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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (67798)	1/22/2003 7:05:54 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

For Saudi royal family, rising fears of a postwar Iraq Patrick E. Tyler/NYT The New York Times iht.com RIYADH It is hard to say what the princes here fear more - a war in Iraq that leads to chaos or a war that brings democracy to the Arabian peninsula. Members of the Saudi royal family and close advisers to Crown Prince Abdullah, the day-to-day ruler, say that chaos from the breakdown of the existing order in Iraq has become an overarching fear. It has motivated the Saudi leader to try to persuade President George W. Bush to go along with an 11th-hour strategy in which a decision to go to war would be followed by a pause for intensive diplomacy - even coup making - to remove Saddam Hussein. But at the same time, many Saudis have begun to realize that if Bush succeeds in removing the Iraqi leader, the potential emergence of a new Iraqi state - allied with the West and empowered by its oil wealth to create new markets, economic power and military strength - could set the winds of change sweeping through the region. The transformation of Iraq is about all that anyone in power is talking about in the Gulf. But nowhere is the conversation so intense as in the Saudi royal family, which struggled for 40 years to unite the disparate tribes of the peninsula and create a sense of nation for 14 million Saudis. That nation exists in an arrested state of political development, however, under a monarchy anchored in a deeply conservative Islamic ideology that represses women's rights and excoriates foreigners and "infidels." It also suffers from extensive corruption that arises from its enormous oil wealth. "I am sure that if Iraq becomes a new kind of democratic state, those people in Iraq will put great pressure on these regimes - they will have to change or be overthrown," said a stalwart of Saudi Arabia's business establishment and friend to the crown prince for 40 years. He has counseled his royal friend unsuccessfully to open the society and create a transparent, democratic state. He spoke on the condition that his name not published. "When Iraq changes, it is going to be a turning point in the history of the Middle East," he said. Some members of the royal family scoff at the notion that they fear a positive transformation of Iraq, which for decades has posed a military threat to Saudi Arabia. "I would rather be threatened with democratic principles than with war," said a leading prince. Far from an onslaught of democratic principles, what worried the prince most was the potential disintegration of Iraq, a country of deep religious, ethnic and tribal divisions woven into a bloody history of internecine conflict. Saudi Arabia's unifier in the last century, King Abdulaziz al Saud was still wielding his sword in tribal warfare when British gerrymandering at the end of World War I cobbled together the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul to form an Iraqi state. The Saudi monarchy has always believed that it takes an iron fist to hold together the three main religious and ethnic groups that comprise Iraq, a Shiite majority dominant in the south, a Sunni minority that has ruled from Baghdad and a Kurdish minority in the north known for rebellion and its aspirations for an independent Kurdish state. "Iraq can only achieve democracy if there is a peaceful transfer of power," the senior prince said. "It will never survive a breakdown in order. It can only survive if the civil institutions are preserved." But while fretting about the worst-case scenario, Saudi Arabia is quietly pursuing other strategies toward Iraq, another senior prince said. For one, Saudi intelligence has been working for months with Saudi and Iraqi tribal leaders whose clans range across borders. They are urging the tribes to take an active role in preventing chaos if military operations cut off Baghdad from the rest of the country. Through the tribal network, Saudi messages have been passed to Iraqi military officers, urging them to break with Saddam if a moment comes when Bush and the United Nations offer him a chance to leave the country to avert war. "We found out how much he has been paying the tribal leaders and we paid them more," said the prince, whose responsibilities combine intelligence and diplomacy. "The tribal leaders have already sold Saddam and he doesn't know it." Yet the hardest thing to get out of a member of the Saudi royal family is an answer to the question: What if things go well? What if Saddam Hussein is removed, the country holds together and democracy takes hold? Iraq would stand second only to Saudi Arabia in oil resources, with 10 percent of the world's proven reserves. It might also stand athwart the Tigris and Euphrates valley like a new colossus, though many specialists on Iraq are intensely skeptical that the country and any new government will be able to mediate a century of internal grievances and ethnic divisions once the iron fist is removed. But it could happen, some admit. And if it did, what would be the effect? The Saudi royal family has always talked a good deal about reform over the last two decades but has seldom acted on its stated intentions. Now that he is effectively ruling the country as King Fahd fades in ill health, the crown prince presides over a kingdom where no citizen can know the income derived from pumping 8 million barrels a day of oil and no one knows how many billions the royal family skims for personal use - though, judging by the scores of opulent palaces throughout the country, it is not chump change.