Price of not heeding Kingdom’s advice

With the traditional Middle East political map disintegrating before our very eyes, the search is on for the reasons that have led to this calamity. Much of the current commentary focuses on the role of the Arab Gulf states, in particular Saudi Arabia, and suggests that their policies are responsible for developments such as the rise of sectarian politics. Unfortunately, part of that debate is framed by misperceptions and faulty analysis when it comes to the policies pursued by Saudi Arabia. A simple review of initiatives and statements coming from the Kingdom in the last decade, in fact, clearly shows that much could have been avoided if regional and foreign leaders had chosen to listen instead of ignoring Saudi advice.
To start with, the Arab Peace Initiative first put on the table by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, then crown prince, at the Beirut Summit of 2002 offered Israel complete normalization of relations in exchange for withdrawal from the occupied territories and a “just” settlement of the Palestinian refugee issue. Despite the initiative being put forward as a basis for negotiation, it was immediately rejected by Israel as a “non-starter.” Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman even described the plan as “a dangerous proposal, a recipe for the destruction of Israel,” a characterization that, of course, could not be further from the truth. The United States (US) has also remained skeptical, never giving the proposal the attention it deserved. Even then, Saudi Arabia pushed forward and received the backing of all Arab states for the plan during the 2007 Riyadh Arab League summit, and later the support of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which consists of 57 Muslim states. The response since then has been wavering and a failure to acknowledge the initiative’s merits. The direct result of the inability to move the peace process forward can be seen in the recent bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces with more than 2,100 Palestinians killed alongside 66 Israeli soldiers.
This crisis once again underscored how the Arab-Israeli conflict remains at the center of Middle Eastern troubles. The question thus remains: Why was the Saudi initiative ignored and why does it continue to remain on the shelf gathering dust?
As far as the situation in Iraq is concerned, Saudi Arabia argued vehemently with the Bush administration against the invasion of the country with Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal warning that with such a move the US would be “solving one problem and creating five more.” After the US went ahead, it was the Kingdom that suggested steps to be taken as part of the post-invasion reconstruction effort, including advance salary payments to the remnants of the Iraqi army, in order to ensure security in the country. Again the advice was ignored and Iraq soon spiraled downwards into a full-blown insurgency against the US invaders. It was during this period that Saudi Arabia also took the lead to organize a meeting of Iraqi factions under the auspices of the OIC.
The Kingdom further proposed that an international military force drawn exclusively from Muslim countries be sent to Iraq to help establish security. Yet again, there was no sufficient support for such steps from the outside.
As Iraq continued to struggle in the post-invasion phase, and as the US became war weary, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, then Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the US, warned that “since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited.” The Saudis were concerned that a precipitous withdrawal of US forces would endanger the security gains achieved through the involvement of the Sunni tribes and “the Awakening Movement,” which fought Al-Qaeda successfully, and that without continued US support for this course, then Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki would soon pursue his own sectarian agenda once again leading to exclusion of the Sunni community in Iraq’s political process.
Yet when the Obama administration assumed power, those concerns were pushed aside in the determination to disengage from Iraq as quickly as possible. The direct result was the renewed alienation of the Sunni community due to the policies of the Al-Maliki government, a factor that has directly led to the emergence of the IS force in western Iraq. Moreover, Iraqi security forces were inadequately trained and abandoned their posts in the face of the IS onslaught. Saudi Arabia had the analysis right but once again no one listened. Finally on Syria, King Abdullah warned in 2011, “What is happening in Syria is not acceptable for Saudi Arabia.” Leading Saudi officials, including the king and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, repeatedly warned that unless the Assad regime was ousted, the Syrian crisis would soon engulf the entire region. With the US and the western world reacting hesitantly, and with Iran and Hezbollah actively supporting the Syrian regime, the results are exactly as predicted. More than 190,000 Syrians have been killed and 3 million rendered refugees, and the IS has filled the power vacuum in eastern Syria and western Iraq — the entire Middle Eastern order has been put in question. This is the situation that Saudi Arabia is now faced with despite warning of such consequences for more than a decade. There are more examples that one could cite. In 2005, King Abdullah called for the establishment of an international center to combat terrorism and in 2011 the UN was able to launch the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre (UNCCT) due to a voluntary contribution from Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom also established the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna as an international organization to overcome the divide among religions. Both are more pertinent and necessary as ever as recent developments underline.
There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia also bears its share of responsibilities for what is happening in the Middle East at present. The bottom line, however, is that the Kingdom is not the sole decision-maker in regional events and that by itself it cannot determine the outcome of all developments. As a matter of fact, for more than a decade, Saudi leaders have provided advice, taken the initiative and warned others about the devastating consequences their policy choices would have for the region. Unfortunately, the Kingdom is either ignored or not taken seriously. Therefore, the real question to ask is why this is so.
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The writer is the chairman and founder of the Gulf Research Center.