'Liberating' Saudi's Shi'ites (and their
oil) By Ashraf Fahim
If the
rulers of Saudi Arabia held out any hope that the
post-September 11, 2001, demonization of their kingdom
was finally waning, then someone in Riyadh should pick
up a copy of An End to Evil, a recently published
neo-conservative roadmap for "winning" the "war on
terror". In it, David Frum, an ex-speechwriter for
President George W Bush (and inventor of the term "axis
of evil"), and Richard Perle, the eminence grise
of the neo-con fraternity, suggest that the United
States should bring Saudi Arabia to heel by threatening
to support independence for the country's Eastern
Province or Al Hasa (also known as Ash Sharqiyah), where
much of Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ite population and,
coincidentally, most of its oil is situated.
While the continuing turmoil in Iraq might
inhibit lesser souls even to consider tinkering with the
map of the world's most important oil producer, Frum and
Perle are made of sterner stuff. Lamenting the
discrimination suffered by Saudi Arabia's Shi'ites at
the hands of the Sunni elite, whose power base lies in
Najd and Hijaz in the center and west of the Arabian
Peninsula, they deduce that "it is not bigotry alone
that explains these Saudi actions, but also their fear
that the Shi'ites might someday seek independence for
the Eastern Province - and its oil". If this fear were
somehow brought to fruition it "would obviously be a
catastrophic outcome for the Saudi state. But it might
be a very good outcome for the US."
There is, of
course, nothing new in the suggestion that, in extreme
circumstances, the United States might seize
strategically important oilfields in the Persian Gulf
region. Such a step was contemplated at an advanced
level by the administration of president Richard Nixon
during the 1973 Arab oil embargo. But some observers
believe that the events of September 11, as well as the
frailty of the House of Saud and the Shi'ite awakening
in Iraq, have given this contingency new life.
Dr Sa'd al-Fagih, head of the London-based Saudi
opposition group the Movement for Islamic Reform in
Arabia (MIRA), says the military plan to "liberate" Al
Hasa is already in place but would only be considered if
the US-friendly House of Saud falls. In that event, he
claims, the US "has made preparations to isolate the
Eastern Province militarily". US bases in Qatar and
Kuwait are aimed, he says, "at the north end of the
Eastern Province and at the south end of the Eastern
Province. So the scenario is, America will take over in
a line extending from Kuwait, down to Dammam [the
capital of Al Hasa] or down to Qatar." With the
oilfields secure, they will "leave Najd and Hijaz to
their fate".
Whether or not al-Fagih's claims
are accurate, other observers of the situation in the
Gulf are dismissive of neo-con fantasies about
partitioning Saudi Arabia. Professor Gary Sick of
Columbia University, who served on the National Security
Council staff under presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford
and Ronald Reagan, calls the idea typical of the kind of
"irresponsible dreaming about the types of changes that
can be brought about in the Middle East" now
commonplace. However, he says, "admittedly some of those
dreams have come true in these last few years".
The current plan to "liberate" Al Hasa has its
genesis in the post-September 11 bipartisan Washington
consensus that Saudi Arabia is, to some degree, a
problem in the "war on terror". Many in Washington
allege that the kingdom has financed, offered
ideological inspiration to and provided the manpower for
al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. The more extreme
ideologues such as Frum and Perle say that Saudi Arabia
"deserves its own place on the axis of evil", and have
zeroed in on the ethnic peculiarities in the Eastern
Province as a possible trump card in pressuring the
kingdom.
That perspective gained voice at an
April 2002 panel discussion at the Hudson Institute, an
influential conservative think-tank, titled "Saudi
Vulnerability: The Source of Middle Eastern Oil and the
Eastern Province". On the panel were Ali al-Ahmed, head
of the Saudi Institute, a Washington-based Shi'ite
opposition organization, and Max Singer, co-founder of
Hudson. No transcript was available for the event, but
the tone can perhaps be discerned from an article Singer
subsequently authored titled "Free the Eastern Province
of Saudi Arabia".
For Singer, the diffusion of
Sunni Wahhabi "extremism" abroad could be eliminated by
severing its source of funds - oil. A conference at
Hudson in June 2002, titled "Oil, Terrorism, and the
Problem of Saudi Arabia" and hosted by Republican
Senator Sam Brownback, allowed various anti-Saudi
luminaries to expand on that theme. "One has to think in
terms of intervention in the oilfields, which are
conveniently all on one side," noted panelist Simon
Henderson, a British writer on Saudi Arabia. "And I dare
say there are at least a few people in the Pentagon who
plan this one day by day."
The neo-cons
discover 'Petrolistan' Though the Saudi Shi'ite
grievance has been newly championed by the neo-cons for
transparently realpolitik reasons, it does have a
legitimate basis in the religious and political
discrimination the Shi'ites have suffered. The Shi'ites
have been excluded from positions of power and certain
professions, hindered from fully practicing their faith
and subject to hostility by some in the conservative
Sunni religious establishment. In addition, though they
make up a large part of the workforce at Saudi Aramco,
Shi'ites have watched the oil wealth flow west to Najd
and Hijaz. Thus intermittent uprisings have erupted
since Al Hasa was incorporated into the Saudi realm in
1913, most recently after the Shi'ite Iranian revolution
emboldened their co-religionists throughout the Persian
Gulf.
Various estimates put the Shi'ite
population at 5-10 percent of the 17 million native
Saudis, and it is possible they constitute a majority in
Al Hasa. Thus far, the priority for the Shi'ite
opposition has been equal rights within the Saudi state,
and it is not at all clear that they would welcome US
intervention on their behalf.
The aspirations of
the Shi'ite, however, are not the priority of the
advocates of a "Muslim Republic of East Arabia", as
Singer dubbed it. And this kind of neo-con grand
strategizing, based largely on ethnic number-crunching,
strikes Sick as foolhardy. The notion of disrupting a
country "as important as Saudi Arabia requires a lot
more serious thought than the idea that there are just a
bunch of Shi'ite running around the Eastern Province",
he says.
Neo-con scheming could also potentially
stir sectarian strife inside Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince
Abdullah, the country's de facto ruler, recently took
the unprecedented step of accepting a petition from
prominent Shi'ites, titled "Partners in the Homeland",
calling for greater rights. Such attempts at
reconciliation could be undermined if the Shi'ites,
unjustly or not, are seen to be conspiring with
outsiders to break up the Saudi state.
The
Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is not the only place
where the Sunni-Shi'ite divide plays out atop large
reserves of black gold. A sectarian power struggle
simmers throughout the Gulf, and some see in the Shi'ite
revival in Iraq the makings of a significant shift in
power. "Now that the dust of the Iraq war has settled,
it is clear the Shi'ites have emerged, blinking in the
sunlight, as the unexpected winners," wrote Mai Yamani,
a research fellow at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs in London. "[The West has] also
woken up to the accident of geography that has placed
the world's major oil supplies in areas where they
[Shi'ites] form the majority: Iran, the Eastern Province
of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and southern Iraq. Welcome to
the new commonwealth of 'Petrolistan'."
The
concept of an emerging "Petrolistan" feeds into the
growing paranoia in the region that the Shi'ites are
conspiring with the United States to dismantle Sunni
hegemony across the Middle East. But Sick says such
paranoia is misplaced. "I don't think there is a Shi'ite
policy," he says. In fact "the US tends to be very
nervous about Shi'ite governance". He notes, among other
things, hostile relations between the US and
revolutionary Iran, and the US failure to topple Saddam
Hussein in 1991 precisely out of fear of a Shi'ite
takeover of Iraq.
For the time being, the idea
of liberating Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province remains on
the fringes of US policymaking, and in fashion among the
mandarins of think-tanks such as the Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute and the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI). But, says Sick, it
"has acquired no significant following in the
administration".
Unfortunately for Riyadh, the
fringes have become the nursery for future policy, and
the fashions of the neo-cons often become conventional
wisdom for the grown-ups in the Bush administration.
Anyone who followed the policy prescriptions of AEI's
"black-coffee breakfast" seminars prior to the invasion
of Iraq, for example, would recognize a stunning
similarity in the way US policy in Iraq has evolved.
At present, however, Al Hasa's would-be
liberators appear cognizant of the limits of their
influence and content to use the threat of partition to
browbeat the Saudis into obeisance in the "war on
terror" and the construction of a new Iraq. The threat
is also intended to ensure that Saudi Arabia doesn't
think about using its own oil as leverage in the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the context in which invasion was
first discussed in 1973.
Frum and Perle are
frank about the strategic utility of their proposal. "We
would want the Saudis to know that we are pondering
[partition]. The knowledge that the US has options other
than abjectly accepting whatever abuse the Saudis choose
to throw our way might have a 'chastening' effect on
Saudi behavior."
Some observers have suggested
that the chaotic situation in Iraq signals the waning of
the neo-conservative star that rose after September 11.
Whether or not this is the case, political fortunes can
change quickly in Washington. Another Bush term could
easily embolden the neo-cons, and if, as so many
predict, the House of Saud falls, they could undertake
their grandest delusion yet.
(Copyright 2004
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
