Monday, March 7, 2011

The kingdom tightrope

Saudi Arabia, the largest oil reserves, also fears the popular revolt that began in Tunisia. To prevent transmission, the speech of King Abdullah, 86, has been simple: to make fixed-term contracts from the Saudis who work for the State. In Washington it is considered that the kingdom, balancing between the West and Wahhabi fundamentalism, will weather the storm.

But yesterday there were demonstrations and Shiites. And Facebook is convened for 11 March a day of wrath. These are some of the whys. Why did it all with a wedding? The Saud, a dynasty founded on the outskirts of Riyadh, I owe everything to the initiative of Mohamed ibn Saud, a tribal chief who in 1744 sealed a political and family with Mohamed ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703-1792), a stickler Sunni in favor of returning to the origins of Islam.

Saud's son, Abdulaziz, married the daughter of Wahab, and the political agreement has been maintained, with some bloody exceptions, until the present. Wahhabi doctrine directs ideologically Saudi Arabia, where codes of conduct are much stricter than any other Arab country, and also was instrumental in the birth of both Pakistan and the Taliban.

Why Saudi Arabia was founded? The Arabian Peninsula, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire from the early sixteenth century, politically fragmented in the eighteenth century. In the early nineteenth century, the Ottomans and their Egyptian allies control the peninsula again, but everything started to change in 1902, when another Saud Abdulaziz also in alliance with the Wahhabi army (Ikhwan, Muslim Brotherhood), conquered Riyadh.

Since 1906, the Saud conquered most of the peninsula, including the region of Hijaz, in Mecca and Medina, who took the Hashemite king Ali, brother of the kings of Iraq and Transjordan. In 1932, Saud III proclaimed the kingdom. Why oil is in the wrong place? The Saudis have much to Winston Churchill, who in the early twentieth century decided that the ships of the Royal Navy does not burn coal and oil are fed.

But London failed after its attempt to secure oil supplies in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis ended up sealing a deal with U.S. oil company Aramco. The Sunni monarchy, however, has the oil in a bad spot. In the Kingdom (23 million, six of them foreigners), 10% of the population is Shiite minority in the oases of Qatif and Al Hasa in the east, which pumps 90% of Saudi oil.

Shiite groups rallied yesterday to protest the arrest of a sheik. Why endure the sons of Saud? Not only for the deal with the Wahhabism that legitimizes them religiously. Saud in 1945 signed another deal with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, who promised to defend the kingdom in exchange for oil.

Roosevelt's successors have always honored the agreement. And Saudi Arabia has returned. Often been providing oil below market price. Not been directly involved in any war against Israel. Washington backed against the secular nationalism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. And financed Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran and then to the Muslim guerrillas, supported by the United States and Pakistan expelled the Soviets from Afghanistan.

But not all have been favorable. The family has also spent a fortune in mosques and madrassas that promote Islam hostile to the West. And fifteen of the nineteen September 11 terrorists were Saudis. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, University of California, has ruled that "Saudi Arabia is the most important fanaticization of Islam." Why started instability? The balance of the House of Saud began to be unstable when the Puritans denounced the extravagant lifestyle of the royal family, comprising some 7,000 princes.

The first warning was the occupation of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979, which resulted in the beheading of 63 rebels. And the second notice has been Osama bin Laden, who condemned the monarchy for having requested the presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil following the Gulf War. The ideological origins of Bin Laden go back to the civil war in the 1920's, when Saud, conquered Medina after he crushed a revolt of the Wahhabi army, a supporter of further conquest.

Bin Laden embodies the rebellion of those Wahhabis. And these tensions, Saud added rivalry with Iran, whose nuclear program are obsessed. Iran assisted the Saudi Shiite who fled the fighting in 1979. Why not reduce unemployment? The oil revenues subsidize political passivity in a kingdom that, according to Democracy Index 2010, ranked 160 in a list of 164 countries.

The boldest reform has been the election of a municipal council whose power is limited. Many young people have access to foreign universities, which brings them closer to modernity, but the cinemas are prohibited, such as alcohol and non-Islamic temples, and the woman, which is not allowed to drive, you can vote but not be a candidate in municipal elections next April 23.

Young people spend years in schools and universities to blow the Koran, but unemployment is high, partly because new generations are not prepared to enter a holding jobs overseas. To reduce unemployment, the Crown has imposed on foreign firms hiring a Saudi share. But many firms, according to The Times, religiously pay wages in exchange for the Saudis to stay in their homes.

Why the Saudi future is uncertain? The Saudi monarchy's future is uncertain. A Saud III (1932-1953) succeeded him on the throne five of his 37 sons, Saud IV (1953-64), Faisal (1964-75), Khalid (1975-82), Fahd (1982-2005) and current king, Abdullah. To keep the rule that the successor is the son of the founder (six with life), the reigns are getting shorter.

And the selection process has become more complex since Abdullah was created in 2006 a commission that must ratify a successor: the hitherto considered heir, Prince Sultan, 87 years and operated on for cancer, or Prince Nayez, 77 . The average age of the Government is 65, compared with nineteen of the population, of which 70% are under thirty.

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