The House of Saud comes down on ISIL
Brian M Downing
Saudi Arabia was jolted by three ISIL bombings earlier this week. One of them shook the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina – a centerpiece of the Kingdom which confers prestige from much of the Islamic world. The bombing calls into question the ability of Saudi security forces to prevent more attacks.
King Salman has promised to come down with an “iron fist” on terrorists inside his Kingdom. While most of his subjects are upset by terrorism at home, security crackdowns are seldom done without excesses. Sometimes they cause at least as much trouble as they seek to curtail. Whatever the House of Saud does will reverberate throughout its realm shortly before a generational succession takes place.
Post-9/11 and now
The Kingdom was home to hundreds of veterans of the Afghan War of the 80s. Some were sympathetic toward, or even active in, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Most were not. Nonetheless, Saudi security forces came down hard on the former jihadis.
Results were not good. Many subjects felt no sympathy with AQAP attacks inside the Kingdom and resented the heavy hand that was coming down. The government shifted to less harsh methods, relying on familial and tribal pressures on jihadis to lay down their arms, and seeking to seal borders from infiltrators and arms supplies. Security forces soon broke AQAP. Remnants fled to Yemen.
The relatively new king has reverted to the harsher methods of his elder brothers. Over the last year, repression has stiffened and executions have increased.
Change inside the Kingdom
One cannot go twice into the same river, the ancient Greek tells us, and considerable changes have come across Saudi Arabia since expelling AQAP. The royal family cannot rely on the popular support it enjoyed in the past.
Weak oil prices have imperiled finances. Saudi budgets once required world prices to be over $100/bbl to break even. With prices now under $50/bbl, and likely to remain soft, the largesse distributed on subjects has been cut. At least some of the princes’ legitimacy has been based on the cash nexus, though they may not realize it.
The monarchy is seen as more hostile to reform. It came down hard on reformists when the Arab Spring began to percolate. Further, it helped bring down the elected government in Egypt and replace it with the old oligarchy, especially the army. Saudi reformers, including the numerous members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood inside the Kingdom, see the monarchy as an obstacle to change even more than ten years ago. They worry, probably quite rightly, that security forces will come down hard on reformers and jihadis alike.
With the rise of ISIL, the monarchy has moved closer to the US in recent years. American drones operate from a Saudi airfield in the south, and Saudi aircraft are part of the US coalition against ISIL. Subjects see their rulers as incapable of fulfilling their first duty of defending the realm. Naturally, this flaw will elicit more ire among jihadis, as it did with bin Laden and his followers15 years ago.
More discerning subjects see their rulers aligned with Israel in the rivalry with Iran. Riyadh underwrites Mossad operations inside the Shia power and is thought to have offered Israeli F-15s refueling opportunities should they attack Iran. Meanwhile, the princes are silent on the Palestinian issue, even though settlements expand and Palestinian resistance flares.
Saudi security will come down harder on the sizable Shia population concentrated in the Eastern Province. They are already deemed seditious and tied to the IRGC. Harsher treatment may make this a self-fulfilling intelligence analysis.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.