Saudi Arabia: In Search of a King

The death of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz is likely to lead to a power struggle within the royal family. The throne’s affairs and the family have to be organized quickly before the departure of the ailing king.

If King Abdullah had been the one to die suddenly, Saudi Arabia would not be experiencing this degree of anxiety and instability.

This is how a Saudi source described the death of Saudi Arabia’s number two man, former Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz. The source said that arrangements for the death of a monarch are usually routine: the crown prince ascends to the throne automatically. However, the death of Prince Sultan broke this old formula for the first time in the kingdom’s history. King Abdullah will be the first Saudi monarch to choose his successor twice.

The king’s work will be two-fold. He has to turn an old page in the history of the country with the loss of Prince Sultan and start a new one amidst internal and external fears that Prince Nayef, the interior minister, will take over. All those around Prince Nayef agree that he represents a conservative force — he is the royal closest to the strict Wahhabi institution which opposes all political, religious, and social change.

It seems that King Abdullah must now quickly support a series of important changes.

His first order of business is to appoint a new defense minister to replace Sultan, who held the position since 1962. This is difficult for several reasons. The first is that the ministry has virtually been the fiefdom of the prince for 50 years. He is the only decision maker in a ministry whose budget is half the annual budget of the country. Most of the defense budget is spent on foreign arms deals, of which the US always has the lion’s share.

Prince Sultan personally ran the ministry, and when its responsibilities increased and became more varied, he handed it over to his eldest son, Prince Khaled, in 1991. This was during the Desert Storm operation when the country became a base for American, international, and Arab troops participating in the liberation of Kuwait. At the time, Khaled took over the leadership of the Arab troops alongside the American General Norman Schwarzkopf who commanded the operation.

The difficulty here is King Abdullah’s own inclination to restore his brother, Prince Abdul Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz, to his duties administering the affairs of the defense ministry after years of absence. Abdul Rahman began sulking when King Abdullah appointed Prince Nayef as second deputy of the Council of Ministers in 2009. Prince Abdul Rahman has been the deputy defense minister since 1983, appointed by King Fahd, and was born directly after Prince Sultan. Abdul Rahman is now 82 years old. King Abdullah’s main problem is not just appeasing Abdul Rahman, who will certainly be upset if Nayef, who is younger than him, is appointed crown prince.

The bigger headache for the king is figuring out how to reorganize the defense ministry after Sultan. He has to put an end to the endemic corruption, particularly evident in its commissions policies. Some of these commissions have become international scandals, such as the Yamama arms deal in 1985, which cost Saudi Arabia US$86 billion. The British press revealed in 2007 that the commission on the deal reached US$2 billion and that the main negotiator for the Saudi side was Prince Bandar, son of Prince Sultan.

Worse yet, the Saudis speak of billions of dollars which go to Prince Sultan and his sons from the purchase of weapons. Saudi sources confirm that since taking over, King Abdullah has tried to curtail spending in this area, without much success. He was simply unable to control the influence of his brother, Sultan. WikiLeaks cables reveal that the king even tried to remove Khaled bin Sultan from his duties at the end of 2009, when he mishandled the fight against Houthi rebels in Yemen, but Abdullah’s efforts failed.

Second on the agenda, the king must convene a meeting of both the Family Council and the Allegiance Council to choose a new crown prince. This will be the first test for the Allegiance Council which was set up by King Abdullah to settle succession issues in the family. (link to http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/saudi-arabia-ailing-monarchy).

Third, the king has to reshuffle ministerial positions in the current government. He must do so to fill vacant posts and to appease the next generation of princes. In the first case, the king has to find a replacement for the Ministry of Defense now that Sultan is gone. In addition, if Prince Nayef is to become crown prince as expected, a new Minister of Interior will also be needed. The appointment of a new defense minister appears to be non-negotiable, while appointing a minister of the interior given current circumstances appears to be difficult. Prince Nayef, whether he becomes crown prince or not, does not seem to be in a rush to leave his ministry.

As for the matter of appeasing the second generation of princes, there are many — such as Bandar bin Sultan, Khaled bin Sultan, and Turki Al Faisal, among others — who have been waiting in line for a long time for ministerial posts. Prince Khaled has his eyes on the defense ministry as his father’s successor, while Prince Bandar sees that the interior ministry is a natural next step from his current position as the head of national security affairs. Prince Turki wants the foreign ministry as the successor to his brother, as Saud Al Faisal, who is in ill-health, may want to retire.

For all these steps to be effective, King Abdullah’s approach must combine the following: 1) It has to be balanced in a way that preserves the rights of everyone, particularly those princes from the next generation who are already quite old and feel genuinely spurned for not having been given the chance to reach the upper echelons of government. They view the sons of Abdul-Aziz, who have monopolized the throne for decades, as a herd of old dinosaurs living in the past. 2) The changes the king makes must not be temporary. They must form a basis for the next era, without leaving room for conflict as soon as he dies. 3) Controls should be put in place to prevent a retreat from the reforms he has implemented in the past few years, the last of which brought women into the Shura Council.

Even if the king succeeds in all of this, there is widespread concern among Saudis today that Prince Nayef may soon become king. A Saudi source says that the general atmosphere in the country now is fraught with anxiety. They are waiting for the results of the meeting of the Family and Allegiance Councils, although most know full well that Nayef will be the next crown prince. Yet many Saudis feel that they have a right to dream of another kind of king, perhaps due to the influence of the Arab Spring. Some predict that Nayef’s reign will be such that the brewing discontent in the kingdom will come to the surface, thus opening a new period of unrest.

This article is an edited translation of an article from the Arabic Edition.