Saudi Arabia
“”Outraged? I'm barely surprised. This is a country where women aren't allowed to drive a car. They're not allowed to be in the company of any man other than a close relative, they're required to adhere to a dress code that would make the Maryknoll nun look like Malibu Barbie. They beheaded 121 people last year for robbery, rape, and drug trafficking; they've no free press, no elected government, no political parties, and the royal family allows the religious police to travel in groups of six, carrying nightsticks and they freely and publicly beat women. But 'Brutus is an honorable man.' 17 schoolgirls were forced to burn alive because they weren't wearing the proper clothing. Am I outraged? No...that is Saudi Arabia, our partners in peace.
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| —CJ Cregg, The West Wing[1] |
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a big desert nation smack-dab in the center of the Middle East. It is a theocratic monarchy ruled by the House of Saud, which is propped up by the United States government in exchange for gargantuan quantities of oil. Saudi Arabia, dominated by Wahhabi Islam, is one of the most repressive countries in the world.
Saudi Arabia is unique among OPEC member nations, in that they are permitted to adjust their oil output on a short term basis in order to tweak the market price. The rest of OPEC are constrained to the production levels agreed upon at periodic cartel meetings.
Nevertheless, the Saudis have been getting rather pissed at America for the recent "fuck yous" given to them by the Obama administration. Upset at the Americans' attempted rapprochement of Iran, lack of military action on Syria and their deal to remove Assad's chemical weapons, the Saudis rejected a chance to get a seat at the United Nations Security Council, are limiting diplomatic interactions with the West and have threatened to "shift away" from the United States.[2] At this point it's unknown what can actually be done to get them to reform.
Saudi Arabia, with its population of 28 million, currently has the fourth largest military budget surpassing France, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan and India.
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[edit] History
Founded in 1925 by Ibn Saud and Jack Philby[wp][3]. As custom warrants in recognition of his Alpha male status, tribal chieftains offered their daughters to Ibn Saud, cementing alliances among the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula; Abdulaziz (his full name) fathered 42 sons. Unlike European monarchies handed down by generation, six of his sons — including the reigning King Salman — have succeed the founder of the Saudi state.
Assassination of Faisal, 1975
In 1975, in a harbinger of things to come in the following decades, the reformer and modernizing King Faisal was assassinated by his own nephew with a gun shot to the head at point blank range. The killer confessed he was motivated by Faisal allowing television in Saudi Arabia.
Anti-Soviet jihad, 1979-1988
In 1979 the Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz bin Baz[wp] issued a fatwa declaring it the collective duty of Muslims to travel to Afghanistan for the anti-Soviet jihad. Bin Baz was also supportive of the rebels who took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca the same year.
Attack on the Grand Mosque, 1979
The Grand Mosque in Mecca (home of the Kaaba) was briefly taken over for a period of weeks by an obscure group led by a poorly educated Bedouin named Juhayman[4] whose theology was an early manifestation of modern violent Salafism. These believers did not embrace many aspects of modern society. They opposed identity cards and passports because these denote loyalty to an entity other than Allah. They were against images of living beings, not only on television and in photography but also on coins. The only previous violent encounter was when a group of young activists were caught smashing shop display windows showing female mannequins in the center of Medina in 1965. And they had peculiar views on ritual practices setting them apart from other religious communities and the religious establishment.
The incident revealed the Saudi state was thoroughly unprepared to deal with a challenge to its legitimacy from conservative religious believers.[5] After three days of fruitless negotiations, the Saudi's turned to external, non-Islamic "crusader" forces to dislodge the jihadis. Non-Muslims are not allowed within the city of Mecca, and bloodshed on the grounds of the temple is considered virtually an unpardonable sin; yet the Saudi state and its reigning religious establishment deputized, through a fatwa, the French Special Operations Forces to retake the mosque.[6][7]
Official reports say that 255 fanatics, troops and pilgrims were killed, while 560 were injured. The rebels who survived were imprisoned or beheaded, with reports claiming 63 beheadings.
The respected imam Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, who abhorred violence, condemned Juhayman's attack; however one of his students, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, fell under the influence of Juhayman's thought. In coming years Maqdisi further developed the idea that the ruling Saudi clan were apostate Muslim infidels along with a rejection of the very idea of a nation state.[8]
1987 Meccan massacre
In 1987 402 persons, mostly Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims and about 85 Saudi security personal, were killed during an anti-American demonstration in front of the Grand Mosque. Iranian Shi'a pilgrims traditionally make up the largest single contingent from any single country.[9]
Reaction to basing U.S. troops, 1991
The decision by the Saudi ruling clan to allow the basing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for an attack upon a neighboring Islamic state shook the Saudi domestic scene like an earthquake. Osama bin Laden offered to King Fahd his jihadis, fresh from victory in Afghanistan to aid in the liberation of Kuwait, and was rebuffed. Many mujihadeen fighters became further radicalized and embraced the Salafi-jihadist movement of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and others. Maqdisi declared the Saudi rulers takfir[wp], or unbelievers, two years earlier, granting a license to kill them by followers of his teaching. Allowing infidel Crusader armies to use Saudi territory for a war against other Muslims seemed to confirm the Salafist's teachings.
The 1991 Gulf war triggered a process whereby jihadists became more critical of the Saudi regime and more openly hostile to the United States. By the middle of the decade Americans were targeted. In November 1995 a car bomb in central Riyadh killed five Americans and two Indians with scores injured. Four suspects confessed claiming they were inspired by Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Mohammad al-Massari[wp] and Osama bin Laden.
[edit] Religion
Saudi Arabia's state religion is Sunni Islam and as such, no other religion is tolerated. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah says that he respects the right of other religions to worship in private, but this right is not respected in practice. In fact, signs of worship from other religions are commonly confiscated and discarded at immigration checks. Recently, Mr Abdullah has said that all religions of the world must unite to fight atheism.[10]
[edit] Human rights
Saudi Arabia is generally ranked, alongside North Korea, as one of the most repressive nations on Earth. Women and non-Sunnis are regarded as second-class citizens. Women are thought to be the property of their husbands, and so much as driving a car can earn a woman ten lashes of a whip.[11] Since 2011, the country has begun to enter the 21st 19th Century by slowly allowing women to work in retail. This has been followed by an organized campaign by Abdullah Muhammad al-Dawood of sexual harassment of women retail workers.[12] Homosexuality is punishable by death. Saudi Arabia has played a large role in repressing the Arab Spring, with their violence towards Bahrain's Shi'a receiving particular coverage.
Following in its long standing tradition of international hypocrisy, Saudi Arabia's deplorable human rights record has not stopped them from condemning the atrocities of the Syrian counterrevolution, and calling for Bashar al-Assad to step down. Nor have they shied away from accusing Israel of crimes against humanity for its bombardment of civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.
[edit] Human trafficking
While slavery supposedly was abolished in 1962, human trafficking remains a big problem in Saudi Arabia, where thousands of children, men and women live as slaves. Foreign workers, especially women, are often subjected to sexual abuse and rape. This is exacerbated by the widespread — but erroneous — belief that Saudi employers are entitled to confiscate employees passports upon entry to the country.[13] Thousands of immigrants have fled their employers claiming to have been enslaved and abused.[14]
[edit] Oil
In 1936 an oil concession was granted to the jointly owned Arabian-American Oil (Aramco), the forerunner of the modern Saudi Aramco, the world's richest corporation.[15] While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia owns the reserves, American operators provide the technology and operate the rigs.
Saudi Arabia has the largest known reserves of oil, and the greatest capacity for extracting it. In fact, Saudi Arabia has so heavily invested in excess capacity that it can, very quickly, increase production by about 2 million barrels per day, or about the output of most other major oil exporting countries. Saudi Arabia has invested in this capability because it gives them a great deal of power over the world's oil market. If another member of OPEC were to go offline, the Saudis could easily make up for it. If the other members of OPEC were to cheat on their quotas, the Saudis could flood them out (and thus cause prices to crash).
This has caused many to worry about their geopolitical power, but so far the few times the Saudis have tried to use the "oil weapon" it failed miserably.
[edit] Alternate names
- al-Mamlaka al-ʻArabiyya as-Suʻūdiyya
- The KSA
- Arabistan (informally)
- Sandy Arabia (by Genghis Khant's grandmother)
[edit] On the other hand
- As dictatorships go, it's been among the least murderous, at least on an official level. No Armenian Genocides, Iran-Iraq wars, Killing Fields, and has likely killed fewer people than Israel or Syria. It didn't send troops to Vietnam in the 1960s, and has likely killed fewer Jews than Hezbollah. Yemen would certainly like to object, of course, so keep your eye on that one. On an unofficial level, there seems to be a tacit approval of funding by Saudis of Sunni Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.[16]
- Has free health care
- Will soon have the tallest building in the world—wp:Kingdom Tower
- Foreign women can likely show more skin in Saudi Arabia than Iran
- Has "work" for immigrants
- Gives more per capita aid than the US
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ "Enemies Foreign and Domestic," season 3
- ↑ Saudi Arabia warns of shift away from U.S. over Syria, Iran, Reuters
- ↑ Middle East Time Bomb: The Real Aim of ISIS Is to Replace the Saud Family as the New Emirs of Arabia, By Alastair Crooke, September 3, 2014.
- ↑ Review of The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al Qaeda, Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday, 2007.
- ↑ Thomas Hegghammer and Stephane Lacroix. Rejectionist Islamism in Saudi Arabia: The Story of Juhayman al-Utaybi Revisited. International Journal of Middle East Studies, February 2007, pp 103-122, Cambridge University Press.
- ↑ Many details of the Mosque takeover remain officially classified Saudi state secrets. The Makkan Siege: In Defense of Juhayman, a collection of internet reports on the siege and excerpts of Juhayman's letters. Juhayman is considered to have provided more inspiration to the the modern jihadist movement than Osama bin Laden who left virtually no religious writings behind.
- ↑ Peterson, J.E. “Saudi Arabia: Internal Security Incidents Since 1979.” Arabian Peninsula Background Note, No. APBN-003. Published on www.JEPeterson.net, January 2004; updated 31 December 2007.
- ↑ Maqdisi's Community of Abraham is a further expansion of Juhayman's Clarification Concerning the Community of the One God Designated as Guide of the People; Awakening Islam, Stephane Lacroix & George Holoch, Harvard University Press, Aug 15, 2011, Page 101.
- ↑ US Saudi Arabia Diplomatic and Political Cooperation Handbook, USA International Business Publications, 2007, p. 178.
- ↑ Saudi Arabia versus atheism
- ↑ Saudi court orders woman to be whipped for driving car AP/NBC News
- ↑ New Employment Opportunities for Saudi Women
- ↑ Holding onto Employee Passports: Unlawful
- ↑ Kalami, Mehr A. Slavery Continues: Hope of Breaking the Chains. iUniverse, 2014.
- ↑ with $30 trillion in assets, or almost two times total U.S. GDP. Oil and Green Energy: Saudi Arabia's Aramco Has $30 Trillion in Assets, Sahit Muja, 11 April 2012.
- ↑ [www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-terrorist-funding WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists] by Declan Walsh (Sunday 5 December 2010 10.30 EST) The Guardian