Saudi Arabia balances ‘tolerance’ with support for ultra-conservatives in conflict zones

 

By James M. Dorsey

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Once viewed as a breeder of religious extremism, Saudi Arabia earned brownie points as the international community sighed a sigh of relief when Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, substantially reduced global funding of ultra-conservative strands of Islam and started to propagate a socially more relaxed interpretation of the faith.

Almost a decade later, the benefits of the change far outweigh the costs.

Even so, the shift’s geopolitical complexity has become apparent, particularly in flashpoints such as Syria and Yemen.

Moreover, it’s in the flashpoints that the Saudi and Emirati attitudes towards rebels, especially of the Islamist kind, diverge.

Regarding Syria, Anwar Gargash, a senior advisor to United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed, cautioned that "the nature of the new forces, the affiliation with the (Muslim) Brotherhood, the affiliation with Al-Qaeda, I think these are all indicators that are quite worrying… We can't ignore the (fact that the) region has seen episodes like this before, so we need to be on guard," Mr. Gargash said.

The UAE official was referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader, Ahmet al Sharaa’s past ties to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Mr. Al-Sharaa and Hayat Tahrir, the rebel group that dominates Syria’s post-Al-Assad transition government, have disavowed jihadism for much of the past decade.

For his part, Mr. Bin Salman seems more confident that the kingdom’s financial muscle and status as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, will enable him to compensate for Saudi Arabia’s diminished influence among religious ultra-conservatives.

So far, Mr. Bin Salman’s bet appears to be paying off in Syria, even if he plays second fiddle to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

 

Saudi Arabia scored a success when newly appointed Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani announced that his first overseas trip as the new transitional government’s representative would be to the kingdom at the invitation of his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

Earlier, Mr. Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new leader, told a Saudi newspaper, “We admire the development in Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia’s bold plans and vision, and we aspire to achieve similar progress for Syria.”

Mr. Al-Sharaa sought to position support for Syria as a Saudi and Gulf interest, arguing that President Bashar al-Assad’s fall had made “the Gulf more secure and stable” by “set(ting) the Iranian project in the region back by 40 years,” a reference to Iran’s loss of Syria as a pillar of its Axis of Resistance, which groups Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Saudi Arabia supported various ultra-conservative groups during Syria’s civil war, including Jaysh al-Islam, created with the kingdom’s support to counter Hayat Tahrir’s Al-Qaeda-affiliated predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Jaysh al-Islam

Jaysh al-Islam has since merged into the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), which is battling US-supported Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

Jaysh al Islam’s founder, Zahran Alloush, a graduate of the Islamic University of Medina and scion of a Saudi-trained ultra-conservative Salafi Islam scholar, was released in 2011 from Syria’s notorious Sednaya Prison as mass anti-government protests erupted.

Mr. Alloush’s release was part of Mr. Al-Assad’s winning bet that freeing scores of Islamists would radicalize the protesters and give the president the pretext of counterterrorism to squash the protests brutally.

For much of his career, Mr. Alloush hued closely to Saudi policy. He denounced Syria’s alliance with Iran forged in the 1980s by Mr. Al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, and viewed the Alawites, the Shiite Muslim sect to which the Al-Assads belong, as heretics. Mr. Alloush called for Damascus’ cleansing of Shiites and Alawites.

Zahran Alloush. Credit: SVT Nyheter

Mr. Alloush changed his tone in 2015 when the kingdom changed its tone.

In the months before Mr. Al-Assad’s killed him, Mr. Alloush gave his first interview to a Western reporter. He said his calls to cleanse Damascus resulted from “psychological stress.”

Mr. Alloush further expressed support for an elected government rather than an Islamic state, prided himself on his group’s protection of Christians under its rule, and described Alawis as victims of the Al-Assads.

Speaking during a panhandling trip in 2015 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Turkey as the Syrian military laid siege to his Ghouta stronghold south of Damascus, Mr. Alloush’s remarks reflected the Salmans’ socially and economically reformed vision of Saudi Arabia.

In contrast to Syria, Yemen, with a 900-kilometre-long border with Saudi Arabia, is a different kettle of fish.

Yemeni Salafi fighters. Credit: Islam Times

Saudi proselytization of Wahhabism, the kingdom’s erstwhile supremacist, ultra-conservative, and anti-Shiite interpretation of Islam in Saada, the heartland of the Houthis, followers of the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam, fuelled the conflict that prompted Mr. Bin Salman to invade Yemen in 2015 in one of his first acts after coming to office.

It also contributed to ever-closer relations between the Houthis and Iran.

In other words, Saudi Arabia’s long-standing view of religious ultra-conservatism as an anti-dote for Iran’s revolutionary interpretation of the faith in cases like the Houthis, whom the kingdom views as Iranian stooges, backfired.

So did Saudi efforts to align with Salafis when the kingdom intervened in Yemen in 2015.

Together with the UAE, Saudi Arabia formed the Southern Giants Brigade as part of the Yemeni resistance to the Houthis, who controlled the capital, Sanaa, and the north of the country.

Made up of units that fought for the north in the 1994 civil war, the Brigade is populated by some 30,000 Salafist tribal fighters.

Emblem of the Southern Giants Brigades. The Arabic inscription translates: "Allah (God) is the greatest, The Southern, Giants Brigades.” Credit: Wikipedia

Even so, today, the Brigade appears more closely aligned with UAE-backed forces in southern Yemen that seek independence from the north than groups aligned with the Saudi Arabia-based, internationally recognised Yemeni government that aims to preserve a unified Yemen.

The UAE, despite its disdain for Wahhabis, Salafis, and Islamists, has been willing to work with Salafist Brigade, like it backed rebels in Libya who propagated an austere form of Islam.

Prominent Israeli Middle East affairs analyst Ehud Yaari noted that the Houthis’ “concern is that Israel will direct its airplanes to the areas of friction between the Houthis and the Aden government’s army and its elite units, the Giants, which were armed by Abu Dhabi.”

Speaking in the United Nations Security Council, Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, warned the Houthis, who have been firing almost daily missiles at Israel in support of the Palestinians, that they risk suffering the same “miserable fate” as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Mr. Al-Assad.

“Let me make one thing absolutely clear: We have had enough. Israel will not stand by and wait for the world to react. We will defend our citizens,” Mr. Danon said.

“Perhaps you have not been paying attention to what has happened to the Middle East over the past year. Well, allow me to remind you what has happened to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to Assad, to all those who have attempted to destroy us. Let this be your final warning,” Mr. Danon said, addressing the Houthis directly.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE may not say so publicly, but there is little doubt that they would be happy to see Israel take out the Houthis, a group they have failed to defeat in more than a decade of war on the military and religious battlefield.

Even so, Saudi geopolitics scholar Hesham Alghannam suggested support of Yemeni ultra-conservatives demonstrated “that the Saudi approach is pragmatic and that the kingdom can bolster Salafis to advance Saudi interests without pursuing an ideological foreign policy.”

Mr. Alghannam cautioned, however, that reduced support for ultra-conservatives risks “creating a vacuum that might be filled by other regional powers or ideologies, including Iran or militant Sunni organizations.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.