7 shocking facts about Saudi Arabia under ‘modernizing’ reign of King Abdullah
Taken aback by the fulsome praise that the recently deceased King Abdullah has garnered from world leaders, RT has decided to assess whether his record stands up to scrutiny.
The majority of eulogies went beyond the requirements of diplomatic etiquette, while some epithets used by Western politicians made people believe they had stepped through the mirror. UK Prime Minister David Cameron said the 90-year-old monarch “strengthened understanding between faiths,” while IMF chief Christine Lagarde called him “a strong advocate of women,” albeit a “discreet” one. And almost all of the political grandees seemed to agree that the scion of the House of Saud, was – in the words of Tony Blair – “a skillful modernizer,” who “led his country into the future.”
One is invited to do a reality check and examine whether the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques has really brought his country into the 21st century.
1. No elections, no parties, no parliament, no dissent
In the same vein as previous decades, Saudi Arabia received the lowest possible marks for civil and political freedoms in the annual Freedom House rankings in 2014. The countries placed alongside it were North Korea, Turkmenistan, and smattering of the most brutal African dictatorships.
The regime’s disregard for any accountability to its people is brazen. There are no national elections, no parties, and no parliament – only a symbolic advisory chamber, known as Majlis al-Shura. Criticism is strictly forbidden: Only last year, prominent opposition activist Abd al-Kareem al-Khoder joined hundreds of the country’s political prisoners, when he was sentenced to eight years for demanding the changeover to a constitutional government. Just days before King Abdullah’s death, blogger Raif Badawi was given the first 50 of his 1,000 lashes – to which he was sentenced for calling for free speech on his blog.
King Abdullah introduced municipal elections upon his official ascension to the throne – as a largely symbolic valve mechanism. At the same time, high-profile petitions demanding greater reform a decade ago landed their authors in prison.
2. Equality: Jobs for the Saud boys – all 7,000 of them
The grip of the House of Saud on the country’s leverage of both power and the purse strings would be the envy of any medieval court. More than 7,000 princes bearing that family name are alive – with some experts speculating that the real number could approach 30,000. Every single one has to be allocated a job commensurate with his lineage – creating hundreds of sinecures – while conversely, all talented candidates are shut out from key jobs if they do not bear the correct surname.
Ironically, with such a large pool of descendants to choose from, the House of Saud is crippled by particularly outdated succession laws. Instead of primogeniture – where the title is inherited by the first-born son of the ruler – Saudi Arabia uses agnatic seniority, or the passing of power across to one’s brothers. This means that the 90-year-old Abdullah has been succeeded by 79-year-old Salman, while Crown Prince Muqrin turns 70 this year.
Underneath the geriatric cadre of leaders, there exists a viper’s nest of intrigue, as the exponentially bigger younger generation plans to stake its claim on the throne, with factions aplenty among the different branches of the sprawling family. It is not obvious how such a system guarantees the increasing prosperity and stability of a 21st-century state, and King Abdullah did little to reform its basic tenets.
4. Law: Scimitars and whips
It may have become almost an online cliché to compare the legal systems of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State, but the links between the two are fundamental. Both use the same ultra-conservative Hanbali school of jurisprudence, and many of the IS “judges” are Saudis, due to their familiarity with this concept of justice.
Among the punishments distributed is anything from hands and feet being chopped off for theft, lashes for adultery and other “social” misdemeanors, to beheading, which can be handed down for crimes as varied as sedition, carjacking, sorcery and drug smuggling.
Eighty-seven people are thought to have been beheaded last year, which is in line with the national average over the past five years, despite ever-growing external pressure on Saudi Arabia. Only this month, a video emerged online, showing an executioner repeatedly hacking away at the neck of a screaming condemned woman as people watched open-mouthed. Unlike solving some of Saudi Arabia’s deep-seated problems, the curtailing of such “justice” would have just required one firm intervention from King Abdullah. It is clear, this was not a priority for him.
In addition, much of the legal process hinges on a “confession” from the defendant, which in turn encourages torture. In practice, the veracity of information obtained this way is lower than in Guantanamo, as instead of trying to extract provable data, the torturers are merely demanding penance – by all means.
King Abdullah attempted to rationalize the system, by creating more appeal courts, and introducing a stricter selection of judges. However, he did not question the value of the legal system as a whole, and all judges that have been appointed in the past two decades have been personally approved by him.
6. Women’s rights: Female (non-)drivers
Over the past decade, the battle lines have been drawn on the symbolic issue of women drivers in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf monarchy is the last country in the world, where women are still not allowed to drive.
The issue is not near resolution, and women caught behind the wheel – whether during a symbolic protest, or an ordinary drive – can still end up sentenced to lashings. In fairness, King Abdullah did intervene in at least one case, to commute a punishment.
But of course, for the majority of Saudi women, driving is the least of their problems.
Many would prefer to be able to leave the house, make a purchase, sign any legal document – in fact perform almost any official action, from agreeing to surgery, to signing up to a class – without the consent of a guardian, either the husband or the father. Yet, even these suffocating measures give only scant impression of the status of Saudi women in a society where even their court testimony is worth half of that of a man.
King Abdullah encouraged more women to go into education, and allocated them a fifth of the seats in his advisory chamber, also allowing them to vote and run in the 2015 municipal elections. As with other reform areas, these are top-down symbolic gestures that have done little to affect most Saudi women, who remain some of the most disadvantaged anywhere in the world – excluding those in warzones. Still, Abdullah’s admirers can hope that his first steps will lay the foundation to profound change, not patronizing concessions.
A voluntary $100 million donation to the UN’s counter-terrorism center last year was a show of generosity from Riyadh, but what the Saudis give with one hand, they seem to take away with the other.
According to the diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, the US regards Saudi Arabia as the biggest source of Sunni terrorism funding in the world, and a “crucial” piggy-bank for Al-Qaeda and other radical groups. While much of its funding comes from private individuals, their identity is unlikely to have been a secret to King Abdullah, who did nothing to rein in his family members.
The alleged funding could give an impression that the House of Saud is only against the “wrong” kind of terrorist – mostly Shia, but also splinter Sunni groups that threaten its hegemony over the region. When the “right” kind of terrorist – Russia’s Chechen militants, or anti-Assad ‘rebels’ – appear, then those in Riyadh palaces not only support them with funds, but see them as a legitimate tool for spreading the favored Wahhabi ideology and influence.
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