Mark Hollingsworth

Abdullah is ready to take on his country's corruption and subordination to U.S. interests.

THE DEATH of King Fahd will be greeted with anxiety and unease by the West and the Saudi royal family now that Crown Prince Abdullah has succeeded the 84-year-old despot.

The House of Saud will be fearful because Abdullah has made little secret of the fact that he plans to cut back on royal corruption and the extravagant royal lifestyle. The White House and London will be nervous because the new king believes his country should be less subservient to Western military and strategic interests in the Gulf.

During his 23-year reign, King Fahd acquired a personal fortune of $20 billion. He encouraged what the CIA called "a culture of royal excess" and Saudi princes brazenly cashed in on British and U.S. defence contracts.

But, unlike most senior princes, Abdullah is not corrupt. He has turned his back on the palatial luxuries of Riyadh and Jeddah. He has always been an aberration in the House of Saud. He represents the Bedouin, conservative, tribal interests in the kingdom. His rare concession to modernity is the bank of 33 television sets in his office, which allow him to monitor all available satellite channels at once.

Abdullah is determined to curb royal corruption, which escalated in the mid-1990s despite the kingdom running up multibillion-dollar deficits. He is also likely to be more non-aligned, reducing Saudi dependency on America in order to increase the prospects of peace in West Asia. For decades Saudi Arabia has been acquiescent in supporting U.S. strategic interests. The wars against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were launched from bases in the kingdom and the Gulf states, and were dependent on unencumbered use of Saudi airspace.

Access to Saudi bases was helpful but not essential. What was crucial was Saudi support for U.S. access to other Gulf bases. "After the 1991 Iraq war, none of the Gulf states were likely to do anything much with us militarily unless the Saudis wanted it to be done," said the former U.S. Undersecretary of Defence, Walter Slocombe. "So we needed Saudi political support."

The House of Saud has also not been shy at bankrolling U.S. foreign policy, notably $32 million to the Contra rebels against the Nicaraguan government, $4 billion for the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s and $17 billion for the 1991 Gulf war.

And the biggest favour of all: supplying cheap, plentiful oil and manipulating the price to benefit the American economy. Less than 24 hours after 9/11, the Saudis authorised a sharp increase in daily oil production. This kept the price low and helped to ensure that the U.S. experienced only a slight inflation increase.

Wielding its surplus oil capacity as a political weapon has given the Saudi royal family real power and influence over the West. In return, the U.S. and Britain protect the kingdom from Islamist insurgents and neighbouring states, sell it weapons at inflated prices purely to produce kickbacks for its senior princes, support its negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank, overlook its complicity in support for terrorism and turn a blind eye when British citizens are tortured in Saudi jails.

While it needs the oil revenues to fund the profligate lifestyles of its 6,000 princes, the House of Saud has been prepared to forgo much-needed profits in tight oil markets, coming close to bankrupting the country. And its subjugation to U.S. interests has increased support for Al-Qaeda and Islamist militancy, which has produced instability in West Asia and terrorism in western Europe.

Crown Prince Abdullah shows all the signs of being more independent, tougher and pragmatic. Politically, he is a traditional Islamic Arab nationalist. Among the Saudi public, he is popular and seen as straight-talking. He does not speak any foreign languages, preferring the traditional Bedouin style of Arabic, much to the annoyance of Prince Sultan, Defence Minister, who craves the patronage of Western governments.

While King Fahd remained alive, Abdullah was restricted in implementing reforms � reducing dependency on the U.S. for its security, stamping out royal greed, implementing the rule of law and curtailing the power of the militant Islamic clerics. He was often blocked by his reactionary half-brothers, Prince Sultan, Prince Naif (the Interior Minister) and Prince Salman (governor of Riyadh).

Now Abdullah should be unshackled and able to modernise a repressive and corrupt regime that has been propped up by the West. Some British and American diplomats claim that democracy is the solution to Saudi Arabia's problems. But the inconvenient consequence of an election might well be that Osama bin Laden would win. In 2001 a Saudi intelligence survey of educated, professional Saudis concluded that 95 per cent supported Al-Qaeda's cause. "If you go around the Muslim world, you will find the vast majority of people support Osama bin Laden and this is more tragic than 9/11 itself," said Ghazi al-Gosaibi, a former Saudi ambassador in London. "It comes down to the question of why people hate America."

Concessions, such as more consultative councils, may placate the kingdom's merchants. But the problem of Islamist terrorism and royal corruption can be rectified only by an independent judiciary and a return to the rule of law. That will involve tough and decisive leadership by Prince Abdullah rather than a tortuously slow road to political accountability.

There is now a rare opportunity to clean up a medieval monarchy that virtually runs the international oil economy, tortures Western and its own citizens at will, allows its religious elite to promote terrorism, and enables the U.S. to dominate West Asia. � � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

(Mark Hollingsworth is the co-author with Sandy Mitchell of Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud [Mainstream Publishing].)