UK House of Commons - Foreign Affairs Select Committee
Foreign Policy Aspects of the War against Terrorism
2 July 2006
Examination of Witnesses (Questions 167-179)
DR MAI YAMANI
2 NOVEMBER 2005
Chairman: Thank you for joining us, Dr Mai Yamani.
Q167 Mr Maples: I wonder if you could talk to us a bit about Saudi reform and what is and is not happening or what might happen. We have seen some developments; there are very limited elections to municipal councils, but with no women being allowed to participate in those. Some I think hoped that when the old King died that we would see some changes. We have not yet. One keeps hearing that there is a younger generation in the Royal Family that understands what needs to be done. We all feel that those sorts of developments are likely to help Saudi Arabia to develop. On the other hand, the alternatives now, all over the Middle East, to the ruling despotic families or regimes seem to be religious extremists. One wonders whether, if there were free democratic elections in Saudi Arabia tomorrow, the people who would get elected would be the people Frank Gardner has just been talking about, the religious extremists. We have seen this vacuum in Iraq by religious extremism, and in Iran. What is happening, and what kind of reforms is it sensible to expect, or indeed for the West to promote or help on their way?
Dr Yamani: The reforms that have taken place until now in Saudi Arabia are inadequate, too little for the demands of the people. They have had partial municipal elections that we saw in February to April, which were not inclusive. About one-quarter of the male population participated. Half the members were appointed, and the whole female population was excluded. To jump to the final part of your question, the results showed at the time that the Islamists had won. That was a victory tailor-made to warn the West, especially the United States, that if we have elections, the Islamists will win. This is all over the Middle East. I think the fact that they have excluded so many people, especially women and the liberal educated people—and many were in gaol at the time—they have concentrated on the neo Salafi, Wahhabi group, which I will explain later. They gave us those results. There were the partial municipal elections.
Q168 Mr Maples: Are you saying it suited the Saudi Government to have this result?
Dr Yamani: Originally, yes, because when Abdullah, Crown Prince at the time, now King Abdullah, arrived in May to visit President Bush, he said: "You see, we have had the elections. We had the Islamists, but we are controlling and managing the situation." That was very good for the whole talk about reform and democracy in the Middle East. What we see now as a result of this particular attempt at reform, or partial elections, is that those who were supposed to have been appointed have not been named yet. Those who were elected have not met yet. There are very small details, such as the fact that they are going to have cinema twice a week for women and children—cartoons. There are small attempts so that perhaps woman will be able to vote in the future. I will talk about the economic reforms separately because that seems to be much easier, especially with the high price of oil. The second important part of reform has been the National Dialogue that King Abdullah has initiated. They saw that in Iraq and in the region in general, there is this whole idea of pluralism and a pluralist society, where you have to recognise diversity. So they had a national dialogue where they brought these different people together, whether Wahhabi, Salafi, or those from the Hijaz, or the Shi'a—people who never talked to each other before; they had them in one room and they talked. That was a good step. But nothing has been legitimised subsequently by the religious establishment, so nothing really changed. The same goes for the consultative council, Majlis Ash-Shura. They increased the number of male members of the council from 120 to 150, but they cannot be elected; they cannot legislate; they cannot decide on the budget; they cannot even look at the expenses of the Princes. In Saudi Arabia they have made some limited, careful steps towards reform, but if you talk about competitive elections, freedom of expression, of assembly, of organisation, reforms of the educational system or the judiciary, they are more serious—and the policy of discrimination, on the basis of religious sect or tribe is still very much visible in the country.
Q169 Mr Maples: Are we seeing any reforms at a slightly different level, in institutions or government? Some people would argue that democratic voting is the last piece to put in place; that before that you need a transparent and incorrupt government, the rule of law, and institutions that have some kind of authority, whether universities or professional bodies. Are we seeing any of those kinds of developments?
Dr Yamani: There are important economic reforms opening up investments—the Chamber of Commerce. This, as we all know, is a very good time for Saudi Arabia in terms of oil prices and revenues. We have seen the opening up of economics, and that is always much easier for them. What I have been looking at for the last few days in order to come and talk to you, and asking people in Saudi Arabia about the reforms, everyone said that King Abdullah has to look first at reform within the Royal Family, the largest royal family in the world; there are between 20-22,000 of them. He needs to look at, first, general house-cleaning. They have divisions. There are schisms, and the distribution of power among the younger generations and the power that has been concentrated on the branch of Al-Fahd, the brothers of the late King Fahd, known here also as the Suderi Seven. King Abdullah has been seen as the reformer who wanted to look especially to the West and internationally, as the champion of reform in Saudi Arabia. He is no longer the de facto ruler, but he is the King and for him the biggest challenge is to face the religious establishment, the Wahhabi religious establishment, and then the more conservative and powerful princes in the country; the distribution of jobs and the end of corruption within the Royal Family. That is an important first step, and then obviously freedom of assembly or organisations and civil society. They have established a human rights committee, which is governmental. They have made so many attempts, but it is always through the Royal Family and the important older princes in this absolute monarchy.
Q170 Mr Purchase: You rightly say that the ruling elite, the Royal Family in Saudi, consistently say that should there be anything resembling free and fair elections, that the Islamicists would win. They are right, are they not? If they did not, despite the awfulness of the present regime, in democratic terms, would it not be even worse with the Islamicists in control?
Dr Yamani: The ruling family of Saudi Arabia have allied themselves with the Wahhabi religious establishment. It is in many ways a coalition government, and the Wahhabis are co-de facto rulers and control the most important levers of power: the judiciary, the ministries and the educational system. They did have a very good relationship. There were tensions, but there was a sharing of power. Today we have a problem that some of the new generation—and I am talking about the 50s and 60s because Saudi Arabia is a country where 60 is very, very young for power—this new wave of neo-Wahhabis, neo-Salafi, who are still important in the country and are on the payroll, are a challenge. They want to be the state, and they propagate their ideas that are more political through the Internet. They are also in contact with the underground, violent jihadi, in order to control them. This is the situation of the religious relationship with the political situation. But you tell me that Saudi Arabia then would be, or the majority, an Islamist country. That is not true. The Wahhabis are a minority in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a country of minorities. The Shi'a in the Eastern Province are a minority. They are only 15% of the population; they are 75% of the population of the oil-rich province. To the east you have Shi'a; in the centre you have the Wahhabis in Al-Qasim and that area of Nejd, where the Royal Family come from. In Mecca and Medina, previously the Kingdom of Hijaz there are not really many Wahhabis; they are of the different Sunni sects of Islam, with movements like Sufis and a different expression of Islam. It is more liberal, more open, than the inlanders in the Nejd. Then you have the various Ismailis and the tribes of Najran and Jisan—Giran. This is a country of minorities. Al-Saud in the centre of Nejd have successfully balanced and controlled Islam, oil—and have kept the thing together. Recent developments, internal, regional and international, and this war on terrorism, has made this very difficult to manage, and there are new challenges. If you have free elections tomorrow in Saudi Arabia, competitive free elections, would it be a country of Islamists? No.
Q171 Mr Purchase: They are wrong.
Dr Yamani: I do not think that that is the case.
Q172 Mr Purchase: The Royal Family are wrong, then. This is what they say!
Dr Yamani: The Royal Family themselves have a range of—if you are a family of five, you are going to have differences in your family, with different people. Can you imagine a family that large? You have people who are more liberal and educated; you have those who are very conservative; you have those who are radical—you have a range of expression. Even among the brothers, the top people now, the question for the Royal Family and the new King, and for us as the international community and within Saudi Arabia, is who is going to be appointed after the King and the Crown Prince? What direction are we going in—a younger, more liberal, educated prince, with less authority and interference by the religious establishment, especially the new wave? There are so many questions that are imminent now to ask. At the moment I do not think that if you have a vote you are going to have just the Islamists.
Q173 Chairman: In regard to the economic reform programme in Saudi Arabia, will the economic problems and growing unemployment lead to greater radicalism and extremism?
Dr Yamani: The economic situation is the best news for Saudi Arabia at the moment. Oil prices are high. Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producer in the world with the biggest spare capacity, producing 10 million barrels. It has spare capacity, and many believe that they can maintain that. The problem here is that, as we know, oil prices go up and then they go down; and to rely only on oil revenues in the long term is problematic. The second thing is that in the absence of inclusive reform, reform in the educational system, you need people to have jobs and join the global economy. Despite all the wealth that has come in, you still have corruption in the bureaucracy and there are policies of discrimination. Having said that, at the moment unemployment is decreasing. King Abdullah, when he became King, increased the salaries of all public employees. There are 10,000 students who have been sent to the United States to study. More jobs have been created and they are paying debts, so there is more foreign investment; and people from the outside look at the prosperity of Saudi Arabia and putting money into Saudi Arabia. Oil revenues is the good news, and the economic side of things is good at the moment.
Q174 Chairman: What about the fact that historically the Saudi economy has been dependent upon expatriate workers, or people who have come to live in the Kingdom, who have no say in the way the society is run, but they are there to work, whether they come from Pakistan or elsewhere in the Arab world or from any other part of the world? Is there a potential for tension on those questions as well?
Dr Yamani: We know that in Saudi Arabia, like the other five Gulf countries, GCC countries: Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, the percentage of expatriates to the native population is very high. We know that each one of these countries—and we are talking about Saudi Arabia now, that has a policy of Saudi-isation, and that is replacing the expatriate workers by the indigenous population. That has not succeeded very much. According to every five-year plan nothing much has changed, and that has been blamed on the ethics of the profession, or education and the fact that the foreigners come to work and need less salaries. There has been no policy of homogenisation. The expatriates' children have to go to schools that are separate. There are separate compounds. Unlike the other GCC countries, where they are allowed facilities like cinemas, in Saudi Arabia, because of the very strict Wahhabi religious system that is imposed on all of the population, for expatriates it is very difficult. You have members of the committee for the ordering of the good and the forbidding of the evil known as the mutawa, who make checks to see that expatriate women and men have the right dress and follow all the rules. It is obviously a matter of choice, but now they have a problem because of the fear of terrorist attacks. Also there are gradings of foreigners. An Egyptian doctor will get less than an English doctor, and the English will get less than the American. There are categorisations other than Muslim versus non-Muslim. They still need foreign expertise and technology, and I do not think that that is a big problem for Saudi Arabia at the moment in terms of security or their economy.
Q175 Mr Purchase: I want to return to a theme that you were partly offering to us earlier about reform and the ability of the family to push through reform now that King Abdullah is there, de facto. Is he in any position within the family to push forward the reforms which he was reputed to be in favour of?
Dr Yamani: Abdullah still does not have full authority. He is King; he took steps when he became King at the beginning of August. First, he freed some of the liberal educated reformists who were in gaol, which his brother, the Minister of the Interior, had put in gaol; so that was a good sign. He still did not force his own appointments. One of the signs we see is that he cannot really decide on who is going to be the second deputy, who is the person right after the Crown Prince—and that is very important to see the future direction. There are some positions that are alarmingly vacant such as the Minister of Defence or Head of the National Guard. He is still waiting and playing for time. But Abdullah has tried to push his own agenda for reform. His problem is that he is not on very good terms with the head of the judiciary, which is part of the religious establishment, or some of the members of the Wahhabi religious establishment. The other camp, headed by Prince Naif, the Minister of the Interior, and some of the Al-Fahd brothers, are obstructing some of Abdullah's attempts. At the moment the schism is more obvious, the divisions between the main two camps in the Royal Family. People in the country know now that Abdullah's group are so-and-so among the Princes. As we said before, the first test would be the reorganisation and distribution of jobs within the Royal Family itself; minimising the expenditures of the young generation of Princes—their princely salaries and their expectations of privileges. During his days as Crown Prince, Abdullah made efforts in that area, but this is a struggle that is going on between the hardliners and those who are more inclined towards reform. We see it in everyday messages that are happening in the debate.
Q176 Mr Purchase: Are these divisions, differences or arguments between two sides, and maybe more, in your opinion, likely to prevent reform or not?
Dr Yamani: I think that they are preventing some of the important reforms. The Royal Family agree on one thing: they agree on fighting terrorism, because they are targeting them. They also agree that the Al-Saud should remain in power. There are very obvious decisions that are seen, examples of reforms. There are those who even talk about constitutional monarchy, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Saud Al-Faisal, and people like Prince Bandar bin Abdulaziz. However, when the petitioners, university professors, wrote about it and all the other signed, they were put in gaol for saying that. The Royal Family perceive the threat to their rule and to Saudi Arabia as jihadis, violent jihadis on one side, and liberal reformers on the other. At the moment we are still seeing that they are more afraid of the liberal reformers. They have been able to quieten them, silence them, even gaol them; while the websites of these neo-Islamist or neo-Salafis that I mentioned—those with fatwas about legitimising jihad in Iraq—there are so many fatwas that are online, but the websites are still operating and they have a problem of silencing those guys. The real task for the King is to bring this balance of allowing more of the educated liberal men and women in the country to participate so that there is a balance between the Islamists and the more moderate Islamists and more liberal.
Q177 Mr Purchase: You mentioned constitutional monarchy: whilst the threat of terror is clearly real in that region and obvious, is there also a danger that in trying to press ahead with reforms, even mimicking the very brave attempts of the Bahraini population off the coast who have moved towards a constitutional monarchy with two houses, it offers an opportunity for the growth of terrorist activities whilst the Royal Family and others are distracted by the need to move forward for reform?
Dr Yamani: If you compare Saudi Arabia to small Bahrain or some of those other countries that have moved ahead with their token democracies, it has a much more complicated task because of the diversity of their population. They only became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, united under the Al-Saud Family, and gave their name to the population in 1932. To control the tribes and the different sects, at a time now when this national identity is very vulnerable—being Saudi is becoming very vulnerable and fragile, in the sense that people are tribal—"I am a Shihri . . ." The Shammar Tribe, for example, who are in the same territory of Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, believe that they are Shammar—it does not matter which passport they hold. These are the problems that they are facing, and also in terms of fighting the war on terrorism. Unfortunately, they have focused first on the fight for the war on terrorism, especially with the powerful Minister of the Interior, Naif, and dealt with the reforms later. That is where they have to come in. In fact the war on terrorism and the security concerns have delayed reform. The money coming in made them also—and it is easier for King Abdullah now because the system of patrimony, that is paying the tribes and the people with oil money so that there is no taxation no representation—you have all this—slows down the pace of reform. At the moment things are fine. Economically the war on terror, as we heard from Frank Gardner, is making progress. I think that people are not as sure of the competence of the security forces or the state's ability to fight terrorism, because we have seen clashes where there are a few men sitting in a villa in Dammam and hundreds of security forces, helicopters and police are sitting for six days trying to get rid of these few, determined, violent Salafis. Frank Gardner also said that they are mostly from the same families and tribes. Take Al-Ghamdi—one of them was September 11—some of them were caught in Iraq. There are about 6,000 Al-Ghamdi. There are about a thousand Al-Ghamdi of the same name, all cousins. Some work in the Ministry of the Interior and some have become jihadis. You have the war on terrorism and some progress that has been made, but you also have these questions about inclusion of people in Saudi Arabia. The most important thing is what is happening in the neighbourhood. There is the situation of violence in Iraq, and 61% out of foreign insurgents in Iraq are apparently Saudi. There is a very big threat of them coming back.
Q178 Mr Purchase: Can I leave that point there? I am getting the message that you feel that some reforms could be achieved, without losing sight of the anti-terrorist measures, but that it would be difficult. Can I finally ask about the future of the Consultative Council, the Ash-Shura Council. Does it have a future worth talking about in terms of the democratic development of Saudi?
Dr Yamani: The religious establishment in Saudi Arabia, co-de facto rulers, do not believe in the word "democracy"; they do not believe that democracy is compatible with Islam. That is peculiar to the Wahhabis, because there are many Muslim scholars that believe that Islam is compatible with democracy. In the first place you have the religious establishment. They do not acknowledge democracy, and some of the Princes, who do not believe that you can have the vote or that the Majlis Ash-Shura, the Consultative Council members, should be elected. They are appointed and not much has changed in their role. In this very young parliament what rights would they have in the future? We have not seen much progress in that and it is not clear, except for the fact that their numbers have increased. The reforms basically—I think it is really inclusive, and I think they need to have more space for the educated, liberal sections of society and population of Saudi Arabia.
Q179 Mr Purchase: That would move it forward.
Dr Yamani: I think that will help. Many Saudis know what they want and would be capable, and they still want to see unity and stability of the country.
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