Repressing Moderate Reform : Saudi Arabia’s rulers invite trouble with an unnecessary crackdown

Saudi Arabia is a country without a constitution, political parties, trade unions or professional associations. It has no representative parliament and no free press. Essentially it is a closely held enterprise whose king and thousands of princes live very well thanks to a geographical happenstance: Their country sits atop about 25% of the world’s known oil reserves.

But great wealth and the things it can buy are proving to be a two-edged sword. Over the last two decades the Saudis have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on economic development. That has produced a modernized infrastructure, as well as a growing middle class and a much more sophisticated awareness of the outside world. It has also encouraged a modest readiness to challenge the tradition of repressive royal rule.

A few weeks ago a group of Saudi scholars formed the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, the kingdom’s first human rights organization. Soon it claimed to have 10,000 supporters. The committee’s program, which was welcomed by international human rights groups, seemed to be anything but radical. As Kim Murphy reported in The Times last week, it basically called for eliminating injustice and repression in accordance with Islamic law principles. Despite its respectable antecedents, authorities moved quickly to quash the committee.

By refusing to tolerate an organization that might have functioned as a moderate lobbying group for gradual reforms, the royal family may well be boosting the appeal of radical, indeed revolutionary Islamic forces. By shutting down what could have been a useful safety valve, the royal family could well be bringing closer the day of violent political explosion.

Why should all this matter to the United States and its allies? Simply because there is no way the West could avoid intervening if Saudi oil supplies were to fall under control of forces hostile to the West. That, after all, was a key reason for going to war against Iraq in 1991. Saudi Arabia’s rulers are inviting trouble by their refusal to accept even modest reforms. Not trouble for themselves alone, but quite possibly for the world economy as a whole.