The predictions made in the book in 1996 have, not surprisingly, materialised. Once super-rich, Saudi Arabia’s mounting problems have destabilised it. There are no signs that the political system will evolve to meet what confronts it. For the House of Saud, it is the beginning of the end.

For the first time ever, the country is facing simultaneous financial, social and political problems at a time of serious divisions within the once-invincible royal family. The convergence of these problems and the seriousness of the each have prompted an American decision to play country-manager the moment the ailing 82 year-old King Fahd dies.

Until recently, the West’s mot important Arab ally and major partner in Operation Desert Storm (the Gulf War) was going bust. The recent dramatic increases in oil prices have halted the decline into economic and political chaos. However, both the longevity of the present oil shock and House of Saud’s ability to use a higher level of oil income effectively are not known. But for the year 2000 and this year, Saudi Arabia ran a budget deficit every year since 1982. The Desert Kingdom’s debt exceeds $140 billion.

Islamic fundamentalist groups opposed to the royal family’s squandering of the country’s wealth, their monopoly on power and their alliance with pro-Israeli America have grown considerably stronger during the past ten years. The unthinkable has happened and extremist Islamic fundamentalist groups are challenging the governments security forces on an almost daily basis. Others are preparing for a terminal showdown. The moderate Islamic parties have been sidelined.

The decline in the standard of living has lead to social disintegration. The emergence of a huge drug problem among the country’s young is beyond the government’s ability to correct. Unemployment among recent college graduates of over 30 per cent has produced subsidiary problems and the increase in crime is three times the increase in the increase in population. Because the government has borrowed the money in the social security system and replaced it with IOUs of questionable value the system is unable to cope with the problems facing it. Construction of schools and hospitals is years behind.

Although ailing King Fahd has transferred power to his half brother Prince Abdullah, the latter is unacceptable to Fahd’s six full brothers(the Sudeiris). They act as a small family within the House of Saud and are determined to retain all power and follow their own policies. They reject Abdallah’s tilt towards reform and greater cooperation with other Arab countries. To many observers, some members of the Sudeiris are running for King.

Indeed nothing substantial has been done to change the march towards self-destruction predicted in the book eight years ago. No serious attempt has been made by the House of Saud or its Western backers to stop structural disintegration of absolutism. The danger to 25% of the world’s oil reserves has increased and the West’s ability to guarantee that the oil continue to flow at a reasonable price has been put in jeopardy.

In fact, with the vileness of the events of 11 September 2001 in mind, the problems of the world’s most absolute feudal monarchy have indeed increased. Fourteen of the nineteen perpetrators of the crime were establishment Saudis. Saudi Arabia has sponsored has sponsored extreme fundamentalist groups at home and abroad since the Sixties as a defence against a mostly imaginary Communism threat and President Nasser of Egypt. Indeed Saudi financial backing made bin Laden.

Organised opposition – The Committee for the defence of Legitimate Rights of the Saudi people, The Advice and Reformation Committee(ARC) and the Committee for Islamic Reform – what emerged in the middle 1990s have been replaced by the more militant successor to ARC, Osama bin Laden and Al Kaeda. The refusal of the Royal Family to respond to the old moderate opposition has turned Saudi politics into a contest between the despotic House of Saud and the vile bin Laden. There is no middle ground. The secular forces ceased to exist years ago.

Because the fate of the West’s leading Arab ally and most important supplier of energy affect Saudi Arabia’s neighbours and co-religionists, the stability of the Middle East and the Muslim world is threatened. The country is home of Islam’s holiest shrines of Mecca and Medina and what happens there concerns all Muslims. Saudi policy towards Iraq and Afghanistan will influence the outcome of both problems. The country employs three million non-Saudi Arabs. Instability is likely to translate into a harder stance vis a vis Israel, an attempt to please the militants.

A decade of low oil prices has been followed by the recent rise to around $50. But in the 1980s it was over $100 in real dollars adjusted for inflation. Accustomed to an annual income which allowed it to buy the loyalty of most of its people and neighbours , the Saudi government cannot function any other way. It continues to overspend on unpopular things. Billion of dollars are wasted on military hardware, useless show projects and the support of regional conflicts and specific religious groups like the Sunnis in Iraq. These non-productive expenditures, following the financing of Saddam’s war with Iran and a $65 billion dollar bill for underwriting Operation Desert Storm., have made the country a shadow of its former self. The yearly per capita income plummeted to $6,000 in 2002overall, compared with $14,600 in 1982. Jobs are scarce even for the average person, overall unemployment is over 20 percent. Government payments to many construction companies are over a year late, and some contractors are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Its lateness in paying foreign workers has led to sit down strikes in Jeddah, Qassim and the Eastern Province. Even the once-wealthy merchant class is suffering where it shows – the country is importing 40 per cent less Cadillacs than in 1984.

Moreover, the Saudi people have grown accustomed to the benefits of an extensive welfare programme and resent attempts to curtail it. The combined costs of sponsoring unproductive policies and having to satisfy peoples expectations have trapped the government into a high-spending mode from which it cannot extricate itself.

The financial problems have energised Islamic fundamentalist groups. They accuse the government of squandering the country’s wealth and for the disappearance of $140 billion in reserves. The number of the male members of the ruling family, another state secret is approaching 10,000. Their numbers are increasing by over 60 a month –they don’t bother to count the females. They skim income from oil revenues before the money reaches the treasury. Each of them is entitled to a salary of £380,000.

Historically, Islamic opposition in Saudi Arabia has come from the Shias, Khomeini’s abused co-religionist minority, 10 per cent of the population, who inhabit the strategic oil-producing Eastern Province. But recently members from the majority Sunni sect, including some members of the Wahhabi sub sect to which the royal family belongs, and which is the foundation of the country’s political system.

Anti-government violence began making an appearance soon after the first Gulf War, an event which politicised the country irreversibly. On 13 November 1995, an Islamic fundamentalist group carried out the country’s first major act of terrorism, killing five and wounding more than sixty members of a US military mission. This followed the September 1994 open-civilian insurrection in the town of Bureida and the subsequent arrest of hundreds of Saudi citizens who rioted and occupied the town to protest the policies of their government.

Slowly, the blowing up of American installations and other symbols of America’s presence in the country, along with the shoot outs with the security people has become the norm. The late May 2004 massacre of 22 western oil workers in the Eastern city of Khobar exposed the weakness of the government to face up to the threat facing it and the naïve and short-sighted policies they have been following. Not only were the perpetrators able to escape, there were reports that most of Saudi Arabia’s religious police (Mutawa) were sympathisers of bin Laden.

The dual economic- political crisis racking the country and the unsatisfied need to create a new relationship with the country’s one time protector before 11 September, the United States, comes at a time when King Fahd is near death. Old, grossly over-weight and suffering from severe diabetes, a stroke has incapacitated him and forced him to call on his heir apparent to run the affairs of government. The superficially smooth transfer of power has not solved the succession problem.

Fahd’s six full brothers and their sons hold the key positions of Minister of Defence and Interior, half the Province governorships and important positions in the diplomatic corps. And they run army and security forces. The risk that they will refuse to co-operate with or try to undermine prince Abduallh – the relatively clean, simple man to whom Fahd has just transferred power – is real. An American observer of Saudi Affairs says that, ‘None of the people competing for King is intelligent enough to think of the national interest. After Fahd the chances of a civil war or a crippling tribal feud are real.’

But even if they did co-operate with him, Fahd’s designated successor is too weak to solve the country’s problems. Eighty-one years old and also in poor health, Abdallah is semi-literate with misgivings about the stationing of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The number two in line, Defence Minister Prince Sultan, is 80, and has been linked to arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and billions of dollars of pay-offs. Sultan is too tainted to be an effective king, but after Abdallah and Sultan, the line of succession is unclear.

The convergence of economic and political turmoil, a king on his deathbed, two princes unfit for kingship and an unwieldy succession process were causing concern in Washington before 11 September 2004. The realisation that the Saudi establishment contributed to the day of shame and the subsequent “war on terror” has turned this into a necessity. In fact, an American plan to save Saudi Arabia appears to be underway. American financial and security experts are already lending a hand and attempts are being made to increase financial control and tighten organisation. Washington is also monitoring the efforts of Saudi political activists and human rights advocates residing in London in order to determine their willingness to accept less than a total change in the regime.

Because 90 per cent of Saudi Arabia is Sunni, Shia opposition groups are discontented. Furthermore, the Saudi government neutralised the Shias by agreeing to meet their modest demands. Politically, the focus of Saudi and American attention are Osama bin Laden – the head of Al Kaeda, formerly the Advice and Reformation Committee (ARC). Bin Laden is a mainline Sunni and former fighter with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. After bin Laden there is the London-based Committee for the Defence of the Legitimate Rights (in Saudi Arabia), CDLR, a moderate group with a commitment against violence.

Bin Laden, isn’t only a one-time friend of the House of Saud, he depended on CIA funding to field an anti-Russian army in Afghanistan. As of 5 years ago , he has turned his attention to two new things. He demands the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from his country and he wants to reclaim Jerusalem for the Muslims. Both demands put him on a collision course with America. This is the simple background of 11 th September. The most remarkable thing about bin Laden is not his demand; it is the breadth of his appeal. According to Western intelligence sources, Al Kaeda has followers or active association in all the Arab and Muslim countries. And while their real numbers are unknown, they have proved capable of carrying out violent anti-American operations throughout the world.

CDLR’s activities are making an impact on the House of Saud’s image overseas and within the kingdom, but they do not represent a threat. It publishes a weekly chronicle of the royal family’s misdeeds and runs a virtual electronic guerrilla warfare centre, which penetrates the kingdom by sending 300 faxes a day, all of which are reprinted in the thousands and distributed throughout the closed country. Their messages are so well researched and informative that the public devours them in the manner of best-sellers.

The traffic of revolutionary electronic messages flows in both directions. Dissidents in Saudi Arabia are in constant touch with CDLR leadership through a toll free New York telephone number, which they use without being traced. These calls are switched to London at a rate of one every ten minutes. Although committed to non-violence, CDLR has been successful enough to prompt the Saudi government to demand the deportation of their leader, Dr Mohammed Al Mas’ari, from London. British willingness to comply with the Saudi request confirms Saudi Arabia’s deteriorating situation. Dr. Mas’ari has successfully appealed the British decision; but the British government has said that it will try to find other reasons for deporting him.

In addition to the economic problems, the activities of London – and Afghanistan-based Saudi dissidents have gained momentum as a result oft the recent wave of executions of drug traffickers (over 150 in 2001), and the emergence of burglary, car theft, kidnapping and violent crime as a major threat to the regime. The call for a return to Islamic ways – without the infectious corruption of the royals – is the only acceptable solution to most Saudis.

The seriousness of these problems has done little to unify the royal family. There have been reliable reports that Princes Sultan and Nayyef, the favoured full brothers of the ailing King Fahd, are doing everything to intercept Abdallah’s succession to the Saudi throne. He has approached members of the large family and of the important religious Council of Ulemas to ask them to help him become king. Ministers of Defence and Interior, Sultan and Nayyef could mount a serious, divisive challenge to Adballah at a time when the family desperately needs to devote its energies to external threats.

Sultan’s and Nayyef’s actions confirm the seriousness of the feud within the House of Saud and have added to the concerns of the Bush administration, which is already acting on a provisional blueprint to stop Saudi Arabia from becoming a new Middle east trouble spot. The search for a solution to the gathering storm that could lead to the disintegration of Saudi Arabia is in full swing.

Meanwhile in Riyadh, the daily violence, persistent rumours of bankruptcies, the defection of senior Saudi diplomats and strikes by foreign workers have shaken the kingdom to its foundations. The immediate reaction has been to arrest dozens of suspected anti-regime academics, students and religious leaders and to place units of the armed forces on full alert. The state of nervousness in the country is feeding on itself, the indiscriminate arrests have produced the opposite of the intended effect and the government’s actions have led to a flight of capital from the country at a time when private investment is most needed to replace public expenditure.

There is little agreement within the royal groups on what to do internally about these developments. The creation of a Consultative Council, an Islamist Parliament, is already a failure because its members are pliant loyalists appointed by the King who are forbidden to discuss anything except issues that the King refers to them. The imposition of higher taxes on electricity, gasoline and telephone charges has produced financial pressures on the average Saudi without affecting the wasteful budgets of the royal household and the military. The recent cosmetic replacement of several ministers simply installed others who are equally unacceptable to the people. No basic reforms of the obsolete government system or attempts to stop the royal family’s wasteful ways are being contemplated. Even the most minor prince continues to live unbelievably lavishly.

‘Look at it this way,’ a source within the US government told me, ‘instead of correcting things they are imprisoning more and more people. We’ve got to do something; the situation has gone too far to be ignored.’ This sums up the Bush administration’s attitude: The United States is desperately trying to stop Saudi Arabia’s decline into chaos.

The question of what to do about Saudi Arabia has been the subject of heated secret discussions in Washington for some time. Whatever the conclusion, the chances that the United States will successfully stop this decline are very mall indeed. What has occurred since the original publication of this book amounts to too little, too late. Above all, saving Saudi Arabia from going the way of Iran under the Shah will require satisfying the people’s wishes for democratic reform, a drastic change in the absolute ways of the royal family and an end to the squandering of the country’s wealth on the purchase of arms that the Saudi armed forces can’t use. None of these have happened, and even if Washington produces sound plans, the royals are likely to resist them and it will be too late to implement them in time.

The only thing keeping Saudi Arabia from disintegrating or falling to an Islamic group is the absence of a cohesive force capable of replacing the royal family. Neither Al Kaeda nor CDLR are strong enough to mount a direct challenge aimed at taking over the government. But both organisations, and others, are gaining strength at a rapid pace. The bombing at Khabar confirm the existence of highly organised militant groups that are willing to resort to violence. Continued violence in the country would force the hands of others capable of changing the government. The chances of the military, concerned members of the royal family, Islamic groups or any combination of these power centres joining forces to change the Saudi government are better than ever before. It is enough to remember that the royal family has tried and failed to organise the unwieldy succession process for 50 years. This, and most peoples’ belief that America is anti-Islamic and pro-Israel, is what will produce a conflagration which could lead to the demise of the House of Saud and end of America as the arbiter of Middle East affairs.

© 2004 Said K Aburish