Every Tuesday night, Crown Prince Abdullah, the heir to the throne of this desert kingdom, opens the doors of his court to any of his subjects with a problem.
It's a tradition left over from the days when Bedouin chieftains ruled from their tents in the sand. But times have changed, Saudi Arabia has 17 million people, and Abdullah now holds court from a magnificent palace on the Red Sea.Last week in a haze of burning incense, surrounded by tribal leaders, Islamic holy men and sword-bearing security guards, he listened to a long line of petitioners, gave out an estimated 1 million Saudi Rials to help solve their problems and then provided all 1,000 of them with a lavish meal at the palace.
For the most part, Tuesday's ceremony was typical: some land disputes and debt problems, dozens of well-to-do Arabians in their flowing gold-trimmed robes, almost as many toothless, shoeless old men with canes. One man begged for mercy for his son, a convicted murderer who is to be beheaded.
But something else was going on as well that evening. As many as half the people who stood on line to speak to the crown prince came to offer their condolences for the bombing last week that killed 19 American servicemen in al-Khobar - a stunning and upsetting incident for this normally peaceful realm. As the prince went into dinner, there was a defensive show of support for the royal family that in itself signaled that all is not right in the kingdom.
"The kingdom will be united," shouted one white-robed petitioner as he stepped up to the high table where the prince was dining. "Nothing will tear it apart."
"This house will stay," shouted another as the dour looking prince forked a cucumber into his mouth. "And justice will done by the sword."
Abdullah is one of more than a dozen remaining sons of King Abdel-Aziz al-Saud, or ibn-Saud, whose ancestors first united the Arabian peninsula in 1745 and who is the founder of the modern Saudi dynasty. Abdullah's al-Saud family wields absolute power in the kingdom, and his own ascension to the throne appears near at hand.
King Fahd, the crown prince's 75-year-old half-brother, also known as the "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques," suffered a stroke late last year and is now in frail health, with Abdullah his clear successor. At 72, Abdullah is believed by most Saudis to be honest - which is not necessarily true of the rest of his relatives. Diplomats say that although he's slightly more traditional and Bedouin and less oriented toward the West than his half-brother the king - a well-known playboy in his youth who made good relations with the United States a central tenet of his policy, along with quiet, peaceful co-existence with Israel - Abdullah is not expected to undertake any huge strategic shifts in policy.
"Crown Prince Abdullah is a good friend of the United States," said Theodore Kattouf, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, who knows that safeguarding American access to Saudi Arabian oil is a top American policy priority. "We know him well and he knows us well."
But Abdullah's opportunity is coming at a difficult moment, when there's fighting behind the scenes within the royal family and a growing terrorist threat, a rising Islamic militant presence in the country and a noticeable increase in grumbling about corruption inside the ruling family. In response to the challenges, the government has cracked down, leading Western observers to offer sharp criticism of the regime's human rights record.
At the root of the problem appears to be an economic dip for this fabulously wealthy oil-rich country. Although the country still sits on 26 percent of the world's oil reserves - some 360 billion barrels, enough to last at least another 100 years - there are signs of fraying.
Flat oil prices, a national baby boom and the devastating price of more than $50 billion for the Persian Gulf War in 1991 has sent the per capita Gross Domestic Product plummeting from $18,800 in 1981 to $6,700 in 1995, according to a report by the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh. Government debt is climbing, as is unemployment, and the good old days of subsidies and entitlements are coming to an end.
The result is a level of grumbling that didn't exist during the boom years. On one side is a small group of critics who want the society opened up - who think it's time the royal family, with its estimated 6,000 princes, stopped living in subsidized palaces and having their phone bills and laundry paid for by the ordinary people. These people would also like to see a less repressive government that doesn't muzzle the media, deny the right to vote and refuse to allow women the right to drive or go out in public without a scarf over their head and a man by their side.
On the other side is a more significant challenge from the Islamic fundamentalists - even though Saudi Arabia already applies Islamic law and does not recognize a difference between religion and the state. The Islamists, such as London-based dissident Mohammed Masari and others, want to see an even stricter enforcement of Muslim standards and believe that the government has sold out its independence to the apostate West in general and the United States in particular. They, too, criticize the royal family as corrupt and hypocritical. Although many of the Islamic dissidents are nonviolent, some have turned to violence, including the four men who were convicted of a bombing in Riyadh in November that killed five Americans and two Indians. Police suspect the Islamists in last week's blast as well.
Neither side has enough of a following to pose a true threat to the al-Sauds yet, but both have raised concerns for the government, which has cracked down in recent months. Last year's human rights report by the U.S. Department of State accused the regime of engaging in a pattern of arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention as well as alleged abuse of political prisoners.
Abdullah's ascension to the throne during these turbulent times in the monarchy seems like it will be relatively smooth. He has been designated crown prince by his brother King Fahd - who has sole discretion to do choose his successor - and most likely will be followed in office by another brother, Prince Sultan bin-Abdel-Aziz, the minister of defense.