Page 271 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

268 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

A less complacent evaluation of the situation would yield the sobering
conclusion that the United States, in return for a handful of undertakings of
doubtful value and duration, has assumed commitments to Saudi Arabia of a
potentially far-reaching character which may lead it one day into some very

strange waters indeed. For this the United States government has only itself to
blame. It has disdained the experience of Britain in Arabia over the past
century and a half, as it has disdained the imperial experience of the European
powers in Asia and Africa generally. And, like British governments themselves
of late years, it has seen fit to spurn the lessons which this experience taught -
among them the necessity to hold aloof from entangling alliances with the Al
Saud, and the futility of propitiation as a mode of treating with that dynasty.
Instead, the United States government has placed itself in an ignominious
position vis-a-vis the Saudis, having confused the role of cicerone with that of
cicisbeo. Not only is it tied to the Al Saud and to the preservation of the status
quo in Saudi Arabia, but it is also, to all intents and purposes, committed to
upholding the integrity and independence of the kingdom against its foes from
without. What this may portend is anyone’s guess.

What degree of political discontent may exist in Saudi Arabia it is impossible to
judge for want of sufficient information about the country’s internal affairs.
Saudi methods of government have always been severe, partly of necessity,
given the turbulent nature of the tribesmen, partly from inclination, given the
character of the Al Saud and the spirit of Wahhabism. Wealth has slightly
tempered this disposition so far as some sections of Saudi society are con­
cerned, though not for the bulk of the population. The Wahhabi mutawiyah,

the zealots who constitute the religious police, remain as vigilant as ever, and
the prescriptions of Islam according to the Hanbali rite are still enforced with
severity. Public floggings, mutilations and beheadings for crimes of mounting
degrees of seriousness are normal practice, while the conditions in Saudi
prisons and the punishments meted out to those confined in them remain as
barbarous as ever. Some tardy realization of these aspects of Saudi government
and society has come to the outside world as a result of the occasional punish­
ment of Europeans or Americans who have offended against Saudi laws or
Islamic prohibitions, and through the putting to death in November 1977 of a
female member of the royal family for adultery and the public execution of her
lover. (The adultery may have been no more than technical. The women of the
Al Saud are forbidden to marry outside the family, unless into the closely
related Thunaiyan clan. Marriage to a man not of the Al Saud, therefore, is
classified as adultery. The men of the Al Saud may marry outsiders, though

they usually confine themselves, as noted earlier, to the ahi al-shaikh or the
Sudairi or Jiluwi clans.) Women and Westerners can, by and large, be chas­
tised with relative impunity; women because they are accounted lesser beings,
both before the law and in the eyes of men; Westerners because their