King Abdullah: A missed opportunity

The passing of King Abdullah last week saw a sense of despondency amongst many reformist Saudis, many of whom feel the reign of King Abdullah represented a (now lost) opportunity for reform.

In education, King Abdullah introduced a generous scholarship programme to send Saudis overseas to universities in Western Europe, North America and Australia. Seventy thousand students have so far taken him up on the offer, roughly a third of them to the United States. On a domestic level, non-Wahhabi doctrines are now being taught in schools to promote understanding of other faiths; while new rules allow Shia educators to teach their own religious texts.

Women’s rights in the Kingdom are also improving, albeit at a glacial pace. One in five Shura council members are now female and new laws on domestic violence and divorce have been announced. The first female editor-in-chief of a Saudi newspaper has been appointed, as have the first four female layers; and two women also now hold senior posts within the government. Women have been allowed to use their own identity documents in court (rather than relying on those of their male guardians), and will be able to vote in municipal elections by 2015.

But while progress on female emancipation and education reform has been encouraging, much more is needed. Under the Saudi guardianship system, girls and women are still forbidden from travelling, conducting some official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from a close male relative.

The country’s human rights record also remains abysmally low, and arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment in detention remain common-place. Saudi judges routinely sentence defendants to hundreds of lashes. Children can be tried for capital crimes and sentenced as adults if physical signs of puberty exist. Saudi officials also refuse to register or recognise political or human rights groups and the government has recently stepped up arrests, trials, and convictions of peaceful dissidents. The latest atrocities to grip international headlines are the lashing of liberal blogger Raif Badawi, and a series of public beheadings that have made ISIS look like peace-loving hippies.

Looking ahead however, there is no guarantee that the snail-pace of reforms will continue.

King Salman is now installed, represents a much more conservative figure than the late King, and one who, according to a 2007 US diplomatic cable, is ideologically opposed to democracy in the Kingdom. He borrows much of his thinking from the previous Crown Prince and heir Nayef, who presided over the security services as they brutally imprisoned and tortured alleged militants and pro-democracy activists alike.

Nayef was also a vocal supporter of the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain, and spent at least eighteen months suppressing pro-democracy protests led by the country’s Shia majority, before his death of an “unspecified illness” in June 2012. Salman was then appointed to replace him as heir and Crown Prince.

Reformists have vested their hope, instead, in the appointment of Prince Muqrin as second-in-line to the throne. This development is recognised as a contingency plan in case Salman’s health deteriorates further (he is in his late seventies and suffering from Alzheimer’s); but Muqrin is considered relatively liberal and a close political and ideological ally of King Abdullah.

However, his role will most likely be as a caretaker in times where Salman is unavailable, with more and more powers being transferred down to the generation below. Muqrin will have to work closely with two much more conservative and powerful princes – Muhammad bin-Nayef and Prince Miteb, both ambitious nephews with their eye on the throne.

Human-rights activists and would-be reformers are suspicious of Prince Muhammad, who has put thousands of alleged militants and democratic reformists in prison in his capacity as an internal security chief. As for Prince Miteb, he raised reformist eyebrows when he led condemnations of peaceful student protests in 2012. The protests had received endorsement from official Saudi media channels – newspapers Al-Watan, Al-Sharq and Al-Iqtisadiyya all called for solidarity and criticised the government openly. Despite this, Miteb condemned the unrest, claiming the peaceful protests endangered national security and were the work of foreign actors (popular unrest in Saudi Arabia is often falsely attributed to Iranian meddling or the Muslim Brotherhood). He added that unrest in other parts of the Middle East, “obligates us to be cautious, to protect the security of our country, and to fight inflammatory calls aimed at destabilising [the Kingdom].”

At the same time, the youth in Saudi Arabia is “awakening”, and several nearby countries have witnessed pro- democracy uprisings. The Kingdom has one of the most active online populations in the world – where political discussion is much more commonplace than on the street. Youth unemployment is a growing problem; oil money, deployed periodically in the form of generous welfare payments, can only go so far. The return of those educated abroad under Abdullah’s scheme has meant that more liberal views are being espoused ever more frequently.

The popularity of King Abdullah is hard to quantify, but he was, for all his critics in the West, well liked in Saudi Arabia. Using the threat of ISIS and other regional spectres, Salman, Miteb and bin-Nayef will harden the Kingdom; breaking the skulls of “terrorists” at the same time as they break those of reformists. Abdullah was nine parts autocrat, one part reformer – and it is that one part that will be sorely missed.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.