Give the Saudi monarchy their dues. They are experts when it comes to manipulating political environment in their region to work in their favor—all by using soft power without attracting too much attention. Some would call that style stealthy and deadly.
This is exactly what the monarchy has been able to achieve in Yemen and Bahrain by propping up pro-Saudi rulers in these two countries to keep them in power despite massive protests that would have toppled the toughest regimes elsewhere.
The house of al-Saud has become highly adept in exploiting regional ethnic and religious fault lines to advance its own political goals, a practice first used in the 1950s against Nasser’s Egypt and continued till now.
The blueprint for the kingdom’s reaction to revolutionary movements in the Middle East has remained unchanged, whether it is applied to a military-led regime similar to Nasser’s, or a clergy-lead government upheaval like the one in Iran. The Saudi recipe calls for a combination of media, religious, security and political pressures aiming to halt any meaningful change in the region—especially if it can negatively affect the monarchy’s standing.
The Saudi regime has a formidable arsenal, which includes its massive oil revenues, media empires, religious establishment, intelligence services, and the gravitas of its political leadership. The monarchy wields this unrivaled collection of assets with skill and fluency that puts leading western political establishments to shame, making Obama’s national security team look like amateurs in comparison.
Take Bahrain, for example. The Saudis invaded the country with no objection from the United States. One would think that the U.S. would at least show concern for the safety of its Fifth Fleet servicemen who are now forced to share a small patch of land with thousands of well-armed soldiers without any supposed coordination. The rest of the world, too, supported the invasion and continued to sell arms to the country that targets peaceful protesters, and will not be leaving Bahrain anytime soon.
As for Yemen, the monarchy’s many years of involvement in the affairs of its poorer neighbor yielded great results—both President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his main rival Sadiq Al-Ahmar are loyal to Saudi Arabia and have been on its payroll for decades. Meanwhile, the leaders of the uprising have been sidelined and left with nothing more than giving speeches at rapidly shrinking rallies.
Some might believe—erroneously—that the United States is taking the lead in Yemen. U.S. officials may get photo ops with Yemeni leaders, but these leaders dance to Saudi music alone. The reason is simple: the Saudis pay for those who obey them and complicate things for those who defy them.
The kingdom understands the importance of winning the loyalty of the security forces, which played the deciding factor in Tunisia and Egypt. The calculus of political power in these states is such that the regimes fall when the military remains neutral or sides with the protest movement, and survive when the military stays loyal to the government. This explains the zeal with which the Saudis have been arming and funding the Yemeni army, national guards and tribal fighters loyal to the Saleh regime.
The monarchy also deftly used its media assets, including the respected Al Arabiya TV station and a plethora of religious channels run by its religious and security organizations, to exploit sectarian and ethnic fears in the region played out between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and between Arabs and Persians. What’s more, Riyadh’s talking points have trickled down to Washington, where some analysts are now parroting the Saudi line by characterizing the Bahraini uprising as an Iranian plot to infiltrate Arab countries, and the Yemeni revolution as a way to give Iran a foothold on the southern flank of the Arabian Peninsula to spread Shi’a Islam.
The Saudi success is rooted in the region’s fragmentation and the ease of buying out loyalists, especially among the Saudi-oriented salafists who have been attacking churches in Egypt and movie theaters in Tunisia. This is a strategy that makes it easy for the rest of the world to equate revolution with chaos. The kingdom thus has not only been able to keep its head above the water, but also has continued to actively shape the region to fit its needs.
Ali Al Ahmed is the director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington D.C., a non-profit research organization. He is a journalist and expert on Saudi Arabian political affairs including terrorism, Islamic movements, Wahhabi Islam, Saudi political history, Saudi-American relations, and the al-Saud family history