King Abdullah 'pro-American'? Look again by Laurent Murawiec Jerusalem Post Opinion August 5, 2005 Biology is Saudi Arabia's gerontocracy's decision-maker. For years, the rest of the royal family watched the decrepit King Fahd fade away, paralyzed by the fear that tinkering with the ever-precarious equilibrium that balances the ruling clan's ferocious appetite for loot would cause a civil war. A few days ago, Fahd was officially, if belatedly, declared dead. In a tribal society, especially amoung Beduin, the transition to a new ruler is always dangerous; a new chieftain means a redistribution of power. The time has finally come, and the explosive contradictions that rend the Saudi elite are going to be sharpened. Not that anyone should expect a change in policy. This is not what politics is about in the Arab world. The al-Saud family has only one science and one talent, that of survival. In order to keep on ruling and cashing in on the oil manna, Abdullah will do what the sheikh needs to do, not what fawning Western analysts ascribe to him. For years, the bogus story has been circulated by the Saudis' lobbyists that Abdullah was "pro-American." Never has a shred of evidence heen offered to bolster that claim except the supposedly trustworthv word of a prince or two. The anticipated effect of this insistent line was that America should eagerly support him against the "bad guys." Brezhnev deserved our support against the hard-liners, remember? To fathom Abdullah's possible courses of action, it is better to examine facts and deeds It was Abdullah who on November 14, 2001, gathered the kingdom's religious luminaries to tell them: "I insist on reminding you of the unjust attack that foreign media have carried against the Saudi kingdom. I mean foreign newspapers, and you know who stands behind those. These papers, behind which you-know-who is standing, criticize your religion, criticize everything that is dearest to you, your faith and your Holy Scripture." It was Abdullah who in 2002, furious at President George W. Bush's refusal to toe the Saudi line on the Palestinian issue, said: "From now on, you Americans come from Uruguay, as we say, which means from nowhere. From now on, we will protect our national interest, regardless of America's interests in the region." He is the one who, through an April 2002 New York Times artcle, threatened the US with a new oil embargo. Even the sycophants of the Saudi lobby do not describe Abdullah in terms one would normally use for an ally. Former US ambassador and president of the Middle East Institute in Washington "Ned" Walker admitted, Whoever thinks that Abdullah is not a man to go to the extremes is wrong. He's stared down "secretaries of state." Further into the past, but highly relevant to today's Middle East situation, it was Abdullah who lead the pack of the royals who wanted to punish for his trip to Jerusalem, and maintain the alliance with the radicals, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Hafez Assad. As such Ahdullah was one of the founders of the Rejection Front, and carries heavy responsibility for 30 more years of Arab and Islamic war against Israel. He is a devout Islamist, wedded to a pan-Islamic outlook. For more than four decades, Abdullah has been one of the prime movers in the great Saudi grab of Sunni Islam, the spread of jihad and the assault on the West. As perennial head of the Saudi National Guard, drawn from the most primitive, ignorant and bigoted element of Nedj, Abdullah has been a pillar of the retrogressive Saudi establishment. Under Abdullah, Saudi financial and intellectual support for jihad has not abated. His much-touted "plan" for the Palestinian issue was a half-baked rehash of Fahd's 20-year-old, unacceptable proposais. Internally, for the last decade or so, there has been no reform. The amicable farce held under the name of "municipal elections" earlier this year, was no election at all, but a show for the credulous. As in other Arab countries, the exercise was the hypocritical homage paid by vice to virtue, or by despotism to democracy. Saudi subjects who respectfully if publicly asked for a national dialogue and some transparency have been arrested, jailed and silenced. These brave souls were not even opponents or dissidents, but desired to be citizens rather than subjects. The somewhat moderate minister of education was sacked earlier this year and replaced by a hard-Jine Wahhabi. All the while, Saudi Arabia's chronic problems of yawning budget deficits, mass unemployment among the swoll cohorts of the young, and wholesale squandering of resources, have noty been tackled. Only the bulge in oil prices is giving the regime a new lease of life: more people can be bought. This, Abdullah knows how to do, as he is not foreign to the tastes of his many princes. Reports of Abdullah's supposedly "austere" ways which would set him apart from his debauched half-brothers and the rest of the royals are, let us say, exaggerated. Just a story: in 1998, as a $15 million palace was being completed, the prince went to China. Impressed by what he had seen, he ordered that palace to he tom down a replaced by a $20 million one, complete with fountains and gardens. The rise in oil prices hardly encourages curtailing such largesse, and generally cuts any incentive to reform. Likewise, by securing some margin of survival, it encourages a harsher reaction to the challenge of American modernization and democratization of the Middle East. The timely appointment of Osama bin Laden's old mentor, former head of Saudi intelligence Prince Turki al-Faisal, to replace Prince Bandar as Saudi ambassador in Washington is probably a harbinger of rougher times to come in US-Saudi relations, however much Bush has tried to slow down the momentum of the divorce between the two governments. Those who claim Abdullah is pro-American should expect him to continue to hide it well. ---------------------- The writer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, is author Princes of Darkness: the Saudi Assault on the West, which appears this month.