Lifting The Veil

By Lisa Beyer

Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been unthinkable. A group of Saudi commoners telling their prince outright that the country needed to be shaken up? Preposterous. But these are extraordinary times, as the small group of businessmen pointed out during a meeting two weeks ago with Prince Salman, governor of Riyadh and younger brother and confidant of King Fahd. "This is the biggest challenge we have ever faced," said one entrepreneur, mindful of the menacing forces of Saddam Hussein gathered just 300 miles to the north. Said another, summoning his courage: "We have to confront our internal issues."

Two matters, the group asserted, demanded urgent attention. First, the nation's defenses must be stiffened. Prince Salman nodded in agreement. Second, the businessmen said with some trepidation, the people of Saudi Arabia must have a greater say in the affairs of the land. The prince, reported one participant, listened to this second petition, "but he didn't like what he heard."

It was remarkable that he heard it at all. The candor of Salman's visitors was a manifestation of how the tremor from Kuwait has shaken the fixtures of Saudi society, one of the world's most conservative realms. For the first time since the visionary warrior-statesman Abdul Aziz, generally known as Ibn Saud, proclaimed his kingdom in 1932, Saudi Arabia has been confronted by the alarming threat of conquest. In coping with that challenge, the country and its 14.5 million inhabitants find themselves poised on the sword edge of change. The modernization and enrichment of Saudi life produced by the oil- price boom of the 1970s and '80s may one day look like a mere twitch compared with the convulsions to come. "This impact will be greater," says a senior adviser to the Saudi government. "These changes won't just break the crockery but the furniture and the walls too."

Ripping the veil off their closely shrouded ties with the U.S., the Saudis offered their territory as the base for the greatest concentration of American troops since the Vietnam War. A land that forbids its women to drive, to travel unaccompanied, to wear Western garb or to expose anything more than a scant flash of eyes and cheekbones is now host to thousands of rifle-toting, jeep-driving female G.I.s clad in fatigues. A country that generally bars Jews from crossing its borders and that prohibits the open practice of any religion other than Islam serves as temporary home to hundreds of American Jewish soldiers and scores of U.S. military chaplains. And a nation that used to allow no more than 20 reporters a year to visit has suddenly found itself swamped by 800 journalists in the past seven weeks, all eager to explore the kingdom's secretive ways.

The foreign defenders have saved Saudi Arabia from Saddam so far, but at the same time the influx of troops has underscored the country's vulnerability. Like the boy who called the bluff on the emperor's new clothes, the Iraqi leader made it plain that Saudi Arabia was not quite the muscular Arab power it appeared to be. "Saddam showed that we are a paper tiger," notes an economist in Riyadh. "Our ability to defend ourselves is a joke." That realization augurs a revamping of the Saudi military. Less easily fixed is the ! breach of the implicit contract between the princes and their lieges. Saudi citizens may come to realize that if the monarch cannot ensure their security, perhaps he ought not to be the only person running things.

So far, the royal family has faced remarkably little challenge. In the early years, Abdul Aziz struggled to hold together a scattered and widely disparate population of tribes. But he and his successors -- sons Saud, Faisal, Khalid and now Fahd -- were greatly aided in their task by the lucky presence beneath their feet of the world's largest reservoir of oil. The revenues from black crude -- which reached a high of $113 billion in 1981 and this year are expected to top $60 billion -- have enabled the House of Saud to create a modern state almost overnight and, in the process, buy the continued fealty of its subjects. First-class medical care is free. So is education from kindergarten to postgraduate levels. Each Saudi family receives 750 sq. yds. of free land and a 30-year interest-free loan of $80,000 to build a house on it. Entrepreneurs get huge interest-free loans to start businesses. And no one pays taxes. "A Saudi," King Fahd noted recently, "has to be very unlucky, very stupid and very lazy not to do well."

While embracing modernity, the government has assiduously eschewed its usual counterpart, Westernization. The House of Saud has clung tenaciously to Wahhabism, the puritanical strain of Sunni Islam that was the driving force of Abdul Aziz's victorious Ikhwan (brethren) movement. The royal family, as well as most Saudis, believe Wahhabi fervor unifies the kingdom's diverse tribes. Though King Fahd is known not to relish meeting his subjects, he devotes an entire day each week, Monday, to conferring with the ulama, the country's religious scholars.

In keeping with the Wahhabi tradition, liquor, pornography and gambling are forbidden. Movies and dancing are also not permitted. Videos, books and publications are heavily censored; copies of this issue of TIME, for example, are certain to be banned from the kingdom. The Saudis enforce Islamic laws of justice to the letter. In the city squares, the hands of thieves are chopped off, adulterers are stoned to death, murderers and rapists are beheaded, and lesser offenders are flogged.

The 1970s produced a few sprouts of freedom. Women appeared on TV for the first time, and educational opportunities for them were expanded. But the overthrow of the Westernizing Shah of Iran by the Ayatullah Khomeini's followers in 1979 froze the budding trend toward liberalization. Later that year, the royal family was shocked when 250 armed religious extremists occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Their defeat took two weeks and cost 229 lives. Suddenly the regime became more devout. Executions were stepped up. And the mutawa, the religious police, gained greater influence. Its members patrol the streets carrying slender sticks and striking transgressors, such as women who show too much skin or shopkeepers who don't close their shutters quickly enough for the five-times-a-day prayer sessions required of all Muslims.

While keeping the lid on personal liberties, the House of Saud has also held on tightly to its monopoly on power. Within the Saud clan, which includes 5,000 princes, there is considerable consultation. Still, government is a closed shop. There is not a single elected official and not a single political party.

Saudis do have access to their leaders, even to the King, through the majlis, a regularly scheduled consultation. In these sessions, held throughout the kingdom, subjects petition the royals for favors; they might, for example, ask for money to send a sick relative abroad for medical treatment or for the mediation of a land dispute. In a complex and modern society, a handful of senior princes, no matter how conscientious, cannot possibly contend with the myriad demands of their subjects. Nonetheless, even the kingdom's small knot of reformists do not want to depose the House of Saud. "The royal family is important for the stability of the country," says a liberal intellectual. "But we do want a parliament."

In 1980 Fahd proposed creating a Consultative Assembly of appointed members. He even built an imposing marble-and-glass chamber for it. But then he waffled on establishing the assembly, and now the building stands vacant on the grounds of the King's al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh. In any case, such a body would not satisfy the nascent band of dissenters. "That's merely a halfway house," says an intellectual.

Even if the royals do retain their undiluted authority, many Saudis would like to see curbs on their abuses of privilege. Paying huge commissions to princes is the price of doing business in the kingdom. "They already receive allowances from the government that allow them to lead easy lives," complains a prominent businessman, "and yet they shake us down."

Nepotism is rife even in the armed forces. "Every commander has some link to the royal family," notes Anthony Cordesman, Washington's foremost expert on the Saudi military. "Loyalty to the House of Saud is the critical factor, not military proficiency." According to U.S. advisers, many of the princely pilots fly only when they want to. During scrambles early in the crisis, a discouraging proportion of them called in sick.

On top of this, the 65,700-man military is simply too small. Pentagon experts reckon the country should have a standing army of at least 100,000. Fahd's family has been leery of a powerful military; for internal security it relies on the 35,000-man National Guard, a tightly knit organization based on tribal loyalties. Still, the government has moved to expand the regular military. Earlier this month, Fahd asked for volunteers. Thousands of Saudis responded, displaying a degree of patriotism not often seen in the heterogeneous state.

More vocal than the calls for political and military reform are pleas for social change, especially for women. With an increasing number of women attaining university degrees, complaints of meager career opportunities are rising. Because Wahhabism forbids the free mixing of the sexes, educated women are mainly confined to jobs in teaching, nursing and social services that do not put them in contact with men. "We have got to change," says a well- educated Saudi woman in Dhahran. "Some fear that we are like sponges that would soak up the negative with the positive from the West. But it is only by being educated and exposed that we are going to find our own identity."

Given the pressing demands of the current crisis, King Fahd has asked women to volunteer to perform "human services and medical services." This, he added, would be in the context of "fully preserving" Islamic values. Still, say some Saudi watchers, men and women will inevitably be thrown together in the workplace, just as American men and women were during the World War II mobilization.

Few Saudis are interested in lessening the rigors of justice. Even liberals tend to believe the country's methods deter crime better than those of the West. The prohibitions on drinking and other vices do not rankle much. Many simply get around them by leading double lives: pious in public, more freewheeling at home and on overseas forays. Bootleg liquor is easily available. The euphemism for home-brew whiskey is "brown," while gin is called "white"; at parties people will say, "I'll have some brown in a + Coke," or "I'll have some white in a Sprite."

One area in which binds have already been loosened is the media. For days, the local press was not even allowed to report the invasion of Kuwait. But now they have the unprecedented freedom to blast Iraq, to record the schism in the Arab world and to report on the troubles the P.L.O. has created for itself by supporting Saddam. These liberties, however, have not been extended to reports on domestic affairs.

Some Saudi liberals seek U.S. support for their campaign for change. "We hope the American presence is not just protection for the status quo," says a businessman. "We assume it will bring an improvement in the integrity of the government." From Washington's viewpoint, however, pushing Fahd and family down the fast track to Westernization and democratization is a likely prescription for a Shah-like disaster. Swift liberalizations could easily stir religious extremists to revolt. "If there's an internal threat to the kingdom," says a U.S. expert on Saudi Arabia, "it's from fundamentalists on the right, not liberalizers on the left."

Speculation that Saudi Arabia will be quickly transformed by the influence of all those Americans on its soil is probably also misconceived. In recent decades Saudi Arabia has absorbed several hundred thousand Westerners, many of them oil-industry experts, without being significantly changed by their presence. One reason is that the foreigners have been kept secluded in luxurious fenced-in compounds that look remarkably like American suburbs.

Similarly, great pains have been taken to isolate the American troops from the Saudi public and minimize cultural clashes. Alcohol and pornography are forbidden to the Americans. Their bases are located away from cities and towns, and when they must venture into settlements, they are under orders to wear civilian clothing and to go unarmed when possible. Violations of this rule have evoked complaints from the Saudis, though both sides are eager to downplay such frictions.

Still, the huge American troop presence cannot help jolting Saudi composure. Says an intimate of the royal decision makers: "They know you can't get into bed with an elephant without a shock to the system." That is especially so now that the affair is out in the open. In the past the Saudis insisted on an "over the horizon" policy toward the U.S. -- they wanted protection but preferred that it be invisible. Faced with Saddam's legions, Fahd quickly < changed his mind. Even as U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney flew to Riyadh immediately after the invasion of Kuwait, Fahd conferred with key royals and decided to accept American troops if Cheney made a convincing case. When the Defense Secretary said President Bush was prepared to help defend the kingdom, Fahd replied, "That's what I thought. Come."

In addition to shoving Riyadh decisively into the Western camp, the gulf crisis has forced the Saudis to rethink relations with their fellow Arabs. According to Western diplomats, Riyadh has decided to financially squeeze the P.L.O., once a big recipient of Saudi largesse, as punishment for its support of Saddam. Yasser Arafat, whom King Fahd dislikes anyway, has asked three times to visit the kingdom but has been turned away. Angered by King Hussein's vacillations on the gulf crisis, King Fahd has refused calls from the Jordanian monarch, who also ranks high on the Saudi dole list. By refusing to condemn Saddam, the Yemenites have so infuriated Riyadh that Defense Minister Prince Sultan hung up on President Ali Abdullah Saleh when he phoned recently.

Some observers believe a new troika of power linking Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria will emerge in the region. U.S. analysts in Washington are doubtful. As they see it, Riyadh has been burned so badly by its neighbors that it is likely to resist Arab alignments and instead rely more on the West.

Whatever the realignments in foreign policy, Fahd and his family will find them easier to swallow than the changes in the country's internal order that some Saudis are just beginning to push for. As Prince Salman's cool reaction to the businessmen in Riyadh suggests, the royals show no willingness to relinquish their monopoly on power. Over time, however, they may see little choice. "It is our tradition to accept authority," says a Saudi professional in Dhahran, adding significantly, "unless the legitimacy of authority is lost." Now that the once closed kingdom has been shocked into opening its doors to the outside world, King Fahd may discover that his people will yearn for a greater say in how their lives are run.

With reporting by William Dowell/Cairo, Dean Fischer/Riyadh and Christopher Ogden/Washington