Professor Madawi Al Rasheed

One thing is certain. When a Saudi security consultant makes policy recommendations, he is anything other than an independent voice.

Such recommendations are often described by unnamed Saudi officials as only representing the views of the people who express them. This is exactly what happened after Nawaf Obaid’s recent reflections on the Iraqi crisis.

Obaid’s article in the Washington Post (29 November 2006) addresses an American audience that is increasingly sceptical about its own military adventure in Iraq and which is beginning to search for exit strategies (the latest being the report of the Iraq Study Group, published on 6 December).

The sub-text of this article is clear. If American troops walk out of the Iraqi Armageddon, Saudi Arabia will walk in, not with troops but with oil, funds and possibly proxies, chosen from among the various Iraqi Sunni forces, both old and new. This is a clear warning to disaffected American constituencies who are calling for the return of their troops. Once again, Saudi Arabia is serving the interests of the Bush administration by calling on Americans to stay in Iraq because the alternative is going to be worse. When asked if Saudi engagement in Iraq would precipitate a regional war, Obaid replied “so be it, the consequences of inaction are far worse.”

Obaid promises that oil markets will be flooded with over-supply, resulting in lower prices that would cripple Iran’s capacity to fund its Shia allies. Iran would be brought to its knees by lower oil revenues and be left with no surplus to distribute beyond it borders. Notwithstanding assessments of Saudi pump capabilities – and without even looking into the effect of a glut in cheap oil on the economy that is nearly 90% dependent on oil revenues to lubricate long lasting loyalty at home – one must take such statements with a pinch of salt. Saudi Arabia will be the first to be seriously affected by such oil policy, while the more diversified Iranian economy may actually prove more resilient. Western and Asian markets will no doubt rejoice at the prospect of cheap oil but the associated economic prosperity may come at the price of yet more Iraqi corpses.

‘Helping the brothers’

In addition to an oil glut, Obaid promises a “Saudi war in support of Sunni brothers” – a catchy slogan likely to find favour with Saudi Islamists, who are both agitated and constantly in search of a new Jihadi destination. Fuelling an ongoing civil war between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis in defence of the latter may sound glorious in the eyes of those who are blinded by sectarian affiliations. Yet such a war will be difficult to contain within Iraqi borders and may spill over to Saudi Arabia itself. Obaid forgets that Iran can endorse the same strategy on Saudi soil. Let’s remind ourselves that Iranian revolutionary effervescence did migrate in the direction of the Saudi oil fields only two decades ago. It even reached the holy cities during the annual pilgrimage season. Saudi Shia activism may not only haunt Riyadh but Washington as well. The limited freedoms granted to the Shia – and even representation in the Qatif municipal council – may then not be enough.

Riyadh’s men

So which of the various Sunni candidates would the Saudis back in its project to defend the “right” Islam? After all, the Iraqi Sunni version of Islam is very different from its Saudi counterpart. Is the candidate going to be the tribal sheikh who emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the Iraqi regime, who would come to Riyadh to receive real Arabian hospitality, incense, and freshly grounded coffee in the princes’ majlis, to be sent back with a purse full of cash to be distributed among his tribal militia in the dusty small towns of al-Anbar? The Saudi rejoiced when Ajil al-Yawar, a descendent of the Shammar Jarba of Iraq who was groomed in Riyadh for several decades, returned to Iraq to become president. This proved to be a short lived Saudi triumph that did not stand the test of the shifting Iraqi political alliances under occupation.

Is the candidate going to be the already perfumed and well-groomed secular Shia leader, who needed Saudi money and satellite television for his campaign in Iraq to reach a wider constituency? Saudi Arabia backed such a personality with no regard to his Shiism or secularism. Perhaps he was then considered an ‘honorary Sunni” for political expediency. Again this proved to be a short lived success that did not survive the Iraqi ballot box.

Alternatively, is the Iraqi proxy going to be the ex-Baathist security and intelligence officers, whom Saudi Arabia welcomed in the 1990s and hailed as true Arabs embodying the spirit of the Arab nation and willing to defend it against its Persian rivals? Several personalities were identified and supported on their way to other destinations where they presented themselves as reformed Baathists or born-again Arab nationalists. They promised an ‘insider’s’ perspective on the so-called Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and other details of Saddam’s intrigues and plots, all of which proved to be lies fabricated by Iraqi defectors who fooled many in the West as a result of enlisting the services of clever public relations companies, ready to sell any story to the press regardless of its authenticity or credibility.

Looking for proxies

Iraq under occupation produced more potential Iraqi-Sunni candidates than the usual suspects that the Saudi regime might want to consider in its search for a proxy in the ongoing civil war.

In the Sunni political sphere, Saudi Arabia has three options: moderate Iraqi Sunni Islamists, residents in the Green Zone and part of the current Iraqi government, Salafi activists associated with the Iraqi Islamic Council or the likes of “Abu Hamza” and “Abu Dhar “, the trans-national Jihadis who claim to defend the umma against its real and imaginary enemies wherever they are.

Before sponsoring such groups, the Saudis will look for major adjustments in order to endear them more to the Saudi leadership. The Islamist activists will have to revise their programme to correspond to a Saudi version of Islam. They will have to be more Salafi to be accepted. The Iraqi Sunni religious scholar will have to model himself along the lines of the Saudi Council of Higher Ulama, which has become more concerned with the appearances of social Islam than with political issues, exactly like the current Saudi official ulama. Finally, the al-Qaida activist will have to suspend his excommunication of the Saudi regime. In fact, he will have to move from denouncing this regime to glorifying it. This will take a serious mental adjustment, and it is uncertain whether the so-called Abu Hamzas are currently ready for such an ideological turn.

Like kings of old?

The Saudi options in Iraq are complicated and each possesses a number of drawbacks.

The immersion of Saudi Arabia in Iraq will prove to be detrimental not only for Iraq but for Saudis themselves. We know that when European kings entered sectarian wars they lost their grip on the population and eventually disappeared. A new Europe gradually emerged from the ashes of burnt witches and crucified heretics.

The Saudi leadership could face the same fate as such kings. The map of the Arab world could be easily redrawn. While European nations emerged from the blood of martyrs on the Catholic and Protestant sides, in the Arab world it is more likely that the current fragile and oppressive nation states will disappear altogether. They are more likely to be replaced by new, sectarian mini-statelets, which might initially correspond to what the supporters of sectarian wars aspire to but which would have no economic viability in some places. Saudi intervention will promise to set in motion a precedent in Iraq, whose model will soon be copied even in Saudi Arabia itself.

Any outside intervention in Iraq must recognise the complexity of the scene.

Today, Iraq and the Arab region in general have moved from centralised violence orchestrated by well-equipped regimes who had a monopoly over the means of coercion, to a decentralised violence practised by resistance movements, terrorists, adventurers and others, not to mention the violence of occupying forces: Americans in Iraq, Israelis in Palestine and international forces in Afghanistan. Such decentralised violence finds home in the complex fabric of Arab society, with its ethnic, sectarian, and Islamist constituencies.

In some cases, the decentralisation of violence is mostly a product of direct regime sponsorship. Arab regimes have created paramilitary troops to fight their own battles with the population, while keeping a distance from direct military engagement. Tribal militia and peasant armies have recently been used in conflicts between central governments and their opponents from Sudan to Algeria. While regime sponsorship continues, such local, violent actors soon develop their own local agendas and consequently escape the control of those who initially sponsored them. Their killing tends to be fierce because they know the local scene. They often have their own vendettas against neighbouring competitors and rivals.

Kill thy neighbour

The violence witnessed in Iraq over the last three years is nothing but an expression of local, decentralised violence that is motivated by the ‘narcissism of small differences’. Those who know each other so well and who have no great differences marking them clearly from each other are capable of killing without mercy and with great treachery. Local perpetrators of violence kill and torture their victim, who is not so different but very similar to themselves. They do so because they know him so well and because they share many common characteristics.

Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq is conducted between people who claim to be so different in creed and ritual but are in fact very similar. Iraqi Sunnis and Shias used to visit the same local shrines regardless of whether they are counted as Shia or Sunni. Culturally they belong to an Iraq that had been homogenised by mass education, state propaganda and ideological indoctrination. Remember – Sunnis and Shia went to the same schools, participated in the same legendary battles of their dictator and suffered in the same way.

Today, imagined cultural and religious differences are exaggerated by political entrepreneurs to demonise the other and make him an exotic creature whose elimination is then turned into a religious duty. When my Iraqi Sunni friend used to swear by the name of Abbas and made vows to give occasional offerings to his shrine, I realised that Iraq was different from other predominantly Sunni Arab countries. The Sunnification of the Shia and vice versa, are common features in a country which had known the two sides coexist and in some cases overlap.

Some decentralised violence had grown in a wide market with potential non-state sponsors, who are able to raise money by mobilising their respective constituencies. Frontiers between Arab states are fertile grounds for arm smuggling – from Yemen to Somalia.

Saudi Arabia itself faces this problem. Some of its own supposedly docile citizens carry arms in their car boots, even when the destination is the shopping centre. Some claim that they carry such arms to defend their harem, at a time when young girls are kidnapped and raped by hordes of men under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Others may have other objectives. Both the cities and the countryside are awash with light and heavy weapons, according to Saudi reports outlining arm discoveries after raids. Saudis have always been armed, but unlike their Yemeni counterparts they do not parade their weapons in public.

The new reality of the Arab world must be taken into account before more money is poured into Iraq in defence of the Sunnis.

After the Afghan war, the Saudi leadership managed to stay in power while reaping the temporary positive rewards of being hailed as the defender of Islam. But the long-term negative consequences came to haunt the regime.

Since 2003 Saudi Arabia has paid the price, with street battles between government forces and Jihadis, suicide bombs and more recently, intellectual battles between Islamists and their rivals, leading in some instances to speakers being attacked in public cultural forums. Iraq is however closer to home than Afghanistan. The tribal, cultural, and religious links between Saudi Arabia and Iraq are too many to list. While such links may facilitate the coming Saudi engagement, they can easily backfire.

My enemy’s enemy is not my friend

A desperate and besieged Iraqi Sunni constituency may find it difficult to resist Saudi generosity. This constituency has paid a high price for crimes committed by a regime that killed not in its name but in the name of power and megalomania.

Being seen as the proxy of yet another regime desperately searching for the chance to assert its own power and legitimacy at home and regionally may not be the only option available.

Iraqi Sunnis should not jump out of the frying pan into the fire. Their only viable option is for all Iraqis to realise that their survival is dependent not on outside support but on joint effort to overcome the many detrimental consequences of having lived under a dictatorship for so long and having suffered the consequences of the superpower who came to save them from such a dictatorship.

All Iraqis – Sunni and Shia – must realise that sometimes my enemy’s enemy is not my friend.