Saudi
Nightmare: What If ISIS Plans For Eid In Mecca
Saeed Naqvi
In President Barack Obama’s initial list
of the coalition against the Islamist State (ISIS) are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
UAE, Bahrain and Jordan. Others are being cajoled, tempted, lured but are not
quite there.
India too was sounded. Mercifully, the
Prime Minister is embarked on a mission of economic diplomacy. He will tip toe
out of this one.
The frenetic hurry with which air
attacks were launched on IS positions in Iraq and Syria, would seem to suggest extraordinary
anxiety.
To everyone’s surprise, Syria approved
the strike. Clearly, a deal had been cut under the table. Would the Saudis have
been privy to this understanding?
The danger in their hugely revised
estimate is not coming from Iran. In fact Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al
Faisal met Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on the margins of the UN
General Assembly.
After the Zarif-Faisal meeting,
President Hasan Rouhani congratulated King Abdullah in a message on the
kingdom’s 84th national day.
The speed with which the IS had taken
Mosul and threatened Baghdad, alarmed the world. By contrast the Shia Houthi’s
swift takeover of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen from Abd Mansur Hadi has evoked little
response.
In a brilliant maneuver, they did not
stage a coup but arrived at a power sharing arrangement with the regime. They now
have the potential of becoming a Hezbullah-like force in Yemen.
Surprising that Riyadh has not pointed
fingers at Iran. In the past, this has been the continuous refrain from Saudi
Arabia: that Iran dabbles in Yemen. Not a word this time.
In 1980 when the US, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan set a hatchery for Jehadists in Afghanistan to help eject the Soviets
from that country, the hard line interior minister of Saudi Arabia, the late
Prince Nayef set up training camps for true-blue all Arab Mujahideen in Yemen also
to fight Soviet influence in Aden. It is these who mutated into Al Qaeda in
Arabian Peninsula. These forces were in the care of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a half
brother of the earlier dictator, Abdullah Saleh.
When the Houthis entered Sanaa without
resistance, it was Ahmar, a one-time Saudi favourite, who fled and found refuge
in Qatar.
In normal times, Saudis would have been
at Iran’s throat. Instead they have been kissing Javad Zarif on both his cheeks
at the UN.
Something strange is happening. Saudis
are swallowing their pride, making up with enemies, towards what end? Are they
preparing themselves for an existential battle against the ISIS?
Let me explain why this could be an
existential battle. In November, 1979, Juhayman bin Uteybi, a retired corporal
in the Saudi National Guard, was identified as the chief leader of the siege of
Mecca which shook the foundations of the Saudi regime. Earlier that year the
Ayatullahs had come to power in Teheran. The siege and its aftermath were brutally
suppressed and attention instead was directed towards Shia mischief from Iran.
The Iranian revolution, removal of
triple distilled Sunni Taleban from Afghanistan, rise of Shia power in Iraq
after Saddam Hussain’s fall, Hezbullah victory in 2006, failure to have Bashar
al Assad’s Alawi visage knocked down, Iran’s conversations with the West on the
nuclear issue, and now Shia Houthis in the news, occupying Sanaa. Shia
encirclement of Saudi Arabia is complete. This should be the existential crisis
for Saudi Arabia. But Riyadh is drumming up its GCC cousins as a coalition of
the willing against ISIS.
In 2010 Recep Tayyip Erdogan was chummy
with Bashar al Assad. He sought accommodation with Assad for the Akhwan ul
Muslimeen or Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian power structure. In other words,
there were a sizable number of Brothers in Syria. In Turkey, ofcourse, Erdogan
and all his cohorts were Brothers behind the screen of Ataturk’s secular
constitution.
Qatar too, a patron of the Brothers, had
its irons in the Syrian fire. The Amir leapfrogged into Gaza to promise them
the moon. Again, the Brothers axis. All of this was most disconcerting for the
Saudis.
In the standoff between President Mohamed
Morsi, a Brother to boot, and Gen. Abdel Fattah el Sisi, the US initially
hesitated. The Saudis turned up with $8 billion to keep Egypt’s powerful Muslim
Brotherhood out of power.
The Saudi’s puritanical school of
Wahabism belongs to the Hanbali school of Jurisprudence. So do the Brothers.
The founder of Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, was the son
of a Hanbali Imam.
In the crisscross of fundamentalist
traffic in Syria injected from the outside, there is a strong contingent of Brothers,
those whose ancestors laid siege to Mecca in 1979. Their mission was to keep
the faith pure. Saudi rulers, in their perception, have since deviated from
Wahabi piety. Other than the Muslim Brotherhood, there are kindred spirits from
other Sunni schools under the ISIS umbrella. Frustrated Baathists are too in
this grouping as Born-Again Sunnis.
Suddenly, the regime in Riyadh found
itself under pressure to revert to its “pure” Wahabism. The Economist reports
that many more beheadings have been done in recent weeks by way of capital
punishment presumably to keep pace with ISIS’s televised beheading spree, a
Christian group too came under the police gaze for simply practicing their
faith. That ISIS in tolerance again.
Eid-ul Zuha is on October 6. Attribute
it to their black humour, but Arab diplomats not in the Saudi camp, have been floating
a story: Abu Bakr al Baghdadi may like to celebrate Eid in Mecca. I had written
three weeks ago that a Caliphate cannot be a Caliphate without Mecca.
Ofcourse the US is powerful enough to
prevent an outcome that will shake its two principal allies in the region –
Saudi Arabia and Israel. But the People versus Potentates balance will have to
reset.
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