FIFA to rescue of troubled Saudi King Salman
By James M. Dorsey
Palestine is a headache Saudi
King Salman doesn’t need as he confronts rare demands from members of his
ruling family that he and his son be removed from power, growing unease about a
seven-month old devastating military campaign in Yemen that has caused devastation
and mounting civilian casualties, widespread criticism of the kingdom’s
handling of the Haj in the wake of a deadly stampede, and concern about the
financial and economic management of the kingdom against the backdrop of
dropping oil prices.
Palestine emerged as a problem
that threatened to escalate already high emotions in the kingdom with Saudi
Arabia’s national soccer team scheduled to play a 2018 World Cup qualifier
against Palestine in the Faisal al-Husseini International Stadium in Al-Ram, a
town on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Travelling to Al-Ram would have meant that
the Saudi squad would pass through Israeli security, passport and customs
controls when it entered the West Bank from Jordan.
Doing so would have without doubt
fuelled criticism of Mr. Salman’s nine-month old reign; infuriated a deeply
conservative, anti-Israeli clergy as well as public opinion that sees the
Jewish state as an enemy; and raised further questions about his management
that has produced few tangible successes, exposed the kingdom to increased
international criticism, and positioned his young, untested son whom many have
nicknamed “Reckless” as a powerful defence and economic policy overlord as well
as the king’s potential successor.
A Saudi soccer team crossing the
King Hussein Bridge from Jordan to the West Bank would have been one step to
many despite greater Saudi willingness to acknowledge that Israel and the
kingdom despite having no diplomatic relations share common interests,
particularly with regard to the rise of Iran with international sanctions
likely to be lifted as a result of the resolution of the Iranian nuclear
crisis. The agreement with Iran has further cemented concern about the
reliability of the United States as the kingdom’s foremost ally.
The Saudi reluctance to allow its
national soccer team to cross an Israeli-controlled border was further
complicated by the fact that the United Arab Emirates had no such qualms to
allow its team earlier this month to play a World Cup qualifier in Al-Ram, the
first such match on Palestinian territory involving a squad from a country with
which Israel has no diplomatic relations. The Saudi hesitancy further
threatened to undermine Palestinian efforts to use soccer as a way to raise
Palestine’s status internationally and project itself as an independent state.
World soccer body FIFA, a
long-standing pillar of autocratic rule in the Middle East and North Africa,
had no misgivings about resolving Mr. Salman’s dilemma. In a letter to the
Saudi and Palestinian soccer associations dated September 28, FIFA ordered the
Saudi-Palestinian match because of “force majeure” to be moved from Al Ram to a
neutral venue.
FIFA offered no explanation of
what force majeure Saudi Arabia was facing that the UAE did not confront in
allowing its soccer team to play in Palestine. In doing so, it appeared to be
attempting to spare King Salman, already fighting battles on multiple fronts, a
further potentially explosive headache. The FIFA decision was one more marker
of the global soccer body’s mockery of its assertion that politics and sports
are unrelated. That mockery is evident with just a glimpse of the issues Mr.
Salman is dealing with.
In an unprecedented move, a
senior Saudi prince, a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud,
this month, called in two letters that have gone viral on the Web for the
replacement of Mr. Salman, and his son, deputy crown prince, defence minister
and chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs, Prince Mohammed
Bin Salman Al Saud.
“The king is not in a stable
condition and in reality the son of the king [Mohammed bin Salman] is ruling
the kingdom. So four or possibly five of my uncles will meet soon to discuss
the letters. They are making a plan with a lot of nephews and that will open
the door. A lot of the second generation is very anxious. The public are also
pushing this very hard, all kinds of people, tribal leaders. They say you have
to do this or the country will go to disaster,” the prince who has not been
named publicly told The Guardian.
The threat to Messrs. Salman and
Mohammed was heightened by the king’s refusal to hold anyone accountable for
this month’s stampede during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in which more than
700 people were killed. Angry Saudis have asserted on social media that the
incident was the result of rampant corruption in the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling Al Saud
family derive their legitimacy from being the custodians of Islam’s two most
holy cities, Mecca and Medina. A Saudi soccer squad playing on the edge of
Jerusalem at a time of Israeli-Palestinian clashes around the Al Aqsa mosque,
Islam’s third most holy site, would have further put that legitimacy in doubt.
Saudis, including many of those
in regions bordering Yemen who have tribal and family ties to the war-torn
country, are increasingly disgusted at the pictures of the Middle East’s
wealthiest country armed to the teeth with sophisticated weaponry reducing the
Arab world’s poorest nation to a heap of ruins in a military campaign that has
made progress in retaking southern Yemen from Houthi rebels but shows no sign
of securing outright victory and producing a viable, unifying Yemeni government.
Saudis also criticize what they see as a lack of a military or exit strategy.
“This is a war against the Yemeni
nation and against Yemen becoming independent. It has no legitimate political foundation
and it is not what the people want. Ninety per cent of people in Saudi Arabia
don’t want this to happen, exactly the opposite of what the media shows,” said
Sgt Maj Dakheel bin Naser Al Qahtani, a former head of air force operations at
King Abdulaziz airbase, Dhahran, who defected from the Saudi armed forces last
year.
With oil trading below $50 a
barrel, Saudi Arabia is being forced to borrow and according to the Financial
Times has withdrawn some $70 billion from overseas investments. Saudi Arabia’s
stock market index has dropped 30 percent in the last year. The International
Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted Saudi Arabia would next year have a budget deficit
of at least $107 billion.
Saudi Arabia’s budget is based on
a $90 a barrel oil price. The kingdom is believed to need a $110 a barrel price
to balance its budget given the costs of the wars in Yemen, Syria and against
the Islamic State, the jihadist group that controls a swath of Syria and Iraq.
Pictures of Saudi soccer players
subjecting themselves to Israeli controls potentially could have been the
cinder that put the House of Saud on fire where it not for the willingness of
Sepp Blatter’s FIFA fire brigade to come to Mr. Salman’s rescue on what can
only be opportunistic political grounds.
James M. Dorsey is a
senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director
of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same
title.
Comments
Post a Comment