And when its leaders denounce the “criminal workings” of the “vile”
Saudi regime and its links to terrorism, the pot is calling the kettle black.
Yet what occurred this past weekend in Saudi Arabia is worrisome for
several reasons.
Executing 47 people in a single day, first of all, is a strange way to
begin the year.
Except if the goal is to beat the kingdom’s record of 153 in 2015 (and
87 the year before), in which case they have made a good start.
And when those put to death by sword or automatic weapons are added to
the list of decapitated apostates, bloggers who have been tortured or who wait
on death row, and the thief of an ATM card who was crucified in the north of
the country, it is appropriate to accord to King Salman, as to his predecessor
and those aspiring to succeed him (none of whom has yet shown the slightest
sign of protest or regret), the macabre but fitting title of world champions in
the category of state crime.
But on top of that, beyond the flouting of the most basic principles of
human dignity, lie other ominous signals.
The unusually macabre staging of these killings—all carried out on the
same day in cities across the country—bespeaks the intention, not to hide the
matter, but to display it in such a way that no one, not the Saudi people and
not the diplomats of allied or enemy powers, could fail to notice it.
In other words, what we saw was a show of force by a regime that has
been in power for more than a century but that all observers agree is tired,
losing steam, and increasingly unable to ensure its own survival. This sort of
desperate action, from a country that is a key player in every major
geopolitical issue of the day, is never a good sign.
Moreover, the act of placing on the same level, and in the same tumbrel,
the likely henchmen of Al-Qaeda and ISIS (who made up the majority of those
executed on Saturday) and four Shiite opponents, including the very charismatic
Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, whose only crime was to have defended a vision of Islam
other than Sunnism, and more specifically Wahhabism, clears the way for a cycle
of reprisals that already has set this part of the world aflame: Yemen, Bahrain,
and, of course, the other great regional power, Iran, Shiite by vocation and destiny.
Under this scorching of consciences and hearts may even lie an element
of calculation, which, however risky and futile it may be, would hardly be
surprising coming from a regime that the slow but steady decline in world oil
prices will plunge into an abyss if it keeps up. Little surprise, then, that it
should seek to wriggle out of its trap (one that it had a hand in setting).
When you are the world’s top producer of crude and 80 percent of your resources
depend on it, turning yourself into the epicenter of a new storm zone, rendering
the future suddenly uncertain and threatening unpredictable convulsions, could
be seen as a means of pushing prices up, at least in the short term.
And finally there is the anti-ISIS coalition, a coalition in which
Saudi Arabia seemed to want to play a leading role only two weeks ago when Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman floated the kingdom’s idea for an
anti-Islamist Muslim force that would gather under a single banner 34 countries
as different as Indonesia, Malaysia, Jordan, and Lebanon. With the revival of
the war to the death between Sunnis and Shiites, more aggravated now than it
has been in a long time; with the reigniting of the old quarrel between the
Arab and Persian empires and their contradictory narratives, to the detriment
of mobilization against the common enemy; with the wind of anger and revenge
blowing through Baghdad and pushing the pro-Iran government of Haider al-Abadi
to break with its brother-turned-enemy, Saudi Arabia, it is hard to see that
coalition forming. And as for the retaking of Mosul, which would mark the real
turning point of the anti-ISIS offensive but which presumes a joint operation
on the part of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites, that which had appeared imminent has
now suddenly been put off indefinitely.
In the face of this disaster the international community is doing
precisely nothing.
The democracies, in particular and as usual, have daintily averted
their gaze.
No one even seems to want to recall, for example, that a
representative of this country gone mad chairs a key panel of the UN Human
Rights Council. What a cruel irony!
No one has the power to change the nature of the Saudi regime.
But it should not be so difficult for the country’s partners, those that
sell it fighter planes and buy its black gold, to curb its homicidal enthusiasm
by telling it that in addition to oppressing its people it is threatening the
peace of the region and the world.
“It’s the oil, stupid!”—a knock-off of the signature slogan of Bill
Clinton’s 1992 campaign against Bush Senior—works in both directions. In this
fool’s game writ large where each takes the other hostage, the one who has the
greatest interest in coming to terms and who will, therefore, be the first to
yield, is not necessarily the one we think.
