security Prospects for the 1980s 456

449 449

Appendix. Sample of a Sum m ary of a Saudi Budget Notes Bibliography Index

461 465 491 509

Tables

1. Revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal 1948, 1952, and 1953 2. Revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal 1955-1965 3. Revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal 1963-1976 4. Comparative allocations to Ministry of Defense, army, interned security, and National Guard, fiscal 1963-1976 5. Annual revenues and allocations to defense and security instruments, with percent change from previous year, fiscal 1963-1976 6. Comparative allocations to defense and security instruments, fiscal 1965 and average fiscal 1966-1967 7. Comparative allocations to defense and security instruments, fiscal 1971 and average fiscal 1972-1974 8. Comparative allocations to defense and security instruments, fiscal 1974 and average fiscal 1975-1976 9. Salary allocations for defense and security instruments, with percent change from previous year, fiscal1963-1978 10. Major defense acquisition programs, 1964-1975 11. Order of battle and inventory of weapons, 1969 and 1975 12. Saudi oil revenues, 1972-1982 13. Revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal1976-1982 14. Comparative allocations to internal security and army, fiscal 1977-1982 15. Annual revenues and allocations to defense and security instruments, with percent change from previous year, fiscal 1975-1982

70 108 182 184 186 190 193 194 196 198 210 221 421 422 423

XVI

Tables

16. Comparative allocations to defense and security instruments, fiscal 1977 and average fiscal 1978-1979 17. Comparative average percent change in allocations to defense and security instruments, fiscal 1978-1979 over fiscal 1977 and fiscal 1980-1981 over fiscal 1978-1979 18. Percent change from previous year in total and salary allocations for defense and security instruments and to Ministries of Agriculture and Health, fiscal 1976-1981 19. Major defense acquisition programs, 1975-1982 20. Order of battle and inventory of weapons, 1975 and 1982

425 426 428 434 444

Figures 1. Abridged genealogy of Saudi Arabia's rulers 2. Percent change from previous year in revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal 1962-1977 3. Percent change from previous year in revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal 1975-1982

11 188

424

Conversion o f Hijra years and fiscal years to Gregorian dates, 1380-1400 H.Y. Hijra year (Muharram through Dhu al-Hijjah)

Starting Gregorian date

Hijra fiscal year (1 Rajab through 30 Jumada II)

Starting Gregorian date

1380 1381 1382 1383 1384 1385 1386 1387 1388 1389 1390 1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 1398 1399 1400

June 25, I960* June 14, 1961 June 4, 1962 May 25, 1963 May 13, 1964a May 1, 1965 April 21, 1966 April 11, 1967 March 30, 1968* March 19, 1969 March 9, 1970 February 26, 1971 February 15, 1972* February 4, 1973 January 23, 1974 January 13, 1975 January 2, 1976® December 22, 1977 December 11, 1978 November 30, 1979 November 19, 1980®

1380-81 1381-82 1382-83 1383-84 1384-85 1385-86 1386-87 1387-88 1388-89 1389-90 1390-91 1391-92 1392-93 1393-94 1394-95 1395-96 1396-97 1397-98 1398-99 1399-1400 1400-1401

December 19, 1960 December 9, 1961 November 28, 1962 November 17, 1963 November 5,1964 October 25, 1965 October 16, 1966 October 4, 1967 September 23, 1968 September 12, 1969 September 2, 1970 August 22, 1971 August 10, 1972 July 30, 1973 July 19, 1974 July 9, 1975 June 28, 1976 June 16, 1977 June 6, 1978 May 26, 1979 May 15, 1980

Source: Richard Nyrop et al., Area Handbook for Saudi Arabia, 3d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977). a. Leap year.

How long halt ye between two opinions? 1 Kings 18:21

Introduction

This study analyzes the national security policy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from the perspective of its rulers since the creation of the King­ dom through 1982 in order to provide insight into the rulers' modus operandi and the country's behavior in the international arena. The im­ portance of that behavior was dem onstrated beyond doubt by the 1973 oil embargo, which shook the foundations of the W estern alliance as no Soviet cam paign has since the onset of the Cold War; and by the Saudi action and inaction on oil prices in 1974 and 1979, which affected the world economy and distribution of wealth more than any single acts by any other power. The centrality of regime and national security as a determ inant of Saudi behavior is suggested by a few facts of geography and history and is indicated by clear evidende of the Saudi rulers' percep­ tions and actions. Saudi Arabia is a vast, desolate country with a relatively sparse popula­ tion. It form s a rough rectangle more than 1,000 miles long and 800 miles wide, comprising about 860,000 square m iles— approximately the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River. There are no rivers or significant perennial streams, and rainfall is scarce except in the south­ west; less than 1 percent of the country is suitable for settled agriculture. Most of the country consists of great sand d eserts— the Rub al-Khali, stretching across the entire south; the Dahna in the east, betw een Najd and the Persian Gulf coast; and the Nafud, across m ost of the north. The rest is wilderness covered by gravel o r jumbled lava beds. The size of the Saudi population is something of a mystery; the best

2

Introduction

estim ates put it at some 5 - 6 million indigenous Saudis in 1980, plus more than 2 million foreign workers and their dependents (for a discussion of this subject, see Chapter 8). The population is distributed along three belts that correspond to geographic and historical divisions. About half the population lives and moves in the Hijaz and Asir regions, which form a m ountainous belt along the Red Sea. This area, conquered in the 1920s, includes the holy cities of Mecca and M adina and the ports of Jidda and Yanbo. The second belt of population consists of an archipelago of oases extending from Hafil in the north to beyond K haij in the south. This is the Najd pow er base of the House of Saud and includes Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The third belt begins on the coast of the Persian Gulf n ear Qatif, a Shi'ite population center, and extends south and west to the oasis of Haradh. This region, known as the Eastern Province, was conquered in 1913 and is the site of Saudi Arabia’s m ain oil fields and facilities, the D hahran airport and m ilitary base, and the new p o rt of Jubail. The three belts are separated from each other, and each in tu rn is surrounded and split by vast thinly inhabited spaces, resulting in a m ultitude of subre­ gions that historically supported the division of the population into some twoscore m ajor tribal groupings and m any m ore subgroupings. The vastness of the country, its topography, its ecology, and its poverty have m ade it extremely difficult for any central pow er to hold it together for any substantial length of time. Indeed, the area occupied by the present Kingdom was politically united only twice before in historical times, in the seventh century and at the tu rn of the nineteenth, and for only brief periods, before the centrifugal tendencies inherent in the envi­ ronm ent reasserted themselves. Since the 1940s, oil revenue has provided the wherewithal for attem pts by the rulers to mitigate those tendencies; but these efforts have so far not been decisive and have generated their own problematic consequences. In addition to vastness, fragmentation, and sparse population, critical features of Saudi geography in term s of defense include the specific location of the Kingdom’s oil wealth and the vulnerability of its lines of com m unication with the outside world. Most of Saudi Arabia’s oil-pro­ ducing capacity derives from five fields and 475-odd wells clustered in a core area 250 miles long and 50 miles wide on the Persian Gulf coast and offshore. In 1979 these fields produced about 65 million barrels a day (mbd) out of a total daily production of 9 m bd.1Terminal facilities serving all Saudi oil fields occupy a 50-mile arc along T arut Bay betw een Ras T annura and al-Khobar. All Saudi oil was loaded at Ras Tannura until recently, when the additional term inal of Ju'ayma becam e operative. The entire area is studded with pow er plants, pum ping stations, gathering places, and tan k farm s that provide targets for prodigiously damaging sabotage o r a ir attacks, and hostage objects for sm all hostile forces. Although Saudi Arabia has a coastline of 1300 miles on two seas, it has

Introduction

3

access to the open sea only through two choke points on the Red Sea and one on the Persian Gulf. The 20-mile-wide Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, adja­ cent to South Yemen, controls passage betw een the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, while the Suez Canal links the Red Sea to the M editerranean. The Strait of Hormuz, 30 miles wide at its narrow est point and bordered by Oman on one side and Iran on the other, links the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Until recently, nearly all Saudi oil exports had to go through the Strait of Hormuz. The completion of the 750-mile cross-Arabian pipe­ line from the Ghawar oil field across the Kingdom to Yanbo on the Red Sea has provided an alternative outlet for about 2 mbd but has also increased the Kingdom's dependence on the Suez Canal and Bab al-Man­ deb. Nearly all Saudi im ports are vulnerable to blockage of the choke points. Ironically, these facts did not m atter m uch when im perial Britain controlled all three passages; access becam e a problem for the Saudis only when indigenous neighboring governments took over, in 1955, 1967, and 1971. History and geography have also combined to produce yet another major security problem. Saudi Arabia was created by recent conquest, and conquest alm ost always leaves unresolved boundary problems. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the nature of the terrain of the Arabian Peninsula m akes precise dem arcation of boundaries virtually impossible. A much more serious problem is that the Kingdom is surrounded by a dozen states that are either too strong or too weak: the form er threaten aggres­ sion, and the latter invite it, especially since several of both are also extremely rich; and vital Saudi interests can suffer in the process. Again, until the end of World W ar II, Britain's control or strong influence over nearly all these neighbors perm itted an understanding betw een it and the Kingdom wherein Britain restrained the stronger powers in exchange for Saudi self-restraint vis-a-vis the w eaker powers. That understanding began to lapse as British control and influence waned in the 1940s and 1950s, and cam e to an end when Britain pulled out of Aden in 1967 and the Persian Gulf in 1971, leaving the Saudis to confront problems around their entire perimeter. These basic vulnerabilities have helped make defense and security a prim ary concern for the rulers of the present Saudi realm. For instance, in 1952, when one of the first rudim entary state budgets was issued, the founder of the Kingdom devoted 30 percent of the $210 million total revenue to defense and security. Twenty-nine years and profound changes later, in 1981, the Kingdom's revenues had increased 383 times, to about $79 billion; but allocations to defense and security had multiplied 415 times, to $25 billion, or 32.4 percent of the state's revenue. The am ounts allocated by the Saudis to defense and security in 1981 were exceeded only by the defense allocations of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. On a per capita basis they were by far the

4

Introduction

highest in the world, twice as high as Israel’s, the next highest, and more than three times as high as those of the United States, the third in rank. In absolute amounts, the Saudi allocations were equivalent to four tim es the combined defense spending of India and Pakistan, with their 760 million population and their thirty-five years of strife, o r about twice the com­ bined defense budgets for that year of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel— the principal antagonists in the Arab-Israeli conflict.2 Just as striking as the extremely high level of Saudi allocations to defense throughout the years is the relatively small m ilitary establish­ m ent that these have generated so far. With betw een one-half and the sam e am ount of defense spending as Saudi Arabia in recent years, the five Middle Eastern countries last m entioned could field in 1981 about 60 divisions, 10,000 tanks, and 2,000 com bat aircraft. In the sam e year Saudi Arabia could field at m ost the equivalent of 5 divisions, 500 tanks, and 200 com bat aircraft. Except for the air force, this was about the sam e size m ilitary force that Jordan could m uster in 1981, with less than onesixtieth of Saudi Arabia's defense allocation for that year. The reasons for this seemingly fantastic low cost effectiveness include the multiplication of defense and security instrum ents; the lack of an initial infrastructure; the lavish scale on which that infrastructure was developed; scarce, un­ derdeveloped, and underutilized m anpower; the extreme slowness of the process of training personnel for a m odern force; and false starts, waste, and spoilage. The ratio of the am ounts spent on hardware to am ounts spent on construction, training, and personnel over the last decade has been 1:3 or 1:4. The disparity betw een the real and perceived vulnerability of the King­ dom, on the one hand, and its rather limited m ilitary capability, on the other, m ade the th ru st of this inquiry clear from the outset: foreign policy— the endeavor to neutralize o r deter threats through alliances and alignments, diplomatic maneuverings, foreign aid, and so o n — was bound in the case of Saudi Arabia to be at least as im portant as the m ilitary component of national security. Moreover, foreign policy was likely to be more reactive than active; thus an understanding of Saudi reactions would require attention to actions by others and would involve discontinuities in the Saudis’ own policies. Finally, as in the case of other countries, analysis of Saudi national security would have to refer to the domestic dimension, including shifts in the structure of pow er and in the resources at the com m and of the rulers, relevant changes in the political and social systems, and modifications in demographic and even geo­ graphic factors. Although the broad param eters of this study were thus clear, its execu­ tion presented difficulties. Until 1973 the literature on the Kingdom in general and on Saudi defense and foreign policy in particular was thin.

Introduction

5

To all but the personnel of interested oil companies and a few foreign service specialists, adventurers, explorers, and scholars, Saudi Arabia was m uch like the Yemen Arab Republic today— a remote, exotic p a rt of the Middle East hinterland that occasionally m ade news in connection with the antics of some of its princes or with the impact on it of develop­ m ents originating in other parts of the region. The indifference of out­ siders accorded well with the Kingdom's strong religious-cultural isola­ tionism, the secretiveness of its rulers, and a traditional political system that lacked even the kind of forum s for the articulation of policy and opinion that have existed in other restrictive Middle Eastern countries. The result was that Saudi Arabia rem ained essentially terra incognita, and the behavior of its rulers rem ained m uch as Winston Churchill de­ scribed that of the Kremlin: “A riddle w rapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Since 1973 there has been an explosion of literature on the Kingdom, but most of it deals with oil issues and other more or less technical subjects. In the area of defense and foreign policy, more information becam e available as outsiders poured into the Kingdom in connection with its massive development projects, as Congress pressed successive adm inistrations to justify and account for the greater American involve­ m ent with the Kingdom, and as the world m edia began to report more extensively on the expanded regional and international role of the King­ dom itself. However, no comprehensive study of the subject has been produced, except for one imaginative and useful work in Arabic by the Lebanese political scientist Ghassane Salameh. A few articles and m ono­ graphs have shed some light on various facets of the subject, but vast areas rem ain obscure. The long list of works cited in the Bibliography is somewhat deceptive. Many are either too general o r too formal, too impressionistic or too spotty; most are tediously repetitive, reflecting m ore the greatly increased dem and for knowledge about the Kingdom than any increased supply of it, either through the tapping of new sources or the application of new methods. To execute this study, it was therefore necessary to assemble and present the accessible data as well as to analyze and synthesize them, and to pursue a strategy that combines several approaches and techniques. One is historical and traces the security problems from the sim pler times of the Kingdom's inception to the complex present. Because of the tradi­ tional nature of the Saudi political system, the analysis proceeds in term s of reigns, to underscore the centrality of the royal family and of power relations within it. Within this framework each reign is also examined in term s of stages, defined by domestic and external strategic problems or opportunities and the rulers' responses to them. If a particular stage spans two reigns, the analysis does likewise. This study also uses a structural approach that is calculated to make

6

Introduction

the m ost of scarce data about the rulers' policy decisions. The m ethod places strategic problems feeing the rulers in the context of carefully constructed analytical frameworks that depict the alternative courses theoretically available to deal with these problems and assesses the im­ plications of the various options on the basis of logic and the historical record. Once that m atrix has been constructed, an act or a statem ent by the rulers often suffices to give a clue not only about the course they probably chose but also about the attendant considerations that affected their choice. This approach may yield equivocal results in individual instances; but when it is applied to scores of cases in historical sequence, as is done in the following chapters, it becom es possible to test inferences by sequels, "predictions” by subsequent events, and thus to validate the analysis. At the point when the scope of the Kingdom’s security policy expands as a result of new problems o r opportunities, a spatial o r functional differentiation is introduced in the analysis. Thereafter Saudi security policy is examined in the context of several "theaters,” such as the ArabIsraeli arena, the Gulf, south Arabia, and in term s of the Kingdom’s American connection. Detailed analysis of developments in each arena includes general discussion of related developments in the other arenas, as necessary. This examination of some of the sam e problems from different perspectives in varying degrees of detail, though involving some repetition, provides a useful check on the overall analysis and approxi­ m ates the situations that the Saudi policymakers confronted. Finally, at all stages a study of Saudi defense policy parallels the analy­ sis of foreign policy. The defense analysis proceeds along two lines. One focuses on the evolution of the defense and security establishment, in­ cluding concepts, strategies, development programs, orders of battle, and capabilities; the other involves a systematic, detailed analysis of defense and security allocations over tim e to the various defense and security instrum ents. Because the defense studies use different data from those used in the foreign policy analysis, the two sets serve as counterchecks to each other and reinforce confidence in the validity of insights and con­ clusions on which they both convene. The book is divided into four principal p arts and eighteen chapters, all of which open with m ore o r less extensive overviews. The conclusions to each p a rt assess the Kingdom's security standing at that point and seek to identify enduring structural developments and recurrent patterns of be­ havior of the Saudi rulers. The final set of conclusions attem pts to use some of the findings of the entire study to cast some light on die future and to cite some general implications for American policy, as Saudi Arabia continues its ceaseless quest for security.

PART ONE

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia as presently constituted is barely fifty years old. The present king and other senior officials are the sons of the remarkable m an who created the Saudi Arab Kingdom1— Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman Al Faisal Al Saud,2 generally referred to as Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud started his empire-building endeavor with a handful of followers from an exile base in Kuwait in 1902 and completed it with a victory over the Yemen in 1934 that unified nearly 900,000 square miles. His success, however, depended in large m easure on the fact that he had set out to recover a realm that his ancestors had created, ruled, and lost, and that his grandfather had recreated before his uncles and father lost again. The first two Saudi realm s gave legitimacy to Ibn Saud's restoration effort and endowed it with a source of potential power that increased and becam e actualized pari passu with his successes. Moreover, the record of the first two realm s is highly relevant to an understanding of the form a­ tion and evolution of the third, not only because Ibn Saud was guided in his endeavor by some acutely sensed lessons derived from that record, but also because many of the factors that affected the history of those realm s continue to affect the present Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For these reasons this study of the Kingdom begins with a concise history of the first two Saudi realms, including some reflections relevant to understanding aspects of present-day Saudi Arabia. Chapters 2 and 3 furnish a more elaborate narrative of Ibn Saud's creation of the third realm. Part One concludes with reflections on features of his accom­ plishments that have relevance to the present and future of Saudi Arabia.

1

The Rise and Fall of the First Two Realms

The First Realm, 1744-1818 The origin of the first Saudi realm was an encounter in 1744 betw een two m en and two ambitions in a desert townlet called Dar'iyya. One of the m en was M uham m ad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a religious preacher possessed of a sense of mission such as arose from time to time in the lands of Islam and left their m ark on the course of history. Substantively, ibn Abd alWahhab's message was neither novel nor radical in Islamic term s. It was indeed a reiteration of the teachings of the great fourteenth-century revivalist Ahmad ibn Taimiya, who in tu rn was inspired by the great ninth-century founder of one of the four orthodox schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab called for a re­ tu rn to the simple and pure beliefs, austere living, and strict application of the law of early Islam and condemned prevalent saint worship and ani­ mistic rituals, indulgence in "luxuries” such as smoking, music, and the w earing of silk, and laxity in the application of the Qoranic prescriptions and penalties. What was new was the length to which he carried his message. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab regarded the practices he denounced not as m ere sins and shortcomings of im perfect believers, but as departures from the central belief in the absolute unity of Allah and the mission of His Prophet, which were tantam ount to apostasy and m erited the maxi­ m um penalty. Like other prophets, ibn Abd al-Wahhab found few disci­ ples in his own town. He encountered some success elsewhere before being driven out, and in 1744 he landed in Dar'iyya in search of a new base of support.

10

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

The other m an in that encounter was M uham m ad ibn Saud, the shaikh1 of a sm all d a n of one of the large tribes that had settled for several generations in two agricultural villages that had grown into the town of Dar'iyya. At the tim e of ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s visit, the Sauds and their dom ain were one of the less im portant of several Najd shaikhdoms, none of which m atched the realm and pow er of the sharifs (a title borne by descendants of the Prophet M uhammad) of the Hijaz, the Banu Khalid of H asa and the coastal district, the Sa'dun of lower Iraq, the Sadat of Najran, the im am s of Yemen, o r the sultans of Oman. Yet, after meeting ibn Abd al-Wahhab, M uham m ad ibn Saud conduded a com pact with him in which he undertook to defy and fight one and all powers for the sake of God and empire. Ibn Saud had sought explicit assurance that ibn Abd al-Wahhab would not ask him to forgo taxes on his subjects, and the latter had agreed and prom ised that if ibn Saud exerted himself and held fast to the doctrine of God’s oneness, "the Almighty will hopefully conquer your conquests and recom pense you with spoils of w ar far m ore ample than your present revenues.”2 The first expedition out of Dar'iyya consisted of seven camel riders who fell on an unsuspecting company of bedouins and brought home booty. During the next fifteen years or so, the combination of additional successes, the desire of some tribes to avoid exposure to Saudi-Wahhabi raiding and to share in the loot from raiding others, and the appeal of the W ahhabi religious message enabled ibn Saud to bring m uch of Najd, excluding Riyadh, under his control. These successes, however, brought the W ahhabis into conflict with the powers beyond the Najd region— the lords of Hasa, Najran, and the Hijaz. A critical m oment occurred in 1764, when, after m any skirm ishes and battles, the Hasa and Najran leaders m ounted large combined expeditions from the east and the south to put an end to the movement. M uham m ad ibn Saud’s son set out to m eet the forces advancing from Najran but his forces were crushed not far from Dar'iyya. Fortunately for ibn Saud, the leader of the Najran forces agreed to come to term s with him and returned home. When the B anu Khalid arrived on the scene, they withdrew after learning that their Najrani allies had m ade peace. One year later M uham m ad ibn Saud died and was succeeded by his son Abd al-Aziz (r. 1765-1803). Under Abd al-Aziz, the W ahhabi jihad gained new momentum , and the W ahhabi forces, ably led by Abd al-Aziz^ eldest son, Saud, were victorious in all directions, reaping vast booty and often sowing terro r along their way. To the east, the W ahhabis captured Qatif, an oasis inhabited by sectarian Shi'ites, and destroyed their places of worship. They also conquered Hasa, subjected B ahrain to their suze­ rainty, subm itted what are now called the United Arab Em irates to Wah­ habism, and reached the Arabian Sea. The sultan of Muscat (part of the

The First Two Realms

11

present Oman) was intermittently forced to pay tribute but was able to escape subjugation by seeking and receiving timely support from British, Persian, and other Arab allies. To the south, the W ahhabis reached the great Empty Q uarter and m ade descents into the H adram aut beyond it although they were unable to annex that region. The leaders of the Asir tribes joined the cause and from there the Wahhabi movement spilled down into the lowland of the Tiham a along the Red Sea, reaching as far south as the ports of Yemen, although in the highlands of Yemen the Zaidis (a Shi'ite sect) preserved their independence. To the north, the W ahhabis advanced into the Iraqi and Syrian deserts, subduing tribes and harassing setded areas and cities. In 1801 a force of 10,000 m en on 6,000 camels broke into Karbala, site of the tomb of the Prophet M uhammad's m artyred grandson, Hus­ sein, and one of the holiest places of Shi'ism. In an eight-hour orgy of violence they indiscriminately m assacred some 5,000 people, wrecked Hussein's mosque-tomb, looted the city, and then pulled out with 200 camels loaded with treasure.3 On the Syrian side, the W ahhabis raided in the vicinity of Damascus and fu rth er north.

1. Muhammad ibn Saud-------------------------------------------------- -—----------Thunavvan (1742-65) 2. Abd al-Aziz-------------------(1765- 1803)

Abdallah ibn Muhammad

i

3. Saud (1803- 14)

i 4. Abdallah — Abd al-Rahman (1814- 18)6 6. Mishari (1834)

11, 14. Abdallah (1865-71, 1875- 89)

8. Khalid (1840-41)

5. Turki (1824-34)

l

7, 10. Faisal (1834 - 38, 1843-65)

9. Abdallah ibn Thunayyan (1841-43)

--,---- 12. Saud (1871-75)

,

13, 15. Abd al-Rahman (1875, 1889- 91)

-,-- ,--

16. Abd al-Aziz (Ibn Saud) (1902 - 53)

l-------------------- 1-----------

17. Saud 18. Faisal (1953 - 65) (1964 - 75)

1

Muhammad

19. Khaled (1975- 82)

1

20. Eahd (1982-)

Figure 1. Abridged genealogy of Saudi Arabia's rulers (with years of reign)

12

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

To the west, the W ahhabis culm inated a fifteen-year struggle with Sharif Ghalib by capturing Ta'if and m assacring its inhabitants in 1802, and then m arching into Mecca in 1803. Before the victorious Abd al-Aziz, the 'ulam a of the holy city declared their acceptance of W ahhabism, and Ghalib accepted Saudi sovereignty; but after Abd al-Aziz returned to Dar'iyya, Ghalib reoccupied the city. Shortly thereafter Abd al-Aziz was assassinated in his capital while perform ing the Friday prayers in the mosque. The assassin was a Persian whose three sons held been m as­ sacred in Karbala. He had pretended to convert to W ahhabism and had woiked in the W ahhabi capital for a year awaiting an opportunity to avenge his children.4 Abd al-Aziz was followed by his eldest son, Saud (r. 1803-1814), whose succession had been secured as eariy as 1787 by Shaikh ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The Shaikh himself had died in 1792 but had left four sons who continued his woik and fu rth e r tightened the alliance with the Saudi dynasty. Saud was an enthusiastic W ahhabi and a m ost capable m ilitary leader; he was responsible for m ost of the conquests during his father's lifetime, and during his own reign he brought the movement to the height of its power. He recaptured M adina the following year and extended the frontiers of W ahhabism in all directions. In 1808,1810, and 1812 W ahhabi forces threatened Baghdad. In 1810 a large force sacked dozens of villages immediately south of Dam ascus and later that year exacted taxes from tribes forty miles south of Aleppo. Internally, Saud institutionalized W ahhabism and dealt severely with tribal lawlessness. Over a century later, King Ibn Saud liked to tell of how when Im am Saud had imprisoned some shaikhs from the M utair tribe, a party of the trib e ’s leaders cam e to rem onstrate with him and becam e threatening.5 Saud ordered the heads of the prisoners to be cut off and dished up on the table before their kinsmen, whom he then ordered to proceed with their meal.6 Saud left Sharif Ghalib in charge of the Hijaz so as not to provoke the Ottom an sultan, Ghalib’s suzerain and the self-proclaimed Guardian of the Two Holy Places (that is, Mecca and Madina). But he antagonized the sultan and Muslims everywhere by ordering Ghalib to remove the dom ed tom bs of saints and by interfering drastically with pilgrim traffic to enforce W ahhabi standards against long-established customs. The effective loss of the holy cities was m ore than the Ottom an sultan could countenance. After failing to engineer counterattacks from Iraq, Sultan Selim appointed M uham m ad Ali of Egypt viceroy of the Hijaz with orders to combat the Wahhabis. M uham m ad Ali first took time to consol­ idate his rule in Egypt, but in October 1811 he sent a force of 1,000 Albanian infantry, which landed in Yanbo and was joined two weeks later by 800 cavalry who had m arched overiand through Sinai and Aqaba. In January 1812 die expeditionary force, under the com m and of M uhamm ad

The First Two Realms

13

Ali's son Tusun, advanced on M adina but was am bushed by Saud's forces and nearly destroyed at the Judaida pass. In October 1812 the reinforced Egyptian army, supported by tribes that had deserted the Wahhabis, reached Madina and, after a fourteen-day siege, storm ed and captured the city. One thousand Wahhabis were killed and 1,500 captured. In January 1813 Mecca was occupied without opposition and Ta'if fell soon after. In August of that year M uhamm ad Ali himself landed at Jidda with 2,000 cavalry and 2,000 infantry and perform ed a trium phant pilgrim­ age. Negotiations betw een agents of M uham m ad Ali and Saud based on Saudi recognition of Ottoman/Egyptian dominion in the Hijaz failed over side issues. Despite M uhamm ad Ali's obvious strength, Saud, who had kept most of his forces intact, trusted in his ability to use them effectively against regular forces, taking advantage of distances and terrain as he had done at Judaida and was to do again at Turaba in 1814. But in April 1814 Saud died suddenly of fever at Dar'iyya; his death was a grievous setback to the W ahhabi cause.7 Saud was succeeded by his son Abdallah (r. 1814-1818), a m an known for wisdom and intelligence but lacking his father's firmness and m ilitary abilities. At the very beginning of his reign he was challenged by his great-uncle, Abdallah ibn M uhammad, who considered that he had a prior claim because he was the son of M uhamm ad ibn Saud, the founder of the Saudi-Wahhabi realm. Abdallah ibn Saud defeated his great-uncle, but dissension had set in and opponents of Abdallah and of the Sauds generally, as well as the fickle bedouin tribes, turned to M uham m ad Ali for support. In March 1815 Tusun m arched on the Qasim, a region halfway betw een Madina and Dar'iyya, with a force of 1,000 regulars, plus contingents from the M utair and Harb tribes, hitherto themselves Wahhabis. In June of that year Abdallah and Tusun reached an agreem ent wherein the form er renounced any claim to Mecca and M adina and recognized Tusun as overlord while the latter agreed to withdraw to Madina; but M uham m ad Ali refused to ratify the agreement. Instead he recalled Tusun to Cairo, where the latter died soon after, and sent another of his sons, Ibrahim Pasha, with a fresh force and with instructions to destroy W ahhabi power and lay waste all the territories under their control. He sought to ensure that no aspirant to suprem acy over the holy cities should arise for a long tim e to come. Ibrahim Pasha landed in the Hijaz with 2,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry in Septem ber 1816 and advanced systematically, rallying defecting tribes as he went. In April 1818 he finally appeared before the walls of Dar'iyya with a force of 2,000 cavalry, 5,600 infantry, 12 guns, and a m ultitude of tribesm en. A rapid assault on the town failed and gave way to a fivemonth siege, after which Abdallah sued for term s including pardon for

14

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

the troops that had rem ained faithful to him, pardon for his brothers and family, the preservation of the town, and safety for his own person. Ibrahim agreed to the first two requests but would m ake no promise with respect to the town. As to the fourth request, he would guarantee Abdal­ lah’s safety only until he arrived in Cairo, where fu rth e r decisions would be made. Abdallah complied. He was sent to Cairo and thence to Con­ stantinople, where he was paraded for three days before being beheaded and impaled. Ibrahim Pasha razed Dar'iyya and then swept into all adja­ cent territories— into Jabal Shammar, Hariq, Hasa, and the borders of Oman. He razed all forts, dism antled every fence, and collected some 400 m em bers of the House of Saud and the Shaikh family whom he deported to Cairo. In 1819 the Egyptian forces pulled back to the Hijaz, leaving only a garrison in the Qasim. They restored Hasa to the Banu Khalid to rule b u t left central Arabia to be to m asunder as before by its own tribal enmities. Thus ended the first Saudi-Wahhabi realm, seventy years after its m odest beginnings and less than twenty years after reaching its ze­ nith.8

The Second Realm, 1824-1891 M uham m ad Ali withdrew his forces from Najd because he had accom­ plished his m ain object of recapturing and securing Mecca and Madina, because Najd itself was too poor and too restless to tem pt him, and because he believed he had completely destroyed W ahhabi power. Within five years, however, a grandson of the founder of the first Saudi realm and son of the pretender defeated by Abdallah ibn Saud, Tuiki ibn Abdal­ lah ibn M uham m ad ibn Saud (r. 1824-1834), established a new SaudiW ahhabi power base in Riyadh, south of Dar'iyya. Like his forebears, Tuiki began by consolidating his rule in Najd through constant cam ­ paigning and then proceeded to expand, conquering Hasa in 1830 and exacting recognition of W ahhabi rule along the entire coast of the Persian Gulf by 1833. Unlike his predecessors, however, Tuiki, though a faithful Wahhabi, was careful not to fan the em bers of Wahhabi fanaticism and endeavored to avoid clashing with Ottoman/Egyptian power in the Hijaz and with the increasingly assertive British pow er in the Persian Gulf and along its shores. The challenge that T uiki faced stem m ed rather from a combination of tribal lawlessness, rivalry within the Saudi family, and discontent within the religious leadership^ which split over the question of responsibility for the 1818 disaster. In 1831, while on a punitive expedition against some tribes, Tuiki re­ ceived word that a distant cousin of his, Mishari ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Saud, whom he had appointed governor of M anfuha, had revolted with the support of some tribal elements. By the time Tuiki got back to

The First Two Realms

15

Riyadh, Mishari had fled. The latter tried in vain to mobilize additional tribal backing and to enlist the support of the sharif of Mecca, then subm itted to Tuiki, who put him and his family under some kind of house arrest. In 1834, however, Mishari successfully plotted the assassination of Turki while the Saudi forces under Turki's son Faisal were occupied in a w ar with Bahrain. Turki was killed while coming out of the mosque on Friday. Members of the Shaikh family rem ained in the mosque and asked for am an— assurance of safety. When this was given, they acknowledged Mishari as imam. Mishari's rule did not last long. Within forty days Faisal ibn Turki (r. 1834-1838, 1843-1865) rallied tribal support, m arched on Riyadh, de­ feated Mishari, and had him executed. But the dissensions within the Saudi family encouraged the Banu Khalid of Hasa to revolt and the rulers of Qatar and B ahrain to repudiate Saudi suzerainty. Moreover, in the year that Faisal seized power, M uhammad Ali of Egypt, having broken with the Ottoman sultan, defeated his forces, and brought what is now Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon under his rule, looked to incorporating the entire Arabian Peninsula in his growing empire. The Egyptians began by put­ ting pressure on Faisal to recognize their overlordship over Najd and to assist them in their long-unsuccessful effort to subdue the Asir high­ lands. Faisal sent his brother Jilwi to Mecca with presents, submissive words, and offers of some camels for transport while he secretly helped his Asiri allies. In 1836, however, the Egyptians landed an expeditionary force in Yanbo that marched on Najd. With them cam e a Saudi pretender in the person of a cousin of Faisal, Khalid, son of Saud and brother of the Abdallah they had defeated in 1818. Faisal assembled a force and went out to meet the invaders, but his troops melted away as word spread about the superior Egyptian forces. The people of Riyadh, too, were intimidated by the approaching enemy and refused to fight. Faisal then slipped out with a small num ber of followers, and Khalid entered Riyadh with the Egyp­ tian forces in 1837. For a while the Egyptians accepted a submission by Faisal and left the two Saudi chiefs ruling a partitioned Najd under them. But in 1838 they m arched against Faisal, defeated and captured him, and sent him for detention in Cairo. The Egyptians went on to conquer all of Arabia except Asir, this time with intent to stay. The fact that they now worked with Khalid and were allies of the Wahhabis, coupled with their superior forces and energetic m ilitary leadership, enabled them to exercise firm control. But events elsewhere soon led to the term ination of Egyptian rule. In the wake of a second w ar and a decisive victory by M uhamm ad Ali against the Otto­ m an sultan in 1839, the European powers intervened and forced on M uham m ad Ali a settlement that confined him to the hereditary rulership of Egypt. In 1841 the bulk of the Egyptian forces were withdrawn

16

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

from Najd, leaving Khalid ibn Saud in charge of Riyadh with the support of a small Egyptian garrison. Soon after the Egyptian withdrawal, Abdallah ibn Thunayyan, a de­ scendant of M uhamm ad ibn Saud, captured Riyadh and was proclaim ed im am in 1841. Khalid m ade several unsuccessful attem pts to recover his fortunes before giving up and finding refuge in the Hijaz. Ibn Thunayyan m et his doom through another challenger. In 1843 Faisal ibn Turki escaped from his jail in Egypt, m ade his way to Najd, and raised a force with which he challenged him in Riyadh. Ibn Thunayyan surrendered, and Eaisal had him throw n in jail, where he was poisoned shortly there­ after. Faisal’s second reign (1843-1865) was the golden age of the second Saudi realm. Territorially, the realm was m uch sm aller than the first and had little of its dynamism; but it had far greater acceptance externally and internally, representing as it did a transition from “revolutionary W ahhabism” to "Wahhabism in one country." Faisal's ideal notion of the "one country” com prised all the dom ains once conquered by his ances­ tors, but in practice he was careful not to press beyond the limits of his power. He not only refrained from challenging Ottoman rule in the Hijaz but also acknowledged the sultan’s suzerainty and paid an annual tribute in exchange for Ottom an recognition of himself as "ruler of all the Arabs."9 In the opposite direction, Faisal endeavored to assert his author­ ity in Bahrain, Qatar, the Gulf shaikhdom s (known then as the Trucial Shaikhdoms and now as the United Arab Emirates), and northern Oman but was careful not to clash with the British, who in 1835 sponsored a treaty that established a "maritim e truce" am ong the rulers of these lands and recognized Britain as arbitrator of disputes betw een them. Toward the end of his life Faisal tried to tem pt the British into an alliance with him against Ottom an power, although he had long used his Ottom an connections and the title granted him by the sultan to resist British pressure to recognize the independence of the Gulf statelets. When the British declined his offer, he tried to take advantage of dissen­ sion in Oman in order to advance his claim there. The British responded by bom barding Dam mam and Hufuf, on the coast under his control, in January 1866, after which they reached an understanding with Faisal’s son Abdallah to prevent fu rth e r clashes. Just as W ahhabism ceased under Faisal to be a driving force for an unlim ited holy w ar externally, so it ceased to be a m ajor issue internally. On the one hand, all the territories under Faisal’s authority willingly accepted Wahhabism, and on the other hand acceptance cam e to signify merely willingness to accept judges and religious teachers appointed by the imam. The bedouin tribes were exem pted even from that require­ m ent, as were the Gulf states and Om an in the interm ittent periods when

The First Two Realms

17

they paid tribute to Riyadh. Although the practice of W ahhabism was strictly enforced in places such as Riyadh and central Najd and more or less loosely followed elsewhere, the differences provided little or no ground for conflict. Politically and administratively, Faisal adopted an even more flexible policy to keep his realm together. In rem ote and insecure areas such as Buraim i and Qatif, he appointed governors supported by garrisons; in the central districts, he appointed governors chosen mostly from the local citizenry; in distant, strong, but nominally loyal districts such as Jabal Shammar, he accepted the Rashidi leadership that em erged locally. Among the bedouin tribes he dealt directly with the shaikhs and made them responsible for enforcing order and paying taxes, which varied with the extent of grazing rights and support against raiding by other tribes granted by the imam. The Gulf states and Oman paid tribute interm it­ tently but had no other connection with Riyadh. Everywhere, he sought to reinforce the "administrative" connection with family bonds— his son Abdallah, for instance, had a Rashidi wife, and another son, Saud, m ar­ ried into the Ajman tribe. Since the "government" disposed of a very small revenue, had no bureaucracy and no standing arm y beyond a royal bodyguard of a few hundred, and depended entirely on tribal militias, it is clear that the entire realm was essentially a precarious confederation of tribes held together by the energy, will, and wisdom of the chief.10 Faisal had these qualities, but even so he had to cam paign constantly to keep the bedouins in line and to subdue recalcitrant tribes. His sons-successors not only lacked these traits but also engaged in a long fratricidal strife that re­ sulted in the destruction of the second Saudi-Wahhabi realm. The m ain episodes of the debacle were as follows. Faisal had four sons: Abdallah, Saud, M uhammad, and Abd al-Rahman. In his own lifetime he had given administrative responsibilities to the first three in various parts of the realm and had nom inated Abdallah to succeed him. (Abd al-Rahman, born in 1850, had been too young to play a significant role.) After his accession as imam, Abdallah tried to "central­ ize" his power by forcing his appointees and enlarging their jurisdiction, thus antagonizing im portant families, sections, and tribes. Saud, who coveted the succession for himself and had sources of support of his own, particularly within the powerful Ajman tribe, to which both his m other and his wife belonged, took advantage of his brother's m istakes to chal­ lenge and eventually defeat him and captured Riyadh in February 1871. Before that happened, however, Abdallah, feeling the ground slip from under him, had appealed to the Ottoman authorities, the nominal suze­ rains of Najd, to help him against his rebellious brother. The Ottoman governor of Iraq, the energetic and able Midhat Pasha, took advantage of

18

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

the situation to send a strong expedition that conquered the eastern province of Hasa in July 1871. Abdallah, who went to greet his ostensible saviors and to obtain fu rth er help from them, found himself their virtual prisoner. Soon afterw ard, however, a brother of the late Im am Faisal, Abdallah ibn Turki, ousted Saud from Riyadh, and Abdallah ibn Faisal escaped and joined him. Abdallah ibn Faisal wrote to Midhat Pasha that he was willing to acknowledge Tuikish suzerainty in return for recogni­ tion as im am of the W ahhabi territories, but Midhat reacted by dismiss­ ing all Saudis and appointing a Tuikish governor for Najd. The dismissals and the appointment m eant little as far as Najd was concerned, but the eastern province rem ained in the hands of the Turks until Ibn Saud recovered it in 1913. As the strife betw een the brothers continued, the Ottomans took ad­ vantage of the opening of the Suez Canal to send a powerful expedition­ ary force that finally overcame W ahhabi resistance in Asir and brought the province under their control. The leader of a fundam entalist Ibadi upheaval in Oman captured the Buraim i oasis from Abdallah's forces and retained it in alliance with Saud, who continued to contest his brother. The Qasim towns and Jabal Sham m ar ceased to make any con­ tribution to Riyadh, so that the Saudi state shrank to the central Najdi districts, and even there, whoever ruled in the Saudi capital was unable to control the bedouins. In 1873 Saud captured Riyadh for the second time. His brother Abdal­ lah eluded him but his uncle, Abdallah ibn Tuiki, was seized and thrown into jail, where he died shortly thereafter. Two years later, Saud himself succum bed to smallpox. Abd al-Rahman, the youngest brother, who was with Saud in Riyadh, took over, but Abdallah and M uhamm ad fought him. Abd al-Rahman emerged victorious but was soon challenged by Saud's sons and was forced to flee Riyadh. He joined his brothers Abdal­ lah and M uhamm ad and together the three were able to drive the nephews out of Riyahd though not to defeat them decisively. This was the eighth change in suprem e authority in Riyadh in the eleven years since Faisal's death. After being reinstalled in Riyadh for the second time, Abdallah tried to take advantage of a conflict betw een Anaiza and Buraida, the principal towns of Qasim, to reassert his authority throughout the province. He backed Anaiza; but M uhamm ad ibn Rashid, the very able ruler of Jabal Shammar, supported Buraida in order to check the resurgence of Saudi power. In the ensuing confrontation Abdallah backed down without giv­ ing battle, with the result that not only did Jabal Sham m ar break away but also whatever authority remaining to Abdallah in Najd was under­ m ined.11 In 1879 Abdallah and his brothers tem porarily patched up their quarrel

The First Two Realms

19

with their nephews (the sons of Saud), and they all sought intermittently to regain Hasa and to reassert Saudi control. In the process, Abdallah clashed once more with M uhamm ad ibn Rashid in 1884 and this tim e was decisively defeated. Ibn Rashid, however, not only refrained from march­ ing into Riyadh but also, in an attem pt to pacify Abdallah, agreed to relinquish his conquest of the districts of Washm and Sudair. The follow­ ing year, the quarrel betw een brothers and nephews flared up again, and two years later the nephews m arched from their base in Kharj, cap­ tured Riyadh, and took Abdallah prisoner. Abdallah m anaged to send an appeal for help to ibn Rashid, who advanced on the Saudi capital with an overwhelming force. The nephews negotiated an aman and returned to Kharj. Ibn Rashid entered Riyadh; liberated Abdallah; took him to Ha'il, Sham m ar's capital, as a “perm anent guest”; and appointed a Rashidi governor of the Saudi capital.12The second Saudi realm thus cam e to an end, the victim of dissension in the ruling family, the inherent centrifugal forces in the region, and the chance presence of a rival of stature in the person of M uhamm ad ibn Rashid. Two or three more episodes round out the story of the fall of the second Saudi realm and shed an interesting light on subsequent events. From their base in Kharj, Saud's sons (the nephews of Abdallah) plotted a restoration of Saudi rule. To quash this threat the Rashidi governor of Riyadh, Salim ibn Subhan, in an operation that anticipated a betterknown one by Ibn Saud in 1902, launched a surprise dawn raid on Kharj in 1888 with thirty-five m en who had scaled the town's walls under cover of darkness. Salim killed one of the nephews and foiled the attem pted escape of a second. When the third, who was on a mission with the Ajman tribe, heard of what had befallen his brothers and their town, he went to Ha'il and threw himself on ibn Rashid's mercy. (The sons of this nephew, grandsons of Saud, were to challenge Ibn Saud in 1911 and 1916.) M uhamm ad ibn Rashid behaved generously toward the Sauds. He disclaimed any knowledge of the attack on Kharj and later dismissed Salim. He allowed Abdallah to return to Riyadh and retain the title of imam, and after Abdallah's death in 1889 he appointed his brother Abd al-Rahman governor. In 1890 Abd al-Rahman revolted and successfully surprised and defeated the Rashidi garrison. Ibn Rashid besieged Riyadh but came to an agreement with Abd al-Rahman that confirmed him as governor of Riyadh and of neighboring districts under Rashidi suzerainty. Later that year the Qasimis, including Anaiza and Buraida, apparently encouraged by the “weakness” shown by ibn Rashid toward Abd al-Rahman, revolted against the former. In addition to backing from Abd al-Rahman, they enlisted the support of powerful tribes hostile to Shammar. Ibn Rashid met the rebels in 1891 in the battle of Mulaida, said to have been the biggest m ilitary encounter in central Arabia since the

20

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

rise of Islam. Ibn Rashid prevailed before Abd al-Rahman and his forces were able to join the battle; Abd al-Rahman headed for the desert and eventual exile in Kuwait, where family m em bers joined him. Mulaida was the last twitch of the dying second Saudi-Wahhabi realm .13

Lessons from the First Two Realms The history of the rise and fall of the first two Saudi realm s provides many insights helpful to an understanding of the emergence of the third Saudi state, its character, and its mode of functioning. Although presentday Saudi Arabia is in many ways vastly different from the first and second realms, and even from the third realm as bequeathed by its founder to his successors, more features of the earlier states rem ain relevant today than might be suspected from a superficial impression of the changes that have taken place since. Moreover, an appreciation of certain features of the earlier realm s also helps to highlight the scope and significance of the changes that have occurred. The rem ainder of this chapter presents the most im portant of these insights. 1. The Arabian Peninsula is by nature inhospitable to any com prehen­ sive political entity. This conclusion is based not only on the fact of the turbulent existence and relatively brief duration of the first two Saudi realms, but also on the fact that for thousands of years before them no political entity embracing m ost of Arabia had arisen, except for a short period under the Prophet M uham m ad and his im m ediate successors. The reasons for this circum ­ stance are related to the geography and ecology of Arabia. With the exception of Yemen and Oman, the Arabian Peninsula is essentially a vast arid territory of more than 1 million square miles that until recently was too poor to provide any resources beyond the needs of subsistence sufficient to support a central power. Its sparse population com prised two groups. The majority consisted of nomadic herdsm en— bedouins— roving over large expanses to graze their flocks on scarce bru sh and ephem eral grass that sprouted after the scanty w inter rains. The rem ainder consisted of small agricultural communities in the few areas where the availability of w ater m ade cultivation possible. In this environment, where individuals and limited families could not survive, both the settled and nom ad populations were organized into tightly knit tribes, clans, and extended families for m utual support and security. Before the rise of Islam, some settled tribes were able for various periods to organize and secure a transit trade through Arabia to and from the rich, fertile lands at its periphery. After Islam was established, some

The First Two Realms

21

towns and tribes secured an additional source of income by providing services, transport, and protection to caravans of pilgrims passing through their territories. However, the benefits of trade and pilgrimage reached only small portions of the population, were subject to frequent and prolonged disruptions as a result of disorder, and thus failed to provide a basis for an enduring large-scale political entity. The difficulties of earning a livelihood, the dearth of surplus re­ sources, the vast distances of the peninsula, and nom adism and tribalism combined to place Arabia in a kind of Hobbesian state of nature in which each tribe was perm anently at w ar with all the others, except for short and tem porary alliances. Hostility between the settled and bedouin tribes was particularly profound, assum ing an added "cultural" dimen­ sion of contempt for each other's occupation and way of life. Yet, contrary to Hobbesian theory, this state of affairs was not deem ed to be an un­ bearable evil to be escaped at all costs. On the contrary, the bedouin tribes especially regarded war, m utual raiding, and looting not as deplor­ able necessities from which they would escape if they could, but rather considered them to be exciting features of a desirable way of life, provid­ ing occasions for the display of various kinds of virtuosity to be im m or­ talized in heroic verse and song. That state of affairs was sustained by an inherent tendency to produce an equilibrium of power among the tribes, bedouin or settled. Weak units tended to merge or ally themselves with others for protection against stronger units; overly large entities tended to split up from lack of sufficient living space or because they becam e unwieldy. For this reason, wars were not as destructive or as one-sided in their outcom es as they might otherwise have been. More im portant, no unit could achieve a sufficiently superior power to develop into a political leviathan that could impose itself on all. The exceptions to this rule, under the Prophet Mu­ ham m ad and the Saudis, occurred precisely when a new factor, in the form of a religious impetus, upset the equilibrium. 2. Religious fervor coupled with the tribal ethos was the essential driving force in the creation of the first Saudi realm, and also its ultimate nemesis. The dynamics of the creation of the first Saudi realm were similar to those that had brought about the unification of the Arabian Peninsula under the Prophet M uhammad. M uhamm ad had delivered a message that sublimated but did not eliminate the tribal ethos and provided a bond that transcended but did not abolish tribal divisions. The adoption of Islam by several tribes and sections of tribes and their submission to a single firm leadership created a mass of power that was too strong for any

22

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

other tribe to resist. Consequently other tribes, w hether o r not they were convinced by the Prophet’s message, were impelled one sifter the other to join his cause in order to avoid reprisals and to share in the booty to be taken from the rem aining recalcitrant tribes. When all the tribes of Arabia were thus united, their formidable com­ bined energies, previously dissipated in m utual hostility, were directed outw ard against the infidels of neighboring lands. Each success achieved there confirmed the m erit of the new dispensation, brought additional m aterial rewards, and gave the movement fu rth e r impetus, until a vast em pire was created in an astoundingly short time. The conquest of rich lands and cities provided m ore than ample revenues to support a central power; but the seat of that power shifted to more natural centers of gravity in the new empire, and arid Arabia becam e a neglected backwater province, except for the holy cities of Mecca and Madina. Before long, under the impact of its environment, it reverted to pre-Islamic beliefs and practices under an Islamic veneer. The creators of the first Saudi-Wahhabi realm consciously em ulated the model of the Prophet’s career, tapped the sam e motives, and by a sim ilar process achieved sim ilar results up to a certain point. Using W ahhabism as the supratribal and intertribal bond, and coupling mili­ tancy on behalf of "true Islam" with the tribal ethos of loot and conquest, they established a firm base in Najd from which they overran the rest of Arabia and spilled over into the neighboring lands. At that point, however, they confronted the power of the Ottom an Empire, which not only dis­ posed of different, superior, and m odem m aterial power but also was acknowledged by m ost Muslims as the bulwaik of Islamic orthodoxy. That confrontation stopped the increasing m om entum of the W ahhabi thrust; and once the drive was checked, a reversal of the process began: tribes that had accepted W ahhabism abandoned its prom oters in in­ creasing num bers as their cause appeared to be losing, and joined the successful Egyptian-Ottoman forces that finally destroyed the SaudiW ahhabi realm. 3. The dynastic principle coupled with routinized W ahhabism was the driving force in the creation of the second Saudi realm and also con­ tained the seeds of its ultimate destruction. The fate of the first realm having dem onstrated the perils of m ilita nt W ahhabism, the founders of the second realm based their drive on their right to rule the domains once conquered by their ancestors in the nam e of W ahhabism. That dynastic principle provided the creators of the sec­ ond realm with a m ore conventional and therefore safer foundation than their ancestors had had, but it was also less inspiring and therefore less

The First Two Realms

23

strong. Since W ahhabism without militancy had become generally ac­ cepted or acceptable, other rulers could and did contest the House of Saud's claim to exclusive association with that creed. Moreover, since the Saudi claim was based on inheritance, various m em bers of the House of Saud itself could and did lay competing claims to it. To be sure, W ahhab­ ism as a subsidiary to the dynastic principle kept alive the ideal of a large unified realm in Arabia, and this fact altered Arabian politics by giving them a new focus; but it no longer ensured unified leadership, as it had in the first realm. The advantages and disadvantages of the dynastic principle in the Arabian environment are clear from the historical record. Whereas Mu­ ham m ad and Abd al-Aziz, the founders of the first realm, starting from Dar'iyya and using m ilitant Wahhabism, took nearly half a century to subdue m ost of Arabia, Tuiki and Faisal, starting from a claim to the inheritance of their ancestors, were able to assert their rule over most of the same territory within a few years. On the other hand, whereas the creators and rulers of the first realm, having founded their right on achievement in the service of the cause they had espoused, m et with no challenge to their leadership, the creators and rulers of the second realm, having based their right on inheritance, were constantly challenged from both within and outside the House of Saud. Tuiki was challenged by Egyptian-supported Khalid, who was challenged by ibn Thunayyan, who was challenged by Faisal again. After Faisal's death, his brother, his own four sons, and his grandsons fought one another in alliance with out­ siders, giving the Ottomans the chance to encroach upon the Saudi realm and M uham m ad ibn Rashid to liquidate it altogether. 4. During internal pow er struggles, the religious establishment con­ tributed litde to an orderly resolution of the conflict, tending to take neutral positions when the issue was in doubt and to sanction the author­ ity of whoever prevailed. M uham m ad ibn Saud and his son Abd al-Aziz had a personal compact with Shaikh M uhamm ad ibn al-Wahhab, who created and headed the W ahhabi religious establishment. The third ruler, Saud, had a personal com pact with the descendants and successors of the Shaikh. But when Saud's son Abdallah was challenged by his uncle, the religious establish­ m ent wavered. After the destruction of Dar'iyya by Ibraham Pasha, the religious establishment itself was rent by bitter argum ents about the wisdom of identifying the cause of religion with the person and policies of a particular ruler, and by charges of blame for the disaster leveled by some m em bers of the establishment against the leaders.14 During the second realm, the religious establishment adopted from the

24

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

outset an attitude of cautious neutrality toward the power struggles among the Saudis and betw een them and outsiders, a stance that am ounted in fact to sanctioning whatever outcome the struggles pro­ duced. The blood of Im am Turki had not been wiped off the floor of the m osque where he was assassinated when the attending m em bers of the Shaikh family recognized his assassin, Mishari, as imam. Nor did the fact that Khalid was installed in 1837 by the bayonets of the returning Egyp­ tian forces prevent the religious establishment from acknowledging his legitimacy. It m aintained the same position throughout the fratricidal struggles that led to the destruction of the second realm and throughout the m ajor crises of the third realm, when Ibn Saud confronted the Ikhwan and when King Saud and Em ir Faisal quarreled. To all appearances, once the era of m ilitant W ahhabism was past, the religious establishment reverted to the traditional Sunni political doctrine advanced by al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), wherein all power was viewed as legitimate regardless of how it was achieved, as long as its holder was prepared to support the application of the Shari'a (the Islamic religious law). Perhaps this attitude protected the continuity and integrity of the role of religion against politi­ cal fluctuations, but only at the cost of forfeiting whatever contribution the religious establishment might have m ade toward diminishing those fluctuations by regularizing the transfer of power. 5. The Saudi realm s have been particularly vulnerable to the problem of succession. All hereditary regimes have been periodically troubled by the issue of succession, but the Saudi and other Arabian regimes (the Rashids, for instance) have been particularly vulnerable to the problem. The first two successions in the first Saudi realm took place smoothly, but the third, Abdallah's, already encountered some difficulty. In the three-quarters of a century of the second Saudi realm there was not one peaceful transfer of power. One reason for the difficulty is the environmental conditions that m ade the Arabian Peninsula inherently inhospitable to large-scale political en­ tities. An exceptionally able leader, or one who is identified with a reli­ gious cause transcending existing loyalties, could tem porarily overcome the environmental limitations and establish a substantial realm; however, because of the dearth of surplus resources, even such a ru ler could not create institutions of pow er— such as standing arm ed forces, a bureauc­ racy, and police— that, if transm itted to his successor, could give him a critical edge over potential challengers. Consequently, if a successor was a w eaker personality than the original ru ler or was not exclusively identi­ fied with the religious cause, as was the case with Abdallah after Saud

The First Two Realms

25

and Abd al-Aziz, or if the transcendent religious bond itself weakened, as was the case in the second realm, the inherent centrifugal tendencies reasserted themselves and encouraged challengers to contest the transfer of power. Another reason has to do with the rules for succession followed by the House of Saud. Like other Arabian (and Muslim) ruling families, the Saudis have shunned the W estern principle of prim ogeniture in favor of the tribally rooted rule that invests the succession in the oldest and most capable m em ber of the ruling family. Perhaps in the circum stances of tribal life, where the criteria of ability are simple, obvious, and related to survival, the rule is logical and natural, but in the more complex circum ­ stances of a large state, even one that consists of a confederation of tribes, the criteria become more difficult to ascertain and capability becomes accordingly subject to division and revision of opinion. The problem might have been overcome if there were a recognized body empowered to make authoritative decisions, and a neutral state power to enforce them, but such was not the case in the disputes that developed in the first and second Saudi realms, nor has such a body m atured in the third realm. The criterion of seniority is fairly straightforward, but even that has not been without problems. In the extensive House of Saud, some have sought to confine the rule to one branch, while others have sought to extend it to the entire family tree. The problem arose in the second Saudi realm and troubled even the great Ibn Saud early in the third. The greater the ramification of the family, the greater the potential for problems, and the more difficult it becomes for a particular incum bent to establish lineal succession within his own family against the opposition of all the others. The House of Saud, like other Arabian and Muslim dynasties past and present, has tried to resolve the problem by a procedure wherein the incum bent ru ler nom inates his successor and secures for him confirma­ tion from "the people with the power to loosen and bind," subject to reconfirmation upon the nominee's accession. This device has worked often but not always. It did not work in the case of the fatal conflict betw een Abdallah, who had been nom inated by his father Faisal (the first) and his brother Saud in the 1860s and 1870s, or in the case of the conflict betw een King Saud and his brother Faisal (the second) some hundred years later. These cases also illustrate the point that attem pts to appease potential rivals of the nominee by giving them shares of power could just as well place them in a better position to challenge him. 6. Except perhaps at the height of the Wahhabi movement, the politics of the Saudi realms, like all other Arabian politics, have been dom inated to an unusual extent by an ethos of opportunism .

26

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

Even if one accepts the adage that in politics there are no perm anent friends and enemies, only perm anent interests, Arabian politics seem to dem onstrate the point to an unusual degree. The following examples are by no m eans exhaustive: the tribes rallied to the Wahhabi cause when it appeared to be winning and joined its enemies when the latter appeared to be stronger; Khalid ibn Saud joined the Egyptians, who had destroyed the first realm and his brother Abdallah, in their campaign against Faisal; the Rashidis began their career as lieutenants of Faisal and went on to dispossess his successors; Faisal overtly helped the Egyptians against the Asiri rebels and covertly helped the rebels against the Egyptians; he vowed loyalty to his Ottoman suzerain and broached a revolt against him with the help of the infidel British; his son Abdallah invited Turkish power against his brother Saud, while Saud allied himself with the sectar­ ian Ibadi chiefs of Oman against his brother Abdallah; Abd al-Rahman sided with Saud against Abdallah and M uhammad, then with the latter against the sons of Saud, and so on. This tendency is rooted in the Arabian environment and its previously described effects. Because Arabia was composed of alm ost entirely selfsufficient tribes, there were very few bonds even of self-interest to tie them into enduring associations. Among the bedouin tribes, who were predom inant in numbers, the only interest in association related to power balances; and since the power constellations always changed be­ cause they lacked a firm “substructure!" base, the associations and alli­ ances also constantly shifted. Among the settled tribes there was a larger m easure of shared interest in common defense against the bedouin tribes, but the wide dispersal of their settlements and the rivalries among themselves also limited the possibility of enduring associations and tem pted the chiefs of the individual towns and oasis-clusters to make their own arrangem ents with the bedouin tribes and thus be drawn into the orbit of their politics. Neither settled nor bedouin tribes had a lasting interest in an overarching state unless their particular tribe controlled it, since the state merely exacted taxes and tribute and was in no position to offer desirable services. A chief who would attem pt such an enterprise was therefore to be intitially resisted, joined if he appeared to be suc­ ceeding, shaken off if he appeared to be faltering, and deserted in favor of his enemy if the latter seem ed stronger. From the point of view of the would-be founder or ru ler of a realm, it was necessary to treat some defeated opponents harshly to impress o r deter others, but to treat most of them generously because enemies could easily become allies. This ethos was modified but not fundam entally altered by Wahhabism. Once the first Saudi chiefs were able to build m om entum for their drive, religious fervor and identification injected a certain m easure of con­ stancy into the previously fluid politics of Arabia. However, since the

The First Two Realms

27

m om entum itself had been built largely through the play of the Arabian political ethos, once that m om entum was stopped, the ethos reasserted itself and contributed to its reversal. Abdallah, the unfortunate last ruler of the first realm, exceptionally fought almost to the end at Dar'iyya; but he did so only after M uham m ad Ali had rejected the accommodation Abdallah had worked out with Tusun. 7. The quality of the ru ler has been of vital im portance for the Saudi realms. If the quality of leadership is im portant for democratic states and crucial for absolutist ones, it has been a m atter of life and death for the Saudi (and other Arabian) realms. Because the dearth of surplus re­ sources has prevented the development of standing instrum ents of power, and because the natural and hum an environment has fostered centrifugal tendencies, the creation and m aintenance of the Saudi realms has depended entirely on the strength and wisdom of their leaders. The first realm was forged by powerful chiefs who m aintained it by directing tribal energies and greed outward against “unbelievers." The failure of these leaders to recognize the limits of their power led to Egyptian intervention and destruction under a w eaker leadership. Tuiki and Faisal, who forged the second Saudi realm, were strong but knew the limits of their power and m aintained their territory by constant cam ­ paigns against recalcitrant tribes and careful accommodation of amen­ able others. Their successors, however, dissipated their energies in fratri­ cidal strife in which none had the strength to prevail against the others or the wisdom to compose their quarrel, with the result that they all for­ feited their inheritance to third parties. The story of the House of Saud might have ended with the second realm and the history of Arabia might have been quite different, but that a scion of that house em erged who combined enough strength and wisdom to create a third realm as vast as the first and to steer it safely until fate introduced a new, critical factor into Arabia's destiny: oil.

2 The Third Realm: Creating an Empire, 1902-1932

Eleven years after the destruction of the second realm, a twenty-year-old son of Abd al-Rahman nam ed Abd al-Aziz and later known to the world as Ibn Saud seized Riyadh in a surprise raid and began an effort to restore the realm of his ancestors. The enterprise seem ed hopeless because, although the Sauds had once before recreated their realm after total destruction and regained their independence after losing it, the authors of the previous restorations, Turki and Faisal, had essentially taken ad­ vantage of the chaos and power vacuum left behind by the withdrawing Egyptian forces to establish themselves. Ibn Saud, on the other hand, had to contend with the strong established power of the ibn Rashid dynasty. Unlike the alien Egyptians, the Rashids were Arabians, had a strong pow er base in the powerful Sham m ar tribe, were themselves adherents of W ahhabism, occupied a strategic territory linking the Turkish posses­ sions of Hasa, Syria, and Iraq to the east and north and the Hijaz, Asir, and Yemen to the south and west, and were loyal allies of the sultan. But Ibn Saud was a truly extraordinary man. H. St. John Philby may have let his enthusiasm get the better of his judgm ent when he likened Ibn Saud to the Prophet M uhamm ad and described him as probably the greatest of Arab leaders who have acted in a desert setting;1but even the judicious, unrom antic Sir Percy Cox, who had m uch to do with Ibn Saud and followed his career closely, m ade the extraordinary assertion that Ibn Saud m ade no serious m istake in thirty turbulent years following the sta rt of his enterprise.

The Third Realm

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Early Reconquests, 1902-1914 After his final defeat at the hands of M uhamm ad ibn Rashid, Abd al-Rahm an A1 Saud spent his time in Kuwait brooding over his family's fate and entertaining impractical schemes of recovery. In 1897 the death of the formidable M uhamm ad ibn Rashid suddenly gave Abd al-Rahman grounds for renewed hope. The year before, his Kuwaiti host, M uham­ m ad ibn Sabah, and the latter's brother had been assassinated by a third brother, Mubarak, who assum ed the chieftainship of the shaikhdom and its tribes. M ubarak was as ambitious and clever as he was ruthless, and upon the death of M uhamm ad ibn Rashid set out to supersede him as the dom inant power in Arabia and to use the Sauds to advance his goal. He first tried to neutralize the power of the Turk, his own nominal suzerain and the ally of the Rashids, and to accomplish that he sought to involve British power on his side. The British, long the m asters of the Persian Gulf, had been concerned about a Turkish-German project for a Berlinto-Baghdad railway that envisaged using Kuwait as a Persian Gulf term i­ nal, and they therefore responded to M ubarak's overture by concluding with him in 1899 a treaty sim ilar to the ones they had with chiefs of other Gulf principalities. M ubarak comm itted himself not to alienate any Ku­ waiti territory or to grant any concessions to subjects of powers other than Britain, in exchange for British protection and a guarantee of his independence. The British tried to keep the treaty secret because it ran counter to their long-established general policy of upholding the integrity of the Ottoman Empire in order to preserve the European balance of power; but the Turkish government somehow got wind of it and, keeping its own knowledge of the pact secret, secretly incited the new Rashidi ruler, Abd al-Aziz ibn Mut*ib ibn Rashid, to attack Mubarak. M ubarak welcomed ibn Rashid's provocations and responded early in 1901 by mounting a m ajor expedition against him that included a small contingent of Saudi supporters under Abd al-Rahman. M ubarak and his allies were thoroughly defeated, but when ibn Rashid sought to follow up his victory by attacking positions in the vicinity of the town of Kuwait, a British gunboat opened fire on him and forced him to withdraw. Later in 1901 the Turks m assed troops in Basra and tried to land some of them in Kuwait from one of their warships, but British naval units prevented them; the result was a diplomatic uproar. In the negotiations that fol­ lowed, Britain, Turkey, and Germany agreed to m aintain the status quo in Kuwait, which m eant nominal Turkish suzerainty but de facto Kuwaiti independence. M ubarak's hegemonic scheme and Saudi hopes had failed for the moment, but M ubarak had succeeded in playing off Britain against Turkey to secure his own rule and independence, and Ibn Saud had learned a lesson he was later to perfect.

30

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

During the fighting that preceded the defeat of M ubarak and Abd al-Rahman, Ibn Saud had ventured with a small force to the vicinity of Riyadh, far from the m ain battlefield. He had actually entered the town and was pondering an attack on the Rashidi garrison, which had en­ trenched itself in the fort, when he received word of the defeat and hurriedly returned to Kuwait. After spending some time with his de­ jected father, Ibn Saud set out with sixty m en in January 1902 for a new desperate attem pt on Riyadh, counting this tim e more on surprise and luck than on strength. Upon reaching the vicinity of the town, he left thirty m en behind with instructions to return to base unless they heard otherw ise from him within twenty-four hours. Still closer to the town he left twenty m ore m en just outside the walls, which ibn Rashid had partly demolished, and with the rem aining m ost trusted companions stole under cover of darkness into one of the houses in the m ain square near the citadel’s gate and lay in wait for the governor. Ibn Saud and his band knew that the governor and his retinue custom arily cam e out of the castle every m orning and m arched across the square to a place where a levee was held. At the proper tim e the castle’s gates were throw n open and the usual m arch began, whereupon Ibn Saud and his m en fell upon the governor and his party and within m oments killed him and others, broke into the castle, and rushed the unw ary garrison with the help of the acolytes who had waited outside the walls. The thirty reserves were called in to help secure the town, whose population welcomed the retu rn of the native Saudis. Twenty years before, in Kharj, the Rashidi governor of Riyadh, Salim ibn Subhan, had executed against the Saudis a coup de m ain very sim ilar to Ibn Saud's coup against his successor in Riyadh. But on that occasion ibn Subhan had had the trium phant Rashidi pow er to back him up after his exploit, whereas Ibn Saud had little force with which to face the expected reaction of Abd al-Aziz ibn Rashid. To deal with that problem, he began by putting the Riyadhis to work frantically to rebuild and reinforce the town walls. He also brought his family from Kuwait and arranged with his father that the latter should retain the title of im am and take charge of administrative affairs while he took on the tasks of m ilitary and political chief. Ibn Saud then left Riyadh and went out to elicit the sup­ port of the towns of the southern districts and to im press his authority on the region’s bedouin tribes. Ibn Rashid was still busy with projects connected with his w ar against Kuwait and did not attribute too m uch im portance to Ibn Saud’s seizure of Riyadh. Not until the autum n of 1902 did he send a strong force south to try to undo Ibn Saud's work, picking as a target the town of Dailam, capital of the Kharj district. Ibn Saud, however, had been following ibn Rashid's moves closely, and the night before the attack he had arrived on

The Third Realm

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the scene unnoticed and deployed his small force in the palm groves outside the town. When the Rashids attacked at daylight they were sur­ prised by the am bush and, despite their superior forces, could not regain their balance and prevail. At the end of a day of fighting they accepted a draw and pulled away during the night. Ibn Rashid next tried the strata­ gem of a feint, and when Ibn Saud's forces rushed to the point of threat, another Rashidi force launched a surprise attack on Riyadh. The plan failed because the citizens had been alerted and had m anned their re­ stored walls in strength. Ibn Rashid thereupon withdrew northward, leaving southern Najd under Ibn Saud's uncontested control. By the tim e Ibn Saud returned to Riyadh he learned that his father had already dispatched expeditions into the W ashm and Sudair districts and that these had encountered im portant successes. Ibn Saud reinforced and developed those efforts and by June 1904 had captured Anaiza and Buraida, the principal towns of the Qasim, and all the w estern p a rt of that vital province, from which the links betw een the eastern and west­ ern possessions of ibn Rashid’s Turkish ally could be disrupted. While that was happening, however, ibn Rashid called on the Turkish govern­ m ent for help and the latter responded with unwonted alacrity and deter­ mination. Ibn Rashid had justified his request for help by charging that the British were helping Ibn Saud against him. The charge happened to be untrue, but the circum stances of the tim e m ade it highly credible. R>r one thing, there was the recent case of Kuwait, in which the British had concluded a secret agreem ent with Shaikh M ubarak and then obstructed the Turks when they sought to act against him. For another thing, Euro­ pean rivalry in the Persian Gulf had been mounting to a climax in con­ nection with the Berlin-Baghdad railway, as was illustrated by the grandi­ ose to u r of the Persian Gulf m ade by the viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, at the head of a pow erful flotilla in November 1903. The significance of the visit was underscored by a statem ent m ade by the foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, in the House of Lords six months before, on May 5, 1903: “I say it without hesitation— we should regard the establishment of a naval base, o r a fortified p o rt in the Persian Gulf by any other Power as a very grave m enace to British interests, and we should certainly resist it with all the m eans at our disposal." 2Third, an em issary of Ibn Saud had in fact m et secretly with the British political agent in Bahrain, Captain Prideaux, in 1903 and broached with him the idea of driving the Turks out of Hasa with British help The British government, inform ed by Prideaux, had turned down the suggestion;3 but word of the encounter may have reached ibn Rashid, and in any case the logic that had led Ibn Saud to m ake his proposal to the British may have occurred to ibn Rashid and the Turks as well. Finally, early in 1904 Turkey had begun to construct a

32

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

railway from Damascus to M adina under the supervision of German engineers. This project form ed a central p a rt of an overall design by Sultan Abdul Hamid to tighten his grip on his Arab empire, advance pan-Islamism, and promote his role as caliph. The undertaking was pro ­ m oted as a service for Muslim pilgrim s and was partly financed by popular subscriptions. It did not take much for the ever-suspicious Tuiks to find possible connections betw een Ibn Saud’s successful campaign against their Rashidi ally and their railway project, and in any case they could not but fear that control of Najd by an enemy of their ally would jeopardize completion of the project. The Turks therefore sent ibn Rashid large am ounts of arm s and money with which he raised substantial new forces from Sham m ar and other tribes, and followed up by dispatching a contingent of eight battalions of regular troops and six guns from Iraq and Madina to help. Ibn Saud had no choice but to rally all the forces he could m uster from the territories under his control and go out to m eet the enemy. A series of battles began in the sum m er of 1904 near a locality called Bukairiya and lasted for the b etter p a rt of two months. Initially things went badly for Ibn Saud— at one point his cam p was overrun and he was wounded and had to flee; but then success shifted back and forth, and the fighting tapered off after each side had suffered about one thousand killed— a very high level of casualties by Arabian standards. The battle ended in an agreem ent wherein Ibn Saud acknowledged Turkish suzerainty and was "appointed" qaim aqam (deputy governor) of Najd; the Qasim was to be a buffer betw een Ibn Saud and ibn Rashid under native rule, also subject to Turkey, and the Turks were to keep a small garrison there for some time. On the bice of it, the agreement appears to have been a severe setback for Ibn Saud, involving as it did "submission" to Turkey and renunciation of his Qasim conquests.4 In fact, however, the outcome of Bukairiya was a tribute to Ibn Saud’s superior statecraft just as the battle itself was a tribute to his courage. The Turks had come into the battle with their vital interest in securing the Damascus-Madina railway wedded to the cause of ibn Rashid, who sought the destruction of Saudi power. By denying to the enemy coalition victory in the battlefield through his effective resist­ ance, and then satisfying the particular interest of the Turks through nom inal and tem porary concessions, Ibn Saud broke up the coalition, placed himself with the Turks on an equal footing with ibn Rashid, and secured from both recognition of his power in the domains other than the Qasim that he had acquired so far. Ibn Rashid realized that he had got the worse end of the deal and subsequently tried to encroach on the agree­ m ent by intriguing with the native Qasim rulers and by taking m ilitary action while the Turkish forces were still in Buraida and Anaiza. Ibn Saud responded with counterintrigues and limited operations until he was

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able one day to launch a successful surprise attack on Abd al-Aziz ibn Rashid's cam p in April 1906, in the course of which Abd al-Aziz himself was killed and his troops broke up and fled. The defeat of Abd al-Aziz confirmed the Turks in the conclusion they had reached after Bukairiya, that it was best to protect their interests by balancing Rashids and Sauds rather than by supporting an unattainable Rashidi hegemony. They reaf­ firmed the post-Bukairiya understanding with Abd al-Aziz's successor and Ibn Saud, granted them a monthly subsidy of 200 and 90 sterlings respectively as a kind of protection money for the railway project, and withdrew their forces from the Qasim. Once the Turks were out, Ibn Saud took advantage of strife in Ha'il over the Rashidi succession to depose the native Qasimi ru ler and annex the province outright. Early in 1909 the turm oil in the Rashidi capital finally subsided and the succession settled for a while on a young son of Abd al-Aziz who was assisted by two able regents. The new rulers form ed an alliance with Sa'dun Pasha, the head of the pow erful Muntafiq federation of tribes of Iraq, which was countered by an alliance of Ibn Saud, M ubarak of Ku­ wait, and various chiefs in revolt against Rashidi rule. In a battle fought at Hadiya, n ear the Iraqi border, early in 1910, Sa'dun inflicted a heavy defeat on the combined forces of Ibn Saud and Mubarak. The battle of Hadiya was significant not only because it resulted in one of Ibn Saud's rare defeats but also because it triggered a conflict within the House of Saud and hostilities on a new front. Back in 1904, when Ibn Saud had m ade his first sallies into the Qasim, he had found in one of the captured Rashidi positions six grandsons of his uncle Saud ibn Faisal, whom ibn Rashid obviously hoped to use against him. Ibn Saud had taken his relatives— subsequently dubbed 'araif (lost and recovered camels) — to Riyadh, where they were treated with the honor due to m em bers of the senior branch of the Saudi family but were carefully excluded from any position from which they might assert their right to the throne. In 1910, while Ibn Saud was away on the Hadiya expedition, they slipped out of Riyadh, joined the rebellious Ajman tribe, and sought to rally additional support for their pretension to the Saudi succession. Ibn Saud, occupied by the w ar with the Muntafiq tribes and the Rashids, could not react promptly to the threat, and the pretenders were thus able to establish a base for themselves in H ariq and Hauta, south of Riyadh. Eventually, in 1912, he defeated them, but out of excess generosity or for political considerations, he offered them a choice be­ tween returning to the fold or going into exile. The senior among them, Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, chose to return, eventually m arried Ibn Saud's sister Nura, and becam e a loyal supporter of Ibn Saud for the rem aining forty years of his life. Saud's brother M uhamm ad also re­ turned. But one had fled to Hasa and the others preferred refuge with

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

Sharif Hussein of the Hijaz, who was emerging as a formidable new enemy and had started a lifelong hostility to Ibn Saud by inflicting on him a humiliation he was never to forget o r foigive.5 Sharif Hussein had been appointed to his post in the Hijaz in 1908, the year the railway reached Madina, and had already proved his usefulness to the Turkish government by occupying the highlands of Asir and Abha while the Turks were engaged in suppressing a rebellion by Im am Yahya in Yemen. Hussein’s success in the south encouraged him to assert himself in the east, and at the end of 1911 he was leading a strong force through the TFtaiba country, straddling the Hijaz and Najd, when he encountered a group led by Ibn Saud's favorite brother, Safd, who was seeking to enlist recruits for the cam paign against the *amif. Hussein took Safd hostage, pending Ibn Saud's agreem ent to acknowledge anew Turk­ ish suzerainty through himself and to pay tribute for the Qasim, which Ibn Saud had occupied some years before. Beset by his recent reverses in the east, w orried about the pretenders' revolt, and anxious to rescue his brother, Ibn Saud signed the humiliating docum ent presented to him by Hussein.6 Even as he did so, however, he was nurturing plans that were soon to come to fruition to despoil the Turks of m uch m ore tangible assets than Hussein had secured for them. In 1903, shortly after Ibn Saud had seized Riyadh, one of his em issaries had vainly broached with Captain Prideaux the idea of driving the Turks out of Hasa with British assistance. In 1904, during the battle of Bukairiya, Ibn Saud once more sought British m aterial support in vain, al­ though this tim e the British m ade representations to the Turkish govern­ m ent not to upset the balance of pow er in central Arabia by supporting Rashidi hegemony, a goal that the Turks had renounced on their own after Bukairiya. In 1906 Ibn Saud m ade several additional overtures to the British, offering to subscribe to the Trucial System— including sup­ pression of slave trade, nonalienation of territory to other powers, British control of foreign relations— in exchange for a guarantee of his indepen­ dence against the Turks. The political resident in the Persian Gulf, Major (later Sir) Percy Cox, wrote to the government of India urging a favorable response, but the secretary of state for India rejected the recom m enda­ tion on the general ground of supporting the integrity of the Ottom an Empire and on the specific ground of avoiding entanglem ent in the Ara­ bian interior, where Britain had no interest. The secretary did, however, recom m end that Cox m aintain a friendly dialogue with Ibn Saud to avert the latter's encroachm ent on British interests in the Gulf, and this as well as the specific reason given to Ibn Saud for the rejection of his request (that his was not a Gulf state) kept alive his hopes of changing the British position by m aking him self a riparian power.7 In 1910 Ibn Saud m et personally for the first time with a British Gulf official, Captain Shakespear, the political agent under Cox. Although no

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specific business was discussed, the meeting was significant because it prepared the ground for other, substantive meetings and because it took place at a tim e when the Young Turk government suspected the British of fostering Arab agitation for autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. In 1911 Ibn Saud m et Shakespear again, expressed a desire to drive the Turks out of Hasa, and asked for British support against a Turkish inva­ sion of the province from the sea, in exchange for his acceptance of a British political agent there. Shakespear and Cox wrote to their superiors in favor of the proposal, but the latter decided on a polite rejection. The British government was about to engage in negotiations to settle all outstanding issues with the Turkish government, including the Germanbacked Baghdad railway, at a delicate juncture in European politics, and it did not want complications over a change in the status quo in an irrelevant p a rt of the Persian Gulf coast.8 Ibn Saud repeated his proposal the next year and this time told Shake­ spear that he intended to seize Hasa because it was his ancestors' patri­ mony, and the time was opportune in view of Turkey's troubles with the Italian and Balkan wars. Shakespear and Cox again recom m ended giv­ ing Ibn Saud the reassurance he sought against invasion from the sea, while the latter, as if to give point to his advocates' argum ent, made threatening noises against the shaikhs of Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. In London, however, Ibn Saud's fear of naval attack was used as an argu­ m ent to discount the likelihood of any threat from him to British interests even if he should seize Hasa independently. This line of reasoning, to­ gether with the prospect of a comprehensive settlem ent with Turkey, led the British to ignore Ibn Saud's overture. Finally, on May 9,1913, Ibn Saud acted on his own. At dawn that day his fighters surprised the Turkish defenders of the fort of Hufuf, the inland capital of Hasa, after scaling the walls under cover of darkness. The Turkish garrison, some twelve hundred strong, scrambled to the big mosque and entrenched itself there. Ibn Saud surrounded the place and offered the Turkish com m ander safe evacuation of his troops to B ahrain if he surrendered. The com m ander accepted. The Turks m ade an at­ tem pt to recover by landing again at TJqair, a coastal village fu rth er northeast, but the effort was foiled and the prisoners were allowed to reem bark for Bahrain. The tiny Turkish garrison at Qatif gave no trouble and was also evacuated, and the entire province from Kuwait to Qatar was thus secured with little effort and with m inim um provocation to the Turks.9 Even as he was completing his conquest, Ibn Saud wrote to the Turkish vali (governor) of Basra affirming his continued subservience to the Porte and explaining that his action was due to the m ism anagement of the affairs of Hasa and his desire to restore the traditional state of affairs in the province.10 Ibn Saud had hoped that by m aking himself a Gulf power he would

36

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

force the British to change their position and enter into some form of protective agreement with him; but in fact just the opposite happened. In July 1913, after two years of desultory negotiations, the British and Turk­ ish governments finally signed the Anglo-Tuikish Convention, which os­ tensibly settled all issues betw een the two countries. In the case of the Arabian Peninsula, a line was draw n from the base of the Q atar Peninsula to the border betw een Aden and Yemen, and everything north of that line, including Najd and Hasa, was recognized as falling under Turkish sover­ eignty. In the wake of the agreem ent the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, issued a directive enjoining Cox and his subordinates from any communication, other than of a purely form al nature when inevitable, with Ibn Saud or any other Arabian chief with whom his majesty's gov­ ernm ent had no treaty relations. The Turks, taking Ibn Saud's protestations of loyalty at face value and feeling reinforced by the agreem ent with Britain, invited him to negotiate a regularization of his relations with them. In the m eantim e they supplied the Rashidi chief with money and 12,000 rifles and incited him to put pressure on Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud invoked a truce that had existed for some time betw een himself and the Rashidis, but the latter replied frankly that they were on the side of the Turks as the suzerain power and would act in their interests against Riyadh. Disillusioned by the British and fearing worse from the Turks, in May 1914 Ibn Saud finally signed a treaty that form alized his status as a Turkish vassal. An im perial firman appointed him governor general with power of vali for Najd and Hasa, in exchange for which Ibn Saud agreed to allow limited Turkish garrisons on the coast and to refrain from concluding any treaties or engagements with foreign powers. However, although the first p a rt of the agreem ent was duly executed, the other two were soon rendered moot by the outbreak of World W ar I.

Overpowering Peninsular Opponents, 1914-1926 The w ar freed Britain from its traditional policy of preserving the integ­ rity of the Ottoman Empire and impelled it instead to seek Arab allies against it. Ibn Saud now had the chance to obtain from Britain the treaty he had sought for twelve years. By the time the treaty was signed and ratified, however, the problem it was supposed to solve had become irrelevant as far as Ibn Saud was concerned, and new and m ore severe problems confronted him in regard to which the treaty was of limited use. Preventing Turkish action from the sea, Ibn Saud's original concern, had become a British military objective regardless of any treaty. On the other hand, the danger from the direction of Jabal S ham m ar had increased as the w ar gave the Turks a strong interest in reinforcing their Rashidi allies,

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and a new and m uch more serious threat had developed from the Hijaz as a result of a British decision to invest massively in an alliance with Sharif Hussein. Both problems were complicated by renewed tribal rebellions and family dissension, by unrest stemming from the disruptions caused by the British blockade, and by extremist pressures from the fanatic Ikhwan fighters, whom Ibn Saud had fostered as a power instrum ent. Nevertheless, Ibn Saud not only steered his way through these difficulties to the end of the w ar but also was able a few years thereafter to defeat definitively his external enemies and capture their domains, to m aster the internal situation, and to force Britain to recognize him as the sole ruler of Arabia more or less within its present boundaries. On November 3, 1914, the government of India sent Ibn Saud a note asking him to cooperate in keeping the peace in the Gulf and to assist the British in taking Basra in exchange for a treaty that would recognize him as independent ru ler of Najd and Hasa, guarantee him protection against attack from the sea, and help secure him against Turkish reprisals. Soon after a prelim inary favorable response from Ibn Saud, Captain Shakespear reported that Ibn Saud would rem ain neutral and seek to keep all his options open until he got a signed and sealed treaty with the British government that included a solid guarantee of his position, a judgm ent that was brilliantly confirmed by events in the next four years. Neverthe­ less, while the British government pondered the term s of the treaty, Ibn Saud went out to do battle with the Rashids, and Shakespear accompa­ nied him. W hether Ibn Saud was trying to demonstrate his value to the British or whether it was ibn Rashid who took the initiative to attack is not clear. At any rate, the battle fought at Jarrab on January 15, 1915, went badly for Ibn Saud, and Captain Shakespear was killed during it. Having compromised himself by fighting against the Turks' ally, and having been defeated as well, Ibn Saud now pressed hard to obtain the protective treaty promptly, threatening that otherwise he might have to make some move to appease the Turks. The British hastened to submit a draft treaty the following month, but once Ibn Saud had it he prolonged the negotia­ tions until December 1915, when the treaty was finally signed.11 In the treaty the British acknowledged Najd, Hasa, Qatif, Jubail, and their dependencies, territories, and ports to be "the countries of Ibn Saud and of his fathers before him" and recognized Ibn Saud as the indepen­ dent ru ler thereof and absolute chief of their tribes, "and after him his sons and descendants by inheritance provided the successor shall not be a person antagonistic to the British government in any respect." The British also undertook to help Ibn Saud protect his interests and coun­ tries against aggression com m itted by any foreign power without refer­ ence to the British government and without giving Whitehall a chance to compose the m atter by other means. In exchange Ibn Saud undertook,

38

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

"as did his father before him," to "refrain from all aggression o r interfer­ ence in the territories of Kuwait and Bahrain, and of the shaikhs of Q atar and the Oman coast who had treaty relations with the British govern­ ment." He also obligated himself not to enter into "any correspondence or agreem ent o r treaty with any foreign power, and absolutely not to cede, sell, mortgage, lease o r otherwise dispose" of his territories or grant concessions within them to any foreign pow er o r the subjects of a foreign power without the consent of Great Britain. In a final article the two parties agreed to conclude a fu rth e r detailed treaty regarding m atters concerning them. The treaty thus formally foreclosed Ibn Saud's option of siding with the Tuiks but did not obligate him, as the government of India would have liked, to side actively with Britain in the war, nor did Britain obligate itself to assist Ibn Saud, ap art from a sweetener of 20,000 pounds and 1,000 rifles to help him out of some internal difficulties. The final article anticipated the possibility of a m ore extensive offensive and defensive agreement, but Ibn Saud continued for another two years to resist British pressure to assum e an offensive commitment, and when he finally did, he acquitted himself perfunctorily and in a pro form a manner. One reason Ibn Saud did not want to play a m ore active role in the war, even of the kind exemplified by the battle of Jarrab, was that for a long tim e after that battle he was fully occupied in suppressing tribal revolts. His defeat at Jarrab had encouraged the Ajman of Hasa to rise against him in alliance with the 'amif, and when he lost one battle to them in which his brother Safd was killed and he himself was wounded, other tribes rebelled and still others failed to help in what they felt to be a losing cause. When Ibn Saud, through extraordinary exertions, finally defeated the Ajman in battle (the pretenders— Rusal, brother of Saud, and Faisal, Fahd, and Saud, sons of Sa!d ibn Saud— were all killed in the Ajman battles), they were given refuge by the new, hostile, rulers of Kuwait, whose territories he could not touch because of their treaty relationship with Britain. Another reason for Ibn Saud's passiveness was that by the time the treaty was signed, the British themselves were not doing well in the area to which he was m ost sensitive. After advancing toward Baghdad, the bulk of the M esopotamian Expeditionary Force was throw n back on Kut al-Amara, where it was besieged and destroyed in the first m onths of 1916, leaving the impression that the Central Powers might well win in the region, or at least badly h u rt small powers such as Ibn Saud's. Finally, in June 1916, six m onths after Ibn Saud had signed his treaty with B ritain and before the government of India had form ally ratified it, Sharif Hus­ sein of Mecca proclaimed a general Arab revolt against Tuikey in retu rn for far-reaching British comm itm ents to help him establish independent

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rule in all the "Arab-inhabited" territories of the Ottoman Empire. Ibn Saud viewed the British pledges to Hussein as a case of double dealing, and British m aterial support to his enemy as a m ortal threat to his own position. And although he could not afford to break with the British and switch camps, neither was he prepared to commit what forces he had in a m anner that exhausted them or helped his enemy. Following Sharif Hussein's revolt, the British called on Ibn Saud to help the movement by taking action against the Rashidis. Ibn Saud wrote directly to Hussein offering cooperation in exchange for a guarantee of his independence, but Hussein rejected the offer in insolent term s. Ibn Saud then sought to discuss the whole situation with his old friend Sir Percy Cox, and the two m et at ‘Uqair at the end of 1916. Cox assured Ibn Saud that his independence was in no way prejudiced by Britain's com­ mitments to Hussein and offered him a subsidy of 5,000 pounds a month, plus 3,000 rifles, 4 machine guns, and ample am m unition on the under­ standing that he would m aintain a force o f4,000 m en continuously in the field against ibn Rashid and attack his capital. Ibn Saud took what was offered, went to Kuwait to a durbar of Arab chiefs allied with Britain and m ade a vague public declaration in support of the Arab revolt, visited the British forces in Iraq, and then returned to his capital and did nothing. On the contrary, he m aintained a secret contact with Jemal Pasha, the Turkish governor of Syria, explained to him that he was hum oring the British because of their naval stranglehold, and assured him of his good intentions by allowing supplies to move through his territories to Shamm ar and beyond to the Turkish forces.12 In the autum n of 1917 the British authorities in Cairo tried to im part new m om entum to the flagging Arab revolt and in that connection urged their Baghdad counterparts to press Ibn Saud to take action against the Rashids. Baghdad suggested that a joint mission from Cairo and Bagh­ dad first attem pt to work out an understanding betw een Hussein and Ibn Saud, but the mission sent to Jidda in December 1917 failed to achieve its objective. The imm ediate cause of the failure was a conflict that had broken out earlier betw een Hussein and Ibn Saud concerning control of the oasis of K hurm a, whose chief had espoused W ahhabism and de­ fected to Ibn Saud but whose territory and tribe were claimed by Hus­ sein. The basic reason, however, was that both Hussein and Ibn Saud had for some time been playing games of their own that did not quite corre­ spond with the British interests and desires. Hussein, whose ambition em braced all the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, did not want to enter into any commitments with Arab chiefs until the power of the Turks was broken and he could deal with those chiefs from a position of strength. Ibn Saud, fearing just that, wanted to assure his position in advance as m uch as possible and, failing that, to let

40

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

the sharif and ibn Rashid exhaust themselves against each other while he preserved and built up forces for the day of reckoning. One key difference in approach between Ibn Saud and Hussein was that the form er appre­ ciated the power and crucial role of Britain, the more so the more the tide of w ar in the Middle East turned in its favor, whereas Hussein becam e more cantankerous, megalomaniacal, and stubborn in his relations with the British the closer he thought he came to the moment when his dream should be fulfilled. That difference was to prove critical in the eventual dism al failure of Hussein's strategy and the brilliant success of Ibn Saud's. After the failure of the British mediating mission, the British author­ ities in Baghdad worked through H. St. John Philby, their newly appointed perm anent representative with Ibn Saud and a fervent adm irer of his, to keep Ibn Saud from fighting Hussein over the K hurm a dispute and to address himself instead to the Rashidi enemy. Ibn Saud obliged the Brit­ ish in their first desire with great difficulty in the face of internal pres­ sure; and he responded to the second by belatedly launching a series of probes against ibn Rashid's forces and m aking an appearance before Ha'il in August 1918 and then pulling back. Shortly thereafter Turkey withdrew from the w ar and Ibn Saud, having come through it unscathed and with a treaty with Britain, was ready to face both the challenges he had anticipated and others he had not. In the meantime, however, another force was beginning to play a crucial role: the famous or infam ous Wah­ habi Ikhwan (Brethren). From the time of his 1902 raid against Riyadh until 1912, Ibn Saud had fought to create the third Saudi realm more or less in the way his ances­ tors Turki and Faisal had fought to create the second. He had carried the w ar (mainly against the Rashid family) on a dynastic rather than a reli­ gious basis, and probably for the same reasons Turki and Faisal did: that vibrant W ahhabism led to disastrous excesses, and mild W ahhabism was also espoused by the enemy. Sometime before 1912, however, he decided to fan the em bers of W ahhabism and to use it in a new way. He sent m issionaries to revive the message among the bedouin tribes, and when­ ever a sufficient num ber of tribesm en were sufficiendy aroused, he helped them establish hijar, colonies (plural of hijrah, "migration," sup­ posedly modeled after the first Muslim comm unity established by the fro p h et M uhamm ad in M adina after he m igrated to it from Mecca). The first setdem ent, begun in 1912 at the wells of Artawiya by fifty m en from the M utair and Harb tribes, had grown within a decade to a town of several thousand. More than threescore additional setdem ents were cre­ ated capable of yielding more than sixty thousand arm s-bearing m en.13 The setders were supposed to form comm unities of brethren in the faith— Ikhw an— transcending tribal loyalties, but in fact m ost setde-

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m ents were form ed by m em bers of single tribes, and the others had elements of two o r three tribes. The Ikhwan were supposed to abandon the tribal way of life and to lead a religiously inspired, settled existence, but they did so only in varying degrees. Most abandoned nom adism and raiding, many sold their camels and tents and built m ud huts, but far fewer were able to take up agriculture and trade and to support them ­ selves productively. All practiced the rituals faithfully and the majority attended religious instruction regularly, but most of the instruction was given by unqualified preachers and am ounted to little more than revival­ ist sessions that stirred up m ilitant fanaticism. The Ikhwan were sup­ posed to be ready to respond immediately to the imam's call to carry on jihad against the mushrikun (literally, "polytheists," but in the Ikhwan view practically all non-Wahhabis). This was one duty they were all eager, indeed overeager, to fulfill. The zeal of the Ikhwan for jihad and the exploitation of that zeal by some of their ambitious leaders eventually presented Ibn Saud with what was probably the most serious threat in his fifty-year career. Several considerations led Ibn Saud to stimulate and use militant W ahhabism when and as he did. His defeat at Hadiya in 1910, his trouble suppressing the revolt of th e 1araif pretenders, the Ajman, and other tribes in 1911; and the setback inflicted on him by Sharif Hussein in that same year drove home to him a sense of both the vulnerability of his claim to legitimacy and the w eakness of his power base. The pretenders chal­ lenged his claim to the succession within the House of Saud with a better one, while Sharif Hussein presented a potential challenge to the entire House of Saud based on his Hashemite lineage going back to the Prophet. Moreover, Hussein could draw on the superior resources of the Hijaz to raise forces, and he and the Rashidis had the backing of the power of the Ottoman state, m ade more available since the completion of the Damascus-Madina railway in 1908; whereas Ibn Saud depended entirely on the m eager resources of Najd, with its loyal but small settled tribes and its completely fickle bedouin tribes, ever ready to join the enemy just when their support was m ost needed. In these circumstances, the revival of W ahhabism appeared to Ibn Saud to offer a needed buttress to his legitimacy, both internally and externally, while the coupling of the re­ vival with the establishment of Ikhwan settlements prom ised to provide him with a new power base and at the sam e time give him sufficient control over it to prevent the kind of excess zeal that had led to the destruction of the first Saudi realm. Experience was to vindicate Ibn Saud on all but the control question: in the end he had to destroy ram pant Ikhwan power to protect his own. In the meantime, however, he con­ trolled it sufficiently to accomplish all he had set out to do. In the sum m er of 1918 Ibn Saud undertook action against the Rashidis

42

The Origins of Saudi Arabia

only after he had overcome strong resistance by the Ikhwan, who had already become a significant force. The latter had wanted to go first to the assistance of the fellow W ahhabis of K hurm a, who had been attacked again by Hussein's forces. Ibn Saud, who did not want to antagonize the British by fighting their ally, had been able to divert the Ikhwan only because the defenders of K hurm a were eventually able to repel Hussein's forces by themselves. At the beginning of 1919, however, with Turkey out of the w ar and with the sharifian forces that had been occupied in the siege of Madina finally freed and available, Hussein thought the time ripe to deal with Ibn Saud and began by reviving the issue of K hurm a. In May 1919 he sent an arm y of 4,000 regulars supported by artillery and 10,000 bedouins under the com m and of his son Em ir Abdallah to enforce his demands. Ibn Saud wearily advanced his forces to m eet the wellequipped enemy, but before he had a chance to act, an Ikhwan force advanced stealthily from K hurm a and surprised the slum bering enemy cam ped at Turaba. Abdallah's arm y was annihilated in a few hours, his bedouin contingents evaporated, and Abdallah himself barely escaped with his life. The road to Ta'if and Mecca lay open and the Ikhwan were eager to take it, but Ibn Saud ordered them to halt, partly because of British pressure. For more than two years before the events at Turaba, the British gov­ ernm ent had grappled periodically with two m utually hostile powers in Arabia, each with its own advocates in British councils. After all attem pts to conciliate the Arabian antagonists had failed, various proposals were discussed but no conclusion was reached until the end of the war. When the tension over K hurm a began to build again at that time, a m inisterial comm ittee chaired by Lord Curzon decided in March 1919 to take the easy way out by backing the stronger party in the expectation that it would force the other to come to term s. Hussein, with his British-trained regu­ lar troops and m odern equipment, seem ed an easy favorite against the ragtag troops of Ibn Saud, and he was given the green light to try his hand at K hurm a. The disaster at Turaba not only upset the calculations of the British government but also raised imm ediate fears about the conse­ quences in Arabia, the Middle East, and India of a Wahhabi-Ikhwan invasion of the holy cities. Whitehall therefore reacted promptly by issu­ ing an ultim atum to Ibn Saud to withdraw his forces from the Hijaz and the disputed area or be considered to have adopted an attitude of definite hostility toward Britain. In that event the subsidy would at once be dis­ continued and Ibn Saud would forfeit irrevocably all the advantages secured under the treaty of December 1915.14 Ibn Saud, anxious to avoid a clash with Britain, sent a conciliatory reply expressing willingness to withdraw his forces to Najd if he received a satisfactory guarantee against aggression and to submit to British arbi­ tration. Hussein, who had panicked after Turaba, recovered in the wake

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of the British ultim atum and refused arbitration, to the irritation of the British. The latter then tried to arrange a meeting betw een Hussein and Ibn Saud to settle things, but the discussion went on for a year, with Hussein m aking m ost of the difficulties. Finally, representatives of the two chiefs m et and agreed on an arm istice pending British arbitration, but Hussein insisted that he would agree to the results of arbitration only if they gave him the disputed areas. At that point, in October 1920, Lord Curzon commented: "I don't think we shall have peace until he [Hussein] has gone. But I do not want to adm inister the final kick."15 The British continued reluctandy to follow a "Hussein policy," but m ore on account of the position of his sons Faisal and Abdallah, whom in February 1921 they decided to m ake respectively king of Iraq and em ir of Transjordan, than of Hussein himself. Even before the arm istice with Hussein had been concluded, Ibn Saud had turned his attention to an opportunity in the Asir uplands and began operations that led to the annexation of that region in 1920. During the world war, the Idrisi ru ler of that relatively rich and ill-defined area had risen against the Turks, who were, however, able to m aintain their posi­ tion in the capital, Abha, with the help of the local Aid chieftains. In 1919 the Turks evacuated Abha, and the local chieftains appealed to Ibn Saud for help against the Idrisis. Ibn Saud responded, but after defeating the Idrisis his forces rem ained in place and he reasserted his claim to the province on the ground that it once belonged to his ancestors. By the time the arm istice with Hussein was concluded, Ibn Saud had absorbed the Asir highlands and was ready to tu rn his energies in another direction where danger and opportunity beckoned: the Rashidi capital and domin­ ions. Among the ideas considered by the British government during the w ar in connection with the hostility betw een Hussein and Ibn Saud was one that had been presented to it joindy by its representatives in Cairo and Baghdad in March 1918, which called for retaining the power of the Rashidis intact to serve as a balancer betw een the two antagonistic allies. Whitehall had rejected the proposal on the old grounds of not wanting to becom e involved in central Arabian affairs; but after the w ar two events — the reconquest of the northernm ost province of Arabia with its capital, Jawf, by the Rashids, bringing them betw een the British-controlled terri­ tories of Iraq and Transjordan; and the failure of Hussein's attem pt to assert himself against Ibn S aud— led the British to reconsider. The gov­ ernm ent agreed to the idea in principle, and Ha'il was approached infor­ mally; but while discussion went on in London as to which British agency was to foot the bill, the situation in Ha'il suddenly deteriorated and gave Ibn Saud a chance to destroy the Rashidi state and foil the British de­ sign.16 Late in 1920 the Rashidi Em ir Saud was assassinated by a cousin who

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

aspired to his throne. The assassin was immediately cut down by one of Saud's slaves, and the succession reverted to Abdallah ibn Mut*ib, who immediately imprisoned a brother of the assassin, M uhamm ad ibn Talal, also a potential pretender. Ibn Saud reacted by sending W ahhabi em is­ saries to work on tribes disaffected by the unrest while his forces under­ took a series of operations against Rashidi territories at the sam e time that the chief of the Ruwala tribe was reasserting his independence in the Jawf district, in the north. Pressed from all directions, Abdallah ibn Rashid let his cousin M uham m ad out of jail and sent him at the head of an expedition against the Ruwala; but upon returning to Ha'il, M uham­ m ad staged a revolt against Abdallah, who fled and joined Ibn Saud. In the m eantim e Ibn Saud had had himself declared sultan of Najd and its dependencies to give himself a status matching that of his ultim ate sharifian rivals. Encouraged by better prospects of success, he now pressed his cam paign and by October 1921 was investing Ha'il. He rejected an offer by M uhamm ad ibn Talal to surrender on condition of rem aining em ir of Sham m ar under Saudi overlordship which he might have wel­ comed under different circum stances. Finally, after Ibn Saud threatened to bom bard the city with cannon, its gates were opened to him, and not long thereafter, on November 4, 1921, M uhamm ad himself surrendered the citadel after receiving a guarantee of personal safety. The Rashidi realm, which had begun in 1834, was thus brought to an end and the surviving m em bers of the Rashid family were taken to Riyadh, where they were kept in comfortable captivity and eventually m arried into the Saud family. Like the second Saudi realm it had once liquidated, the Rashidi state m et its end as a result of fratricidal strife within the ruling family at a tim e when external enemies pressed it. After taking Ha'il, Ibn Saud immediately sent his forces to assert his control over all the territories that had come under Rashidi rule at any time, including Jawf and Wadi Siihan, in the far north. This northern cam paign brought him into contact on a wide front with the territories of Iraq and Transjordan placed under Sharif Hussein's sons, and before long the entire region was live with raids and counterraids by Ikhwan and tribes from those territories only partly controlled by their respective sovereigns. The British, who held m andates over Iraq and Palestine (including Transjordan) and were seriously considering building a strategic railway from the Persian Gulf to the M editerranean through the agitated terri­ tory, acted quickly to try to stabilize the situation. They called a confer­ ence of representatives of Iraq, Najd, and Kuwait to settle their border problems, and the result was the Treaty of M uham m ara, signed on May 5, 1922. The treaty drew the boundaries on the basis of a prior assignm ent of the various tribes in the region to the respective three sovereigns, and in

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addition confirm ed the security of o ther Persian G ulf principalities un d er B ritish protection. Ibn Saud, however, refused to ratify the treaty, claim ing that his negotiators had exceeded th eir authority by agreeing to assign som e of "his" trib es to the sovereignty of King Faisal. He proposed a reconsideration of the whole m atter in a personal discussion w ith Sir Percy Cox, now B ritish high com m issioner for Iraq. Cox agreed, and th eir m eeting in Novem ber 1922 resulted in w hat cam e to be know n as the IJqair Protocols, which in tu rn becam e p a rt of the Treaty of M uham m ara. Cox persuaded Ibn Saud to agree to boundary lines th at favored Iraq's claim s by com pensating him w ith lines that greatly favored his claim s against Kuwait. Provisions w ere also m ade to assure access by trib es of both sides to wells and pastures in the area, including the b arrin g of m ilitary posts there. N either the treaty nor the protocols prevented the outbreak of serious border w arfare in the follow­ ing years. However, th eir ratification did allow Ibn Saud to keep on good term s w ith the B ritish, who held positions around all his dom ains, and helped neutralize Iraq's Faisal in the decisive rounds that Ibn Saud next fought against his hither, H ussein, in the Hijaz. Even before the signing of the TJqair Protocols, which ostensibly settled m atters w ith Iraq and the Gulf principalities, trouble had flared up be­ tw een Najd and Transjordan, and the dispute betw een S harif H ussein and Ibn Saud had been resum ed. In the case of Transjordan, an Ikhw an group of about tw o thousand advanced on one occasion as far as the H ijaz railway in the vicinity of Am m an and raided a village near Ziza, killing its entire population. It w as a typical Ikhw an operation and w as carried out w ithout authorization from Ibn Saud, who w as m ore anxious than ever to avoid provoking the B ritish a fte r having recently rejected the Treaty o f M uham m ara. The sequel to that incident dem onstrated the good sense of Ibn Saud’s policy of caution in dealing w ith B ritain: the Ikhw an raiders w ere pursued by B ritish arm ored c a r detachm ents and by Royal Air Force squadrons stationed in Am m an and virtually annihi­ lated. The eight raiders who survived to tell about the uneven m atch betw een rifle-arm ed cam eleers and a ir pow er in the open d esert w ere them selves punished by Ibn Saud for the provocation they offered. The resurgence of die dispute w ith H ussein also involved Ikhw an pressure, but on grounds th at Ibn Saud him self felt w ere justified. Since the first fighting over K hurm a, Najdi pilgrim s had abstained from going to the Hijaz; b u t the y ear a fte r the 1920 arm istice the Najdis felt th at they should be able to perform the very im portant obligation of the hajj. The problem w as th at the Ikhw an and Ibn Saud did not tru s t H ussein’s p ro­ tection and w anted the pilgrim s to provide th eir own, w hereas H ussein saw in the Najdi dem and both a derogation of his sovereignty and a th reat to his security. In the 1921 pilgrim age season Ibn Saud, preoccupied w ith

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his anti-Rashidi cam paign, allow ed the issue to pass by not sending a Najdi contingent; b u t as the 1922 season approached, he could not or would not restrain Ikhw an dem ands and threatened to let his pilgrim s go arm ed. The B ritish intervened once m ore to prevent fighting betw een th eir allies, only this tim e, om inously for H ussein, they did not take his side, b u t rath er called for a conference of representatives of Najd, the Hijaz, Transjordan, and Iraq to settle all problem s am ong them . Ibn Saud agreed and in the m eantim e contented him self w ith sending a sm all num ber of pilgrim s. H ussein, as usual, m ade difficulties before agreeing and strained B ritish patience to the lim it. The previous year he had tu rn ed a deaf e a r to an attem pt by T. E. Lawrence to w in his endorse­ m ent of the B ritish policy in Palestine as enunciated by Colonial Secre­ ta ry W inston Churchill in February 1921. Now he com pounded his m is­ deeds in B ritish eyes by com m unicating to Ibn Saud th at he, H ussein, w ould be w illing to abdicate in his favor if the latter joined him in expell­ ing all E uropean pow ers from A rabia— a com m unication th at Ibn Saud m ade certain reached the B ritish.17 The B ritish-sponsored conference convened in Kuwait in D ecem ber 1923. Its com plicated agenda and the fact th at representatives of the three sharifian o r H ashem ite states w ere brought together to face the represen­ tatives of Najd did not bode well for its success, nor did the announce­ m ent by the B ritish governm ent at the outset that it w as term inating all subsidies to the p arties as of M arch 31, 1924. N evertheless, the B ritish representatives kept the conference lim ping along until the first w eek of M arch, when H ussein dealt it a fatal blow. On M arch 3, 1924, the G rand N ational Assembly of Turkey set the M uslim world astir by proclaim ing the abolition of the caliphate held by the O ttom an dynasty for four cen­ turies, and tw o days later King H ussein added to the agitation by having him self proclaim ed caliph in the Friday m osque of Amman, w here he had been visiting w ith his son Abdallah. Ibn Saud could hardly be expected to be the first M uslim o r Arab ru le r to lend credence to H ussein’s unilateral act by concluding an agreem ent w ith him and his sons, and so the confer­ ence trailed into inconclusion. Shortly th ereafter the pilgrim age issue arose once m ore, and the dou­ bly outraged Ikhw an petitioned for a cam paign against the Hijaz. This tim e th eir dem and was backed by Ibn Saud’s m ore sober advisers, who saw in H ussein’s provocative unilateral action an opportunity to strike at him w ith the approval of M uslim opinion and especially of leaders and ru lers who considered them selves m ore w orthy of the caliphal dignity than H ussein. Ibn Saud decided to act, b u t only a fte r the end of the pilgrim age season in order not to offend M uslim opinion; even then he authorized a lim ited strike directed against Ta'if only, in order to test the capacity of the bedouin Ikhw an to fight in the Hijaz m ountains and to

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w atch the reaction of the B ritish. As events unfolded, the latter concerns proved to be unw arranted, and his precaution to avoid giving offense to M uslim s proved to be of no avail, owing to the excessive zeal of the Ikhw an. The Hijaz cam paign began in late August 1924 w ith a series of diver­ sionary moves and raids in Iraq and Transjordan while the m ain forces jum ped off from K hurm a and T uraba. One of the raids in T ransjordan resulted in another m assacre of villagers and another devastating repri­ sal by the Royal Air force; b u t before the flurry over that event subsided, the Saudi forces lunged at Tafif and occupied it on Septem ber 3. An attem pt by Ali, son of H ussein, to counterattack at H adda, som e tw enty m iles to die northw est, failed for lack of local trib al support, and Ali's force retreated all the way to Jidda am id a stream of refugees, bypassing doom ed M ecca. The victorious Ikhw an indulged th eir passion for loot and indiscrim inate killing of m ushrikun, including a few B ritish subjects. H ussein, Abdallah, and Faisal appealed to the B ritish governm ent for help, the first recalling his services during the great w ar and the latter two invoking the m enace of the W ahhabis to th eir realm s and thrones; b u t this tim e the B ritish adopted a neutral position in w hat they decided to consider a conflict am ong M uslims over the holy places, as long as the rights of M uslim B ritish subjects w ere respected. Most im portant, at the end of Septem ber 1924 B ritain declared that "it would give no counte­ nance to interference in the Hedjaz by Transjordan and Ira q /'18 Three days later, on O ctober 3, 1924, the hapless King H ussein w as forced to yield to the dem and of notables of M ecca and Jidda to abdicate in favor of his son Ali and go into exile. Ali lost no tim e in offering to negotiate w ith Ibn Saud, b ut the latter prom ptly tu rn ed him down and his forces entered M ecca w ithout a fight on O ctober 12, 1924. Strict orders prevented any m assacre by the Ikhw an this tim e b u t did not stop them from com m itting o ther form s of violence. In the w ords of Ibn Saud's newly appointed civil governor of the holy city, "their violence . . . w as beyond descrip­ tion . . . the Ikhw an set them selves to annihilating personally, w ith bare hands, sticks o r rifles, anything they considered evil."19 The fall of M ecca w as followed by the capture of several coastal tow ns north and south of Jidda, leaving Ali in com m and of an area com prising only Jidda, M adina, and Yanbo. At this point Ibn Saud's predom inant concern ceased to be Ali's capacity to continue m ilitary resistance on his own and focused on two other problem s: the possibility of foreign in ter­ vention in response to Ikhw an excesses, which m ight rob him of the com plete victory now w ithin his grasp; and the reaction of the M uslim world to his invasion of the Hijaz and capture of the holy city. To m eet the first problem he indicated to W hitehall his w illingness to com e to an understanding regarding the death of B ritish subjects a t Tafif and assured

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it th at he had m ade strict provisions to protect all foreigners. At the sam e tim e he ordered his troops to refrain from assaulting the cities still under Ali's control and to put them under siege instead, in order to avoid inci­ dents that m ight involve foreign residents and especially m em bers of the diplom atic and consular corps established in Jid d a . As the w ar dragged on, Ibn Saud w ent fu rth e r to appease the B ritish and keep them neutral. In the sum m er of 1925 the B ritish, having concluded that the Hijaz was bound to fall to Ibn Saud, engineered a dubious cession of the AqabaMa'an district by Ali to his brother A bdallah of T ransjordan and then sent th eir forces to occupy it. Ibn Saud protested the act and never recognized its legitim acy; nevertheless, in Novem ber 1925 he concluded w ith Sir G ilbert Clayton two agreem ents th at ostensibly setded m ost of the issues w ith Iraq and T ransjordan left unsettled by the abortive 1923 Kuwait Conference. To m eet the problem of M uslim opinion, Ibn Saud endeavored to iso­ late his enemy diplom atically and to gain support for him self by dis­ claim ing for som e tim e any am bitions of his own in the Hijaz and indicat­ ing that, once the "Sharifian evildoers” w ere expelled, the M uslim world w ould be free to decide the fu tu re of the Holy Land. This line also served to justify Ibn Saud's rejection of Ali's repeated pleas for peace and the m any offers of m ediation m ade by various parties, including one by the Soviet consul at Jidda together w ith the D utch and Persian vice-consuls.20 At th at stage Ibn Saud concentrated his attention on the M uslims of India because of the possible effect of th eir attitude on the position of B ritain, and on King Fuad of Egypt, as ru le r of the strongest neighboring Arab country. He accepted a proposal m ade in O ctober 1924 by Indian M uslim leaders that a constitution for the Holy Land "m ust be draw n up by the whole Islam ic com m unity” and th at the area "m ust be placed under a dem ocratic governm ent” a fte r the expulsion of H ussein and his sons;21 and he intim ated to King Fuad that he supported his aspiration to the caliphate and would like him to convene the Islam ic congress that w ould decide the fu tu re of the Holy Land. However, as the initial im pact of the fall of M ecca wore off and as it becam e apparent th at Ali had been successfully isolated, Ibn Saud's pronouncem ents about the fu tu re of the Hijaz becam e m ore and m ore am biguous, and those about the role of the envisaged Islam ic congress m ore and m ore qualified. By the tim e Ali finally surrendered Jidda peacefully a fte r a yearlong siege and sailed away in D ecem ber 1925, the only prom ise of Ibn Saud's th at w as still operative w as one to convene an Islam ic congress w ith an unspecified agenda to be determ ined later. W hatever function the congress w as m eant to have, it did not im pede Ibn Saud from "accepting” on January 8, 1926, his proclam ation as king by an assem bly of Hijazi notables and his assum ption of the form al tide King of the Hijaz and Sultan of Najd and Its D ependencies.22

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The conquest of the Hijaz w as followed by the establishm ent in 1926 of a Saudi protectorate over the rem ainder of die Asir, this tim e as a result of an invitation by the incum bent Idrisi ruler, who sought to save his dom ain from the encroachm ent of Im am Yahya of Yemen in collusion w ith a rival pretender. The Hijaz and the Asir lowlands added to Ibn Saud’s dom ains an im m ense strip of territo ry 1,000 m iles long and 250 m iles wide. T heir annexation m arked the end of his expansion and defined, w ith one m inor exception, the lim its of the third Saudi realm as it exists today. All around th at enorm ous realm there w as either sea o r political entities dom inated o r protected by B ritish power; and th at pow er Ibn Saud had no intention of challenging even w hen respect for it threatened to underm ine his ru le over the dom ains he had conquered.

Mastering the Ikhwan and Rounding Off the Empire, 1926-1932 The real political considerations that in Ibn Saud’s view set the lim its for the expansionist drive of the Saudi-W ahhabi state did not accord well w ith the theopolitical conception of jih ad held by the Ikhw an, which called for unrelenting w ar against m ushrikun and infidels. This opposi­ tion of views blended w ith o ther ostensibly religious issues th at arose in connection w ith the conquest of the Hijaz and becam e the basis for a conflict betw een Ibn Saud and the Ikhw an th at threatened to undo all of Ibn Saud’s labors of a q u a rte r of a century. W hen he finally m astered that m ost serious of challenges, Ibn Saud set not only the boundaries of the Saudi state b u t also the lim its of W ahhabism . The conflict germ inated during the Hijaz war. On the one hand, the m assacre of the “unbelievers" at Ta'if had created a host of unnecessary com plications for Ibn Saud, which he was able to overcom e only w ith great difficulty and at the cost of prolonging the w ar by a year. On the o th er hand, as he took control of M ecca and then of the rest of the Hijaz, he found it necessary to leave in place m uch of the sharifian adm inistra­ tive apparatus, including personnel, taxation, regulations, and physical instrum ents such as telegraph, telephones, and cars. All of these w ere anathem a to the Ikhw an, who w ere prom pt to express th eir feelings. In 1924, on the first holy day of Id al-Fitr celebrated in M ecca un d er Saudi rule, one of th eir leaders, Faisal al-Dawish, m ade a speech at an Ikhw an gathering in which he said om inously that the Ikhw an w ere pledged to enforce the w ord of God and to correct d ep artu res from the ways of Islam regardless of who com m itted them , be it the sharif o r anyone who fol­ lowed in his footsteps.23 Ibn Saud tolerated th at kind of arrogant zeal for the duration of the war, b u t im m ediately afterw ard he sent the Ikhw an off to th eir respective hijar while he tu rn ed his attention to the m ultitude of problem s he faced in the conquered lands.

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A year later, at an Ikhw an conference at Artawiya, the participants freely criticized Ibn Saud for m any practices th at they deem ed contrary to the tru e faith and for allow ing trib es from Iraq and T ransjordan to pasture th eir herds in "true M uslim" territory. They also upbraided him for prohibiting com m erce w ith Kuwait, saying th at if that country was infidel it should be invaded, and if not it should not be boycotted. W hen news of this reached Ibn Saud in the Hijaz, he h u rried back to Najd and invited all the secular and religious leaders to a conference in Riyadh in January 1927 to discuss the affairs of the realm . Ibn Saud arrived at the conference w ith chests full of treasu re acquired in the Hijaz, which he distributed differentially am ong the assem bled chiefs to m ollify and di­ vide them . He then proposed that the conference proclaim him king of Najd and its dependencies as well as of the Hijaz, as if th at w ere its principal business, and the conference did so by acclam ation. Regarding the problem that was forem ost in his m ind, he addressed to the 'ulam a a num ber of questions concerning issues on which he had been criticized and asked them to provide authoritative fatw as (rulings according to religious law) to deal w ith them . W hen the conference dispersed, it looked as though Ibn Saud had defused the crisis, b u t events w ere to show otherw ise. The 'ulam a reported in February 1927, and th eir rulings w ere an in ter­ esting m ixture of decision, ambiguity, and evasion, typical of th eir posi­ tion in situations of internal pow er conflict. On the question of use of the telegraph, for instance, the 'ulam a stated that the legal sources provided no guidance on the m atter and th at they could not provide a ruling until the exact nature of the device w as understood. On the question of adm in­ istration in the Hijaz, they ruled th at any un-Islam ic laws, "if any such exist," should be abolished in favor of pure Islam ic law. Regarding treat­ m ent of the Shi'ites in H asa and Q atif— a question that Ibn Saud had apparently raised voluntarily— the answ er was decisive enough: they should not be allow ed to perform th eir m isguided religious practices, and if they violated the prohibition they should be exiled from M uslim lands. On the explosive question of grazing across the borders, the 'ulam a ruled som ew hat irrelevantly that the Shi'ites of Iraq should be forbidden entry to M uslim pastures or, for th at m atter, to other M uslim territory. On the question of jihad, they replied clearly enough that "we leave this to the Im am , whose duty it is according to o u r religious teaching to see w hat is best for Islam and the M uslims."24 As for the levying of taxes other than the traditional zakat they reported, unhelpfully under the circum ­ stances: "Taxes, we have ruled, are com pletely illegal and it is the King's duty to rem it them ; bu t if he refuses to do so, we do not feel it is perm issi­ ble to break up M uslim unity and revolt against him solely on this ac­ count”25

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The rulings of the 'ulam a took som e specific questions out of the discussion but failed to settle the principal issue betw een Ibn Saud and the Ikhw an chiefs, which centered on jih ad against Iraq. In April 1927 Ibn Saud convened another conference, which was attended by all the Najdi chiefs and three thousand Ikhw an but was boycotted by Sultan ibn Bijad, chief of the TJtaiba and the Ghatghat hijrah and conqueror of Ta'if. Ibn Saud tried to appease his critics by explaining that his attitude tow ard Iraq w as not different from theirs, but that because of the attitude of a certain foreign pow er he m ust exercise discretion in handling the prob­ lem until circum stances were right, at which tim e the Ikhw an would have the honor of subm itting that country to the law of God. His words, how­ ever, m ust have sounded hollow the next m onth, w hen on May 20 he signed the Treaty of Jidda w ith B ritain. This instrum ent annulled the 1915 treaty and included B ritish recognition of “the absolute independence of the dom inions" of Ibn Saud in retu rn for the latter's undertaking to respect B ritish treaties w ith the tru cial shaikhs, suppress slavery, and facilitate the pilgrim age of B ritish subjects. In any case, som e of the Ikhw an leaders w ere unpersuaded at the April conference, probably because they had decided to try to overthrow Ibn Saud and take pow er them selves.26 Thus, in O ctober 1927 Faisal alDawish, chief of the M utair and Artawiya, led a sm all Ikhw an force against a p arty engaged in building a controversial Iraqi garrison post at Bosaya and w iped it out together w ith its police guard. The B ritish au­ thorities in Iraq dem anded the im m ediate w ithdraw al of the Najdi fron­ tier trib es and launched a ir attacks on them th at continued for three m onths. Ibn Saud had no choice b ut to p rotest against the B ritish and the Iraqis and to advance his own grievances in justification of his subjects' actions, until an agreem ent was reached to hold negotiations in April 1928. In the m eantim e, however, the Ikhw an plotters had succeeded in provok­ ing a conflict w ith Iraq and the B ritish, in arousing the anger of the Najdis, and in depicting Ibn Saud as a frightened and w eak leader in the face of the infidels. The B ritish sent Sir G ilbert Clayton to Jidda to negotiate on behalf of them selves and the Iraqis. The talks w ent on for several m onths but ended in failure. The h e a rt of the problem was th at the B ritish did not tru st Ibn Saud's ability to prevent raiding from his side and Ibn Saud failed to convince them of the contrary. They therefore insisted on con­ tinuing to build frontier posts and using other defensive m easures, while Ibn Saud insisted th at the frontier posts w ere contrary to previous agree­ m ents to keep the borders dem ilitarized. The Ikhw an thus succeeded in causing the failure of the negotiations ju st as they had succeeded in stirring up the problem in the first place. Ibn Saud tried to underplay the consequences of the fiasco by taking tim e to go on pilgrim age, but the

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resum ption of the raids and counterraids, the Iraqis’ continued construc­ tion of new posts, and the agitation by the Ikhw an brought the situation in Najd close to anarchy.27 In Septem ber 1928 Ibn Saud ordered another conference of Najdi and Ikhw an chiefs to convene the following m onth to discuss the situation. This tim e Faisal al-Dawish (of M utair) joined S ultan ibn Bijad (ofU taiba) in refusing the sum m ons, as did Dhaydan ibn H ithlain, chief of the Ajman, ever ready to revolt against constituted authority, and F u h an ibn Mashhur, leader of a group of Ruwala Ikhw an. In the absence of the rebels an understanding could not even be attem pted, so Ibn Saud used the occa­ sion to try to rally support for him self. In the presence of eight hundred shaikhs and chiefs, both tow n dw ellers and bedouins, he review ed his efforts to unite and pacify the A rabian Peninsula and referred to signs of disaffection in som e quarters. He spoke about his negotiations w ith the B ritish and th eir insistence on the frontier posts b u t blam ed th eir deci­ sion on Faisal al-Dawish’s raid on the Bosaya post. He then called upon those present, if dissatisfied, to choose another m em ber of the Saud fam ily to take his place as leader and pledged him self to support whom ­ ever they chose.28 Of course those present did not choose a successor b u t pledged them ­ selves anew to support and obey him . The fact that Ibn Saud offered to abdicate, however, w as an interesting reflection of his state of m ind and o f the gravity of the situation he confronted. He could not bring him self to declare w ar on the Iraqi unbelievers and th eir infidel B ritish supporters, especially since the Ikhw an had deliberately provoked them ; b u t neither could he ask his people to rally behind him to fight the Ikhw an, because they w ere fighting unbelievers and infidels. All he could do for the m o­ m ent w as to elicit a dem onstration of tru st in his leadership continue his efforts to split the ranks of the rebels by gifts of m oney and the encour­ agem ent of rivals to th eir trib al leaderships, and w ait for them to m ake a m istake th at w ould allow him to change the issue and fight them on m ore prom ising grounds. Before long his opponents played into his hands. For several m onths a fte r the conference dispersed, the rebels and th eir Ikhw an bands buzzed threateningly along the frontiers of Kuwait and Iraq, launching an occasional raid b u t failing to deliver a serious blow, because of the alert­ ness of the enem y and the vigilance of the Royal Air Force. Then on February 22, 1929, Sultan ibn Bijad for som e unknow n reason suddenly attacked sim ultaneously the Najd Sham m ar and a group of Najdi cam el m erchants— both under the jurisdiction of Ibn S aud— and the Ydjib, un d er Iraqi jurisdiction. The latter fled and lost only property, b u t the Sham m ar suffered heavily and the cam el m erchants, m ostly natives o f the Qasim , w ere m assacred alm ost to a m an. At the sam e tim e, other m inor Ikhw an groups m assacred a group o f unarm ed Sulaba tribesm en,

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subjects of Ibn Saud, while Faisal al-Dawish m aneuvered to su rp rise som e Iraqi prey. W hether the rebels had been driven by frustration and greed o r w hether they m eant to underm ine Ibn Saud's position by sowing terro r am ong his subjects, th eir actions backfired completely. The m assa­ cre of the m erchants raised a storm of indignation am ong the tow nspeo­ ple of Najd, and the great bedouin trib es w ere outraged. The rebel leaders' claim to be “tru e M uslims" while they labeled Ibn Saud a rene­ gade was shown to be com pletely hypocritical by th eir attacks on fellow M uslims. Ibn Saud responded w ith speed and determ ination. As soon as he got word of the m assacre he proceeded to B uraida and called out a double levy of the tow nspeople of Najd, who responded w ith alacrity. He ap­ pealed to the trib es to join him and received a m assive response, includ­ ing sections of the rebel tribes. The rebel forces under al-Dawish and ibn Bijad, sm aller b ut highly confident, advanced to m eet Ibn Saud's gather­ ing forces, while the Ajman under ibn H ithlain covered the flank in H asa. N egotiations w ent on while the arm ies converged: Ibn Saud tried to split the rebels o r to get them to surrender w ithout battle, and the rebels tried to lure Ibn Saud into a trap and kill o r capture him . Nothing cam e of these efforts, and the battle was joined at Sibla, betw een B uraida and Artawiya, on M arch 30, 1929.29 The battle w as sharp, lasted only a few hours, and ended in a total rout of the rebel forces. Ibn Bijad fled to Ghatghat; al-Dawish was w ounded and carried from the battlefield by his m en to Artawiya. Ibn Saud pursued the latter thither, seized him , and then let him go to die peacefully— o r so he believed. A fter Sibla, Dhaydan ibn H ithlain visited the cam p of Fahd ibn Jilwi, the son of Ibn Saud's governor of H asa, who had been w atching the Ajman m ovem ents w ith a sm all force, to assure him of his peaceful intentions. A failure of com m unication and m utual suspicion of treach­ ery caused the Ajman to approach Fahd's cam p in force, Fahd to kill Dhaydan, and the Ajman to kill Fahd, defeat his forces, and raise the banner of rebellion again under Dhaydan's son and successor, Naif ibn H ithlain. Not long th ereafter Faisal al-Dawish recovered from his wounds, left Artawiya, rallied a force of M utair Ikhw an, and resum ed operations against Kuwait and Iraq north of the Ajman region. Ibn Mashh u r of the Ruwala Ikhw an raided fu rth e r north, and m ost of the TJtaiba ravaged the land betw een Najd and the Hijaz. The rebellion thus raged again m ore fiercely than ever, cut off Najd from the Persian Gulf, and disrupted com m unications betw een Riyadh and M ecca for m onths. However, since the rebels' claim to be the bearers of the banner of jihad and upholders of “tru e Islam ” had been exploded, Ibn Saud had no trouble rallying the loyalist forces of Najd and o ther trib es for a final cam paign against them . The rebellious U taiba w ere defeated and m erci­ lessly dispossessed; a raiding group of seven hundred Ikhw an under the

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

com m and of a son of Faisal al-Dawish w as defeated, pursued, and de­ feated again. The denouem ent w as rath er ironic. The ringleaders of the rebellion, Faisal al-Dawish, N aif ibn H ithlain, and Faihan ibn M ashhur, m ade th eir way to Iraq w ith a sm all num ber of followers, surrendered th eir arm s to the authorities, and sought asylum in the land of the unbelievers (Sultan ibn Bijad had surrendered earlier to Ibn Saud and w as in jail in Riyadh). Adding to the irony, King Faisal of Iraq refused for a while to su rren d er the refugees to Ibn Saud, giving rise to a crisis th at threatened to eru p t into hostilities. In the end the B ritish m ediated an "unconditional" extra­ dition on the understanding that Ibn Saud would not execute the rebels. The trouble w as over by January 1930, and the B ritish fittingly capped it by arranging a m eeting betw een King Faisal and King Ibn Saud aboard HMS Lupin on February 22, 1930, which resulted in an agreem ent of friendship and bon voisinage betw een the heads of the tw o hostile dynas­ ties.30 A fter Sibla, Ibn Saud declared th at religious issues would be decided only by the 'ulam a and banned all m eetings for any purpose w ithout p rio r approval by the ruler. Artawiya and Ghatghat, the m ost notorious of the Ikhw an colonies, w ere razed and o ther hijar brought under strict control. The Ikhw an w ere not banned and w ere used to good effect in the 1934 w ar w ith Yemen; b u t as the events of th at w ar showed, th eir sting had already been draw n and Ibn Saud felt free to pursue w ith Yemen a realistic and even generous policy w ithout fear of internal repercussions. The im m ediate cause of the Yemen w ar w as a dispute over the oasis of N ajran, on the border betw een the tw o countries, which the forces of Im am Yahya seized and from which the Ikhw an ousted them in the spring o f 1932 Ultimately, however, the w ar occurred as a resu lt of the conveigence of the forces of tw o expansionist leaders on the territo ry of the dissolving Asiri state. H em m ed in by B ritish pow er elsewhere, Ibn Saud and Yahya w ere tem pted to test th eir strength against each other, and this is why tw o years of negotiations led nowhere. In April 1934 Ibn Saud gave Yahya an ultim atum to com ply w ith his dem ands, and w hen the latte r failed to answer, tw o Saudi colum ns led by Ibn Saud's sons Saud and Faisal m arched in. Saud’s army, startin g from N ajran and heading for San’a, m ade som e progress before becom ing bogged dow n in the m oun­ tains. Faisal's forces, however, m oving along the coast, advanced rapidly a fte r defeating Yahya’s forces and reached the p o rt of Hodeida, halfw ay dow n Yemen's coast, w ithin three weeks. By that tim e Yahya had sent appeals for help in every direction, som e of which elicited prom pt responses. The Italians, entrenched in E ritrea and Som alia since 1885 and fearing eventual Saudi control of Bab al-M andeb, sent tw o destroyers to Hodeida and landed a com pany of m arines. Two

The Third Realm

55

days later the B ritish sent in th eir ow n naval units to balance the Italians and to try to keep Ibn Saud from becom ing th eir neighbor at the Aden Protectorate. Both pow ers dem anded th at Ibn Saud halt his forces and en ter into negotiations, and Arab leaders chim ed in w ith a call to end the fighting am ong M uslims and an offer to m ediate the dispute. Ibn Saud yielded and negotiations took place under the supervision of a concilia­ tion com m ission com posed of Egyptians, Syrians, and Palestinians. The resulting agreem ent recognized Ibn Saud’s sovereignty over all of Asir, including Najran, and stipulated w ithdraw al of his forces from Yemen and paym ent to him of reparations of 100,000 sterling in gold.31W ith these rath er m odest gains, Ibn Saud concluded the rem arkable career of con­ quest begun thirty-tw o years before and tu rn ed his attention to consoli­ dating the em pire he had rebuilt and the dynasty he had restored. Symbo­ lizing the shift, at about the sam e tim e he changed the nam e of his realm from the K ingdom s of Hijaz and Najd and Its D ependencies to the King­ dom of Saudi Arabia (more accurately, the Arab Saudi Kingdom) and nom inated a crow n prince in the person of his son E m ir Saud.

Observations on the Creation of the Third Realm A few general observations concerning the creation of the third realm are w orth underscoring for th eir possible bearing on key features of the Kingdom and on subsequent developm ents there. 1. In his endeavor to create the third realm , Ibn Saud based his drive on the dynastic principle, like the founders of the second realm , as long as he confronted trib al adversaries. W hen facing established pow ers w ith strong traditional Islam ic credentials, such as the H ashem ites and the Tuiks, he based his drive on m ilitant W ahhabism , like the founders of the first realm . 2 Despite the feet th at Ibn Saud personally rebuilt the fortunes of the House of Saud from zero, he w as not spared serious challenges from pretenders belonging to another branch of the family, who w ere able to draw considerable support from disaffected trib al chiefs. Conscious th at fam ily strife had brought about the destruction of the second realm , Ibn Saud endeavored to forgo retribution and to conciliate the pretenders a fte r defeating them . 3. W hether he p ursued the dynastic principle o r m ilitant W ahhabism , Ibn Saud was acutely aw are from the history of the first realm of the im perative to avoid an all-out confrontation w ith a superior im perial pow er all by him self. He strove to obtain B ritish support against the Turkish pow er behind ibn Rashid and to neutralize the B ritish pow er behind S harif H ussein before launching his final assaults on the realm s of those enem ies. In pursuing these strategic goals, he w ent to great

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lengths to appease the big pow ers, accepting for tactical reasons hum ili­ ating term s from the Turks and th eir allies and seeking and agreeing to a B ritish alliance on highly constricting term s. 4. The high point of Ibn Saud's strategy of caution tow ard big pow ers cam e when the Ikhw an sought to em broil him in an all-out confrontation w ith the B ritish-backed H ashem ites in Iraq and Transjordan. He resisted th eir pressure at great risk to him self and eventually tu rn ed on them and destroyed them rath er than fight the pow erful "infidels” (the British) and th eir proteges, the Iraqi "unbelievers.” 5. The confrontation w ith the Ikhw an carried an additional lesson. Although Ibn Saud was aw are from the outset of the need to control m ilitant W ahhabism and devised ways th at he thought would do so, the Ikhw an eventually eluded his control, divided o r paralyzed his ow n con­ stituencies and sources of support, and threatened to take over suprem e pow er.32 Only because of the lack of coordination am ong the leaders of the challengers and th eir excesses against fellow M uslims was Ibn Saud eventually able to prevail against them .33 6. A fter subduing the Ikhw an, Ibn Saud did not revert sim ply to the dynastic principle, notw ithstanding the nam e he adopted for his realm . The justification of his conquest and control of the Hijaz and the holy cities; the continuing need to counter the danger of irredentism from the H ashem ites installed in Iraq and Transjordan, w ith th eir superior lineage and prescriptive religious legitim acy; and the general requirem ent of providing a cem ent for his heterogeneous em pire m ade it as necessary as ever for him to rest the legitim acy of his house on superior religious ideology and perform ance.34 The suppression of the Ikhw an may thus be seen as ending a stage of "revolutionary W ahhabism ” in favor of "Wah­ habism in one country.” 7. Although Ibn Saud alternately appeased and defied the Turks and th eir local allies until he prevailed over them , he was careful not to attem pt the sam e approach w ith the B ritish and th eir local allies. He did agree to a constricting treaty w ith B ritain in 1915, which he subsequently nullified in 1927, b ut he achieved this end by negotiations rath er than by defiance. His absolute respect for B ritish pow er was seen in the fact that he pressed his attack against S harif H ussein only a fte r the B ritish had abandoned him , that he did not encroach on the B ritish-protected Gulf em irates, and that he tu rn ed on his own Ikhw an w hen they threatened to em broil him w ith the B ritish in Iraq and Transjordan. In Yemen, too, he dem onstrated considerable m oderation and renounced m ost of his con­ quests in the face of a possible clash w ith B ritish and Italian power. The resu lt was that historically it was B ritish pow er th at effectively set the lim its of Ibn Saud's process of expansion on practically all sides.

3 Preserving the Empire, 1932-1953

Having created an em pire out of disparate sections and anarchic trib es in a vast inhospitable environm ent, Ibn Saud in the last tw o decades of his life faced the problem of how to preserve th at unusual creation. Two dangers threatened its existence: the internal centrifugal pulls th at had historically b arred the em ergence of any enduring political entity the size of the one he had foiged; and the hostility of the H ashem ite ru lers of Iraq and Transjordan, whose fam ily he had dispossessed of the Hijaz. In the 1930s and eariy 1940s, Ibn Saud neutralized the H ashem ite th reat by reaching an understanding w ith th eir B ritish patrons. His m ain preoccupation w as the danger of disintegration from w ithin. Although he had, and w as believed to have, the necessary personal leadership quali­ ties and a suitable strategy to appease o r d eter the restless trib es and sections o f his realm , he lacked sufficient financial resources to uphold th at strategy. Eventually Ibn Saud w as tided over by B ritish and A m erican assistance until the flow of oil revenues a fte r W oiid W ar II provided the necessary m eans. No sooner did this happen, however, than he w as confronted w ith a resurgence of the H ashem ite th reat owing to the w eakening of B ritain’s control over Iraq and B ritain’s suspected collusion w ith Iraq and T rans­ jordan (later Jordan) in projects th at could give the H ashem ite ru lers the capability to defeat him and to destabilize and break up his em pire. Ibn Saud responded w ith a three-pronged strategy: he strove to con­ clude a m ilitary alliance w ith the United States, endeavored to contain the H ashem ites and fru stra te th eir designs through political friendships

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and alliances in the Arab arena, and attem pted to build up a regular arm ed force for purposes of internal and external deterrence. By the tim e of his death in Novem ber 1953, he had achieved none of his goals fully. He had scored a m easure of success w ith the first and peihaps a larger m easure w ith the second, b u t the third rem ained m ore of an objective than a reality. Altogether, although he transm itted his em pire intact to his successors, its continued existence w as far from assured.

Defense and Foreign Policy during the Lean Years In 1932, the year in which Ibn Saud form ally signified the unification of the territo ries he had conquered over the previous three decades by renam ing his realm the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the A m erican viceconsul in Aden, who followed developm ents in Arabia, w rote to the secre­ tary of state that the kingdom was not destined to survive its founder. " . . . a unified Arab state, even if established today by Ibn Saud, would evidently collapse a fte r his death u nder the influence of the schism atic tendencies of his h e irs/'1 He added: "Undoubtedly the W ahhabi fam ily \sic], as it has done tw ice before, w ill abandon the Hijaz and retire to Najd soon a fte r Ibn Saud's death, o r possibly even earlier/'2Seven m onths later the sam e vice-consul predicted the fall of Ibn Saud and of his realm m uch sooner indeed as a result of penury. In August 1933 he w rote th at "neither he [Ibn Saud] nor his governm ent can be expected to last m uch longer w ithout money."3 A fter describing Ibn Saud's desperate efforts to raise m oney by "pandering to foreigners" to the detrim ent of his religious standing, the vice-consul concluded: "The Consulate, which has for som e tim e predicted the beginning of ibn Saud's fall as a world personage and his retirem ent to Nejd, if the 1933 pilgrim age w ere a failure, feels that its views w ere greatly strengthened by the recent events in Saudi Arabia of which an outline has been furnished above."4 The A m erican vice-consul proved to be wrong, of course, b ut he was in excellent company. Only a few years before, T. E. Lawrence and David H ogarth, tw o of the forem ost B ritish experts on Arabian affairs, had m ade sim ilar predictions based on sim ilar grounds. Lawrence had a r­ gued that the vastness and poverty of Arabia and the ethos of the tribes inhabiting it precluded the establishm ent of enduring large political enti­ ties. A leader of exceptional abilities such as Ibn Saud m ight be able to create such an entity by dint of extraordinary exertions and good fortune, b ut in the absence of the necessary resources and instrum ents of estab­ lished states, it was bound to fall a p a rt a fte r his disappearance from the scene, as had happened to the realm of the Rashids (the archrivals of the H ouse of Saud) and m any others before. H. St. John Philby, another B ritish Arabist, who was particularly close to Ibn Saud, had argued

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against Law rence th at Ibn Sand's espousal and prom otion of W ahhabism gave his endeavor an elem ent of cohesiveness which o ther trib al em pire builders had lacked and which assured its durability. H ogarth shared Philby’s view of the critical im portance of W ahhabism , b u t precisely for th at reason he had categorically predicted the collapse of Ibn Saud’s em pire w ithin a few years a fte r the conquest of the Hijaz, on the grounds th at the W ahhabi spirit w ould give way to the lure of the fleshpots of Jidda and leave Ibn Saud’s enterprise exposed to the inexorable anarchic pres­ sures o f A rabian politics.5 Although the vice-consul and the experts w ere w rong in th eir predic­ tions, they accurately diagnosed Ibn Saud’s basic security concern and associated practical problem in the period up to W orld W ar II. That concern w as internal rath er than external threats, and the practical problem w as money. The Kingdom w as surrounded on all sides except its southw estern com er by w aters and territo ries un d er B ritish control. The territo ries bordering on the A rabian Sea and the Persian G ulf consisted of sm all em irates vulnerable to Saudi encroachm ents— Ibn Saud had con­ quered and absorbed stronger ones inland. To the north and east, the territo ries had recently been organized into the state of Iraq and the em irate of Transjordan, both under the ru le of princes of the Hashem ite fam ily whom Ibn Saud had dispossessed in the Hijaz, and presented a real potential danger. Ibn Saud had dealt effectively w ith th at th reat by entering into an agreem ent w ith B ritain, anticipated in the 1927 Treaty of Jidda, w herein he in effect com m itted him self to refrain from encroach­ ing upon the w eak em irates in exchange for B ritain's restraining the potentially strong H ashem ites from hostile action against his realm . This kind of deal had been expected at the tim e the experts spoke and w as an established reality w hen the vice-consul reported. Ibn Saud's basic security problem w as how to keep together the em pire he had created out of m any diverse scattered regions and a m ultitude of arm ed tribes, w ith the very lim ited m eans at his disposal. In dealing w ith that issue Ibn Saud had adopted an approach th at w as m ore akin to interstate relations th an to the relations of a ru le r to his subjects. He could not disarm the trib es and establish a m onopoly over the m eans of coercion— probably the thought did not even occur to him . His only way to m aintain in tertrib al peace and acquiescence in his ru le w as a strategy based on deterrence, diplomacy, and blandishm ent. He had inherited from the sharifian adm inistration of the Hijaz a regular, uniform ed arm y of several thousand, train ed by Turkish officers and possessing som e "m odem ” equipm ent, including m otor tran sp o rts and som e guns, b u t he neither valued its capability nor tru sted its loyalty. He kept som e tw o o r three thousand o f these troops and distributed them in sm all detach­ m ents am ong the H ijaz cities to perform supplem entary police duties,

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

and in b o n ier posts to fight sm ugglers. His real deterren t force consisted o f a core of up to one thousand royal guards backed by trib a l levies provided by loyal trib es from the vicinity of Riyadh and o th er tow ns of Najd. T hat force attracted as w ell as d eterred another set of trib a l forces in the m ore rem ote areas, and this w ider com bination a t least deterred and secured the acquiescence of still others. The entire system w as finely interw oven and needed constant tending to prevent a te a r th at w ould unravel it all. As one kind of tending activity, Ibn Saud entered into a m ultitude of m arital alliances w ith fam ilies o f trib al chiefs, including form er foes as w ell as allies, and held m em bers o f form eiiy hostile chiefs as security in gilded captivity in his court. A nother device th at Ibn Saud deem ed essential w as to m aintain a flow of largesse to the trib es to sustain his own prestige, to com pensate the trib es for the flow of trib u te in the opposite direction, and to reduce the tem ptation of trib al raiding as a supplem entary m eans of livelihood in tim es o f scarcity. The problem th at confronted Ibn Saud in 1933, and the one th at the A m erican vice-consul expected to lead to his prom pt dow nfall, w as shortage of m oney to support the system . Hafiz W ahba, who spent h alf a century in Saudi service, reported fo r instance th at during the financial crisis of 1932 there w as a trib al revolt in no rth ern H ijaz led by ibn R ifada, instigated by Em ir A bdallah of T ransjordan, and financed by the form er Egyptian khedive Abbas H ilm i II. Not long afterw ard there w as a revolt of the Idrisis in Asir; and not long th ereafter there was the b order conflict w ith the im am o f Yemen th at led to w ar.6 The financial crisis resulted from a drastic decline in the num ber of pilgrim s, the country's m ain source of revenue, in connection w ith the world econom ic depression. Figures for that period are difficult to ob­ tain. According to Philby, the num ber of pilgrim s fell from an average o f 130,000 a year in 1926-1929 to 80,000 in 1930, 40,000 in 1931, and less thereafter. At the highest level of pilgrim traffic, the revenue of the state am ounted to 4 to 5 m illion sterling— 20 to 25 m illion dollars7— so th at in 1933 the revenue m ust have been betw een one-third and one-fourth th at am ount. Nearly 80 percent of the revenue w as used to support the in tern al political system in one way o r another. A rare sheet of govern­ m ent appropriations for 1930, published in the official gazette, Umm al-Qura, listed appropriations am ounting to 106 m illion piasters. The value of a piaster in m ore fam iliar currencies is not known. However, about 17 m illion piasters w ere assigned for debt repaym ent, 18 m illion for adm inistration and public service functions, and the rem aining 89 m il­ lion w ere assigned to the co u rt, defense and security, grants to tribes, and so on.8 The drastic drop in revenue w as therefore a critical problem , and from 1930 until the end o f W orld W ar n Ibn Saud's financial anxieties and his basic security concern w ere one and the sam e thing. In 1933 Ibn Saud’s desperate need for m oney drove him to grant to

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Standard Oil of C alifornia (SOCAL) the historic concession to explore and develop his country's oil resources in exchange fo r relatively sm all pay­ m ents even in his ow n term s. The agreem ent provided for the paym ent of an annual ren t o f $35,000, plus a loan of $210,000 in the first year and another o f $140,000 in the second year recoverable from fu tu re royalties if any should be forthcom ing. Two additional loans of $350,000 each w ould be given if oil in com m ercial quantities w ere discovered. Royalties on such oil w ould be at the rate of $7 p e r ton. The agreem ent w as bitterly opposed by the religious leaders on the grounds that it w ould let into the country infidels who w ould co rru p t the people and introduce liquor, phonographs, and o ther instrum ents of the devil,9 b u t Ibn Saud overrode the opposition on w hat m ight be called raison d’etat. The following year he obtained additional relief in the form of $700,000 in reparations ex­ acted from Yemen at the conclusion of the 1934 war, b u t the financial bind persisted. In 1938 SOCAL struck oil in com m ercial quantities, and the following year Ibn Saud collected $3.2 m illion in revenues; but the outbreak of W orld W ar II suspended fu rth e r developm ent, oil revenues dropped to $12 m illion, the traffic of foreign pilgrim s cam e to a nearly com plete halt, and a succession of droughts brought hunger to the tribes. The B ritish, fearing the developm ent of trouble in an area on the flank and in the re a r of th eir restless M iddle E astern territo ries, provided em ergency shipm ents of food, and SOCAL, renam ed CASOC (California A rabian Standard Oil Company), provided som e funds on account of fu tu re royalties. Neither, however, felt able to com ply w ith Ibn Saud’s request for a loan of $6 m illion a year to help m eet his m inim al annual need of $10 m illion. Eventually CASOC was able to persuade the U.S. governm ent to help Ibn Saud under the term s of the Lend-Lease Act, first through the B ritish in 1942 and 1943, and th ereafter directly. In a m em o­ randum to President Roosevelt CASOC stated, w ith som e exaggeration, that "unless this is done, and soon, this independent kingdom , and p er­ haps w ith it the entire Arab world, w ill be throw n into chaos.”10 In the next few years direct A m erican aid w as at tw ice the level of Ibn Saud’s indicated budgetary need. The end of the w ar allow ed the resum ption of oil developm ent and exports, which finally resolved Ibn Saud's political-financial problem . Revenue from oil am ounted to $10 m illion in 1946, $53 m illion in 1948, $57 m illion in 1950, and $212 m illion in 1952, the last fu ll year of Ibn Saud's reign.u B ecause of the profligacy of the ru le r and prim itive financial m anagem ent, neither these am ounts nor m ultiples of them sufficed to prevent endem ic budgetary deficits and indebtedness for the next fifteen years; b u t the Kingdom was never again to be politically endangered by lack of the m inim al financial m eans necessary to lubricate the nexus betw een the ru le r and the trib al chiefs. Even as the m oney problem w as on its way to solution, however, Ibn

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

Saud confronted a serious security problem in the shape of a resurgence of the H ashem ite threat. B ritain had em erged from die w ar as the sole dom inant pow er in the M iddle East a fte r having ejected the Italians from Libya and eased the French out of Syria and Lebanon. However, B ritain w as also exhausted and, facing w hat Lord Keynes called a “financial D unkirk/' sought to reduce drastically its global com m itm ents. W ithin tw o years of the end of the war, it had been com pelled by penury at hom e and nationalist pressure abroad to concede independence to India, B urm a, and Ceylon and to divest itself of responsibility for the defense of Iran, Turkey, and Greece. In the M iddle East heartland, its endeavor to reduce its com m itm ents while protecting its interests in the region (de­ fined in term s of access to oil and im perial com m unications and defense) led it to pursue a complex policy, including tw o features that particularly affected Saudi Arabia. One was to replace existing treaties w ith Iraq, Egypt, and Transjordan, which w ere anathem a to local nationalists, w ith new treaties that would concede full independence to those countries in exchange for th eir granting to B ritain certain m inim al base rights. To create a favorable clim ate for achievem ent of this goal, B ritain unilater­ ally m inim ized the extent of its interference in the affairs of those coun­ tries even before the negotiations yielded the desired results, and took a pro-A rab stance in the surging Jewish-Arab conflict over Palestine. The other feature of B ritish policy particularly relevant to Saudi Arabia w as an attem pt to encourage various schem es of association am ong Arab states, partly the b e tte r to keep out rival powers, partly in the hope that association would either facilitate conclusion of the desired treaties w ith individual states o r m ake possible a collective substitute for them . Even before the end of the w ar King (then Emir) Abdallah of T ransjordan had advanced one such associative schem e, know n as G reater Syria, which sought to unite Syria, Lebanon, and m ost of Palestine w ith Transjordan u nder his rule. Iraq's perennial prim e m inister, N uri al-Sa'id, had ad­ vanced another schem e in the nam e of his Hashem ite m asters know n as the Fertile Crescent, which sought to unite all the previously cited coun­ tries w ith Iraq. The B ritish w ere know n to be sym pathetic to both schem es at the tim e they w ere enunciated; bu t when these triggered a process that led to the form ation, w ith active B ritish encouragem ent, of the League of Arab States in 1945, B ritain ostensibly ceased to back the Iraqi and Transjordanian plans even though th eir authors continued to pursue them . From the point of view of Ibn Saud, the prospect of his H ashem ite opponents' realizing either of th eir schem es w ith B ritish help was alarm ­ ing. B ritain's profession of neutrality tow ard those projects a fte r the form ation of the Arab League was hardly credible to the old king, who had seen B ritish officials create the H ashem ite states, determ ine th eir

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boundaries, choose and depose th eir rulers, and prescribe th eir policy at will. L east of all was he disposed to believe B ritain's claim a fte r it had em erged victorious from a world w ar and was w ithout rival in the M iddle E ast. B ut even if he w ere to take the B ritish at th eir w ord, the H ashem ites w ould have acquired o r been granted freedom of action to a degree that w ould allow them to contem plate all sorts of hostile initiatives tow ard him . E ither way, his historic understanding w ith the B ritish, w herein they had undertaken to restrain the H ashem ites in exchange for his exercising restrain t tow ard the B ritish-protected Persian Gulf em irates, appeared to him to have becom e inoperative. Ibn Saud expressed his concerns in diplom atic exchanges w ith the B ritish, who reassured him of th eir desire to preserve and develop th eir traditional friendship w ith the Kingdom . He pretended to take the B ritish protestations at face value for the tim e being; he even took them as a basis for seeking th eir assistance in creating for him a m odem arm y form ation sim ilar to T ransjordan's Arab Legion. However, to protect him self against the dangers he perceived, he strove to bring in the United States as a counterw eight to B ritain and as a substitute b uttress for the Kingdom 's security. He specifically sought to have the United States p ut pressure on B ritain to restrain the H ashem ites and asked it to supply him w ith arm s and even to conclude a full-fledged treaty of alliance w ith him . In a dogged pu rsu it of that aim , he tried to play upon the elem ent of rivalry that existed betw een B ritain and the United States and to use the leverage of oil, m ilitary bases, and even the Soviet danger. A fter four o r five years, however, he achieved only p artial success. The following paragraphs recount som e of the landm arks of these efforts. In m id-January 1947 Crown Prince Saud m ade a m onthlong visit to the United States, culm inating in a m eeting w ith President T rum an on Feb­ ru ary 18. According to a m em orandum subm itted to the president by the State D epartm ent in preparation for the m eeting, the crow n prince had expressed in his talks w ith governm ent officials a fear th at the B ritish w ere behind King Abdallah's plan for G reater Syria. L ater in the crow n prince's visit, the m em orandum inform ed the president, King Ibn Saud him self had sent an urgent m essage to W ashington claim ing th at he had “obtained definite inform ation'' that the B ritish w ere indeed "planning to have King A bdallah m ade ru le r of G reater Syria'' and requesting that the U.S. governm ent “intervene in this m atter imm ediately." The State De­ partm ent m em orandum w ent on to say th at the crow n prince had been assured that the United States w ould support the integrity and indepen­ dence of the countries of the N ear East in the United N ations should these countries be threatened w ith aggression, and recom m ended a reasser­ tion of th at position. It also inform ed the president th at the Am erican charge d'affaires in London had been requested to tell the B ritish th at the

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

United States w as "disturbed" by reports th at had reached it from N ear E astern capitals in regard to K ing Abdallah’s plans for a G reater Syria, and to ask for a statem ent of the B ritish position in this m atter.12 On D ecem ber 12 the Arab League Council w as due to m eet to react to the UN resolution to p artition Palestine, adopted on Novem ber 29, 1947. Well before the m eeting there w as talk th at the league m ight consider a resolution calling for cancellation o f A m erican and B ritish oil conces­ sions in m em ber countries (at th at tim e, Saudi Arabia and Iraq) because o f th eir role in connection w ith the UN resolution. On D ecem ber 3 Ibn Saud received the A m erican m inister in Jidda to express his view of the situation and to m ake a general request for A m erican political and m ili­ ta ry aid. He told the m inister th at the talk about canceling the conces­ sions w as an exam ple of the increased pressure being p u t on him by the "Shereefian states" in order to harm his relations w ith the U nited States. He indicated agreem ent w ith the Arab states regarding the dispute w ith Zionism b u t said th at he w anted to m ake "a distinction betw een such an attitude and the attem pts being m ade by my antagonists in the Arab worid to draw m e into direct conflict politically o r econom ically w ith the United States." He w as prepared to oppose the pressure being p u t on him , b u t for him the "crucial question" w as to know "w hether and to w hat extent I can count upon United States aid in enabling m e to resist any incursion from Iraq o r T ransjordan w hich may be the resu lt of my failure to yield to the pressure."13 A fter the audience Ibn Saud indicated th at he had re­ quested aid consisting of arm s and political support. The United S tates responded prom ptly th at it w as b arred from provid­ ing him w ith arm s by the em bargo it had ju st declared on all arm s shipm ents to the N ear East. However, it sent Ibn Saud a note expressing su p p o rt for the "territo rial and political integrity o f Saudi Arabia."14 Ibn Saud w as not content w ith the A m erican reply and four m onths later retu rn ed to the charge w ith another request fo r arm s and a proposal for an A m erican- Saudi treaty of alliance. In early April 1948, w hen they w ere evacuating Palestine and w hen T ransjordan’s Arab Legion w as expected to move in, the B ritish tried to assuage Ibn Saud’s suspicion of th eir support for H ashem ite schem es by offering to conclude a m ilitary alliance w ith Saudi A rabia. Ibn Saud tried to use the B ritish offer to induce the U nited States to conclude such a treaty w ith him in addition to, o r instead of, the B ritish.15 L ater th at m onth he took advantage o f a visit by the com m ander of the U.S. Air T ransport Com m and in connection w ith program s to develop the D hahran a ir base, to m ake, in the w ords of a State D epartm ent m em oran­ dum , "the strongest plea which he has yet registered for provision o f m ilitary equipm ent by the United States." The m em orandum reported the king to have said th at if his country w ere arm ed to share in its

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self- defense, the U nited States w ould be granted w hatever strategic facili­ ties it m ight require in Saudi A rabia.16 W ashington replied th at it could not undertake “to discuss assistance of any sort" to arty of the N ear E astern states before a settlem ent of the "Palestine situation"— th at is, the A rab-Israeli war, which had sta rte d a few days before.17 In April 1949 T ransjordan followed Egypt and Lebanon in signing an arm istice agreem ent w ith Israel th at left Transjordan in control of the Arab p a rt of Palestine (later know n as the W est Bank) and eastern Jeru­ salem w ith its Islam ic holy places. By then the tensions betw een W est and E ast w ere assum ing the character of a cold war. In May 1949 Ibn Saud received the A m erican representative in Jidda in an audience from which even in terp reters w ere excluded, to express his concern and to reiterate his dem ands for A m erican assistance. He m entioned the danger of Com­ m unism , stating th at he did not fear it at hom e b u t w as concerned about its taking hold in som e neighboring Arab countries. He said th at B ritain's attitude tow ard him had cooled and its interest had been deflected to Iraq and Transjordan as A m erican interests in Saudi A rabia had increased. He then dwelt at length on the problem of the "innate Shereefian hostility.” He said th at Yemen w as flirting w ith T ransjordan and Iraq and th at Saudi A rabia m ight find itself encircled by enem ies. He em phasized th at King Abdallah w ould never give up the idea of G reater Syria, and asserted th at he had reliable inform ation th at Abdallah had told the Jews th at he w ould m ake concessions to them in Palestine if they w ould support him in efforts to regain the Hijaz. He argued th at there w as a tim e w hen Saudi A rabia could rely on the splendid fighting qualities of its soldiers to defend itself, b u t th at now it w as defenseless against tan k s and m ilitary airc ra ft “in possession of/or available to” his enem ies. He concluded by addressing an urgent request "for the last tim e" for help adequate arm a­ m ents, and advice. He w as prepared to send one o f his sons to W ashing­ ton to m ake his views known, b u t he did not w ant to advertise unduly his concern and feared disastrous consequences should th eir m ission fail.18 The A m erican representative rem arked in his cable th at “we cannot continue to give King b ru sh off indefinitely” and recom m ended th at the U nited States agree to tra in 10,000 m obile airborne Saudi troops in ex­ change for a long-term agreem ent on the D hahran A ir facility to replace the one due to expire in 195L19 This proposal becam e the subject o f extensive discussion in W ashington. In the m eantim e relations betw een Ibn Saud and the B ritish deteriorated further. At the end of 1949 Ibn Saud reopened w ith O m an and Abu Dhabi the long-dorm ant dispute over the B uraim i oasis. The prospects of oil there had som ething to do w ith the move, but it w as also a signal from Ibn Saud to B ritain th at his strategic understanding w ith them was a two-way street, and that if they did not restrain the H ashem ites he w as exem pt from the obligation to restrain

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him self. Early in 1950 the B ritish reacted by announcing plans to create a “Persian Gulf Frontier Force," later know n as the T rucial Om an Levies.20 By April 1950 W ashington had crystallized a set of specific proposals in response to Ibn Saud’s requests. These w ere conveyed to the king by A ssistant Secretary of State George McGhee during a m eeting in Riyadh on April 10 and w ere sum m arized in a m em orandum subm itted to the president the following m onth. The m em orandum recapitulates nicely both Ibn Saud’s views and the A m erican position at th at point. According to McGhee, the king dwelt at length on his concern about “possible aggression from the H ashem ite Kingdom s of Jordan and Iraq, w ith whom the United Kingdom has treaty relations.” He expressed his need for m ilitary forces to protect his realm against H ashem ite attack, to assure internal security, and to secure a defense against R ussia. McGhee attem pted to allay the first of these fears by pointing out th at the B ritish w ere capable of restraining H ashem ite aggression and had assured the United States th at they would do so, if necessary; b u t the king said “he did not tru st the British," had refused a treaty of alliance they had offered him , and w ished to look to the United States, “to whose com panies he had given his oil concessions," for support. He w anted “to assure Saudi Ara­ bian security by concluding a m ilitary alliance w ith the United States" and by obtaining m ilitary assistance on a grant basis. He called attention to the D hahran a ir base as w ell as to A m erica’s interest in Saudi oil to show th at Saudi A rabia's security should be vital to both countries. McGhee replied th at the United States was fully aw are of the im por­ tance of m aintaining the security of Saudi A rabia and w anted to do w hat it could to assist. It could not consider concluding a treaty of alliance w ith Saudi Arabia "since it was contrary to o u r traditions,” but McGhee sug­ gested "certain o ther m eans which should achieve virtually the sam e end." These included (1) a treaty of friendship, com m erce, and navigation; (2) providing technicians as Saudi A rabia m ight desire u n d er the Point IV Program ; (3) loans by the E xport-Im port B ank, subject to approval by the bank; (4) a long-term D hahran airfield agreem ent, which w ould include o r follow (5) a program of m ilitary aid providing arm s on a cash-reim ­ bursable basis and a m ilitary m ission to help train Saudi A rabian forces.21 A m bassador Childs, who accom panied McGhee, subm itted a rep o rt on the conversation that differed from the m em orandum to the president in tw o particulars. According to Childs, McGhee followed his expression of A m erican concern for Saudi security w ith a statem ent th at the United States “w ill take m ost im m ediate action at any tim e th at the integrity and independence of Saudi Arabia is threatened." T hat w as a m uch stronger and m ore specific statem ent than any previous assurances. Childs also rep o rted th at McGhee explained A m erica’s reluctance to condude a m ili­ tary alliance by saying that the United States had already assum ed

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num erous com m itm ents and that “although o u r friendship is un­ bounded, o u r resources are not."22 A fter the April 1950 talks Ibn Saud finally reconciled him self to the fact th at he could not obtain an A m erican alliance. He accepted the package he w as offered b u t held back on the long-term agreem ent on the D hahran a ir base. On June 18,1951, he signed an agreem ent extending for five years the lease on the base, along w ith a m utual defense assistance agreem ent. As p a rt of the latter, the United States began to supply Saudi Arabia w ith m ilitary equipm ent, and an A m erican m ilitary m ission arrived to sta rt a training program for the Saudi arm ed forces. In addition to his efforts w ith B ritain and the United States, Ibn Saud sought to check the H ashem ites by cultivating friends and influence am ong Arab leaders. The form ation of the Arab League in 1945, partly as a result of B ritish exertions, had created an arena for inter-A rab politics, and Ibn Saud m aneuvered w ithin and outside it to check Hashem ite designs. In January 1946 he paid a state visit to Egypt to nourish a budding diplom atic alliance w ith its leaders, and one rep o rt has it that he w atered it w ith a handsom e secret retain er to King Faruq.23 He developed an equally flourishing relationship w ith Syria’s President Shukri alKuwatly until the latter was overthrow n in 1949, and w ith o ther leaders and personalities in Syria, Lebanon, and even Jordan and Iraq. These exertions proved to be of considerable value. They helped shield Ibn Saud against H ashem ite efforts to em barrass him by publicly advocating the cancellation of oil concessions to countries that supported the creation of a Jew ish state; and they helped him foil the m ovem ent for a union be­ tw een Syria and Iraq that developed a fte r the overthrow of Kuwatly. However, the exertions did not prevent King Abdallah from annexing the Arab p a rt of Palestine, which his arm y had occupied and defended in the 1948 war, and from thus becom ing the protector of Jerusalem ’s A1 Aqsa m osque and the Dome of the Rock, a fte r M ecca and M adina the holiest places of Islam . The Palestine w ar also showed the w eakness of Ibn Saud’s security position vis-a-vis the H ashem ites in another way. King Abdallah’s Arab Legion was the only Arab force th at w as able to hold on to its initial conquests a fte r the Israelis passed to the counteroffensive, in contrast to the Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese forces and the Palestine Liberation Army. The Iraqis, although they did not exactly cover them selves w ith glory, at least w ere able to field and m aintain an arm y of up to ten thousand m en in Palestine by the end of the war. In contrast, Saudi Arabia was able to contribute to the w ar only a sm all battalion of two com panies that fought under Egyptian com m and.24M em bers of th at unit had been recruited solely from Najdi tribes; the H ijazis and others had been excluded because th eir loyalty w as suspect.25A fter the war, p articu­

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larly a fte r the conclusion of the 1951 m utual defense assistance agree­ m ent w ith the United States, Ibn Saud began to acquire som e m odem arm s and devoted large am ounts of revenue to building his arm ed forces. These efforts, however, w ere very slow to m ature, and in any case the H ashem ites im proved th eir forces even m ore under th eir long-standing treaty arrangem ents w ith B ritain, on top of the h ead start they already had on Ibn Saud.

Defense Establishment and Strategy The arrival of the Am erican m ilitary advisory group and training m ission m arked Ibn Saud's second m ajor attem pt to develop his arm ed forces a fte r W orld W ar II. The first effort, begun six years before w ith the help of a B ritish m ilitary m ission, had failed alm ost com pletely before it was form ally term inated. The reasons for the fiasco included insufficient allocations of funds for equipm ent needed, the "disappearance" of m ost of the allocations that w ere m ade, restrictions on the m ovem ent of the training m ission personnel and on th eir contact w ith Saudi troops, lack of adequate officer m aterial, and the arbitrary granting of com m issions to the king's relatives and friends.26 Typically, construction of a large arm y base designed to include a sm all-arm s and am m unitions factory, w are­ houses, training facilities, and living qu arters was begun at K harj, south­ east of Riyadh, in 1950 b ut was suspended halfway to com pletion because of official bungling.27 The effect of the entire B ritish effort w as so sm all th at officers w ith the A m erican m ission did not know the num ber of existing Saudi troops even though they had the findings of a nine-m onthlong survey of the Saudi defense establishm ent and needs, undertaken before th eir arrival. A m erican officers estim ated the num ber of regular Saudi troops in 1953 at betw een 7,500 and 10,000. W ith the royal bodyguard, param ilitary police, and bedouin levies included, the num ber w ould be m ore than doubled.28 The A m erican m ission's program , based on the survey, envis­ aged the creation of an arm y of three to five regim ental com bat team s w ith appropriate artillery, engineer, signal, and other technical units over a period of three years.29 As in the earlier B ritish program , these troops w ere to be specially equipped for d esert w arfare; but according to the A m erican plan they w ere also to be endowed w ith a substantial elem ent of a ir m obility to perm it rapid deploym ent to any p a rt of the vast country. In addition to a ir tran sp o rt, the Saudi arm ed forces w ere to acquire an a ir com bat com ponent. This had been an obsession w ith Ibn Saud ever since the RAF had annihilated a p arty of two thousand Ikhw an a fte r they had raided in Transjordan in 1922. In 1923 he had acquired a few surplus DH-9 light bom bers from the B ritish and had hired foreigners to fly and

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m aintain them . In 1931 he had bought four ex-RAF W apitis and secured a few seconded RAF personnel to operate them under a tw o-year contract. W hen the B ritish left, other foreign personnel w ere hired and a sta rt w as m ade on the construction of a new airfield at Jidda. W ork w as in ter­ ru p ted repeatedly by lack of funds until 1937, w hen the Italian govern­ m ent took over and com pleted it as a gesture of goodwill. For the next th irteen years m ilitary aviation stagnated until the B ritish m ilitary m is­ sion w as asked to revive it. A handful of de H avilland Tiger M oth prim ary train ers was provided from RAF surplus stock, b u t the m ission was soon w ithdraw n and gave way to the A m erican m ission.30 By the tim e of Ibn Saud’s death in Novem ber 1953, six troop tran sp o rts and tw enty arm able train ers had been provided under the A m erican program — six Douglas C-47 tran sp o rts and ten Temco TE-1A B uckaroo trainers in 1952, and ten NA T-6 Texan train ers in 1952 - 53. In addition, tw o Convair C-131Ds w ere provided for royal use in 1952.31 B ecause of the im portance Ibn Saud attached to aviation and because the U.S. Air Force w as already present at the D hahran airfield, the m ilitary advisory group and the training m is­ sion w ere headed by a U.S. Air R>rce brigadier general.

Defense and Security Allocations A close and system atic study of budgetary d ata provides a parallel approach to the study of Saudi defense and security th at can highlight, check, o r supplem ent key points presented in the historical analysis of defense and foreign policy and in the review of the inform ation on the m ilitary establishm ent. B udgetary d ata for the period 1932-1953 are scarce and rudim entary, reflecting the prim itive condition of the Saudi realm a t the tim e. Only three budgets of any so rt are available for the latter p a rt of th at period, covering fiscal 1948,1952, and 1953. (The Saudi fiscal year is based on the H ijra, o r lunar, year and ru n s from 1 Rajab through 30 Jum ada H The table at the beginning of the book provides conversions to the G regorian calendar for the years 1960-1980.) Moreover, in principle as well as in practice, Ibn Saud regarded the entire revenue of his country as his own personal w ealth and disposed of it accordingly, w ithout having to account to anyone and w ithout even self-im posed constraints. Still, although the d ata for the period may be irrelevant as an indication of actual perform ­ ance, they can shed considerable light on Ibn Saud's perceptions and intentions at the tim e, as well as on the realm 's general statu s in term s of defense and security. Table 1 presents the relevant inform ation culled from the three available budgets. The following points em erge from o r are reflected in the table.

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

Table L Revenues and defense and security allocations, fiscal 1948,1952, and 1953 (million SR)a

Revenues and allocations Total revenue Oil revenue Total defense and security allocations % of total revenueb Specific defense and security allocationsc 1. Ministry of Defense 2. Aviation 3. Royal Guard 4. Grants to tribes 5. Riyadh and its dependencies 6. Cash and kind annuities 7. Regions and principalities 8. Public Security Department 9. Ministry of Interior 10. Coast Guard 11. Emergency expenditures 12. Unanticipated expenditures 13. Kharj factory and materials

1947-48

1951-52

1952-53

215 141 91 42

490 341 157 32

758 372 400 53

64 4 — 11 — — 4 6 — 1 — —

88 12 — 34 — — 10 12 — 2 — —

61 10d 7 — 152 11 — — 63 2 2 5 87

Source: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Statistical Yearbook, 1965. a. Rounded to nearest million. b. Rounded to nearest percentage. c. Items 1-13 are official Saudi budget categories. d. Recategorized as "Kingdom's airports."

1. In general, allocations to defense and security represent a very high percentage of revenues, reflecting the preem inence of the ru le r’s con­ cern w ith the problem . W ith the very large increase in revenues betw een 1947-48 and 1951-52, the percentage allotted to defense shrank, al­ though the absolute am ounts increased substantially; b u t in the following fiscal year the percentage caught up despite a continuing increase in revenues. 2. The table reflects generally the stru ctu re of the defense and security concept previously described: its heavy concentration on internal secu­ rity, its central concern w ith deterrin g and appeasing trib es and sections, and the incipient effort a t institutionalization. 3. Although a M inistry of D efense had been created in 1944, its function in 1947 w as not confined to handling a regular defense establishm ent. The 1952- 53 budget suggests th at the allocation for the trib a l levies around Riyadh and in the Najd localities (item 5) had previously been

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included in the allocations to M inistry of Defense and w as separated th at year; it w as alternately ieincluded and separated again in subsequent budgets. The allocation for the Royal G uard had apparently also been previously included under M inistry of Defense but w as perm anently separated that year. Item 6 in the 1952-53 budget seem s to represent the portion of grants to non-Najd trib es th at had previously been included un d er the item “grants to trib es” (item 4). 4. The specific allocation to “aviation" (later included in the larger category “M inistry of D efense and Aviation") reflects Ibn Saud’s special interest in the subject because of p ast experience and the im portance of aviation in the absence of o th er rapid m eans of com m unication. 5. A M inistry o f In terio r (headed by E m ir Abdallah al-Eaisal) cam e into being w ith the 1952-53 budget, taking over the previous Public Security D epartm ent, and evidently also the allocations to “regions and princi­ palities,” reflecting an incipient effort to institutionalize the handling of certain aspects of internal security. 6. The allocations for “em ergency expenditures" and “unanticipated expenditures" (item s 11 and 12) reflect a continuing tendency tow ard the proliferation of discretionary budget item s. 7. Item 13 represents an attem pt to resum e the K haij project (m ilitary base and factories) begun and dropped before; it w as dropped again before long.

Conclusions A fter the creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the central security concern of its founder and first ru le r w as the preservation of the King­ dom ’s very existence. The th reats to the existence of the Kingdom sprang from a com bina­ tion of internal fragility and the hostility of the H ashem ite ru lers of Iraq and Transjordan (Jordan), who had been dispossessed by Ibn Saud of th eir Hijaz patrim ony. By a shrew d strategy and policy, Ibn Saud w as able to enlist the B ritish to contain the H ashem ite th reat during the lean years before oil revenues began to flow, w hen the internal situation was precarious. W hen the B ritish becam e less able o r w illing to continue in th at role, a t least in Ibn Saud’s eyes, he tried to use his newly acquired oil w ealth to obtain a security guarantee from the U nited States, gain diplom atic allies and friends am ong Arab leaders opposed to the H ashem ites, and build up arm ed forces and instrum ents of security for purposes of internal and external deterrence. By the end of his reign Ibn Saud had succeeded in gaining a security assurance from the United States b u t not the m ilitary alliance he sought.

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The Origins of Saudi Arabia

He had m anaged to obstruct the H ashem ites’ m oves in the Arab arena b u t not to stop them from scoring som e real gains, notably in Palestine. He had perhaps enhanced his hold on the country by the use of traditional m eans, but he had m ade little headway in building up a suitable m ilitary d eterren t of his own. On balance, therefore, the original threatening com bination to the Kingdom ’s existence rem ained re a l the H ashem ites probably did not have the m ilitary capability to invade and occupy Saudi A rabia o r large p a rts of it; b u t they did have the m eans to encroach upon its borders and, w ith th eir m odern weapons, to defeat Ibn Saud’s forces in a m ajor encounter. This could suffice to unleash internal forces hostile to the H ouse of S aud— Hijazis, Sham m aris, and o th ers— which w ould in tu rn undo the delicate balance on which it rested and bring about its destruction.

PART TWO

The Reign of Saud 1953-1964

The form al reign of King Saud w itnessed som e critical th reats to the survival of the Kingdom . These th reats w ere the result of an interplay betw een external developm ents and internal stru ctu ral changes stem ­ m ing m ainly from the dem ise of Ibn Saud as the undisputed m aster of the realm he had created. The way in which these th reats w ere dealt w ith had a form ative influence on subsequent Saudi positions and behavior in the sphere of defense and security. The problem began w ith two interrelated external developm ents that underm ined key elem ents of Ibn Saud's basic strategy. One was the adop­ tion by the United States and B ritain of m ajor new initiatives regarding the M iddle East; the o ther w as the polarization of the Arab countries in reaction to these initiatives along a neutralist versus pro-W estern axis, w hich stim ulated a conflict betw een rival versions of pan-A rabism . Ibn Saud had been able to cultivate the A m erican connection and seek to preserve his understanding w ith B ritain and at the sam e tim e cooperate w ith Egypt in seeking to check the H ashem ites. However, the em ergence of Egypt under N asser as the cham pion of neutralism and anti-im perialism m ade the pu rsu it of that strategy problem atic by injecting an elem ent of contradiction betw een cooperation w ith both Egypt and the W est. The problem w as fu rth e r com plicated by tw o additional factors: (1) N asser's position becam e ever m ore radical, w ith the result th at the Saudis found it increasingly difficult to w ithstand the contradiction on dom estic as well as external grounds; and (2) w ithin Saudi A rabia itself, u n rest am ong

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The Reign of Saud

newly m obilized social sectors and rivalries am ong m em bers of the ru l­ ing fam ily im pinged on w hatever courses w ere pursued. The actual courses pursued during Saud's form al reign fell into two broad stages: from 1953 to early 1958 the Saudis tried to m uddle through the contradiction; from early 1958 to 1964 and beyond, they confronted the contradiction and m ade clear policy decisions. Each of these stages, in tu rn , had tw o phases. Until about the end of 1956 the Saudis stressed th eir anti-H ashem ite alliance w ith Egypt m uch m ore than their connections w ith the W est; from then until 1958 they sharply reversed th eir priorities. Early in the second stage the Saudis alm ost com pletely suppressed th eir W estern connections in an attem pt to appease Egypt; but in 1962 they unequivocally strove to revive and cultivate th eir W estern connections in a context of total confrontation w ith Egypt. All these shifts w ere accom panied by substantial, som etim es drastic, changes in the allocation of resources to the various instrum ents of defense and security. The developm ents of the period may be outlined as follows. W ith the accession of King Saud, there was a resurgence of the H ashem ite th reat in m ore intense form as Iraq responded to W estern initiatives by m aking its way during 1955 into w hat cam e to be know n as the Baghdad Pact, and by seeking to draw Syria and Jordan along w ith it. In response, King Saud developed the Egyptian connection begun by his father into a full-fledged m ilitary and political alliance. The alliance w as effective in containing Iraq and putting it on the defensive, although it did not prevent that country from joining the pact. But for Saudi Arabia, the association w ith an ever m ore radical Egyptian leadership entailed a com plete sacrifice of the B ritish connection, a straining of the A m erican connection, and the adoption of positions and actions that had detrim en­ tal effects on internal security and stability. The latter effects becam e m ore m anifest as N asser em erged in 19561959 as the dom inant influence in the Arab world, and as the United States took the lead in trying to halt him because of his association w ith the Soviets. King Saud responded in 1957-1958 by attem pting sim ulta­ neously to cooperate w ith the United States, to effect a rapprochem ent w ith the H ashem ites to counterbalance Nasser, to continue overtly to cooperate w ith him , and covertly to seek to destroy him . His endeavor backfired and exposed Saudi Arabia to an unequal confrontation w ith N asser at the peak of his power. In M arch 1958 the crisis brought to a head a long-sim m ering conflict w ithin the royal fam ily over distribution of power, which resulted in a tran sfer of all effective pow er from King Saud to Crown Prince Faisal and the latter's adoption of a new defense concept and strategy. Faisal, like Saud, recognized th at N asser's Arab nationalist drive rep ­

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resented a critical th reat to the Saudi realm and regim e. However, believ­ ing that open resistance to it was hopeless, he adopted a strategy based on appeasing N asser while reinforcing the country internally. He pro­ claim ed form ally a policy of neutrality and sym pathy w ith Arab national­ ism and accordingly suppressed the A m erican (and Hashem ite) connec­ tions alm ost entirely. He even put in abeyance the buildup of Saudi Arabia's arm ed forces, which depended on the continued supply of Amer­ ican arm s, and instead em phasized the developm ent of internal security forces. At the sam e tim e he endeavored to strengthen the country in ter­ nally through institutional reform s and b etter m anagem ent of its fi­ nances. Faisal's strategy saw Saudi Arabia through a critical period, but at the end of 1960 Saud rem oved him and took over w ith the help of a group of "liberal princes." For a while he attem pted to take Faisal's strategy even fu rth e r internally and externally; but then he relented and rid him self of the liberal princes on Septem ber 11,1961. Saud's backtracking, which was followed less than three w eeks later (on Septem ber 28) by Syria's seces­ sion from the United Arab Republic, contributed to the excuses o r rea­ sons that led N asser to proclaim openly a strategy aim ed at the overthrow of all "feudal-reactionary" regim es, including, in the first place, Saudi Arabia's. The Septem ber 1962 m ilitary coup in Yemen and the arrival of an Egyptian expeditionary force to support it converted N asser's previous m edia w ar against the Saudi regim e into an im m ediate, real, m ortal threat. It also resulted in Faisal's retu rn to pow er and ushered in a long period of confrontation betw een the tw o countries. The strategy openly adopted by the Saudis against Egypt was rem iniscent of the strategy that Ibn Saud had discreetly followed in dealing w ith the Hashem ites. It consisted in trying to revive and develop the A m erican and B ritish con­ nections; in seeking an alliance w ith Egypt's opponents in the Arab and M uslim worlds, starting w ith the surviving H ashem ite state of Jordan; and in building up the arm ed forces of the country while endeavoring to strengthen the regim e internally. Partly because of persisting pow er struggles at the top and internal unrest, the strategy did not fall entirely into place until the deposition of Saud and the accession of Faisal. Throughout the reign of King Saud m oney was far m ore plentiful than in the best years of Ibn Saud; revenues from oil exports ranged betw een $236 and $366 m illion. However, the governm ent experienced m om ents of financial difficulty as a result of m isuse of funds and im provision in the face of fluctuations in the rate of increase of oil revenue.

4 Tribulations under the First Successor

Muddling Through, 1953-1958 Alliance with Nasser Saud started his reign on a note of continuity. He intended to follow his father's strategy of trying to check the Hashemites diplomatically through inform al understandings (for example, with Egypt and Syria) while building up a deterrent force for internal and external purposes. But alm ost immediately he m et with complications. One of the most serious of these cam e as a consequence of an American initiative. In the spring of 1953 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles toured the Middle East capitals, including Riyadh, to explore the possibility of creating a regional alliance as p a rt of his global defense scheme vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. The T rum an adm inistration had broached such projects before but had encountered objections from Egypt, which wanted to end the British occupation of the Suez Canal bases before considering any new alliance, and m ore general Arab objections to including Israel in any regional scheme. The Saudis had looked rather favorably on an all-Arab alliance with the United States and Britain jointly, which prom ised a decisive containm ent of the Hashemites, but they had given way in the face of Egypt's decisive opposition to this idea. Dulles discovered that the situation had not changed essentially since the previous attem pt to foige a pro-W estern alliance in the region, in 1951. Unlike his predecessors, however, he sought to circumvent Egyptian and other Arab objections by proposing that an alliance begin with the mostly non-Arab countries of the "northern tier" of the Middle East, which had shown greater sensitiv­

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ity to the Soviet danger, and be augm ented later by other countries when­ ever they felt ready to join. The proposal was welcomed by the Iraqi regime and eagerly espoused by the British. The form er saw it as an opportunity for aggrandizem ent with W estern support; the British saw it as a m eans to replace their expiring treaty with Iraq with a m ore acceptable, multilateral alliance. The Iraqi government sought to secure the assent of the m em bers of the Arab League to its intent to join, but when it failed, it nevertheless signed an alliance with Turkey in February 1955. This treaty paved the way for the conclusion in November of the Baghdad Pact, which included Iran, Pakistan, and Britain in addition to Turkey and Iraq. The United States, although it had originated the idea and helped promote it, among other things by granting Iraq economic and m ilitary assistance, preferred to hold back for various reasons, including regard for Egyptian and Israeli opposition. As far as the Saudis were concerned, the fact that the United States stayed out probably m ade the pact more rather than less obnoxious, for that m eant they could not count on Washington to restrain the Hashemites from within as Britain had done in the past. At any rate, King Saud and his advisers saw in Iraq's participation a resurgence in a m ost viru­ lent form of the old Hashemite threat. They had visions of Iraq with W estern help wooing Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon into the alliance, realiz­ ing its scheme of the Fertile Crescent, and then turning on them. At the very least, they saw Iraq using its access to the best equipm ent in the W estern arsenals to build up its m ilitary power and then using it inde­ pendently in direct or indirect ways to recover the Hijaz and avenge the defeat inflicted on its ruling family by Ibn Saud. The reaction of Saud and his advisers was accordingly far-reaching. While the pact was still being discussed, Saud m ade comm on cause with Egypt in trying to dissuade Iraq from going ahead with it. In the process he espoused the them es of neutralism and Arab nationalism that Egypt was using in the joint struggle, even though these were highly charged concepts that could underm ine Saudi rule domestically and endanger Saudi-American ties. After Iraq signed the alliance with T ur­ key, Saud concluded a m utual defense treaty with Egypt in October 1955 and cooperated with Nasser in efforts to isolate Iraq and to prevent Syria and Jordan from joining the pact. In that endeavor he did not hesitate to em ulate the tactics used by revolutionary Egypt of appealing to the pub­ lics of Iraq, Syria, and Jordan over the heads of their governments and inciting them to disobedience and rebellion. At the same time he pursued the more congenial m ethods of discreetly trying to buy off politicians and supporting opposition groups in those countries. Once Saud com m itted him self to following Egypt's line, he felt com­ pelled to support actions by its leader that went far beyond the im m ediate

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issue of Iraq. Thus, when Nasser announced in Septem ber 1955 the con­ clusion of an arm s deal with the Soviet Union, which brought the latter into the Arab region for the first time, Saud supported the move and went on to sign the m ilitary alliance with Egypt the next month. In December 1955 two Saudi princes visited Prague, allegedly to discuss an arm s deal, and Polish and Chinese trade delegations subsequently traveled to Saudi Arabia.1 In July 1956 Saud also supported Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, which was avowedly done in retaliation against the United States for withdrawing a promise to help Egypt build a high dam at Aswan. Three m onths later, when Britain and R anee responded to the nationalization of the canal by invading Egypt in the wake of an Israeli invasion of Sinai, Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with the two European powers and declared an em bargo on oil shipments to them. The break with Britain m aiked the culm ination of a deterioration in Saudi-British relations that had been going on for some time. Ibn Saud himself had raised the issue of Buraim i before his death but had not pressed it forcefully. His intent was m ore to recall the British to a faithful pursuit of the joint understanding concerning the Hashemites and the Gulf principalities than to contest the issue itself. Saud, on the other hand, resenting Britain's role in promoting what becam e the Baghdad Pact and acting on the them es he had espoused as p a rt of his cooperation with Nasser, turned the issue into a contest betw een Saudi "national rights" and British "imperialism" and extended the hostility to other fronts as well. He supported the im am of Yemen's claim to the British colony of Aden and incited and assisted a tribal revolt in Oman, headed by its imam, against the British-backed sultan, in the nam e of Arab national­ ism. In December 1955 and January 1956 Saud joined forces with Egypt in inciting, with Arab nationalist propaganda and Saudi gold, massive riots and rebellion in Jordan to compel its government to reverse its intention to join the Baghdad Pact and force it to break away from Britain. The practical results of Saud's anti-British cam paign were mixed. In the case of Buraimi, the British-officered troops of Oman and Abu Dhabi eventually occupied the oasis in October 1955 and expelled the Saudi police units that had held it. In Oman the sultan's forces, also British led, captured the rebel stronghold of Nizwa in December 1955 and won at least that round of a contest that was to flare up again. In the case of Jordan, however, the Saudis and Egyptians had their way, keeping it out of the Baghdad Pact after causing the downfall of several governments within a few weeks and shaking King Hussein's throne. The net effect of all this, even before the final break in relations, was to term inate, indeed to reverse, the historic Saudi-British understanding, and to that extent to remove one of the pillars of Saudi security, leaving the Kingdom more dependent on the supports that rem ained. The line pursued by Saud in fighting the Baghdad Pact also threatened

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The Reign of Saud

to damage the American connection, which his hither had carefully n urtured and which was paying handsom e dividends in security and m ilitary assistance as well as in oil development. As p a rt of the national­ ist posture that he assum ed, Saud concluded in February 1954 an agree­ m ent with Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate, to create a tanker fleet to transport Saudi oil and clashed on this score with Aramco, which claimed infringem ent of its concessionary rights.2 In August of the sam e year Saud rejected the American Point IV allotm ent in a demon­ strative way and ordered the Point IV aid mission, which had been active for three years, to leave the country. The reason given was that the allotm ent was insultingly sm all com pared with that awarded to Israel; but American assistance to Iraq was probably as m uch of a factor. After concluding the m utual defense treaty with Egypt in October 1955, Saud invited an Egyptian m ilitary mission to help organize and train the Saudi forces alongside the American mission. The arrangem ent entailed practical inconveniences and reflected a certain am ount of m istrust of the American personnel. It also provided the Egyptians with opportuni­ ties to indoctrinate the trainees with nationalist notions that were ulti­ mately inimical to the Saudi political system. Saudi Arabia’s participation with Egypt in the cam paign against the Baghdad Pact and in the success­ ful efforts to destabilize the pro-pact government of Jordan and to pres­ sure fence-sitting Syria to stay out added fu rth e r to the strain. Finally, in June 1956, the agreem ent on the lease of the Dhahran air base expired and the Saudis decided to renew it for one m ore year only, pending renewed negotiations. The fact that they did not term inate the lease indicated their ultim ate appreciation of the contribution of the American m ilitary pres­ ence at the base to their security; but the fact that they dared not at this point renew the lease for m ore than one year (and referred to it as involving the lease of an airport) was symptomatic of the contradiction in which they had become embroiled by opportunistically espousing Nasser’s nationalist, neutralist, anti-imperialist line. The contradiction m anifested itself also in disturbing developments inside Saudi Arabia. Even as he espoused the nationalist them es in his fight against Iraq, Saud tried to prom ote traditionalism at hom e as an antidote, with such m easures as barring Saudi pupils from going to foreign schools and extending the reach and pow er of the religious police. Trouble ensued on both scores. For instance, the Iraqi am bassador to Saudi Arabia, who was a keen and cautious observer, reported toward the end of Septem ber 1955 that some tim e earlier the al-Rith tribe in north­ west Jizan had rebelled and entrenched itself in Jabal Q aha because the Saudi authorities had suddenly interfered with its custom s (presumably trying to enforce religious rules). The government sent planes and tribal forces but failed to subdue the rebels and finally had to come to term s with their chief, Shaikh Mudawi ibn Shahira.3

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The sam e observer wrote that in the early sum m er of that year the authorities stam ped out with great cruelty what appeared to be a "free officers' movement" modeled on the Egyptian prototype that overthrew King Earuq's regime in 1952. The movement was led by a certain Abd al-Rahman al-Shamrawi and included at least twelve officers.4 An intelli­ gence report by the State Departm ent's NEA research and intelligence division on January 18, 1956, stated as a "well established" fact that a group of senior arm y officers had plotted in April and May 1955 to assas­ sinate Prim e M inister Faisal and other m inisters and to force the abdica­ tion of the king if not to assassinate him as well. The conspirators had intended to establish a "revolutionary com m and council," as in Egypt. These officers were executed and a purge of arm y officers was carried out.5 Other reports from the sam e period spoke of the m arshaling and deployment of tribal forces at strategic points in the country and of sudden shifts and disappearances of Saudi personnel.6 Other troubles were beyond the government's capacity to conceal. In May 1956, on the occasion of a visit by King Saud to the Aramco facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia, at a time when the lease on Dhahran air base was about to expire and rum ors were circulating about its renewal, thousands of workers held a demonstration in which they carried ban­ ners condemning "imperialism" and dem anded elected trade unions. The demonstration was suppressed with violence, but on June 17 a strike broke out that lasted for several weeks despite a government decree on June 16 that banned all strikes and political demonstrations on pain of jail or deportation. On Septem ber 23, 1956, Nasser landed in D hahran to confer with King Saud and Syria's President Kuwatly. Although the visit had not been announced in advance, Nasser was m et by tum ultuous popular demonstrations hailing him as the savior of the Arab world; this welcome was repeated on an unprecedented scale when he arrived in Riyadh. A keen observer inside King Saud's court reported that in the wake of that visit, the king's advisers reversed themselves and, instead of supporting the project of a Syrian-Egyptian-Saudi federation that Nasser had come to discuss, determ ined to destroy him.7 In November 1956, following the British-Firench-Israeli attack on Egypt, violent demonstrations broke out in Bahrain and Kuwait, and Kuwaiti oil fields were sabotaged. Saud avoided sim ilar disturbances by decreeing "general mobilization," breaking off diplomatic relations with the British and French, and imposing an embargo on oil shipments to them.

Ambivalence toward Nasserism By the time the Suez W ar was over, Saud and his advisers were seriously reconsidering the alliance with Egypt. On the one hand, the Hashemite threat, which had been the raison d'etre of the alliance, seem ed to have

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The Reign of Saud

abated; Iraq was contained and Jordan was altogether destabilized. On the other hand, Nasser had em erged as an increasingly popular Arab hero, and the association of the Saudi government with him appeared to give license and legitimacy to expressions of identification with him am ong the peoples of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Nasser seem ed to have em barked on an ever m ore extreme revolutionary course and to have developed the habit of taking drastic decisions without consulting his ostensible allies and without regard to the effect of his decisions on them. The nationalization of the Suez Canal was a case in point. It exposed Egypt’s allies to m ilitary attack by strong powers; it stirred up popular nationalist hostility against the oil companies, the W estern countries to which they belonged, and the Arab governments that had granted them the concessions, thus forcing the latter to take decisions about their only resource without regard to cost and benefit. It specifically resulted in the blockage of the Suez Canal oil transit route and led to a considerable loss of revenue for Saudi Arabia.* After he had w rested political victory from the jaws of m ilitary defeat in the Suez War, Nasser’s appeal to the Arab m asses becam e greater than ever, and all restraints on whatever new initiatives he chose to take seem ed to have collapsed. What course he would choose next was not quite clear, but his increased cooperation with the Soviets, who had spoken of sending "volunteers" to Egypt and had offered to replenish its arsenal, destroyed during the war, did not bode well. Reconsideration of the situation led Saud in 1957 to try to revitalize the American connection as a security asset against Nasser, to reverse his relationship with the Hashemite monarchs from one of hostility to one of cooperation for the sam e reason, and at the sam e tim e to handle his relations with Nasser so as not to incur his open hostility. For a while circum stances helped Saud m anage this seemingly impossible feat; but as the year wore on, the pretense behind this diplomatic and strategic reversal wore off, and Saud and Nasser cam e to a m ortal confrontation. On January 30,1957, Saud began a state visit to the United States during which the American government sought to enlist his support for its new Middle East policy, known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. The doctrine was prom pted by fear of a Soviet move to fill the “vacuum" created by the collapse of British and Irench influence in the Middle East in the wake of the Suez fiasco. Formally, it proclaim ed the determ ination of the United States to use force to support any Middle East country seeking assistance against open aggression by any country under the control of "interna­ tional comm unism .” In fact the doctrine was m eant to cover a policy of trying to check and roll back Nasser's Soviet-supported nationalist, anti­ im perialist drive, and the Americans invited Saud to W ashington with the aim of building him up as a counterpoise to Nasser in the Arab woiid.9

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Saud gave his support to the doctrine and prom ised to help prom ote it in the Arab world. He also agreed to a five-year renewal of the lease on the US. Air Force base at Dhahran. In exchange he obtained a com m itm ent of economic and m ilitary assistance, which was formalized in specific agreements in April 1957, for additional supplies of arm s and a program to create a small Saudi navy.10Saud felt able to conclude that deal without risking Nasser's open hostility; at that time Arab nationalist opinion was still favorable to the United States because the latter's strong opposition had contributed decisively to the failure of the British-Irench-Israeli compaign against Egypt. On his way hom e Saud stopped in Egypt to brief Nasser about his American visit and to explain his support of Washing­ ton's anti-Communist objective. While in the United States, King Saud took another action, which he m ust have had more difficulty explaining to Nasser. Iraq's Crown Prince Abdul Ilah, the son of the last Hashemite king of the Hijaz (whom the Saudis had dispossessed) and the m an they believed to be the most determ ined proponent of Hashemite irredentism in Syria as well as in Saudi Arabia, happened to be in W ashington at the sam e time. Saud m et with the crown prince, and the two agreed to bury the hatchet and cooperate in meeting the real danger to their realm s and thrones, which lay in the revolutionary ideology prom oted by Nasser.11Although both the Iraqi and Saudi governments had previously engaged in double-talk and double-dealing with each other,12the meeting betw een these two m en at that particular place and under the particular circum stances prevailing at the time established at least a presum ption of earnestness to be tested by their respective future behavior. The record of that behavior was to show that the meeting was of substantial consequence. In January 1957, ten days before leaving on his visit to the United States, Saud had given active support to the pro-Nasser nationalist government of Jordan. He had specifically supported its initiative to term inate Jor­ dan's treaty with Britain by agreeing to share with Egypt and Syria in replacing the subsidy of about $25 million a year that Britain had given Jordan under the treaty.13 In April King Hussein dism issed the proNasser government and precipitated a crisis that lasted several weeks, during which he received discreet American backing as well as open support under the term s of the Eisenhower Doctrine. King Saud backed King Hussein squarely and even placed at his disposal the Saudi troops that had been in Jordan since the Suez War, on the grounds that he had been the victim of an attem pted m ilitary coup. Nasser did not react publicly against Saud, perhaps because he knew that Saud's excuse was not without foundation. According to John Bagot Glubb, all fourteen officers arrested during the crisis had been in the pay of the Egyptian secret services.14 But on April 21,1957, the Riyadh police uncovered a plot

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The Reign of Saud

to assassinate Saud by blowing up his Nasiriya palace; the principal culprits were five Palestinians who had m ade their way from Egypt.15 The Saudi m edia did not dwell on the possible Egyptian connection, presumably because Saud was not prepared to draw the consequences publicly. Nasser probably acted on sim ilar reasoning when, after a state visit by Saud to Baghdad in May, he declared on July 1, 1957, that his personal relations with King Saud were good and that the latter's policy was definitely "Arab."16 The next test of Saud's post-Suez policy cam e not long thereafter. In August 1957 an American-sponsored plot to overthrow the Syrian regime was uncovered and the Syrian government ordered the expulsion of the American m ilitary attache in Damascus along with two other diplomats. The incident triggered a "crisis" that lasted several m onths before peter­ ing out, in the course of which the United States invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine on behalf of Syria's neighbors, deployed the Sixth Fleet in the eastern M editerranean, and called upon the Syrian people to rise against their government. Turkey and Iraq m assed troops along Syria's borders; the Soviet Union threatened Turkey when it persisted after Iraq had backed away; while the United States countered the Soviet threats, and the Egyptians sent a battalion of troops to help defend Syria against Turkey. Saud's position throughout the crisis was one of concern but nonparti­ sanship, unlike his behavior in the Jordanian crisis in April. W orried though he was about Syria's close alliance with Egypt and its increasing drift to the left, he did not want to see it fall under Iraqi domination either, notwithstanding his rapprochem ent with the latter. Early in the crisis he had told the United States privately that he believed the trouble in Syria was due to overambitious arm y officers rather than to Commu­ nists,17 with the implication that Washington's swift aid to Iraq and Tur­ key was unw arranted. Later he publicly offered to m ediate betw een Syria and Turkey and called on all sides to avoid interference in Syria's affairs. N asser was pleased by his position and showed his appreciation by send­ ing to Saudi Arabia another batch of his obsolete fighter planes, thus giving renewed expression to the m ilitary alliance betw een the two countries. After the phony crisis over Syria's Communist-inspired threat to its neighbors subsided, Saud resum ed and intensified his rapprochem ent with Iraq. A reflection of this trend was a state visit by Iraq's King Faisal to Riyadh at the beginning of December 1957, returning Saud's visit to Baghdad the previous May. Saud had very good grounds for closing ranks with Iraq; even as he feted the Iraqi m onarch and signed a series of economic and cultural agreements within him, Syrian delegations were following one another to Cairo in an endeavor to persuade Nasser to

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respond to a resolution adopted by the Syrian parliam ent in November 1957 calling for an Egyptian-Syrian union. A few weeks later, after the Syrians had m et all the term s he had set, Nasser agreed, and on February 1, 1958, he and President Kuwatly of Syria jointly proclaimed the union of the two countries, which becam e known as the United Arab Republic. Other Arab countries were invited to join. The proclamation of the union had an electrifying effect on all the Arab peoples, who saw in it the beginning of the realization of the Arab nationalist dream and looked to other Arab states to respond to the call to enlarge it. Iraq and Jordan responded by form ing their own federal union, the United Arab Kingdom, on February 14,1958. Yemen joined the United Arab Republic in a federative arrangem ent called the United Arab States. Lebanon began a slide toward civil w ar as its population becam e polarized betw een Muslims who favored union, and Christians and others who opposed it. In Saudi Arabia itself, pro-Nasser and Arab nationalist sentiments swelled among the urban public and the educated elite, many of whom foresaw an im m inent end of the monarchy.18In that charged climate, both the United Arab Kingdom and the United Arab Republic invited Saudi Arabia to join, but Saud asked for time to consider. It was clear to Saud that his country would lose its independence if it joined the UAR, would be threatened by the UAR if it joined its rival, and would be vulnerable and isolated if it did neither. Caught in that dilemma, he turned to conspiracy in search of a solution and displayed the feverishness and simpleminded­ ness of a desperate man. The Egyptian-Syrian agreem ent had called for a plebiscite to be held in both countries on February 21,1958, to ratify the union, to be followed by the proclamation of a provisional constitution that would establish the instrum ents of government of the new state. One of the conditions on which Nasser had successfully insisted was that all Syrian parties and political organizations be dissolved in order to make way for a single political organization called the National Union, as in Egypt. Saud sought to capitalize on the resentm ent of politicians and groups who would have to term inate their political careers, in order to foment a coup d'etat before the union becam e a reality. His quest for a leader for the coup led him to the head of the Syrian Deuxieme B ureau (security service), Colo­ nel Abdel Hamid Sarraj. The conditions set by Sarraj might have aroused the suspicions of a professional in the dirty-tricks business, but Saud apparently handled the m atter personally through an em issary and let himself be trapped into providing dam ning evidence against himself.19 On March 5, 1958, Sarraj revealed to a press conference that Saud had commissioned him to carry out a coup aim ed at foiling the union and to arrange for the assassination of President Nasser. He substantiated his

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The Reign of Sand

story by producing photostatic copies of a m em orandum issued on royal stationery and discussing particulars of the plot, three incriminating cables, and checks issued him by Saud to the am ount of 1.9 million pounds sterling, representing an advance on a total of more than 20 million pounds to be paid after completion of the job. Saudi Arabia formally denied the story; but even if die affair had been entirely fabri­ cated, its publication with the certain approval of Nasser could only m ean that Nasser had decided to go after Saud, if not after the entire Saudi regime. And, in a way, he did get Saud. While these external developments were taking place, a critical evolu­ tion was under way at the center of the Saudi political system. The key to that evolution was the demise of the founder of the Saudi realm and the hub of its political system. Saud's succession appeared to have occurred smoothly, tem porarily belying the experts and delighting the emerging band of interested partisans of the country. However, the facts that Saud had acceded to the throne not by virtue of dem onstrated achievement, as in the case of his father, but on the basis of seniority and presumed ability; that he had to demonstrate ability of a different kind from that underlying the principle of succession; and that, unlike his father, he was sur­ rounded by a multitude of brothers, uncles, sons, and nephews who deem ed themselves entitled to a share of power, altered fundam entally the political situation of the Kingdom. From the outset of Sauds reign, there developed a political struggle that, significantly, centered for the m ost p a rt on institutions and issues about which tradition provided little guidance. The struggle centered on the powers of the Council of Minis­ ters, decreed by Ibn Saud just before his death and beginning operation after Sauds accession; on the distribution of top positions in the modemtype adm inistration initiated by Ibn Saud; on control of the emerging regular arm ed forces and the refurbished tribal forces; and on the dis­ posal of the revenues of the state as they fluctuated even while increas­ ing. An outline of the complex political alignments and maneuvers during that period is essential for an understanding of later developments re­ garding Saudi defense and security. Even while Ibn Saud was alive, rivalries had begun to develop among his many sons as they cam e of age to take on whatever positions he chose to assign to them. By the late 1940s the rivalries had crystallized into two cliques or factions, one headed by Prince Saud, who was governor of Najd as well as crown prince, and one by Prince Faisal, who was viceroy of the Hijaz and titular foreign minister. A third, smaller, and at the time less well-defined clique headed by Prince Talal was beginning to jell inde­ pendently of the other two but was for some reason more hostile to Faisal than to Saud. Upon Saud's accession to the throne, an informal under­ standing was reached wherein Faisal was to be in charge of the Council of

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M inisters— first as deputy prim e m inister and after August 1954 as prim e m inister— while the king would ostensibly retain all the absolute pow er that his father had held. This diffuse arrangem ent, intended to promote harm ony through the sharing of power, becam e instead a prescription for a constant tug-ofw ar betw een the two and their respective supporters and clients. Faisal tried to establish regular "legislative," administrative, and financial pro­ cedures for their own m erit as well as to check the king’s power, but he was constantly frustrated by the king’s use of his royal prerogative to ignore o r circumvent these procedures. Of particular im portance in this respect was Faisal's failure to get the king to adopt and abide by a regular budget. Saud’s persistence in treating the revenues of the state as his own and the extravagant use he m ade of them naturally antagonized those in the power circle who felt they got less than their share of the bonanza and also stirred resentm ent of the system among segments of the public that were exposed to the nationalist winds blowing from the outside. Saud's behavior exhausted the treasury and ran the country into seri­ ous financial troubles the m oment revenues, which had been rising by leaps and bounds, diminished and leveled off in 1956 and 1957. In 1954 oil revenue was $236 million, up 39 percent over 1953. In 1955 it rose another 44 percent, to $340 million. In 1956 it fell 15 percent, to $290 million, and rem ained static for the next two years.20The results were a soaring public debt, inflation, the fall of the riyal to half its official value, denial of credit by Aramco and international banks, and suspension of public projects, all while num erous palaces were being built and the orgy of royal spending rem ained otherwise unabated. It was against this background of immedi­ ate financial strains and underlying political struggle that Saud at­ tem pted his ill-fated plot against Nasser. Within two days of revelation of the plot, Prince Faisal resigned his prim e m inistership and other positions and precipitated a crisis within the ruling establishment. In the meantime, Egypt’s Voice of the Arabs Radio, heard throughout the Middle East, had begun a cam paign calling for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy, and a Saudi National Liberation Iro n t was form ed in Cairo under Nasir al-Said, the leader of the 1956 oil workers’ strikes. Saud and his supporters tried to enlist other princes and the 'ulam a in an effort to persuade Faisal to relent at a tim e of great internal and external peril, but laisal and his supporters saw greater dangers in letting m atters drift along. They insisted on certain drastic conditions, and Saud, in despair, conceded. The king was to transfer to Faisal by decree all his statutory powers; form al governing procedures were to be instituted and consistently pursued; the king and his court were to refrain from any interference in the m anagem ent of the internal and external affairs of the state. Saud retained the title of king and issued

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the March 24 decree authorizing the change, but otherwise the transfer of pow er was as complete as could be.

Facing the Contradictions, 1958-1964 Appeasing Nasserism Faisal was well placed to w eather the storm raised by Saud’s plot and to deal with the underlying issue of Nasser and Arab nationalism, because he had been absent from the country for nine critical months starting in April 1957, when Saud's policy turned against Nasser. For m ost of that period Faisal was undergoing m edical treatm ent in the United States (Saudi Arabia watchers know that extended m edical trips abroad by key princes tend somehow to occur in the wake of flare-ups of royal family disputes in which those princes have been bested), but he had spent the entire m onth of January 1958 in Egypt, p a rt of it as Nasser's state guest, just weeks after his brother had entertained the king of Iraq in Riyadh. Faisal had observed from close quarters the last stages of the negotiations leading to the proclamation of the Egyptian-Syrian union, had discussed their progress with Nasser, and had perhaps even hinted that, in his view, Saudi Arabia should associate itself in some way with the emerging union.21 He certainly conveyed to N asser the impression that he believed Saudi Arabia could live with the union, and his first actions upon assum ­ ing power confirmed that impression. One of Faisal’s first acts was to order the withdrawal of Saudi troops from Jordan (which had been placed at Hussein’s disposal in the April 1957 crisis) and to change the policy of rapprochem ent with the Hashemites to one of neutrality. He also did nothing to correct the interpreta­ tion advanced by the m edia at the tim e that his accession to power represented a setback for the American anti-Nasser policy, and rather tended to confirm it by adopting a distant attitude toward the United States. This position provided a respite from external pressure that al­ lowed him to devote m ost of his energies to reorganizing the structure of pow er and government through a new statute for the Council of Minis­ ters and to reforming and rationalizing the country’s finances. But the respite was soon disrupted by another storm , which confronted Faisal with the necessity of m aking drastic decisions regarding the country’s basic security concept. On July 14, 1958, the Iraqi monarchy was overthrow n by a revolution led by Arab nationalist officers believed to be partisans of Nasser, and within days American m arines landed in Leba­ non and British paratroopers in Jordan to shore up the regim es of those countries against the Nasserist tide and to be in a position to intervene in Iraq if the opportunity arose.

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Faisal's im m ediate problem was what stand to take in the (ace of an apparent showdown betw een the United States and Nasserism whose outcom e was totally unpredictable. He dealt with that problem by playing for time till the dust settled, refraining from condemning the American and British interventions but at the sam e time scrupulously avoiding any hint of action that might be interpreted as condoning them .22 Beyond that, however, he confronted the basic problem of developing a new defense concept that would take into account three critical factors un­ derscored by the events surrounding the Iraqi revolution: the seemingly irresistible tide of Nasserism, the failure of the United States and Britain to stave off the collapse of an allied regime, and the added evidence of the unreliability of the regular arm ed forces as an instrum ent of security for the regim e— indeed, the confirmation of their role as the spearhead of revolution. The task was complicated by the reassertion of the divisions within the royal family itself, which began as soon as the storm over Saud's plot to assassinate Nasser had subsided, and was fu rth er fueled by resentm ent of Faisal's reform m easures. The divisions m anifested themselves among other ways in the unseem ly rush of m em bers of rival factions of the royal family to cultivate Nasser's support. During a six-week period, for exam­ ple, m em bers of the royal family engaged in the following activities: Em ir Talal, who headed a faction of liberal princes, was in Cairo on July 2,1958; Em ir Fahd ibn Saud, son of King Saud, form er defense m inister and at the time chief of the royal cabinet, returned from Cairo to Riyadh on July 17, Em ir Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz, m inister of education and a fervent Faisal supporter, arrived in Cairo on July 19; on August 6, King Saud conferred with Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer, Nasser's second in com m and and commander-in-chief of the UAR arm ed forces; finally, on August 15, Fai­ sal went to Cairo for three days of discussions with President Nasser.23 By the end of the discussions Faisal had agreed to denounce the Ameri­ can and British m ilitary interventions in Lebanon and Jordan as "aggres­ sion"24 and practically to put in abeyance the m utual security agreem ent with the United States. He had tried to secure Nasser's understanding for Saudi Arabia's necessary connection with the American oil companies while explaining away the significance of the Dhahran lease and prom is­ ing not to renew it after its expiration. He had proclaim ed his support for Arab nationalism and apparently indicated his willingness to try to get Saudi Arabia to join the United Arab Republic.25 He had also distanced himself from the regimes of Jordan and Lebanon, the only independent governments in the eastern Arab world that still resisted Arab national­ ism. In short, Faisal appeared to have settled on a defensive strategy that was in essence the opposite of Ibn Saud's: it consisted in appeasing, rather than opposing or seeking to counterbalance, the m ain source of

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th re a t— in this instance Nasser; renouncing all other Arab links; sup­ pressing the A m erican— as well as the B ritish— connection; putting in abeyance the development of an intem al/extem al deterrent power based on the regular arm ed forces; and relying for internal deterrence on other instrum ents of public security. Faisal himself was too shrewd not to recognize the long-term dangers involved in a strategy that depended so completely on appeasing the principal potential opponent. He had subscribed to it at a time of stress when no viable alternative appeared to exist, but he was bound to modify it as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Such an opportunity arose by the autum n of 1959, when a bitter struggle following the initial friend­ ship betw een Nasser and the revolutionary leadership of Iraq finally settled into a hostile stalemate. The seemingly irresistible tide of Nasser’s personal and ideological sway over the Arab world had been checked by Baghdad’s new regime, supported by Moscow, and Nasser was looking everywhere for forces to counter his opponent. Faisal took advantage of the situation to steer what he called in a declaration in October 1958 an “independent” Saudi policy based on "neutrality and Arab nationalism."26 The policy continued to keep the United States at a rm ’s length and paid obeisance to the prevailing dogma of Arab nationalism but regained some room for m aneuver by capitalizing on the hostility betw een Nasser’s UAR and Kassem ’s Iraq. The next development in Saudi policy cam e as a result of internal political change. Faisal's success in riding out the Nasserist storm s and putting the country's internal affairs into some order stim ulated efforts by King Saud to recover his powers. The king first approached the United States for help then went on to seek it from none other than N asser— the m an whose assassination he had plotted personally.27 Ahmad Shuqairy, an adviser of King Saud whom Faisal barred along with other advisers from attending meetings of the Council of Ministers in 1958, reports in one of his many books that both Saud and Faisal indiscriminately sought help against each other from American and Arab quarters. In that vol­ um e he reproduces a photocopy of a note from King Saud to him while Shuqairy was in Cairo, informing him of developments in the M ay- June 1959 crisis betw een him self and Faisal and asking him to convey to Nasser and company that he, Saud, was "on their side.”28 Nasser, for his part, feeling deceived by Faisal, was anxious to play on the rivalries among the Saudi princes and preferred to deal with the erratic but emotional and amenable king rather than with his coldly calculating brother. All the m ore so since Saud sought political allies at home among the liberal princes headed by Talal, who professed to be convinced adherents of Nasserist ideological tenets. In May 1960 Faisal needed to go abroad for m edical treatm ent and

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sought authorization from the king to appoint two princes of his choice — Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz, a supporter of his, and Musa'id ibn Abd al-Rahm an, a presum ed n eu tral— to replace him in his absence. Saud refused on the grounds that the powers conferred on Faisal were not transferable and should revert to him self if Faisal ceased to be able to exercise them. A crisis ensued that lasted for several months, split the royal family sharply, and spilled over into the Lebanese and Egyptian press before Faisal finally decided to forgo his planned trip despite his failing health.29 In December 1960 King Saud brought the persisting strain betw een him ­ self and his brother and their respective cam ps to a climax by refusing, for some technical reason, to sign into law a budget subm itted to him by Faisal. When Faisal wrote the king a note complaining that he could not carry out his duties under the circumstances, the latter construed it as a form al resignation, which he promptly accepted. He then form ed a gov­ ernm ent with himself as prim e minister, thus circumventing the division of powers betw een king and prim e m inister that Faisal had labored to establish. Moreover, Saud loaded the Council of Ministers and other key positions in the government and arm ed forces with his own sons, liberal princes, and comm oners and technocrats who owed their promotion to him. Faisal turned down a pro form a invitation to join the government, and no known supporter of his was included in it. Prodded by his advisers and the liberal princes, Saud adopted a pro­ gram that sought to outdo Faisal both in internal reform s and in swinging Saudi Arabia closer to the UAR and Arab nationalism. In a speech deliv­ ered on his behalf at the first meeting of the new Council of Ministers he proclaimed “Arabism” as a foundation of Saudi existence on a p ar with Islam. He prom ised to work for the elimination of poverty, ignorance, and disease; to m arch on the "correct scientific paths”; to create a special apparatus to undertake comprehensive economic planning and good m anagem ent of the economy; and to guide educational policy to achieve those objectives "while benefiting from the experience of others who preceded Saudi Arabia in this domain.” Saud also prom ised to establish a "basic order of government” that would define the functions of groups and individuals and their rights and obligations in accordance with the prescriptions of the Qoran and the Prophet's Tradition. Apart from the obligatory references to Islam, all this was vintage Nasserism. In m atters of foreign policy specifically, Saud pledged to cooperate with "sister Arab countries”; to support efforts to recover Arab rights in Palestine, Algeria, Oman, and the "Arab South” (the Arab nationalist term for the British colony of Aden and the protectorate of South Arabia); and to resort to all m eans to recover Buraimi. Reference to the United States was conspicu­ ous by its absence.30 The fate of King Saud's program was illustrative of the extent to which

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Saudi policy during that period had come to be determ ined by internal power struggles and the accident of external events. Saud's government began by giving indications of the earnestness of its intent at home and abroad. It adopted some m easures of liberalization and welfare projects and started to consider constitutional reform. In May 1961 it announced its intention to term inate the American presence in Dhahran when the lease expired the following June. The head of the newly created Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals, Abdallah Tariqi, adopted a contentious na­ tionalist line toward Aramco and played an active role in the efforts that resulted in the creation of OPEC. In June and July Saudi Arabia joined Egypt in opposing Iraq's moves to annex the newly independent state of Kuwait and later sent a brigade of troops along with Egyptian, Jordanian, and Sudanese contingents assigned by the Arab League to replace British forces that had come to assist Kuwait. The king, however, was being constantly buffeted by opposite pressures: from the liberal princes, who were demanding more action in line with the government's program; from his own sons, who were growing jealous of the power of the liberal princes; from advisers who cautioned him against antagonizing conserv­ ative religious and tribal leaders and playing into the hands of Faisal's faction; and from conciliators who feared the consequences for the dy­ nasty and the realm of perm anendy alienating Faisal and his supporters. By Septem ber 11 the strains resulted in the dismissal of Talal, the resigna­ tion of two liberal princes, and a tu rn toward conservatism. The vacan­ cies were filled by a son of Saud and by other princes whom the king was trying to win to his side. Later in the sam e month, quite by coincidence, a m ilitary coup took Syria out of the United Arab Republic and installed a conservative civilian government in Damascus. Nasser took stock of the reasons for Syria's secession, concluded that it was due to the machinations of "exploitative capitalists, feudalists and colonialists," and accordingly proclaim ed that the pursuit of Arab unity m ust henceforth proceed by an effort first to destroy those forces everywhere in the Arab world through an alliance of toilers, soldiers, intellectuals, and "national capitalists." The Saudi re­ gime, which had rid itself of such "progressive" elements just before the secession, was designated as a prim e target in this social revolutionary m etam orphosis of Arab nationalism.

Resisting Nasserism Forced to abandon appeasement, Saud was at a loss to devise a coherent alternative strategy to face the Nasserite threat. He was too com m itted to an anti-British line to be able to reverse course without giving am m uni­ tion to his enemies. The United States had some tim e before given up its

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cam paign against Nasser and, since the advent of the Kennedy adm inis­ tration, was on the contrary engaged in an experiment of supporting Nasser's Arab Socialism as an antidote to Communism. In the Arab arena, Iraq was too antagonized by the Saudi position on Kuwait to be of any assistance, and Syria's secessionist regime was too weak. Jordan was a potential exception, but relations with it required a great deal of tending to repair the damage they had suffered in the previous phase, when both Faisal and Saud had abandoned King Hussein. Nor was the internal situation reassuring. The weak arm ed forces presented no deterrent externally and were more of a threat than a buttress internally after years of exposure to Arab nationalist ideology with the license of the govern­ ment. Other internal security instrum ents were not im m une to the na­ tionalist virus and had been weakened by the conflicts among m em bers of the royal family. The king's political base was narrow er than ever, now that he faced the hostility of the liberal princes as well as the opposition of Faisal and his supporters. Saud's response under these circum stances consisted of improvisa­ tions. Initially, these betrayed more nervousness than sense. In No­ vember 1961, for example, he repudiated the "erroneous" previous policy that had succum bed to the "lure of alien doctrines," proclaimed Islam and the Shari'a (religious law) to be the Kingdom's only policy, and issued decrees prohibiting support of any contrary ideology such as socialism or Communism.31 Subsequently he m ade some moves that ameliorated but did not fundam entally alter the situation. In December he called on Faisal to act as regent while he left the country for medical treatm ent abroad. This move paved the way for Faisal to rejoin the government together with some of his supporters in March 1962, although Saud was careful this time to retain for himself the post of prim e minister. In August Saud signed with King Hussein at Ta'if a comprehensive treaty of alliance that included among other things a provision for the forces of each country automatically to enter the other country to assist in case of internal upheaval. However, before the Treaty of Ta'if was ratified, an­ other Nasserist storm shook the Saudi regime to its foundations, contrib­ uted to the final toppling of King Saud, and forced his successor to adopt a fundam entally new course for the realm. On Septem ber 26, 1962, Im am M uhamm ad al-Badr of Yemen was overthrown by a m ilitary coup led by Colonel Abdallah al-Sallal, who immediately proclaim ed the Yemen Arab Republic. The im am survived the attack on his palace and surfaced in the north of the country a short time later to lead the resistance already rallied by his uncle, Em ir Hassan. Within days of the coup, Egyptian paratroopers landed in Yemen to speaihead a combined expeditionary force of many thousands, including air force and naval units. The speed and scope of the Egyptian interven­

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tion clearly indicated Nasser's prior knowledge of and preparation for the coup. The coup and the Egyptian intervention presented a threefold threat to the Saudi regime. At a minimum, the consolidation of a Nasser-backed radical regime on the peninsula would present the Saudis with a persist­ ent security threat. Next, were the Egyptian m ilitary presence to endure, it might encourage dissidents in Saudi Arabia to follow the Yemeni exam­ ple, attem pt a coup and call for Egyptian m ilitary assistance. Several om inous developments m ade that threat particularly serious. Em ir Talal, who had attacked the regime in the pages of the Beirut press after his dismissal by King Saud, went to Cairo before the Yemen coup and was apparently held in reserve by Nasser to head a revolutionary regime in Saudi Arabia. Shortly after the coup Talal was joined in Cairo by three liberal princes who form ed with him a Committee of Free Princes, hark­ ing back to the Committee of Free Officers that had overthrown King Faruq. At the same time the arm ed forces justified the regime's m istrust of them: several Saudi pilots sent to ferry supplies to the Yemeni loyalists in the first days after the coup defected with their planes and their cargo to the Egyptian side. A third threat was that of an Egyptian-initiated invasion of the country, ostensibly in response to Saudi provocation, in the expectation that the first major defeat of the regime's forces would trigger uprisings of dissident and separatist elements. These threats, severe in themselves, were m ade worse by panic, divided counsel, and conflict within the ruling establishment and by the physical and m ental breakdown of King Saud. According to one report, die com­ m oners in the Council of Ministers subm itted a petition to the king urging recognition and appeasem ent of the Yemen Arab Republic, while princes within and outside the government urged various courses of resistance and proceeded on their own to organize help to the royalists.32 King Hussein, according to all accounts, pressed for joint Saudi-Jordanian m ilitary intervention and sent a brigade to the Yemeni border. King Saud was inclined toward m ilitary action but feared that a defeat of the Saudi forces might trigger a revolution, and the strains he suffered were ex­ acerbated by combinations of princes who plotted to depose him or to force him to transfer all his powers to Faisal once more. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency sum m arized the situation as follows in its October 15, 1962, daily intelligence "checklist" to the president: "(a) King Saud, in extremely poor health and in a psychopathic state of suspicion and w orry over the Yemenis, may not last m uch longer, (b) Among other plots, a group of Saudi princes, anxious to pre-em pt the field before pro-Nasirites m ake a try at taking over, are laying plans to force Saud to abdicate in favor of Faysal."33 Three days later, the CIA checklist reported that King Saud, "to avert a revolt against the Saudi monarchy," had nam ed Crown

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Prince Faisal prim e m inister and given him authority to form his own cabinet— "which am ounts to forced abdication/'34 Egyptian intelligence, which at the tim e was good on Saudi Arabia, essentially confirmed the CIA report and added significant details. In a colum n published in the daily al-Ahram on November 20, 1962, Nasser's confidant, M uham m ad H. Heikal, reported that the defection of the Saudi pilots had caused King Saud to suffer a nervous breakdown for fear of a plot. Heikal added that a group of princes had gone to see Saud and asked him to transfer power to Faisal to avert revolution. In the argum ent that ensued, Saud reportedly said that the real source of trou­ ble was the cities— Jidda, Mecca, Madina, R iyadh— because of their educated people; and he told his interlocutors to w arn those people that if they m ade a revolutionary move against him, he would let the tribes m arch on them and despoil them. In the end, the princes convinced him to transfer power on the grounds that Faisal could m anage things, espe­ cially the United States, to save what could be saved.35 While these events were taking place, Faisal was in the United States attending the United Nations General Assembly session and therefore did not take p a rt in the wrangles that compelled the king to call on him. Once he returned home, however, he becam e involved in a dispute over the term s of his appointment, as is evident from the fact that he did not announce the form ation of his government until November 6, nearly three critical weeks after he was assigned the task. Moreover, the cabinet that he form ed did not include any of King Saud's sons for the first time since 1953; indeed it included none of the m em bers of Saud's 1960 cabinet and only two carry-overs from the reshuffled cabinet of March 1962. Faisal held the portfolio of foreign affairs in addition to the prim e m inis­ tership and assigned the key posts of defense and interior to ardent partisans of his, Sultan ibn Abd al-Aziz and Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz, respec­ tively. Other im portant positions held by sons of Saud— notably the gov­ ernorship of Riyadh and com m and of the National G uard— were later taken away from them and given to Faisal loyalists. With the question of suprem e leadership setded for the m om ent— it was to flare up again and again before being finally resolved with the deposition of S aud— Faisal evolved a three-point strategy to deal with the Egyptian-Yemeni threats. First, he decided to avoid direct Saudi mili­ tary intervention at all costs. Instead, he chose to fight the Egyptians and republicans by proxy, through providing all possible support to the royal­ ists and to any tribes that could be bought. Faisal realized that the loyal­ ists could not defeat the Egyptian forces decisively and that his strategy could at best result in a long w ar of attrition, stalemate, and negotiations; but he also realized that he had no other choice. The Saudi arm ed forces, even with a Jordanian contribution, were no m atch for the Egyptians, and

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their loyalty was questionable. Were they to suffer a serious defeat, the consequences could be fatal. Moreover, intervention would give the Egyptians an excuse to extend the w ar to Saudi Arabia itself and thus encourage internal uprisings, while placing the regime in an unfavorable position to obtain assistance from friendly outside powers. Second, now that the Nasserite threat was so close to home, Faisal decided to drop all pretense of nonalignment and incur the liability of seeking the help of the United States and Britain. Ironically, he had more success with the latter, with which Saudi Arabia had broken diplomatic relations in 1956, than with the United States, whose friendship had been taken for granted. Even before he had assum ed full powers, Faisal had personally sought to enlist American support during a meeting with President Kennedy in Washington on October 4, 1962. Behind the diplomatic phraseology, Fai­ sal was given to understand that the United States would help Saudi Arabia only in case of an Egyptian invasion of its territory. Otherwise, even though it spoke of self-determ ination for the people of Yemen, the United States did not in principle oppose the advent of a "progressive" Arab nationalist regime in Yemen. Moreover, although it favored a "hands off" policy in Yemen, it did not view the Egyptian m ilitary intervention with any particular alarm , as long as the Egyptians did not actively encroach upon Saudi sovereignty and integrity. With regard to the indirect effects of the Yemeni revolution on Saudi Arabia, Faisal was advised by the United States that these were best com batted through political, economic, and social reform s that would strengthen the loyalty of the people to the regime and thus immunize it against subversion. Faisal barely m anaged to convince Kennedy to post­ pone American recognition of the republican regime at least until it becam e apparent that it actually controlled the country. Even the "guarantee" against direct Egyptian attack, Faisal was to learn before long, was construed in a rather limited way. On November 2, 1962, for instance, the Egyptian air force and navy began a series of alm ost daily attacks on Saudi border and coastal towns and positions that ostensibly served as supply bases and staging points for loyalist forces. On November 10, American combat planes based in Dhahran m ade de­ monstrative sorties over some of the principal Saudi cities to support the morale of the population and ostensibly also to w arn the Egyptians. Flowever, as the Egyptians continued to bom b and shell the Saudi border areas without being molested by the U.S. Air Force, it becam e apparent that the American "protection" extended only to the oil facilities and to an "unprovoked" extension of the w ar into the interior of Saudi Arabia. The border areas, insofar as they served as bases for the forces opposing

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the Egyptians, were apparently fair game as far as the United States was concerned. President Kennedy's reticence in assisting the Saudis was based upon a broad policy of trying to work with Nasser's Arab Socialism to stem the appeal of Communism. The British did not labor under any such con­ straint; on the contrary, they had every reason to seek to frustrate Nasser's intervention in Yemen and to overthrow the republican regime in order to protect their position in Aden and South Yemen. Conse­ quently, once Faisal turned to them and restored diplomatic relations in January 1963, they cooperated with him in every possible way in support­ ing the loyalists and his own defense plans. Among other things, in June 1963 they sent a m ilitary mission to help m odernize and upgrade the training of the Saudi National Guard. Later that year, as Faisal looked for some rapid ways to counter the increasing Egyptian air attacks, they put together an emergency assistance package providing for a dozen Light­ ning and H unter combat jets, some taken directly out of RAF stock; a battery of Thunderbird surface-to-air missiles; and pilots and personnel to operate the equipm ent while Saudi personnel were taken to Britain for training. Later in the war, when the United States had become disap­ pointed with Nasser, the British and Americans together contracted for a m uch more ambitious $300 million nationwide air defense system. The British were to provide forty Lightnings and twenty-five Strikemasters, an up-to-date rad ar network, plus 1,000 m aintenance and training per­ sonnel; the Americans were to supply Hawk surface-to-air missiles and a communications network. That program was realized only after the Egyptians withdrew from Yemen in the wake of the 1967 Six Day W ar with Israel.36 The third element of Faisal's strategy was a plan to reinforce the home front that was interesting for what it excluded as m uch as for what it included. Faisal inaugurated his government on November 6, 1962, with an impressive ten-point reform and development program , headed by the promise of a constitution or basic law and concluding with the an­ nounced intention of outlawing slavery and emancipating all existing slaves. Many believed at the time that the program was mainly an exercise in public relations designed to counter Egyptian propaganda and to please American and world opinion. However, despite die failure of Fai­ sal (and his successors to date) to deliver on the basic law promise, it is apparent in retrospect that the program led logically and practically to the first five-year plan (1969), which in tu rn m aiked a w atershed in Saudi history. H itherto the Saudi rulers had approached the question of mod­ ernization gingerly, taking one step forward and then halting o r retreat­ ing for fear of the unknown. Faisal's program eventually led the country

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to take the plunge, on the basis of his own declared conviction that m odernization and traditional Islam, on which the Saudi political order and regime rested, were m utually compatible. W hether or not Rusal actually believed what he said, he definitely decided that political neces­ sity required him to act as if he did. Another aspect of Rusal's internal effort was to arouse and appeal to the Saudis' sense of patriotism against the m enace of the alien Egyptians. In January 1963 he declared a national em eigency and proclaim ed a general mobilization of the “working forces of the country." As the con­ flict went on, Faisal assum ed the (for a Saudi chief) novel role of a political leader, addressing m ass rallies and using populist and even democratic-nationalist rhetoric. For example, at a m ass rally in Ta'if on Septem ber 5, 1963, Rusal said: “We find ourselves in the position of one who is defending himself, his country, his homeland. The Egyptian leaders, on the other hand, have said that they went to Yemen and fight in Yemen in order to threaten the very existence \kayari\ of this country, to conquer it and destroy it." He concluded by telling his audience: “You are the owmers of this country; you are the party to any agreement; you are responsible for everything in the country. The government is nothing but a representation expressing your will, your feelings and your wishes.”37 However, notwithstanding his call for national mobilization, Faisal en­ larged and reinforced the National Guard and strengthened the instru­ m ents of internal security but was careful to avoid building up the regu­ lar arm y until m uch later, when the internal front appeared to be secure and the danger of Egyptian subversion seem ed to have passed its peak. Faisal’s strategy stem m ed the panic at home and before long brought about a stalemate in the Yemen batdefront. These successes, however, underscored the limitations inherent in that strategy: it could deny N asser’s broad objectives but could not achieve Faisal’s own of getting rid of the Egyptians and the republican regime. Moreover, the passing of the critical moment encouraged a dangerous resurgence of the struggle for pow er betw een Rdsal and Saud, which threatened to undo whatever gains were achieved. The struggle blended with diplomatic-military de­ velopments in the conflict. Already in the latter p a rt of November 1962, Nasser realized that the prospects of quickly achieving control over Yemen and toppling the Saudi regime with a limited m ilitary investment had eluded him. (Heikal’s November revelations, m entioned above, were an indication that Nasser had decided to escalate the political-propaganda w ar against the Saudi regime, as the m ilitary operation in Yemen failed to achieve quick results.) His choice becam e either to negotiate for some comprom ise o r to escalate his m ilitary com m itm ent and m ake another attem pt to achieve his goals. Since the United States was attem pting to m ediate a

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solution to the conflict and had given indications of a not unfriendly disposition, Nasser decided to try negotiations first. By December 19, 1962, he had arrived at a deal with the United States: in exchange for his accepting an American proposal for a sim ultaneous withdrawal of Egyp­ tian forces and an end to all intervention, the United States agreed to recognize the Yemen Arab Republic. Faisal himself had agreed earlier to the principle of sim ultaneous with­ drawal and an end to intervention, but Washington's recognition of the republican regime seem ed to him to reflect a disturbing tilt toward Nasser and an acceptance of the outcome that Faisal had desperately sought to avoid; he therefore balked. The United States corrected the impression of a tilt by m aking public on January 8, 1963, a letter from Kennedy to Faisal w ritten the previous October in which the president expressed America's support for the Kingdom's territorial integrity. Fai­ sal, however, continued to oppose any recognition of the republican re­ gime and dem anded a supervised consultation of the Yemeni people once all foreign intervention had ceased. Encouraged by the American recognition, Nasser redoubled his efforts to subdue the loyalist forces and bring Faisal to heel. By February 1963 the Egyptian forces engaged in the fighting in Yemen had reached 40,000. The raids on Saudi border areas continued, and Egyptian planes dropped arm s in various spots in the Hijaz to encourage putative dissident tribes to rebel. However, Yemen's geography and topography, together with an incessant flow of Saudi funds and arm s to the Yemeni loyalists, frus­ trated Nasser's campaign, and this lack of progress in tu rn discouraged any substantial expression of dissidence in Saudi Arabia. By March 1963 Nasser was ready to negotiate again, and by April 15 he and Faisal had agreed to a United Nations proposal for sim ultaneous withdrawal and cessation of intervention, to be preceded by a disengagement of forces and the creation of a UN-supervised demilitarized zone of twenty kilome­ ters on each side of the Yemeni-Saudi border. However, since neither party had given up on its political objective, both violated the agreement, the Egyptians in an effort to buttress the republican regime and the Saudis to reinforce fu rth er the opposition to it. By June 1963 the fighting had resum ed and Egypt was again bombing Saudi territory. Once more the fighting produced no decisive results, and once more, at the end of 1963 and the beginning of 1964, there was an attem pt to negotiate. This time, however, the negotiations were to be direct and to be held at the highest level, under the auspices of an Arab sum m it called by Nasser to deal with Israel's diversion of the Jordan River waters. The fact that it was Nasser who engineered the sum m it suggested that he was tiring first in what had become a w ar of attrition. Earlier, in August 1963, the Free Princes had asked for perm ission to return home, indicating that

100

The Reign of Saud

they, at least, had given up on Nasser’s chances of toppling the regime in Saudi Arabia. Had other things rem ained equal, Faisal would have been in a superior bargaining position and might have been able to extract some advantages from it if not to secure his principal objectives. As things were, however, King Saud decided to take advantage of the situation to attem pt to recover his powers and thus got the negotiations tangled up with the struggles within the royal family. The result was that the negotia­ tions were dam aged and the intrafamily struggle deteriorated into a showdown that ended with the deposition of Saud. Precise details are, of course, unavailable, but on the basis of scattered bits of information, the following picture can be reconstructed. In Septem ber 1963 King Saud returned to Riyadh after an elevenm onth absence abroad, interrupted by a brief home visit. During his absence Faisal had consolidated his power by removing sons of Saud from key positions, notably from the posts of com m ander of the National Guard and governor of Riyadh, and replacing them with his own men. At the time of Saud’s return, the situation in Yemen was stable, and Saud began to m aneuver to recover his powers, urged on by his sons, who had lost theirs, too. Nasser’s call for a sum m it precipitated matters. Saud insisted that he, as the head of state, should represent the country, like the other Arab heads of state, whereas Faisal m aintained that, as the person effectively in charge of policy, he should be the one to speak for the country. The dispute degenerated into a series of confrontations and threats of violence. Rahd ibn Abd al-Aziz was said to have dem anded Saud’s abdication and to have threatened to kill him if he did not.38 Saud was reported to have mobilized the Royal Guard, the m ost effective force in the country, deployed it around his palace, and used it to threaten Faisal. Faisal was reported to have counterm anded plans m ade by Saud for a ceremonial entry into Jidda— Faisal’s power b a se — and deployed the National Guard to face the Royal Guard.39 That episode of the crisis was tem porarily resolved by arbitration of the 'ulam a, who decided that, because of Saud’s poor state of health, Faisal should continue to exercise effective power, but that because Saud rem ained the sovereign, he should represent the country at the sum m it while referring all decisions to Faisal. Saud abided by th * letter of the 'ulam a’s decision, but in his talks with Nasser he paved the way for restoration of diplomatic relations betw een the two countries, broken off since November 1962, and for peace negoti­ ations to be undertaken with Faisal. An Algerian-Iraqi conciliation com­ mission was to go to Riyadh in mid-February 1964, to be followed at the end of that m onth by an Egyptian peace delegation headed by Vice President Abd al-Hakim Amer. Saud naturally took credit for this achieve­ m ent, while Faisal tried to limit its significance. Before the arrival of the

Tribulations under the First Successor

101

Egyptians, Faisal voiced unusually tough positions, stating on February 6, for instance, that his government would never recognize a Yemeni government controlled by a foreign state and that he might seek compen­ sation for the Egyptian attacks on Saudi territory.** On February 18 a "Saudi source in B eirut” told the Arab News Agency that Saudi Arabia did not intend to discuss the Yemen in the forthcoming talks with the Egyp­ tians since that was a problem for the Yemenis themselves to settle. When Faisal finally m et with the Egyptians, the two sides agreed on March 3, 1964, to the restoration of diplomatic relations, and the Egyptians con­ ceded the principle that it was for the Yemenis to determ ine the future of their country, but Faisal nevertheless put off fu rth e r negotiations to a meeting betw een himself and Nasser scheduled for two months later, in late April or early May. Saud, however, felt sufficiently reinforced by his achievement, and perhaps also by the retu rn of the free Princes in Jan­ uary, to reopen the question of recovering his powers. On March 13, 1964, Saud wrote Faisal a letter asking him to resign his position as prim e m inister in his favor on the grounds (harking back to the 'ulam a’s argum ent the previous Ja n u a ry that his health was now perfectly restored and there was no longer any reason for him not to exercise the powers that were his. The next day Faisal showed the letter to some of his brothers, who unanim ously rejected the king’s request and insisted that Faisal carry on as prim e minister. Some of Saud’s sons distributed leaflets in Riyadh and Jidda criticizing Faisal’s government, and slogans appeared on the walls of Riyadh saying "No king and no ru ler but Saud.”41 Faisal’s partisans, on the other hand, endeavored to secure the support of the arm y and of tribal leaders, while Faisal himself mobi­ lized support in his Jidda power base. Among other things, he approached the m ufti of the city on March 17, and the latter convened a conclave of 'ulam a the next day to consider the situation. The Jidda 'ulam a then adjourned to Riyadh to join a council of the senior religious leaders of the realm, where they probably constituted a solid pro-Faisal caucus. By March 22 the council had decided that Faisal should be vested with full powers while Saud retained the title of king, although it did not issue a form al fatwa to that effect until March 29. On March 22 Faisal went to Riyadh at the behest of his partisans who had succeeded in the m eantim e in securing the city and rallying m ost of the senior princes behind the 'ulam a’s judgment. The judgm ent was then conveyed to King Saud, who rejected it and deployed his personal guard and the Royal Guard around his palace. Faisal ordered the National Guard to surround the palace and the Royal Guard to withdraw,42but the latter stood its ground, presum ably on Saud’s counterorders. On March 26 a group of officers loyal to Faisal, moving in taxis for disguise, raided the hom e of Sultan ibn Saud, the com m ander of the Royal Guard, and

102

The Reign of Saud

arrested him.41Two days later Saud gave in, and during the next two days the perm anent transfer of power from Saud to Faisal was formalized. On March 29 a fatwa was m ade public in which the 'ulam a harked back to the ruling they had issued in the dispute in January, pointed to the exacerba­ tion of the dispute betw een the two brothers since, stated that the conflict threatened to produce “civil strife and chaos" the consequences of which God only knew, alluded to Saud's health, and concluded that he should rem ain king of the realm while Faisal should carry out the internal and external affairs of the Kingdom without referring back to the king.44 On March 30 a petition signed by sixty-eight princes from different branches of the royal family was m ade public, which alluded to the fatwa and called upon Faisal as prim e m inister to expedite its execution. He and the Council of Ministers did so the sam e day. The council also ordered the transfers of the Royal Guard to the authority of the Ministry of Defense and of the king’s personal bodyguard to the M inistry of Interior, abolished the royal Diwan (cabinet), and cut the king’s allowance of $40 million a year by half. Partly because of these events, Faisal’s anticipated trip to Egypt to pursue the Yemen peace talks was put off until Septem ber 1964, when the second Arab sum m it m et in Alexandria. Another reason for the delay was the development of strain betw een Faisal and the Yemeni royalists over ways to give effect to the principle of letting the people of Yemen determ ine their own future, agreed to betw een Faisal and Amer. The dispute was serious enough to cause Faisal to stop the flow of assistance to the im am in the sum m er of that year. The grounds for that friction becam e apparent in the agreem ent reached betw een Faisal and Nasser when they m et in September. The two leaders decided to cooperate "to help the people of Yemen towards stability, security and freedom," specif­ ically agreed on a seven-month cease-fire during which Egyptian troops would withdraw gradually and Saudi Arabia would halt its aid, and pledged themselves to support a Yemeni coalition government that would include royalists as well as republicans but exclude both President Sallal and Im am al-Badr.45 A start was m ade in implementing the agree­ m ent when republican and royalist representatives m et for the first time at Erkwit, Sudan, in October 1964 and agreed to convening a national reconciliation congress in H aradh, Yemen, in November to realize the agreem ent fully. The reconciliation congress did not m eet as scheduled. Instead the cease-fire broke down and fighting resum ed, with the Egyptians bom b­ ing royalist positions in late November and the royalists resum ing ground operations shortly thereafter. Given the opposition of Sallal and the im am to the Alexandria agreement, it is not difficult to see why the cease-fire did not hold. What is not clear, however, is the connection, if any, betw een

Tribulations under the First Successor

103

these events and the final denouem ent of the Saud-Eaisal struggle on November 2, 1964. All the sources that provided some details about the events of March are silent about those of November, except for a few general allusions. These suggest that in October 1964 Saud and his en­ tourage reopened the question of the king's powers in the context of the wider issue of a basic law, that rum ors circulated that some neighboring governments (Egypt and the imam, for different reasons) were behind the move, and that the princes, 'ulam a, and leaders m et continually and decided that Saud m ust go.46 The king was given a choice to abdicate voluntarily, to comply with a dem and to abdicate, or to be deposed and exiled by a resolution of "the people." Saud refused to m ake a choice and entrenched himself in his palace, whereupon the princes decided to de­ pose him and proclaim Faisal king. The 'ulam a issued a fatwa, which, in accordance with traditional Sunni doctrine, reported the facts of the deposition and succession and then legitimized the latter.47

Defense Establishment and Policy In 1952 the American military advisory and training missions had set up a program aim ed at creating a regular arm y of three to five regimental com bat team s with a substantial element of air mobility and air combat support over a three-year period. Ten years later that goal had not been m et despite redoubled American assistance in 1957 in connection with the endeavor to prom ote the Eisenhower Doctrine. The failure stem m ed from a combination of internal developments, technical inefficiencies and limitations, and the sudden shift in the Saudi defense concept in 1958 in connection with Saudi foreign relations. The effects of the shift in defense concept are reflected dramatically in the procurem ent of m ilitary equipment. Through 1958 there was a steady flow of heavy equipm ent to the air and ground forces from American and, to a lesser extent, British sources; after 1958 the acquisition of such equipm ent from any source ceased for six or seven years in the case of m ilitary aircraft and for nearly a decade in the case of heavy equipm ent for the ground forces. Specifically, from 1954 through 1958 Saudi Arabia received the following aircraft from the United States: 9 10 6 12

Douglas B-26 Invader tactical bom bers (piston) Lockheed T-33A trainers plus a num ber of Beech A-45s C-123 Provider transports F-86 Sabre jet fighters

In addition, in 1956 the Saudis acquired from Britain twelve DH Chip­ m unk T-10 trainers, and in 1957 Egypt presented them with two batches of Vampire fighters, one batch containing four and the other of unknow n

104

The Reign of Saud

but probably sim ilar size, as p a rt of the Saudi-Egyptian m ilitary alliance. In contrast, from 1959 through 1965 no m ilitary aircraft were acquired from any source except for two Sud Alouette III helicopters received from Irance in 1965.48 A $300 million air defense system including sixtyfive aircraft, a rad ar network, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles was broached in 1963-1964 but was not realized until after 1965. As for heavy equipm ent for the ground forces, the following arm ored fighting vehicles were acquired in the period through 1958: 30 58 15 55

M-6 Staghound and M-8 Greyhound arm ored cars from Britain M-41 W alker Bulldog light tanks from the U.S. M-24 Chaffee light tanks from the U.S. M-47 Patton m edium tanks from the U.S.

Some of the Chaffee tanks were delivered in 1959. The Pattons were ordered in 1956-1958 and delivered in 1959 and I960.49 In contrast, no arm ored fighting vehicles were ordered after 1958 until about 1969. In that year and in 1970 the Saudis received 220 Panhard AML arm ored cars from Irance, purchased for $95 million.50 The total halt in the acquisition of heavy m ilitary equipm ent was not due to any reluctance on the p a rt of the suppliers. The American advisory and training missions continued to operate, and the United States had agreed in April 1957 to provide Saudi Arabia with more equipm ent than the latter subsequendy ordered. Nor was the halt due to financial strin­ gencies, as will be explained in the next section. It was basically the consequence of the change in defense concept that occurred after Faisal took over effective power in 1958 in the wake of the Egyptian-Syrian union. That concept, it will be recalled, viewed Arab nationalism under Nasser's leadership as the m ain threat and sought to m eet it through a policy of neutralism, appeasem ent, and suppression of the American connection to the point of freezing the buildup of the regular arm ed forces. When the concept was changed in connection with the Yemen war, American coolness and Saudi internal considerations delayed the effective resum ption of the flow of arm s. Even before the interruption in the procurem ent of equipm ent, the development of the regular arm ed forces was ham pered by the intrusion of politics into the process. R o m the outset of his reign, King Saud sought to build up the White Army of tribal levies and the Royal Guard to buttress his personal pow er position against rival princes,51 and thus diverted financial and m anpow er resources away from the regular arm ed forces. The discovery in May 1955 of a plot against the regime by senior arm y officers and the subsequent purge of the officer corps fu r­ th er increased Saud's fears and caused additional diversion o r dissipa­ tion of resources. In 1956 Saud dism issed M inister of Defense Mishal ibn

Tribulations under the First Successor

105

Abd al-Aziz on grounds of corruption and alleged pro-Nasserism and replaced him with his own son, Fahd ibn Saud.52 This move may have somewhat allayed Saud's fear of the regular arm ed forces but it stirred suspicion among his princely brothers because it extended his direct control over the country's arm ed forces (his sons already controlled the White Army and the Royal Guard) and caused those among them in a position to check that development, like Faisal, to try to do so. At any rate, the double handicap under which the regular arm ed forces labored, as a suspected source of disloyalty to the regime as a whole and as a source of specific support for Saud against his rivals, m ade it easier for Faisal to contemplate freezing them in 1958, when the requirem ents of high policy also pointed in the same direction. When these requirem ents changed in 1962, new manifestations of disloyalty in the arm ed forces, such as the defection of pilots with their planes to Nasser and the culm i­ nation of the struggle betw een Saud and Faisal, helped prolong the stag­ nation.53 Finally, corruption, inefficiency, bureaucratic bungling, and lack of suitable personnel wrought havoc in the underlying assum ptions and schedules of the original American-devised program . The need for addi­ tional time and effort to m eet the program 's targets of size and quality for the arm ed forces and to absorb the equipm ent already received m ade the halt of the flow of arm s appear a plausible course under the circum ­ stances. At the time of the halt, the regular arm y com prised some 12,000 m en organized in small infantry battalions of 400 - 600 troops loosely fitted into five regiments. After six years of assistance by an American training mission and three by an Egyptian mission of 200 men, a comm ittee of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff reported in 1959 that the arm y still lacked an adequate trained officer corps and trained enlisted personnel, had inadequate logistical support in the field, and suffered from endemic disease among the troops and a low level of education. It had no field com bat capability against a m odem arm y except for harassm ent in des­ e rt warfare.54 The air force had a personnel strength of about 160, and one American intelligence report characterized m ost of its officers as being secretly in sympathy with Nasser.55 Its organization was still embryonic and the training of its personnel rudim entary. Its combat capability was nil. The civil a ir fleet under the M inistry of Defense com prised twelve DC-3s and 4s, five Bristol Wayfarers, and ten Convair 340s. TWA provided the flying and m aintenance personnel under contract, but the com­ m ander of the Royal Saudi Air Force personally controlled all flight scheduling. The navy was nonexistent. As p a rt of the April 1957 agreem ents on

106

The Reign of Saud

m ilitary assistance, an American survey mission worked out a program for building up a m odest navy, a naval base, and training facilities, but the program was delayed at the Saudi end and was eventually shelved after the 1958 defense concept switch. The tribal levies (White Army) were estim ated at 10,000 to 16,000 plus twice that num ber of inactive reserves by different American intelligence sources.56 They were equipped with light arm s, were poorly trained, and lacked m otor transportation of their own. They were used as a kind of regime guard, were presum ed to be loyal to the king, and were assigned to sensitive arm y duties— such as patrolling the Tapline and guarding the strategic points— in moments of trouble. The Royal Guard was estim ated at one battalion or one regim ent of 2,700 crack troops by different American intelligence sources.57 The dis­ parity may be due to an unclear line of dem arcation betw een the Royal Guard and some tribal units. In any case, all the sources agree that the Royal Guard was the most effective unit of the Saudi arm ed forces. One source estim ated that the Royal Guard was m ore than a m atch against the White Army, and that together the two could defeat the entire regular army.58 The royal bodyguard, composed of a few hundred arm ed men, was responsible for close protection of the person of the king. Their m ilitary significance was negligible, but their existence was a rem inder of the ruler's great exposure to assassination in a system of personal authoritar­ ian government. During the years that followed the halt in procurem ent, the American training mission continued to work (the Egyptian mission was with­ draw n in 1958) so that some progress in organization and training may be assum ed to have taken place. However, a participant in the American effort assessed the capacity of the Saudi air force by the end of 1962 to be still "purely nominal";59 and the capability of the various arm ed forces probably did not improve m uch more than that of the air force in the intervening years. Altogether, then, the regular arm ed forces rem ained incapable throughout the form al reign of King Saud of playing a deterrent role against the m ilitary power of actual or potentially hostile neighbors such as Jordan, Iraq, or Egypt, or of playing a significant offensive role against an enemy such as Israel. Provided they rem ained loyal, they could afford a m easure of deterrence against internal tribal uprisings. Moreover, they could be used in politically profitable noncombat m ilitary missions, as they were in Jordan in 1956-1957 and in Kuwait in 1961-1963. In the form er instance a contingent of two or three battalions was deployed in southern Jordan in a demonstration of support for Egypt during the 1956 war, and for King Hussein during the internal crisis he faced in eariy

Tribulations under the First Successor

107

1957. They were also m eant to retain control of the territory they guarded, over which the House of Saud had claims, in case King Hussein's regime collapsed. In the case of Kuwait, a Saudi brigade served as p a rt of an Arab League peacekeeping force that relieved the British troops who had effectively blocked Iraq's move to annex the newly independent emirate. The Saudi forces, regular and tribal, had a theoretical offensive capa­ bility only against the neighboring shaikhdoms, over some of which the ruling family had irredentist claims; but, as the conflict over Buraim i showed, the British patrons of these shaikhdoms provided an effective deterrent. Supplementing the various arm ed forces in their internal security roles and contributing to the system of checks and balances among them were various civil security apparatuses at the national and regional levels. The m ost im portant of these was the Departm ent of Public Secu­ rity of the Ministry of Interior, which controlled m ost of a 10,000-man police force. As with the various m ilitary forces, control of the m inistry and the departm ent becam e an issue in the power struggles within the royal family. For instance, Abdallah ibn Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz was ap­ pointed m inister of interior by King Ibn Saud and formally retained that post throughout the 1950s. But King Saud insisted on having the director of the Public Security D epartm ent report to him directly, and he often bypassed Faisal's son altogether even on such im portant m atters as hav­ ing Jidda's police chief arrested on grounds of disloyalty.60

Defense and Security Allocations Table 2 presents the budgetary data on defense and security for the reign of King Saud. Examination of the data confirms key points in the pre­ vious analysis and sheds additional light on them. 1. The most general point reflected in the financial data is that the character of those data changed significantly after 1958. Although the Council of Ministers began to operate in 1954 under a statute that re­ quired it to follow a regular budget, King Saud continued to treat the country's revenue as his private wealth to the point that he did not even bother to form ulate a budget for particular years (for example, 1955- 56, 1956-57). Moreover, the budgets that were published did not follow a consistent format. Only after Faisal took over effective power in 1958 were budgets in a more o r less consistent form at published regularly. 2. The upper p a rt of the table shows a drastic drop in the percentage of total revenue allocated to defense and security in the period starting with fiscal 1958-59. This decline reflects dram atically the change in defense

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Govenunent Budget: Appropriations by Chapters, Items and Sections, 1400/1401 A.H. (Million S.R.)

Table 10-4 (Conl’d)

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Section 4 Projects

2095,5 4994,9 696,0 993,6 1497,6 154,9 376,5 15,4

1580,1 1568.0 215,0 265,1 765,0 79,0 247,0

Passport and Civil Status........... ....... 363,6 White Army...................................... 248,5 Emirate of Riyadh............................. 199,0 Emirate of Makkah.......................... 186,6 Emirate of Eastern province.............. 162,5 Emirate of Medina............................ 116.9 Emirate of Hail............................... 119,3 Emirate of North Frontiers............... 59,9 Emirate of Quaseem........................ 95,0 Emirate of Aseer.............................. 140,5 84,0 Emirate of labouk........................... 66,9 Emirate of Al-Jouf........................... 76,5 Emirate of Al-Baha........................... 58,6 Emirate of Al-Ourayyat.................... 66,7 Emirate of Jizan...................... ......... 91,7 Emirate of Najran............................. Mlntetry of Labour: General Bureau................................. 4.9 Labour Affairs.................................. 1118,8 Social Affairs Department.................. 179,5 Social Security Department................ 1189,6 342,5 Social Welfare Mtatetry of Health............................. 5656,4 Minted? of Education: General Bureau................................. 9568,2 Thaghr Model School. Jeddah........ 81,1 46,9 Al-Asma Model Institute................... Presidency of Girls School.................. 3871,4 258,1 Teacher Training College for Girls....... Ministry of Higher Education.............. 608,3 9,6 Darat Al-Malik Abdul Aziz............... Mhtetry of Communicatioas............... 7594,6 Minted? of P.T.T. T.T.................................................. 7695,5 Post.................................................. 798,1 Minted? of Finance & N.E. General Bureau................................ 2879,6 Customs Department........................- 442,3 41.2 Income Tax Department.................... 180,3 Deportment of Guest Palace.............. 71,8 Central Department of Statistics........ Gov. Public Utility............................ 7805,0

82,0 4,3 68,6 79,3 95.3 62.5 72,9 37,0 32,7 63,9 42,2 31,8 38,1 17,4 17,4 42.0

Mlntetry of (he Interior: 1 General Bureau........................... . 2 Public Security......................... ........ 3 Civil Defence........................... _...... 4 investigation Department................... 5 Frontiers A Coast Guards............... 6 Public Security College.................. ... 7 Special Security Department.......... . 8 National Security Council.................. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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826,6 75,0 26,0 186,8 2420,0

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15,0 20,0 1100,0 50,0 —

349,8 750,8 45,2 85,8 103,6 34,7 16,9 2.7

165.6 2676.1 435.8 642,7 629,0 41,2 112,6 12,7

33.1 13.2 38.8 32.7 18,4 12.7 12.9 6,6 17,8 20,5 10,5 9,9 11.2 13,2 12,9 16,5

248.5 231,0 91,6 74,6 48,8 41,7 33,5 16,3 44,5 56,1 31,3 25,2 27,2 28,0 36,4 33,2

0,6 97,3 38,5 11,0 41.5 1021.4

4,3 179,9 46,0 52,6 64,2 2215,0

2591,7 1.4 34,0 1131,7 88,2 18,4 — 7365,0

79,0 _ _ 11,3 — 26,7 — 19,0

2214,5 8,0 5,1 524,8 69,4 340,0 4,0 27,9

4683,0 11,7 7,8 2203,6 100,5 223,2 5.6 182,7

7120,2 350,3

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216,3 127,9

359,0 319,9

2649,0 158,0 10,0 — 16,6 7805,0

_ — — — —

59,8 39.2 3,9 121,6: 31,6

170,8 245,1 27,3 58,7 23,6

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Mhdtfry of Petroleum and Mbende

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Roporca: 1 Petroleum......................................... 2 27

Mhrielrj of Commerce.......................

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Mfabtry ofIndusny A Electricity..................................... Mfthbtiy of Apiculture and Water.....

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11,6

47,4

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36,3

30,9

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831,1

763,9



120,2

42,2

2,0

17,8

58,2

1827.7

275,0

1500,0

9,3

43,4

4160.3

3470,3

140,0

228,2

322,0

1220,5

750,3

4.1

103,8

362,3

\ X

393,4

334 ,4

.................

86,9

36,3



12,0

38,6

3!

Mhehteyofjuellce.............................

556,0

177,2

-

63,8

315,0

32

Pretedmcy of KeHgloai JurMc, 183.5

40,0

-

67,2

76,3

140,0

1.0

-

30.3

108,7

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2 Pilgrim Affairs..................................

Pwirhlng and Guidance Aflhkx......

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Mktetry of PSgrhae and Endowments: 1 Endowments Affairs..........................

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Presidency of ReHgfana Gnldance Gronpe...........................

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Presidency of Religious Supervisloa hi the hoty Mosques........................

209,6

40,0

-

119.8

49.8

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Prerideocy of Yooth Wdflare...............

2679,8

2377,5

120,0

105,5

76,8

1 Islamic Affairs................................. 2 Idflmb Rniul iMBIHIhW TfnrlH VIIEI D UlHI Civil Employees Salaries................... 40 and General Roots Governments’ Share in the Retirement 41

150,0

_

150,0

67,1 350,0

-

350,0

Pension Fund &Social Insurance........

950,0

-

950,0



2500,0

_

2500,0





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4101,0



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42 43 44

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General Budget Reserve.................... RiMManr* Prnlar1

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Foreign Aid*

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Gas Collection programme....................... PhbHc Eteabttshments Subsidies.............. Total Budget.......................................... Source: Budget Volumes.

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4101.0 2000,0 9000,0

46,5

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2000,0





9000,0

4V/W,) 244993,5

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