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« Back to The Saudi-American Alliance, Part One main page    Transcript for: The Saudi-American Alliance, Part OneTHINK TANK WITH BEN WATTENBERG #1235 Saudi Arabia Pt. 1FEED DATE: JANUARY 6,2005 Sandra Mackey and Tom Lippman Opening Billboard: Funding for this program is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Mr. Wattenberg: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. America’s 70 year long relationship with Saudi Arabia has been at times both fruitful and challenging. With the world’s largest proven oil reserves and major Saudi investment in the U.S. economy, the Desert Kingdom has been a strong economic and strategic partner. But inside Saudi Arabia, the Royal Family is under attack from Islamic terrorists who are opposed to the regimes’ close ties with America. In fact, 15 out of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were Saudi terrorists. With so many interests at stake for both countries, what is the future of the U.S. – Saudi alliance? To find out, Think Tank is joined by… Thomas Lippman, veteran journalist, former Middle East bureau chief with the Washington Post, and author of Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia And… Sandra Mackey, a journalist who worked secretly inside Saudi Arabia during the Oil Boom of the 1970’s and 1980’s. She is the author of The Saudi’s: Inside the Desert Kingdom. The Topic Before the House: The Saudi - American Alliance, part one. This Week on Think Tank. Mr. Wattenberg: Sandra Mackey, Tom Lippman, congratulations on both of you for writing two very fine, fascinating books about Saudi Arabia. Sandra, seeing as your book was earlier, written I guess in the late 1980s, could you give us a sense of what Saudi Arabia was like, just I guess during and shortly after the oil boom began? Ms. Mackey: Well, I was in Riyadh and... Mr. Wattenberg: Which is the capitol. Ms. Mackey: Is the capital. I mean it was a boomtown. It was everything you heard about what the atmosphere in a boomtown might be. What was particularly interesting about this boomtown was that you had a convergence of the very insular Saudis and the outside world. And... Mr. Wattenberg: Insular meaning these – it was – part of it was really a peasant society, wasn’t it? Ms. Mackey: Well, I would say it was more a nomadic society... Mr. Wattenberg: Right. Ms. Mackey: With certainly a number of areas of settled population. What I mean by insular is where particularly in the center of the country you just had not had contact with the outside world. The coastlines had for, you know, many, many years. Mr. Wattenberg: Yes. Ms. Mackey: But not the center of the country. And you suddenly had this influx of all these foreigners who brought the expertise to do the physical infrastructure of Saudi Arabia and you created a situation in which the Saudis were suddenly, you know, thrown into the twentieth century. Mr. Wattenberg: Now Tom, your book is copyright 2004, somewhat later. Where do we stand now? Has this boom progressed? Mr. Lippman: Well, Saudi Arabia today is a fully automated, air-conditioned, computerized, mechanized, motorized society. That great boom that Sandra described, transformed the country in a – in a material way, faster, I believe than any other society in human history has been catapulted into the appurtenances of modern life. Mr. Wattenberg: And the high price of oil hasn’t hurt? Mr. Lippman: No. Absolutely not. In fact only in the last year or two have – have - the first time since Desert Storm, have the Saudis been able to balance their budget, which they didn’t do in the 1990s. The issue in Saudi Arabia today is whether, and if so in what way, society, the organization of the community should be transformed as the material surroundings have been transformed. Mr. Wattenberg: I mean, Saudi Arabia in no way is a democracy, is that...? Although, I – reading some of the material, one place said that women will be voting in municipal elections and there will be municipal elections. And then somewhere else says women will not be voting. Mr. Lippman: Women will not be voting. Mr. Wattenberg: Women will not be voting for anything. Mr. Lippman: No. Well, it’s funny that you should bring that up because there are two very important elections in process in Saudi Arabia now. One is for the first time since the early 1960s, some of the municipality councils will be elected – direct popular participation. Men only, as candidates and as voters. The other is for the board of directors of... Mr. Wattenberg: But can women – and women can’t vote? Mr. Lippman: No. They can’t, for reasons which we can talk about. Nor can they run. The other election, which is going on right now, in which women ran and voted, is the election for the Board of Directors of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which is one of the most powerful, non-royal economic organizations in the country. And there, female members of the business community who were quite active and do have a lot of money did run and were elected. Mr. Wattenberg: Now, Sandra makes the point in her book that you get all the good dish and all the good gossip and what’s really going on from women. Is that – was that the point? Ms. Mackey: Oh, yes. I, you know, so many times people say... Mr. Wattenberg: You had to write when you filed under a nom de plume or nom de guerre of a man. Is that right? Ms. Mackey: That’s correct. Mr. Wattenberg: But – but your work on the ground, you were obviously a woman? Ms. Mackey: Right. I – I’ve always said that being a woman working in Saudi Arabia, that you really had advantages. People think, you know, you don’t – it’s a great disadvantage. The advantage is that you can operate in the world of women and women particularly in the educated classes really know what’s going on and are really willing to tell you. Mr. Wattenberg: Does – from the American point of view, does supporting a monarchy undercut our idea to promote democracy around the world? I mean, President Bush says the 21st century is going to be liberty century? Does that undermine what we’re talking about? Mr. Lippman: Well, you know, we could do a twelve-part series on this, Ben. I... Mr. Wattenberg: Let’s do it. Mr. Lippman: But – but the idea – the entire basis of organization of Saudi society is different from ours. By law and custom the raison detre of the Saudi state is the propagation of Islam. The state has no other purpose and the royal family has no other claims to legitimacy. Nor would any ruler in Saudi Arabia. That’s what the state is for and... Mr. Wattenberg: Is a very specific form of Sunni Islam. Mr. Lippman: Yes. That’s correct. That’s correct. Although that’s not what the law says, but in fact that’s... Mr. Wattenberg: Different from other forms of Islam around the world. Mr. Lippman: In many respects, yes. But nevertheless, this is not – this is not a society where a atheist, an agnostic, a Christian or anyone other than a Sunni Muslim can run for office and challenge the rulers, nor do they – nor in my opinion do they aspire to such a system. the democratization of Saudi Arabia is – is really a concept from another planet to them. Ms. Mackey: And I think one thing that we need to realize is that the House of Saud is not an absolute monarchy that – that is so perceived in the west that it really is built on the tribal model where you actually bring together various tribes and families in support of who the king happens to be. Mr. Wattenberg: The figure you always hear is 7000 Princes. Ms. Mackey: Well, you know, I think that’s a good a number as any, but what I’m saying as I’m looking beyond the quote, “royal family”, to the fact that the Saudi – the House of Saud has had to be really good politicians and that there has been a – a shadow of democracy in the country; not the one-man, one-vote kind of democracy, but the fact that the – these families and tribes have always considered that they have access to the king and to the decision makers and they have used that access. Mr. Wattenberg: So they’ve got their own form of sort of internal – not democracy, but way of doing politics. Ms. Mackey: Representative government. Now it’s, you know, it’s a... Mr. Wattenberg: Representative of the royal family? Mr. Lippman: No. Ms. Mackey: Well, representative of the people. Mr. Wattenberg: Of the whole population? Ms. Mackey: Um hm. Mr. Lippman: If you... Mr. Wattenberg: But not foreigners? Mr. Lippman: If your definition of democracy is the consent of the governed, I would argue that at least until very recently – at least until very recently – the House of Saud has had that. Ms. Mackey: I would agree with that. Mr. Wattenberg: That they had representative government? Ms. Mackey: A form of representative government. Mr. Lippman: Look at – if you look at Egypt, Egypt’s the – is the largest Arab country in population. Egypt has an elected president, an elected parliament, some non-state, some independent newspapers and political parties. It – but it’s a pseudo democracy. I would argue that in many cases the individual Saudi citizen has more opportunities to make himself heard and to protect his own interests than the individual Egyptian citizen. Do you disagree with that? Mr. Wattenberg: How... Ms. Mackey: No, I would agree with that. Mr. Wattenberg: Can you explain to our viewers who the top guy is and who the second guy is and it’s the father and the son and, who – who’s number one; who’s number two? Mr. Lippman: The people who are in charge of Saudi Arabia now are sons, mostly in their seventies and eighties, of King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud the founder – founding king. Mr. Wattenberg: Who was very ill. Mr. Lippman: No, no. No. He died in 19—-. Mr. Wattenberg: Oh, I’m sorry. Mr. Lippman: His sons control the kingdom today. Crown Prince of – King Fahd, who has been essentially incapacitated for almost a decade now by stoke; his half-brother, Abdullah, Crown Prince, designated next in line... Mr. Wattenberg: Who is running the country in effect now. He’s the top guy now. Mr. Lippman: He is and he isn’t for reasons we’ll get to in a minute. Next two in line are Prince Sultan, the Defense Minister, half brother of Adbullah but full brother of the king; and Prince Nyeth, the Prince (sic) the Minister of the Interior, half brother of Adbullah but full brother of the king. No one knows what these gentlemen actually say to each other. But they are the top of the ruling pyramid and they work very, very closely with the senior religious authorities and are said to take on board a lot of information and input from a handful of powerful women. Mr. Wattenberg: How does that work? Mr. Lippman: When King Fahd is no longer king, his heir apparent and designated successor is Crown Prince Adbullah, who has been the regent of the de facto ruler for the past several years. The next in line of succession is King Fahd’s next brother, Prince Sultan, the Defense Minister. After that there is no designated line of succession and no one knows – no one outside the royal family knows what it is. Mr. Wattenberg: And is it correct to say that Abdullah is more popular than Sultan? Mr. Lippman: I don’t know. He’s certainly more popular with us. Ms. Mackey: I think that he has a legitimacy with the ordinary Saudis that Sultan does not have. Mr. Wattenberg: Abdullah does. Ms. Mackey: Abdullah does. He has been much better at keeping his lines open to the traditional tribes, the tradition society and so forth and he is not perceived by the Saudis to be, you know, terribly corrupt. I suppose they all think, you know, everybody’s corrupt but he – he doesn’t have the reputation of being a horribly corrupt person and I think the real challenge, though, for the House of Saud is what do you do when the sons have all gone over the horizon and how you’re going to get to the next generation of leadership. That is the big looming question over the House of Saud in my opinion. Mr. Wattenberg: Can you explain what is Wahabism? Ms. Mackey: Well I often describe the Wahabis as the southern Baptists of Islam, that they are very much believe in the quote “literal translation”, the Koran; they really look back to the time of Mohammad as being somewhat the perfect society. They are believe – I mean, in some ways they’re like puritans also in that they really are opposed to anything that is ostentatious. They, you know, really support rigid dress codes, all of this. I mean, what we might call – which is such an imprecise term – fundamentalists. Mr. Wattenberg: I mean women in Saudi Arabia are fully veiled and cloaked, or not? Ms. Mackey: Well, it depends on what the woman’s family has decided and what the woman herself has decided – has decided. Mr. Wattenberg: And she’s not harassed if she wears a short skirt or... Ms. Mackey: Well, she could be because you do have a religious police force called the Matawa, the – and they, you know, have been in the past free to harass either Saudis or westerners who did not meet their dress codes or their codes of behavior. I think that’s probably not as much a case today... Mr. Wattenberg: Did you find it uncomfortable as a woman? Ms. Mackey: Well... Mr. Wattenberg: Other than what we said that you got so much source material, but... Ms. Mackey: Yes, I mean, you know, it is – I did run foul of the Matawa a couple of times and – and had some yelling at me and so forth... nothing terrible. And also from the standpoint that it’s not my society and I didn’t feel that it was my place to try to change the system and if I was terribly unhappy I could just leave. If I were a Saudi woman, I’m sure that I would have been agitating behind the walls to get changes made. But I didn’t feel that I was, you know, terribly put upon, that I played by the rules and I was there as a guest and therefore that’s what I was expected to do. Mr. Wattenberg: After 9/11, it was said that the Saudis were financing Wahabism around the Arab world, I guess particularly in Pakistan through these Madrasas and the idea was that the Saudis were buying off the extremists in Saudi Arabia. Is that right? Mr. Lippman: That’s – that’s at once true and a huge oversimplification and if you – if you let me abuse your viewer’s patience for a minute... Mr. Wattenberg: Please, go right ahead. Mr. Lippman: I would say that you can’t understand that – the situation in Saudi Arabia – without going back to the events of 1979 in which the following things happened. The Iranian revolution triumphed, bringing to power Ayatollah Khomeini who for the first time in their history outflanked the Saudis from the right, so to speak. He was more Muslim than they. They found their – their Muslim authenticity challenged by Khomeini, right. Then Egypt made peace with Israel and the Saudis for political reasons found themselves thrust into the company of the radical Arab rejectionists – Iraq and Libya – it was a very uncomfortable position and they felt a need to shore up their right wing religious credentials, so to speak. Then a band of desperados similar to today’s Al Qaeda, took over the great mosque in Mecca at gunpoint, a direction challenge to the legitimacy of the House of Saud. There was a long siege after which sixty some people were publicly beheaded but the credentials of the House of Saud were exposed... Mr. Wattenberg: They don’t play around with long trials. . . Mr. Lippman: No, they don’t. They don’t. But it was – as a result of these events, the Saudis found it necessary, desirable, politically essential, however you want to describe it, to sort of turn loose the religious authorities to reestablish their religious supremacy and legitimacy. And that resulted in the export of people we would describe as missionaries, you might say. Mr. Wattenberg: The Wahabis. Mr. Lippman: Yes. Of the Saudi form of Islam. The construction of mosques, the financing of educational programs, charitable programs, institutions. This was not necessarily nor even in – nor even knowingly, the financing of terrorism per se. This was the financing of groups, organizations and individuals who were influenced by, committed to this extremely rigid, xenophobic form of Islam that they were – that was being exported to them by Saudi Arabia. That’s – that and the combination of the war of the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, which we and the Saudis jointly paid for and organized, brought these forces to the floor in Saudi Arabia which they’re now struggling to control. Ms. Mackey: I was in Saudi Arabia in ’79 when the mosque was seized and.. Mr. Lippman: Oh, were you? Ms. Mackey: Yes and... Mr. Wattenberg: This was part of the Haj – part of the migration? Ms. Mackey: No. Mr. Wattenberg: No. Ms. Mackey: This was – this was a... Mr. Wattenberg: I’m sorry. Ms. Mackey: ...an uprising. Mr. Lippman: By a group of Saudis, not pilgrims from outside. Mr. Wattenberg: Oh, oh. I see. Ms. Mackey: Yes. Group of Saudis. I mean I can’t tell you how shaken the Saudis were that this happened. And I’m not just talking about those in the elite. I’m talking about down through the society because there were a couple of reasons with this. One was that any group would violate the mosque at Mecca and secondly it was that the Saudis are very fearful of instability. And they saw both of these things happening, that the – that you know, Islam had been assaulted by these renegades taking over the mosque; and secondly that their society was becoming unstable and – or – or – I, maybe I shouldn’t say the society, but the political system, the whole, you know, the whole existing system had been unbelievably challenged. Mr. Lippman: And unhinged by wealth at the same time. Ms. Mackey: Yes. Uh huh. And I would make another point about what the House of Saud did following that takeover of the mosque and that is that one of the very roots of the legitimacy of the House of Saud is defenders of Mecca and Medina and suddenly they are seen by the Saudis and by the Islamic world as someone having failed in their task of protecting those holy sites. And so therefore you are, you know, undercutting the legitimacy of the ruling family and so they had to get busy and mend fences. Mr. Wattenberg: I want to talk to you about violence within Saudi Arabia that there was a bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Jetta. Now some Saudi guards were killed; Americans weren’t killed but this is pretty tough stuff and it’s got Americans very upset. I guess it’s got the Saudis upset also. What do you make of it? Mr. Lippman: Beginning about a year-and-a-half ago, there began to occur in Saudi Arabia some acts of sustained campaign of domestic terrorism, aimed as far as anybody could tell at two things; destabilizing the monarchy and getting rid of Americans and American influence. Mr. Wattenberg: I mean that was one of Osama’s key demands, was to get America out of Saudi Arabia. Mr. Lippman: Yes and to get rid of the House of Saud. Mr. Wattenberg: Yes, both. Mr. Lippman: To get rid of the monarchy. That’s right. It’s not clear to what extent the – this domestic violence, which struck housing compounds occupied by westerners mostly, struck certain western American oil facilities and offices. It’s not clear to what extent it is directly linked to the Al Qaeda command structure outside Saudi Arabia. But certainly it’s of the same type and sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s objectives. The Saudis – I think the conventional wisdom would say that the Saudis had been ambivalent about terrorism and the threat of terrorism until it began to strike right in Riyadh and right inside Saudi Arabia about a year-and-a-half ago and just as happened with the mosque takeover in ’79, they got angry and they got scared and there began a campaign to root these guys out and gun them down. Until the compound bombing in Jetta which we heard about recently, there had been about six months of relative calm because the security forces had the upper hand. No one believed that the skirmishing was over or that it’s over yet, but I think in the short term, the Saudis are finding a way to manage this phenomena. What we don’t know is how many recruits are in the pipeline. Mr. Wattenberg: Could... Ms. Mackey: And I think one thing that the bombing of the housing compound about a year-and-a-half ago actually did... Mr. Wattenberg: This is the American housing compound. Ms. Mackey: Well and – and there were – it was – there were a number of Saudis who lived there; there were Saudis killed and so forth. That that really gave the House of Saud the political cover to really begin to go after the terrorists. There was some – there was real hesitancy on the House of Saud to aggressively and very publicly go after terrorists in the kingdom because they didn’t want to appear as being dictated to by the United States and once the Saudis began dying and being maimed by these terrorists, then it – the House of Saud was really able to take the gloves off. Mr. Wattenberg: Okay. Sandra Mackey, Tom Lippman, thanks for joining us on Think Tank and thank you. Please join us for part two of this discussion in a future episode. And also remember to send us your comments via e-mail, we think it makes our show better. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Announcer: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 4455 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite C-100, Washington, DC 20008 or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS online at pbs.org and please let us know where you watch Think Tank. Funding for Think Tank is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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