Saudi Arabia: Skirmishes Under the Veil

By DEAN FISCHER/RIYADH

The camouflage-clad American troops with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders have all but disappeared from the streets of Riyadh. In the cool evening hours, Saudi families once again browse in the stores, examining electronic gadgets and comparing the latest imported luxury cars. In Jidda, gateway to the Muslim shrines of Mecca and Medina, preparations are well under way to accommodate the 2 million pilgrims expected during this month's hajj. Says an adviser to a senior Saudi minister: "We feel a cloud has been lifted from over our land."

Three months after the gulf war ended, Saudi Arabia seems to have returned to its placid ways. But the calm atmosphere is a mirage. Operation Desert Storm may be over, but it has unleashed powerful political and social crosswinds in the kingdom. Buffeted by the currents, King Fahd is struggling to preserve a precarious balance between secular moderates and religious conservatives while opening up the family-run government to his subjects. At stake is not only the direction of Saudi society, but also the survival of a royal dynasty that has ruled the country since its founding 60 years ago.

Saudi officials even claim that the country is slightly strapped for cash. The government has been forced to borrow $7 billion to fulfill commitments to the U.S.-led alliance. Despite a wartime surge in oil production from 5.5 million to 8 million bbl. a day, Western economists estimate a budget deficit of $25 billion this year. Skittish about both the expense and foreign entanglements, Fahd has reneged on an agreement to base a Pan-Arab defense force composed primarily of Egyptian and Syrian troops on Saudi soil. The plan envisaged an exchange of Egyptian and Syrian military manpower for economic and financial aid.

The country's postwar foreign policy has been a mix of shortsightedness and self-interest. Like the Bush Administration, Fahd had hoped Saddam Hussein would be a casualty of the gulf war; the King now fears that a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq possibly aligned with Iran is worse than coexisting with a weakened Saddam. Washington's hopes of Saudi leadership in the intensified search for Arab-Israeli peace were dashed when Riyadh refused direct participation in negotiations with Israel. Only under intense U.S. pressure did the Saudis consent to discuss such peripheral issues with Israel as arms control and water rights if a peace conference is convened. Fahd has not forgiven Jordan's King Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat for their support of Saddam, further complicating U.S. efforts to forge a united position among Arab moderates.

Eager to show Washington that he is willing to embrace at least some democratic principles, Fahd announced plans in April to appoint a Consultative Council to advise the policymaking Council of Ministers. By Western democratic standards, the proposal is modest. But in the autocratic gulf region, any step to broaden participation in government is radical. Fahd first proposed a Consultative Council more than a decade ago, but shelved the initiative when the Iranian revolution aroused fears of regional instability.

In characteristically subdued Saudi style, the debate prompted by Fahd's proposed reforms is neither conducted in public meetings nor reported in the country's media. The government bans public gatherings of three or more people, and press censorship precludes coverage of internal disputes. Instead, petitions and pamphlets, widely disseminated by photocopiers and fax machines, inform the public of conservative and liberal views. Both minorities seek to influence Saudi Arabia's silent majority, but the literature of the well- organized ultraconservatives is more plentiful and vituperative. Religious extremists have even advocated the execution of so-called secularists -- men without beards. So vicious are the accusations that the country's most influential Islamic scholars last week condemned the ultraconservative campaign as "counter to the interests of the Muslim society." Like the moderates, the conservatives have endorsed the concept of a Consultative Council and called for an end to corruption. But they also want Shari'a (Islamic law) applied to banks, courts and the media. The government, for example, would be barred from borrowing money from banks, and noncriminal offenses would be tried in religious courts. So far, King Fahd has rejected the demand.

During Ramadan, the month-long Islamic fasting period that followed the war, vigilante members of the religious police, the mutawain, stepped up their harassment of Saudi and foreign women who displayed too much skin in violation of dress codes. Women appearing in public without veils, or without wearing head-to-toe abayas, have been abused and occasionally assaulted by the cane- wielding morals squads.

The vigilantes, mostly semi-educated young men bitterly opposed to Western values, have broken into compounds in Riyadh and Jidda to threaten and arrest Westerners drinking home-brewed liquor in defiance of the ban on alcohol. A women's tennis tournament in Riyadh was halted when the mutawain learned of it. The government advised an oil-company executive to cancel a party because members of both sexes were invited. Wives of Western businessmen and diplomats are fearful of leaving their villas in the evening unless accompanied by their husbands. To do otherwise in the atmosphere of intimidation created by the mutawain is to risk imprisonment.

To curb the excesses of the fanatics, the King appointed a religious moderate, Abdul Rahman al-Said, to head the mutawain, officially known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Al-Said, a former dean of Islamic studies at Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud Islamic University, received an $18 million budget increase and instructions to rid the mutawain of zealous volunteers. But harassment of Saudis and foreigners by the mutawain continues, underscoring how difficult it will be for al-Said to gain control of the organization and its durable network of faculty and student supporters.

Alarmed by the aggressiveness of the religious extremists, 43 moderate businessmen and intellectuals petitioned Fahd to fulfill his pledge to make the government more democratic. "A Consultative Council is a symbol of participation that will help educate the public," says Abdul Muhsin al-Akkas, an executive of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We are not yet ready for free elections, but it is a step forward." In response, the religious conservatives marshaled support in the mosques for the implementation of Shari'a. Last month religious leaders in the conservative stronghold of Buraida spread rumors that a popular sheik, Salman al-Oda, had been arrested. Five thousand followers marched on the governor's palace in protest.

The moderates were encouraged when Fahd met in April with four of the 47 women who drove their automobiles last November in defiance of tradition. The women, many of them teachers (one of the few professions open to females), were suspended from their jobs, plagued by anonymous phone calls, threatened with beheading by rabid Muslim preachers and denied permission to leave the - country. Like a stern but forgiving father, Fahd told the women he had to discipline them as he would his own daughters, but hinted that their punishment would soon end. Nonetheless, the issue of women's rights is likely to be deferred until the Consultative Council issue is settled.

To educated middle-class Saudis, who chafe at religious persecution and political disenfranchisement, Fahd's promises have raised hopes of progressive if gradual change. "By next fall," predicts an aide to a senior prince, "there will be a Consultative Council and a major Cabinet reshuffle." The council, consisting of 80 to 100 appointive members, will have limited powers that will not impinge on the absolute authority of the monarch. According to the Saudi adviser, the Cabinet changes will not involve defense and internal security. Fahd's half brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, commands the National Guard, and his full brothers, Prince Sultan and Prince Naif, direct the Defense and Interior ministries.

Authority would remain firmly in the hands of the King and his brothers. But in the Saudi tradition, the slightest movement toward liberalization is noteworthy. It was not until the 1960s that slavery was abolished and women were allowed to attend schools. A Consultative Council is a concession to the concept of political dialogue, if not to the principle of power sharing. Fahd, who governs by family consensus, should not shy away from a modest extension of the political franchise, particularly if it represents no dilution of his own power. He might even find it easier to control the religious extremists who pose such a threat, in the moderates' view, to the stability of the kingdom. Despite their endorsement of a Consultative Council, says a Western diplomat, "the religious conservatives correctly perceive that one of its aims is to provide a forum for people to speak out against their excesses."

Moderates fret that Fahd will once again back down rather than confront the conservatives. "He will never fight them," says a Saudi intellectual. But failure to institute reforms now will only serve to encourage the extremists. Fahd's father, King Abdul Aziz, founder of the kingdom, did not hesitate to sever his alliance with the puritanical Wahhabi warriors when they defied his rule. As the struggle over Saudi Arabia's future intensifies, Fahd could do worse than recall his father's choice when challenged by his kingdom's zealots.