Charles Hanley won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative work on a US massacre
of Korean refugees in the early stages of the Korean War. He wrote a three part
series on KSA; i can only find the following two parts on the web.
Kingdom to Collapse of Its Own Weight?; Another
Prince Is Born To House of Saud Almost Every Day;
House of Saud Collapsing of Its Own Weight?
Byline: BY CHARLES J. HANLEY THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Scarcely a day
dawns in this desert kingdom that doesn't
deliver pilgrims to Mecca, oil to the world and
yet another baby boy to the royal House of
Saud.
Another prince among thousands, heir to a
six-figure allowance, free phone calls, free
kilowatts, free first-class seats worldwide.
Another claimant to a penthouse office in
government, to rich commissions on contracts,
to lucrative business partnerships.
Another reason, in short, why Saudi Arabia's
proliferating princelings may soon become
Saudi Arabia's king-size problem.
Already the neighbors are talking.
``Because of their undefined position in the
power system, Saudi princes could generate
uncontrollable crises,'' a Tehran newspaper
observed from across the Persian Gulf. An
Israeli analyst foresees a ``doomsday'' when
King Fahd's gray band of brothers passes
power to the younger generation -- hundreds
of competing cousins.
Inside this realm of sun, sand and secret
police, contrary words about the House of
Saud are rarely spoken aloud. But sometimes
they're smuggled out, like the notes for
``Princess,'' the memoirs of a Saudi royal.
``Sadly, many of the royal cousins were
swept away by the sudden rush of riches,''
Princess Sultana, a pseudonym, said in the
1992 book. ``My mother used to say . . . we
would never survive the wealth of the oil
fields.''
For now the Sauds survive quite well.
Up and down north Riyadh's boulevards,
their new marble palaces gleam in the stark
desert light, behind gates manned by
red-bereted royal guards. Their gardens
flourish on water desalinated and pumped 300
miles from the Persian Gulf. Rolls-Royces and
Cadillacs cruise the quiet streets. At the nearby
airport, private jets stand by for
intercontinental shopping sprees.
In Jiddah and other commercial centers,
House of Saud princes and close relatives sit,
by one count, as chairmen of 520 Saudi
corporations.
Here in the capital, princes hold strategic
Cabinet posts -- Defense, Interior, Intelligence
-- and others sit as junior ministers. Every
provincial governor is a prince or in-law, and
family members control key military staffs.
Stalin had his commissars. The House of
Saud has its princes.
``The Saudi royal family . . . virtually runs the
country as a private fiefdom,'' says the
American human-rights group Freedom
House.
Runs it so tightly, in fact, that even basic
information about the Sauds themselves can be
hard to come by.
No ``Debrett's Peerage'' lays out pedigrees
for an inquisitive public, as in Britain. No
society pages celebrate rich-and-famous
lifestyles. A half-dozen of the media-shy
princes declined interview requests from a
visiting journalist.
But enough is known to sketch in some
details about the planet's biggest, richest royal
family -- although just how big is not
necessarily one of those details.
Numbers Game: A government source told a
reporter there are 2,700 princes and
princesses. Other estimates are higher. A U.S.
government publication speaks of more than
4,000 princes alone in the early 1990s.
Said Aburish, an Arab-American who wrote
a critical study of the monarchy, settles on
7,000 princes and princesses, and calculates
males are being born at a rate of a few
hundred a year.
The key to an exploding royal household:
polygamy. Islam permits a man up to four
wives, but rapid-fire divorce multiplies that
among the royals.
King Abdel Aziz Al Saud, who founded
modern Saudi Arabia in 1932, took at least 16
wives, who bore him 42 sons. Those sons,
including King Fahd, have married hundreds of
women.
Some of their sons, the middle-aged third
generation, have gained international fame:
Prince Sultan bin Salman flew on the space
shuttle Discovery; Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is
a global tycoon and Michael Jackson's friend;
Prince Khaled bin Sultan led America's Arab
allies in the Gulf War.
But thousands of royals -- including other
lines of the Saud clan that also bear the
``emir,'' or prince, title -- spend their days in
the leisurely obscurity of the oil elite.
``They watch movies, go to the country
house, go to Europe to shop,'' said a young
woman who socializes with princesses.
Behind palace walls, some idle
20-somethings also indulge in less healthy
pursuits, she said -- heavy drinking and drug
use, vices that can cost commoners long jail
terms, if not their lives, in this land of puritanical
Islam.
``They're into cocaine, but they favor
hashish,'' this insider said. ``They bring it into
the country themselves, because princes and
princesses don't get searched.''
A Woman's Reputation: Sex also is furtive.
Some princesses inconspicuously take secret
lesbian lovers, she said, rather than risk being
branded as ``loose,'' unworthy of a princely
marriage, by dating a man.
``Marriages for love are rare,'' she said.
``Even talking by phone with a man ruins a
girl's reputation.''
One result: Young Saudi royals have deluged
a new telephone ``chat'' line, based abroad,
where they talk about sex and personal
problems endlessly and anonymously.
They can afford it. Free telephone service is
part of the House of Saud birthright, along with
free electricity, water and other public services,
and free seats on the national airline.
The birthright also includes government cash
up front, from an infant's first day. The
minimum stipend is now about $10,000 a
month for a baby prince or princess, said a
source with access to the accounts.
For a Saudi-sized family, the checks add up.
And many adult princes receive huge
government salaries on top of that -- often for
jobs in protocol and other ``make-work''
areas, diplomats report. In this
male-supremacist society, princesses stay at
home.
Government oil revenues reach the princes
more indirectly, too.
A generation ago, King Faisal registered
state lands in the names of Saud family
members. The billions they earned when they
sold them back for universities, airports and
other projects established the core of many
family fortunes.
The fortunes still fatten on government deals
today. Princes or their proxies often are found
in the middle of lucrative contracts, taking
``commissions,'' sometimes on deals involving
their own ministries.
A former U.S. diplomat here explained: ``A
British Tornado jet fighter is $25 million on the
open market. We estimated the Saudis are
paying $65 million to $75 million. There are
ways that extra money gets distributed
throughout the family.''
The new Saudi finance minister, Ibrahim Al
Assaf, is trying to ``rationalize'' budget
spending, outsiders note.
``But it's not an easy job for a commoner
like him to be bringing these things up,'' said
Kevin R. Taecker, an executive at
Saudi-American Bank.
A Western embassy recently cabled home
that up to a third of the government's revenues
never make it to the budget, remaining ``the
secret business of the Al Saud.''
But when royal nurseries are filling up so fast,
even fabled oil wealth may not keep up. That
apparently is why the Sauds have discarded a
family dictum from King Faisal's day: Don't
tamper with commoners' businesses.
More and more, young princes are being
imposed on Saudi companies as ``silent
partners,'' pocketing earnings and sometimes
bringing little to the business in return.
``The old compact is starting to break down
with the growing numbers of princes, and that's
causing friction,'' a U.S. official reported.
Some old associates see time running out for
the princes.
The extravagance, the princely baby boom,
the corruption -- all supply ammunition for an
Islamic dissident movement that wants to
``purify'' this puritanical land even further.
Exiled dissident Mohammed Al Masari likens
the royal family to a ``mafia.''
But some say family infighting may endanger
the ever-expanding House of Saud even more
than popular dissent.
``It's a high-maintenance family,'' said an
experienced diplomat here. ``And it's showing
less cohesion at a critical time.''
Since King Abdel Aziz died in 1953, the
throne has passed down through his sons in a
murky process of seniority and family
consensus. But King Fahd is 75 and ailing, his
brothers are not much younger, and the day
will come when power must be transferred --
to someone -- in a teeming generation of
ambitious grandsons. A new law empowers
the monarch alone to name his heir.
``They're all scared of that doomsday,'' said
Israeli scholar Alexander Bligh, a longtime
student of the Sauds. ``They'd like to freeze
the status quo as long as possible.''
In Princess, American author Jean P. Sasson
and collaborator ``Sultana'' indicted the royal
family for its wasteful spending and the
limitations it imposes on its women. But
Sasson, who forged friendships among the
royals while living here in the 1980s, wishes the
House of Saud many more years.
``I always say it's probably the best they
could have,'' she said in a U.S. telephone
interview. ``If you go to a more religious
group, will you be getting into another Iran
situation?''
Sultana herself, in Princess, did not sound
hopeful.
``Surely the weakness of our monarchy in
Saudi Arabia is bound up in our addiction to
extravagance,'' she confessed. ``I fear it will be
our undoing.''
Saudis rely on United States
By Charles J. Hanley
AP Special Correspondent
Posted April 17, 1997
EDITOR'S NOTE -- The economic relationship between the world's lone superpower
and its biggest oil exporter reaches back decades. But it has
entered a new stage in the 1990s. This is the second in a three-part series on
U.S.-Saudi relations.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Quietly, steadily, in a slow parade west of
supertankers and a digital flow east of dollars, the U.S.-Saudi partnership has
drawn
tighter since the Gulf War.
America's oil imports have risen by a third. Saudi oil revenues have more than
doubled. And in a fast-changing world, the mutual dependence of the
superpower and the petro-power has become a dominant geopolitical fact of post-
Cold War life.
To a British economist, it represents a ''return of American hegemony in the
international oil system.'' To an American oilman, it's a trap. To a Saudi
dissident, it's a betrayal. And to Iraq it's bad news -- very bad news.
''Saudi Arabia would like the embargo on Iraqi oil maintained as long as
possible,'' says international oil expert Fadhil Chalabi. In America, it has a
powerful partner for achieving that.
Energy is only one strand in a web of U.S.-Saudi economic ties that has grown
in the six years since an American-led army rolled back Iraqi aggression in
the Persian Gulf.
Statistics tell the story: U.S. products, 16 percent of Saudi imports before
the war, now make up 24 percent. Imports from
America -- computers and turbines, cigarettes and F-15 fighters -- totaled $7.3
billion last year.
The story plays out, too, in the streets and government corridors of this
sprawling capital: in the gleaming new Toys R Us
store in north Riyadh; in the Cadillacs and Suburbans cruising the desert
roadways; in the two dozen American economists at
work in the Finance Ministry; in the U.S. business advisers hired to counsel
King Fahd, led by James A. Baker III, secretary
of state during the Gulf War.
Oil has long linked the two countries, ''but now we have a much more complex
and dynamic relationship,'' Treasury Secretary
Robert Rubin told the U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council, a group formed since
the war.
But for all the complexity, oil remains key.
As U.S. oil output declined, imports climbed. America's Saudi imports last year
-- 1.25 million barrels a day -- were twice the
level of 1986. Saudi oil revenues, meanwhile, grew from $22 billion before the
war to $50 billion last year, halting an economic slide that began in the
mid-1980s.
Some say an ''entente'' has been forged since the war, that the United States
has agreed to protect the Gulf monarchies and remain a dependable customer in
exchange for reliable supplies at stable prices.
''You'll never find anything in writing, but all events suggest that things are
under control,'' said energy scholar Peter Odell of the London School of
Economics.
This ''hegemony'' is a force for oil price stability, he said. The Saudis'
spare capacity would enable them to ratchet production up or down to influence
prices.
U.S. officials dismiss talk of secret agreements. But they acknowledge the two
governments regularly consult on the oil market -- and especially, lately, on
the anti-Iraq embargo. It was high on the agenda of recent U.S.-Saudi talks in
Washington.
The U.N. embargo, imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, shut down Iraqi
oil exports of 3.2 million barrels a day. Limited sales have been allowed
since December, but the embargo remains a disaster for the Iraqi economy -- and
a godsend for the Saudis.
In the absence of Iraqi oil, Saudi exports surged to 8 million barrels a day
from 5.4 million.
London's Center for Global Energy Studies, headed by Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani,
the former Saudi oil minister, determined that Saudi Arabia has earned
more than $100 billion in oil revenues from the embargo -- more than covering
the $55 billion the war cost the Saudi treasury.
With the bonus billions, the Saudis largely maintained government spending on
their fast-growing population, deferring expected increases last year in
gasoline, electricity and other subsidized prices.
That kind of economic security helps keep the lid on in a land with no
political freedom and an increasingly vocal dissident movement. And that means,
Chalabi said, the Saudis cannot allow Iraqi oil back on the market, where it
could drive down prices or force a cutback in Saudi exports.
''Saudi Arabia cannot live with lower oil revenues,'' said Chalabi, a former
secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries who now
runs Yamani's think tank. ''It could have a far-reaching effect on the
political situation inside the country.''
A key Saudi official said this danger is overstated, that growing Asian oil
demand will mean an expanding market for all producers.
''So the question of Saudi Arabia reducing production is not going to be a
factor in the future,'' Abdulaziz N. Al-Orayer, deputy finance minister, said
in an
interview.
But a well-informed foreign source in Riyadh, who is in touch with Saudi
thinking, said the Saudis are, indeed, working against the return of Iraqi oil.
''They don't want it coming suddenly onto the market,'' he said.
Although the sanctions have been maintained because of Iraq's efforts to build
weapons of mass destruction, Western officials suggest they may stay as
long as Saddam Hussein rules Iraq.
To some Americans and Saudis, meanwhile, the real problem is the oil
partnership itself.
The surge in U.S. oil imports -- from 30 percent of consumption in the mid-
1980s to 54 percent last year -- leaves the American economy too reliant on
outside sources, U.S. energy conservationists say.
Some describe the billions the Pentagon spends to protect Persian Gulf oil as a
giant ''welfare'' program for U.S. energy multinationals.
''I think you're trapped now,'' said well-known Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens.
''It would take years to work your way out of this problem.''
The U.S. General Accounting Office advises Americans to enjoy the ''trap.''
Lower-priced oil saves the U.S. economy billions of dollars a year, it reported
in December.
But what looks like a boon to American drivers -- relatively cheap oil -- looks
like a ripoff to some Saudis.
''Oil policy should have to do with the interests of our country, not of
America,'' Saad Al-Faqih, an exiled Saudi dissident, said in London.
For those trying to break the monarchy's authoritarian hold on this country,
the ever-tightening U.S.-Saudi partnership -- military, economic, political --
is
an ever-bigger target.
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