Modern states evolved from kinship-based societies but Saudi Arabia is still somewhere in between. It is a country that is a fiefdom of one lineage, the House of Saud, with thousands of members. Within this extended family, there is the not-so-small unit that the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz ibn Saud, left behind. He had multiple wives and 45 sons and it is from this corpus that all of Saudi Arabia’s rulers are chosen.
Ordinarily that shouldn’t bother the rest of the world too much if not for Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves which decide what you will pay for the petrol in your car. This is why when King Abdullah, who had been the head of Saudi Arabia for a decade, passed away and his half-brother Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud assumed charge, oil prices that had been in decline registered a blip on the upside. The world was uncertain about the course the new ruler would take. Was this going to be the man who would pull the country out of what many consider a medieval age in which women are not allowed to drive or step out unaccompanied by men? Will he curtail oil supply and stop the downward spiral in prices? The doubts didn’t last too long. In his first address to his nation, the new king promised that nothing would change. According to a Reuters report, he said, “We will… with God’s support, maintain the straight path that this country has advanced on since its establishment by the late King Abdulaziz.” And as proof of that, the world recently saw the first beheading being conducted under his reign.
King Salman is the 25th son of Ibn Saud and he is 79 years old—not an age when monarchs become reformists. Also, he has been an insider in the establishment for decades, serving as the Governor of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabaia, from his youth. Under his 50-year governorship, Riyadh metamorphosed from a desert outpost to a magnificent city. From 2011 onwards he was the defence minister of the country and under him Saudi soon had the fourth largest defence budget in the world, more than that of the United Kingdom. King Salman is therefore a tried, tested and able ruler but he faces challenges that his predecessors didn’t have to contend with. The immediate threat is the Islamic State, which, after taking over large parts of Syria and Iraq, is eyeing the Gulf nations. The House of Saud’s fine balance of remaining in power by keeping the country under an ultra orthodox interpretation of Islam is now being shaken with an even more extreme religious ideology knocking on the door armed to the teeth and with soldiers who think death in battle is salvation. The new king does have some experience with extremists. A Foreign Policy article with the headline ‘King Salman’s Shady History’ noted, ‘Salman has an ongoing track record of patronizing hateful extremists that is now getting downplayed for political convenience. As former CIA official Bruce Riedel astutely pointed out, Salman was the regime’s lead fundraiser for mujahideen, or Islamic holy warriors, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as well as for Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan struggles of the 1990s. In essence, he served as Saudi Arabia’s financial point man for bolstering fundamentalist proxies in war zones abroad.’
An equal challenge before King Salman will be oil. Saudi Arabia has massive oil reserves but with United States developing shale oil, that monopoly is under threat. That is the reason that Saudi Arabia is not checking the fall in oil prices. It can survive at low price levels but further falls will drive US shale oil companies out of business. It’s a game with big stakes and how King Salman plays it will decide the future of his country and much else.
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