The Imperialist Origins of Saudi Arabia
By Yanis Iqbal / April 22nd, 2021
Note: I posted many articles on the Saudi monarchy and the history of the Arabian Peninsula. This is one of the exhaustive research papers
Why Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, a Sunni absolute monarchy, is enthusiastically supported by the West, and promoted as a global promoter of “democracy” and a peaceful entity in the region? This question is rarely asked.
The apparent mismatch between liberal democracy and religious fundamentalism is hastily airbrushed when the matter is about oil trade and arms deals.
This attitude is not an expression of mere hypocrisy on the part of the West; it is deeply rooted in a historical process, whereby the Arabian Peninsula was propped up by major powers as an outpost of imperialist interests and a bulwark against revolutionary ideologies.
Creating the Kingdom
Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, was an 18th century peasant who left date palm cultivation and cattle grazing to preach locally, calling for a return to the pure beliefs of the seventh century “authenticity”.
He denounced the worship of holy places and shrines as denying the “unity of the One God”. He insisted singularly on beatings that led to inhumane practices: thieves should be amputated and criminals executed in public.
Religious leaders in the region objected when he began to perform what he preached and the local chief in Uyayna asked him to leave.
Wahhab fled to Deraiya in 1744, where he made a pact with Mohammad Ibn Saud, the leader of the Najd tribes and the founder of the dynasty that currently rules Saudi monarchy today.
Wahhab’s daughter became one of Ibn Saud’s wives. Ibn Saud utilized Wahhab’s spiritual fervor to ideologically discipline the tribes before hurling them into a battle against the Ottoman Empire.
Wahhab considered the Sultan in Istanbul as undeserving of any right to be the Caliph of Islam and preached the virtues of a permanent jihad against Islamic modernizers and infidels.
Lamenting the demise of the former greatness of Islamic civilization, he wished to remove all bidah (innovations/heresies), which he regarded as heretical to the original meaning of Islam.
Basing himself on the Sunnah (customary practices of the Prophet Muhammad) and the Hadiths (accounts, collections of reports, sayings and deeds of the Prophet), he wished to purge the Islamic world of what he viewed as the degenerative practices introduced into the Islamic world by the Ottoman Turks and their associates.
In 1801, Ibn Saud’s army attacked the Shia holy city of Karbala, massacring thousands and destroying revered Shiite shrines. They also razed shrines in Mecca and Medina, erasing centuries of Islamic architecture because of the Wahhabist belief that these treasures represented idol worship.
The Ottomans retaliated, occupied Hijaz and took charge of Mecca and Medina.
(Actually, it was the army of Egypt Muhammad Ali, at the insistence and persistence of the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad 4, and led by his son Ibrahim Pasha, later labelled the “Little Napoleon” by the French, that Ibrahim army entered Deraiya and erased it around 1820. Ibrahim took all his time to progress slowly and rally the tribes before advancing surely and determinately. It is after Ibrahim retreated from the peninsula, and after the British captured Aden in Yemen, that the British resumed their weapon and financial support to the Wahhabis).
The Ibn Saud-Wahhab alliance remained in the interior, with the full support of the British in weapons and money, until the Ottomans collapsed after World War I.
By 1926, the al-Saud clan – led by their new patriarch Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud – and their fanatical Wahhabi allies – the Ikhwan, or “Brotherhood” – once again seized control of the holiest cities in Islam, as well as important trading ports on the western coast of the peninsula.
Like the initial advances of the 1700s, it was a campaign defined by bloodshed, forced conversions, enslavement, and the enforcement of the strict and eccentric laws of Wahhabism.
It was also a campaign that was grounded in an alliance between Abdul Aziz and the British Empire. A 1915 treaty turned the lands under Abdul Aziz’s control into a British protectorate, ensuring military support against rival warlords and uniting the two against the Ottomans.
The intimate relationship between British imperialists and Abdul Aziz continued even after the dismantlement of the Ottoman empire, reflected in their close cooperation in the war against Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the Guardian of the Holy Cities, the chief of the clan of Hashem and directly descended from the Prophet.
Hussein had contributed the most to the Ottoman Empire’s defeat by switching allegiances and leading the “Arab Revolt” in June 1916 which removed the Turkish presence from Aqaba.
He was convinced to alter his position after Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, made him believe that a unified Arab country from Gaza to the Persian Gulf would be established with the defeat of the Turks.
The letters exchanged between Hussain and McMahon are known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. As soon as the war ended, Hussein wanted the British to fulfill their war-time promises.
The British, however, wanted Sharif to accept the division of the Arab world between the British and the French (Sykes-Picot agreement, two Jewish administrators) and the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine through a process of colonization done by European Jews.
These demands were laid out in the Anglo-Hijaz Treaty – written by the British – which Hussein refused to sign.
In 1924, the British unleashed Ibn Saud against Hussein. Lord Curzon hailed this as the “final kick” against Hussein.
Meanwhile, the Ikhwan grew increasingly angry about Abdul Aziz’s accommodation with the imperial powers that financed him. They disliked his lavish lifestyle, his family’s relations with the West, the relative leniency toward the Shia sect on the coastal region of the Gulf.
The Shia were actually being savagely repressed, but the desired rate of execution in forcible conversion and deportation were Not to the level expected by the Ekhiwan.
The introduction of new technologies (the telegraph, for example, was viewed as being of satanic origin).
Consequently, the Ikhwan began to openly rebel in 1927, shortly after Abdul Aziz signed another treaty with the British which recognized his “complete and absolute” rule of the twin kingdoms of Hijaz and of Najd and their dependencies.
The Ikhwani insurgents, after conquering the various regions of Arabia, began to attack the British and French protectorates of Transjordan, Syria and Iraq in order to subject them to Wahhabi doctrines.
They came into direct conflict with imperialist interests in the Middle East. After some three years of fighting, Abdul Aziz – with military assistance from the British Empire – defeated the rebellion and executed the leaders.
(It was the same deal as done during the initial Nazi regime as the German army demanded that Hitler militias be dismantled, the militia that brought him to power. Hitler personally got engaged in arresting his own leaders in what is known as Cristal Night)
In 1932, Ibn Saud confirmed his conquests by crowning himself as king of a new state, named after himself and his family: Saudi Arabia.
The suppression of the Ikhwan revolt did not in any way signify the weakening of Wahhabi fundamentalism. Threatened by Islamic radicalism, the royal family co-opted the Ikhwan movement by incorporating its local leaders into the Saudi state apparatuses.
This laid the foundations for the backward ideology of the state: unity of religion and loyalty to one family, making Saudi Arabia the only state in the world that was titled as the property of a single dynasty.
Cozying Up to USA
In 1933, Abdul Aziz had to face a severe financial crisis because his main source of income, taxation of the hajj (Muslim pilgrimage), had been undermined by the world slump.
(Actually, the Wahhabis were intent on destroying the Kaaba (shrine) and forbid Islamic pilgrimage as anathema to their ideology, but Saud was reminded of the wealth he could generate from the Hajj seasons)
For £50,000 in gold he gave an oil concession to Standard Oil of California (SOCAL). The deal between Abdul Aziz and SOCAL provided crucial funds for the fledgling king to consolidate his precarious rule.
Indeed, at the time, his rule was so tenuous that Britain had more control over the House of Saud than the House of Saud had over their own recently conquered dependencies.
SOCAL gave Abdul Aziz a $28 million dollar loan, and paid an annual payment of $2.8 million in exchange for oil exploration rights throughout the 1930s. SOCAL later merged with three other US firms (Esso, Texaco, Mobil) to form the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO).
This began exploration in eastern Arabia, and in 1938 production of Saudi Arabian oil commenced. The developing political economy of Saudi Kingdom quickly became linked to ARAMCO and its American backers, as the company built labor camps, corporate towns, roads, railways, ports, and other infrastructure necessary for the production and export of oil.
These infrastructural projects tapped into subsidies from the US government that ran into the tens of millions of dollars.
During the Second World War, the role of Saudi monarchy as a reliable partner of a nascent American empire was strengthened. In 1943, Washington decided that “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States” and lend-lease aid was provided: a US military mission arrived to train Abdul Aziz’s army and the United States Air Force (USAF) began construction of an airfield at Dhahran, near the oil wells.
These arrangement were to give the US a position independent of the British bases at Cairo and Abadan (port in Iran.
This airbase became the largest US air position between Germany and Japan, and the one nearest Soviet industrial plants. Washington managed to retain the base only until 1962, when anti-imperialist resistance forced the Saudi monarchy to ask the Americans to leave.
Not until three decades later, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, were the Americans provided with an opportunity to reoccupy the base.
The relationship between the US and Saudi Kingdom was famously sealed in a 1945 meeting on the Suez Canal between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abdul-Aziz. The two leaders agreed that the kingdom would supply the US with oil, and the US government would provide the kingdom with security and military assistance.
Over the years, US presidents reiterated their commitments to Saudi monarchy security. The 1947 Truman Doctrine, which stated that the United States would send military aid to countries threatened by Soviet communism, was used to strengthen US – Saudi military ties.
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman told Abdul-Aziz, “No threat to your Kingdom could occur which would not be a matter of immediate concern to the United States”.
This assurance was repeated in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine. The 1969 Nixon Doctrine included aid to three strategic American allies in the region – Shah of Iran, Saudi monarchy, and colonial Israel.
After the US-supported ruler in Iran was overthrown and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter issued his Doctrine as a direct threat to the Soviets, essentially asserting USA’s monopoly over Middle East’s oil.
Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, extended this policy in October 1981 with the “Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine”, which proclaimed that the USA would intervene to protect the Saudi rulers.
While the Carter Doctrine focused on threats posted by external forces, the Reagan Corollary promised to secure the kingdom’s internal stability.
Spreading Counter-revolution
The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of Saudi petro-nationalism, based upon the rapidly expanding oil industry and the growth of transnational energy corporations.
The petrol bonanza – driven by the western economies’ steady consumption of oil – not only filled the coffers of the Saudi state, but also provided the Saudi state the ability to spread Wahhabi ideology, Not as a minor creed of militant jihad, but as a cultural export to influence the direction of Islam.
(Actually, it was the insurgency of the Ekhwan after the entrance of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and their occupation of the Kaaba in 1977 that convinced the Saudi monarchy to revisit its origin and cow under harsher laws and customs, principally targeting women and exporting millions of their brand of Quran, free, and establishing thousands of Madrassas (religious schools) in the Islamic world)
Oil wealth enabled the Saudi royal family to counter the rival interpretations and denominations of the Islamic world, and spread its influence over the Ummah (the community of the faithful). In other words, the Saudi ruling elite attempted to project itself as the ultimate definer and protector of the Ummah.
The export of Wahhabism to other countries was a part of the post-World War II US-Saudi strategy, wherein the two countries were allies in their opposition to Soviet “godless communism,” with USA focused on communism while the Saudis were more concerned about the “godless” side of the equation.
Wahhabism also served as a counter-revolutionary instrument against Nasserism, Ba’athism, and the Shia radicalism of the Iranian revolution.
Saudi Arabia started an organisation called the World Muslim League in 1962 to “combat the serious plots by which the enemies of Islam are trying to draw Muslims away from their religion and to destroy their unity and brotherhood.”
The main targets were republicanism (Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser Nasserite influence and invasion of Yemen) and communism.
The objective was to push the idea that these anti-monarchical ideologies were shu’ubi (anti-Arab). Saudi Arabia was also a central member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), created in 1969 as a counter-balance to the socialist-oriented Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
Apart from this geopolitical function, OIC was used by Saudi monarchy to undermine its regional adversary, namely Nasserite Egypt.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought shudders into the palaces of the Saudi royal family, and into the US higher establishment. The overthrow of the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi announced the creation of an Islamic form of republicanism.
Iranian Islamic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said that Islam and hereditary monarchies were incompatible and he characterized Saudi Arabia as a US agent in the Persian Gulf.
Saudi rulers felt threatened. They denounced Iran’s revolution as an upheaval of heretical Shiites, but to no avail as Islamic republicanism swept the region, from Pakistan to Morocco.
Ultimately, the Saudis and the West egged on Saddam Hussein to send in the Iraqi army against Iran in 1980 and supported by all the colonial powers, including the Soviet Union, with all kinds of modern weapons and financial infusion from Saudi Monarchy and Kuwait).
That war went on till 1988, with both Iran and Iraq bleeding for the sake of Riyadh and Washington. (Over 400,000 Iraqi soldiers perished and 1.5 million Iranians. A ceasefire was announced as Khomeini felt that this war might resume indefinitely if he comes to die before an end to it)
Iraq, weakened by the lengthy war, turned against its Gulf Arab financiers who were demanding to be repaid, at the USA request. With insufficient support to rebuild Iraq, Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, threatening Saudi Arabia as well.
The US entered the picture with its full spectrum warfare – bombing Iraq to smithereens and providing Saudi Arabia with the confirmation that the US military would protect it till the end of time.
Once the history of Saudi Arabia is understood, it can be easily concluded that the monarchs of the kingdom willingly entered into a relationship of geo-political servitude to the West.
The kingdom would have had marginal or limited importance in the world if it was not supported wholeheartedly by the British and American empires.
With the significant backing it received by the colonial powers, Saudi Arabia became an international political player. With the help of their enormous oil wealth, the decadent kings and princes of Saudi Arabia have been perpetrating massacres and wars in various countries, such as the bombing of Yemen, the indirect attacks in Syria and Libya.
All this has been allowed to happen by the West, which provides both tacit and explicit support to the House of Saud in its myriad crimes.
As Che Guevara said, “The bestiality of imperialism…knows no limits…has no national boundaries”.
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Adonis Diaries 
Titbits #104
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 14, 2021
Titbits #104
Notes and tidbits on FB and Twitter. Part 62
Posted on September 16, 2017
Un camarade en cachot (1.10*1.50 m) tenait bon, rigolait et se trouvait en forme. Il imaginait des troupeaux d’éléphants errant irrésistiblement á travers les grands espaces ouverts de l’Afrique “Le temps de l’orgueille est fini. Il est temps de nous tourner avec humilité vers les autres animaux”
Il est temps de nous rassurer que nous sommes capables de préserver cette liberté géante des troupeaux d’animaux qui vit encore á nos cotés (Les éléphants et gros mammifères, on land and seas).
La semaine derniére j’ai eu mes ragnagnas (puberté)
Est-il possible que seul notre quartier soit saturé de tensions et de violence, alors que le reste de la ville était radieux et bienveillant?
Cette fois-ci, sa crise de folie était de Bonheur: son ancient amant, il y avait longtemps á cela, avait produit un receuille de poêms et signait sur la premiére page une dédicace a elle.
Saudi Kingdom and the “Gulf” Emirate States have no shrines, religious or otherwise. The Wahhabi sect made sure none of that nonsense should exist. They were about to destroy the Kaaba in Mecca, after demolishing the Prophet tomb in Medina, but King Saud was pressured to recognize its great economical and political worth: Britain ordered him to militarily crush the early extremist Wahhabi leaders (Al Okhouwan) who brought him to power. The same process with Hitler when he came to power.
It was the British who consistently supported with finance and weapons the Wahhabi tribes since the 19th century. Egypt Mohammad Ali and his son Ibrahim crushed this Wahhabi insurgency that disturbed all the neighboring tribes, Iraq and Syria. And Mecca was looted and the Wahhabi fighters assassinated everyone in their path, as today ISIS.
The British rearmed and financed the Wahhabi again after Ibrahim Pasha devastated their home city, after Ibrahim retreated his troops.
As long as Palestinian youths in Lebanese refugee camps are forbidden to work in their disciplines or included in the Lebanese army, they’ll always be the best and easiest resource for extremist movements to lure them in with a handful ready cash.
The British were occupied by the Vikings who occupied the Normandie in France who reconquered England… What specificity the British want to preserve out of the EU? Even Obama was clear: “Get off our back and join the EU. We can no longer afford to support you financially“
Rationality set aside, long-term projects confuse me: No girl ever approached me and told me: “Cool it down Adonis. Don’t you worry. This long-term stuff, I take care of it”
Les hommes politiques de premier plan rallient le marxisme par générosité d’âme au mépris de leurs intérêts évidents. Les ratés rejoignent, faute d’avoir été appréciés ailleurs.
France 1913: les filles arrivant au Collège étaient harassés: elles donnaient des répétitions et corrigaient des copies pour des salaires de famine
France 1913: les filles prévoyaient leur échec probable á l’agrégation qui les rejettaient dans le prolétariat des institutions d’ établissement privés (Louise Weiss)
Camstoll Group? A US institution funded by Emirate States and Israel to downgrade the reputation of Qatar since 2014.
Israel is against funding Hamas, and UAE against subsidizing Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt, Turkey and Syria
After suicide terrorist attacks in Iran, Iran had to decide on priority: Yemen or Bahrain? Wise Iran is Not about to let 2 wars in her strategic sea, Not so with crazy Saudi Kingdom and backed by USA
Nothing like a courageous night dream to produce a happy zesty day. So is a glorious morning bowel movement.
The young generations want young leaders: They need to retain this hope of a young tomorrow
Ma fille, les hommes ont horreur des femmes qui les aiment et aussi qui ne les aiment pas. Débrouille-toi
Je ne vis pas dans la misère: c’est le doute qui me rend miséreux
C’est énervant: L’autre est toujours en majorité. Quand trouverais-je un moment de relax?
Faire le voeux de quelque chose est un jeu d’enfant
Le ritual nous libére de la necéssité de nous exprimer
En premier temps, on ne choisit pas sa foi. Et le temps second n’arrive que pour les idiots
Quoi Qu’il advienne, la vie continue? De quelle vie parle-t-on? Toute personne ayant droit á l’éducation a aussi le droit de ne pas lire certain livres
La tolérance est de s’accommoder de la contradiction intellectuelle. La tolérance est la meilleure attitude révolutionnaire de tout moment
La tolérance est une activité morale et de premier ordre
Toute personne qui a droit de monter á l’échafaud a aussi le droit á monter á la tribune
Toute personne qui a droit á porter les armes doit avoir le droit de voter
Toute personne ayant la responsabilité de payer des impots a la responsabilité de critiquer les decisions financiéres
Toute personne ayant le droit d’adhérer á une religion, doit avoir le droit de s’opposer aux clerges
Fear of success as for failure goes hand in hand: Changes are around the bend
The US is having a field day since 2011, hearing these free false propaganda heaping on it, all the intelligence and potency to affecting the Spring Revolutions in Arab World. US doesn’t know zilch about us and is impotent in changing anything.
L’argent est un ciment: il consolide, renforce et répart. Sinon, il est utilisé pour faire les guerres. Ne l’accumule pas
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