As the Yemen conflict enters its second phase after Saudi officials announce the “successful conclusion” of its airstrikes against the Houthis in the offensive dubbed “Decisive Storm”, the region braces for greater turmoil in the future. The new offensive codenamed “Restoring Hope” hints at the ground invasion by Saudi and allied forces to “prevent the Houthis from moving or undertaking any operations inside Yemen”. With a glut of petro-dollars, a bustling Hajj economy and powerful allies at its disposal coupled with the legitimacy derived from the custodianship of the Sanctuary, the Sauds have yet again proved their mettle in dominating the geo-politics of the region.
They have little cause for celebration though as a burgeoning threat lurks in their backyard. Decades of Wahhabi evangelism espousing Jihadi fervor sponsored by the Sauds have brought such groups as the little known Ikhwan (brethren) and the infamous Al-Qaeda face-to-face with their patrons before. But their poor organizational base and scattered leadership have severely limited their potency. The millennial Jihadis however, hardened by a prolonged war in Iraq and Syria and emboldened by its apparent successes now pose a direct threat to the Saudi leadership as they seek to fill the void left open by the recent chaos in Yemen. That fear is perhaps immanent in operation “Restoring Hope” as it focuses primarily on counterterrorism and security operations. While the familiar intra-sectarian clash plays out in the region, lets briefly look back at the history of Saud-Wahhabi nexus to understand its present dynamics.
Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the puritanical Islamic movement Wahhabism, was an 18th century preacher vehemently critical of Bidah (innovations) in religious practices appropriated by the Muslims that had plunged them in a state of Jahilliya (ignorance)- a concept later radicalized by Syed Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood. In particular, he was disillusioned with their idolatrous rituals, including veneration of shrines and saints, which he considered akin to encroaching on the absolute sovereignty of God and accused those Muslims as Takfeers (apostates) whom he argued “… should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their properties confiscated.” In general, like many of the revivalists before and after him, he wished to revert to the “unadulterated Islam” of the Prophet (PBUH) and his companions.
Luckily for him, he found an avid and ambitious ally in Muhammad bin Saud, who employed his Takfeeri doctrine to invoke Jihad against the neighbouring Sheikhdoms, which would otherwise have been impermissible in Islam. As Reza Aslan documents in his book “no god but God”, the Wahhabis under Saud’s leadership set about sacking the Prophet’s (PBUH) and his companion’s tombs, burning libraries in Medina and 1802, massacring Shi’ite worshippers in Karbala. At one point, they even threatened the Ottoman caliph himself before the well-trained army of Khedive Muhammad Ali, the autonomous governor of Egypt, pushed them back into Najd on the caliph’s behest.
Decimated by the Ottomans, the ailing Saud family bided their time before re-launching their campaign for supremacy in Arabia. The opportunity came during the First World War when Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of modern day Saudi Arabia allied himself with Great Britain against the Ottoman-backed Rashidis. Aiding the Saudi cause, was the formation of Ikhwan (literally brethren), a band of Bedouin tribes high on the Wahhabi zeal, led by Sultan bin Bajad Al-Otaybi. As David Commins remarks, the Ikhwan helped the Sauds beat the Rashidis and later Husan Ibn Ali, leader of the Hashemites in 1921 to gain unprecedented control of the Arabian Peninsula.
Once secure in his rule through, Ikhwan’s sporadic raids into British protectorates of Iraq, Transjordan, and Kuwait- a lucrative source of its income- became a nuisance for Abd Al-Aziz as he faced mounting pressure from his wartime ally, Great Britain. The tipping point came in 1929 when the Ikhwan accusing King Aziz of moral depravity and lavishness proscribed by Wahhabism launched an uprsing against him. In response, King Aziz decimated the rebellion at the battle of Sabilla thus bringing their fleeting romance to the end. Incidentally, a flabbergasted Muslim world would witness the grand spectacle of Ikhwan’s return 50 years later led by Otaybi’s grandson, Juhayman al-Otaybi, during the dramatic, bloody, but oft forgotten, siege of the Grand mosque in 1979.
Ironically, despite the threat posed by Ikhwan and their uncompromising puritanical ideology, there was no love lost between the Saudi monarchy and Wahhabis as they continued to pump some $100 billion petro-dollars through the establishment of charities, seminaries, and later, the active funding of the so-called Afghan Mujahiddien against the Soviet Union only for it backfire with the rise of
their henchman, Osama Bin laden and his rag-tag band of Arab-Afghans threatening their patrons.
Three decades later, the Sauds and their allies, have made the perennial mistake again of propping up the Jihadi zeal among recruits in Syria to fight the tyrannical Alawite regime of Bashar Al Assad. This time too, the Jihadis, now boasting as ISIS, have come knocking back at their doors. With a soaring militia armed by a steady influx of ‘global Jihadis’ lured from the Middle East, Europe and the US, buttressed by a steady flow of money through oil revenues, ISIS poses a far greater challenge to the Saudi hegemony than any other group before it. According to recent reports, ISIS has already made inroads into Yemen and is wining defectors from its rivals given its growing military and economic clout.
In retrospect, it becomes evident that despite Iran and its allies, a far greater challenge to Saudi Arabia has often been of its own making, and mostly coming from its Sunni Arab neighbors be it the flamboyant Gamal Nasser in the 1960s, or the eccentric Saddam Hussain during the First Gulf War, and now the ultra-sectarian ISIS and other extremists that are gradually creeping towards them. Lastly, while the credibility and magnitude of the threat posed by ISIS or its counterpart Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is contingent on the US and Saudi Arabia-led response to them, judging by the desperate diplomatic pleas by the Kingdom to Pakistan and other allies for help suggests the Saudis are certainly in jitters.
