Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has one of the toughest jobs in the world

BY KAREN ELLIOTT HOUSE

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia--For all the oil riches of his desert kingdom, King

Abdullah arguably has one of the world's worst jobs. The octogenarian ruler,

who only 18 months ago inherited the dynastic throne, is besieged by

internal and external challenges. Sectarian chaos in Iraq, messianic

militancy in Iran and the diminishing clout in the Middle East of its

longtime U.S. ally all pose threats from without. Religious extremism, youth

unemployment and princely corruption threaten from within.

It is a sign of how intense--and potentially fatal to the ruling

regime--those pressures are that King Abdullah opened the Arab Summit

meeting here last Friday by lashing out at U.S. troops in Iraq as an

"illegitimate foreign occupation." But the pressure also explains why Saudi

Arabia has a ruler who actually is trying to grapple with challenges to the

kingdom his father founded 75 years ago. On the one hand, the elderly king

is opening up an unprecedented internal public dialogue on sensitive issues

ranging from religious extremism to the role of women to ease pressure from

middle-class Saudis. On the other hand, in a kingdom that historically

limited its international role to pulling strings in the shadows, he has

engaged in active and open regional and international diplomacy.

The king's initiatives are all the more surprising given his own history.

King Abdullah has no formal education. His government experience for most of

the past 50 years consisted of heading the kingdom's National Guard. For

most of the past decade as Crown Prince and regent for his infirm elder

brother, King Fahd, Abdullah contented himself largely with presiding over a

static and stagnant government. Among his earliest moves upon finally taking

the throne, the king called together the most senior princes to admonish

them that the family's retention of power required greater unity and

integrity than had been evident in the lost decade of Fahd's fading rule.

More significantly, Abdullah imposed for the first time ever an orderly

process for selecting future kings.

Rather than passing the crown from aging brother to aging brother among the

surviving sons of founding ruler Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the next king will be

Crown Prince Sultan and his crown prince will be chosen by a formal vote

among the 36 sons of Abdul Aziz who are either living or have a living son

to represent them. This plebiscite among princes obviously falls far short

of democracy, but it has reassured the country that there is an orderly

process to transition from the sons of Abdul Aziz, the youngest of whom is

now 63, to the next generation.

On a broader level the king has lifted the traditional tight lid on public

discussion of controversial issues and has encouraged a series of nationally

televised dialogues on such touchy issues as extremism, education and the

role of women. The long tame Saudi press has been unleashed to write about

taboo topics like crime, drug use and violence against women and is

beginning even to tiptoe into the sensitive issue of princely corruption.

Saudi Arabia still lacks anything approaching a representative parliament,

but the hand-picked members of the Majlis Ash Shura have been expanded under

King Abdullah and are at least discussing, though not deciding, sensitive

domestic issues. And, on the religious front, he is talking a new language

of tolerance that appeals to the restive middle class even at the risk of

alienating religious extremists.

None of these moves would make King Abdullah a progressive in any other

society, but in Saudi Arabia they have given him an unprecedented measure of

public support. The fact that his initiatives have led to very little

substantive change so far is widely blamed on what are seen as reactionary

relations, especially his brother, Prince Naif, who heads the Ministry of

Interior, and on the religious establishment. "I am hopeful with King

Abdullah more change is on the way," says Tawfiq al-Saif, a member of the

minority Shia sect and one of several Shia leaders with whom King Abdullah

has opened a dialogue. "The people around him are more open. But we need to

institutionalize change, not have it be a personal thing that comes and

goes."

Internationally, the king's earliest focus was on trying to repair the

damage done to U.S.-Saudi relations when, on Sept. 11, 2001, 15 Saudi

extremists and four others attacked the U.S., and by the wider perception

that Saudi Arabia has exported Islamic extremism. Royal diplomacy over the

past 18 months had substantially patched up the bilateral relationship with

the Bush administration, which dropped talk of the need for democracy in

Saudi Arabia, though the king's remarks at the Arab Summit aren't likely to

go over well in the White House. Changing the kingdom's image among the

American public will take far more effort. As one Saudi official says

bleakly, "There is no way to change the image of Saudi Arabia without

changing the image of Islam."

Saudi Arabia's other diplomatic priorities are to convince nations with

regional influence that Sunni-Shia sectarian strife must be stopped at

Iraq's borders, that Iranian militancy must be contained, and that the Sunni

Arab world, of which Saudi Arabia is a part, must be supported in the

self-interest of the West.

In short, Saudi Arabia wants to preserve the regional status quo even as it

is aware that Iran's nuclear ambitions and its influence in Iraq make that

unlikely. From the Saudi perspective, Iraq already is largely under Iranian

domination and nothing the U.S. is likely to do will change that. Iran, in

the private view of senior Saudi officials, is an impoverished country,

radicalized by Shia extremists and now led by a madman, President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad, who is intimidating regional and Western nations. Serious

senior Saudis truly believe Mr. Ahmadinejad seeks nuclear weapons to create

an apocalyptic event that he believes would bring the "final days" and the

return of the Twelfth Imam, whom Shia Muslims believe has been alive but

concealed since 874. His return, they believe, will herald the defeat of the

enemies of Shia Islam, which include not only Christians and Jews but also

Sunni Muslims.

The genuine fear of Mr. Ahmadinejad is also tinged with a certain jealousy

since Iran has rapidly replaced Saudi Arabia as the perceived benefactor of

the Palestinians through its support of violent Hezbollah and Hamas proxies.

It galls the Saudis that they have $1 billion in prospective aid to the

Palestinians sitting in escrow awaiting Hamas' acceptance of Israel's right

to exist while the Iranians can thumb their nose at Israel and buy

Palestinian affections for a tiny fraction of that largesse.

"These are Arabs," says Prince Saud al-Faisal, the kingdom's foreign

minister. "Iran can help achieve peace but not interfere or impose its own

policy. This is a test of will between us and them."

Most Saudis one encounters here seem to see the U.S. as a fading presence in

the region--worn down by its painful experience in Iraq, divided at home,

and lacking the national unity necessary to sustain its historic great power

role. The ruling regime is historically and inextricably linked to its U.S.

ally but is beginning to hedge its bets by improving ties with Russia,

China, India and other powers. "We want to get to a point where China,

Russia, the U.S. and Europe all have an interest in stability in the gulf so

it is no one's sphere of influence and all need to work together to

guarantee stability in order to protect their own economic security," says

one senior official.

Despite all the effort to broaden its diplomatic circle of allies, both

Saudi officials and ordinary citizens with whom one talks are fixated on the

Iranian threat and on whether or not the U.S. will launch a military strike

to try to destroy, or at least retard, Iran's nuclear programs. During

dinner in a tent outside Riyadh with members of a Young Saudi Leaders group,

the topic comes up over and over. The general tenor of the evening is that

the U.S. has horribly "botched" Iraq and this could encourage young Saudi

extremists to be drawn to Iraq to fight the U.S. and return, radicalized, to

threaten Saudi Arabia, or that sectarian strife will spill into Saudi Arabia

where the oil-rich Eastern province is dominated by Shias.

It is clear this group doesn't want a nuclear Iran nor a U.S. strike to

prevent it. "You Americans should stay out of our region," one young man

angrily asserts. "You divided Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq. Please just go."

Says another more realistic Saudi: "We face two evils. If the U.S. strikes

Iran it is terrible for us and if Iran gets nuclear weapons it is terrible

for us." The Saudis, as always, are better at fretting and finger pointing

than at taking decisive action. And the king and his regime, notwithstanding

their new realism and openness, are much better at seeing problems than

solving them.

To the Saudis success lies in balancing competing pressures to preserve the

status quo not in staking out risky new directions. There still is little

sign that the kingdom has the courage of its own concerns. The regime talks

about Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Israel having common strategic interests in

the Middle East, including containing extremist forces in the region and

blocking Iranian domination. But as yet they haven't stepped up to join

Egypt and Jordan in recognizing Israel. For all the concern about U.S.

failure in Iraq, the oil rich kingdom isn't helping U.S. taxpayers foot the

bill for a war whose outcome is at least as important to Saudi Arabia as the

U.S. For all the fears about Iranian domination of the region, the Saudi

response beyond multiple levels of dialogue, is to hope that the U.S. solves

the problem.

Still, whether one views Saudi Arabia as a largely loyal U.S. ally, as an

increasingly reluctant dependent or as a country haltingly seeking an

independent position in this dangerous region, the U.S. continues to have a

profound interest in Saudi stability. In a part of the world where America

has few friends and many enemies, King Abdullah is a last best hope for the

U.S. as well as the Saudis. What will follow him, regardless of whether

there is an orderly succession, almost certainly will be less to America's

liking.

Ms. House, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, won a Pulitzer

prize for her coverage of the Middle East.