House of Saud’s Power Struggle Could Turn Bloody

Rumours quickly erupted. The princes came to complain about the assassination of one close relative of theirs, according to one such rumour. Official sources did not name the recently detained 11 princes.

In the current phantasmagoria of Mohammed bin Salman, the elimination of royalty is currently by imprisonment and banishment to known and unknown locations. In the past, a Saudi prince, Abdulaziz bin Turki, was kidnapped in Geneva, drugged and sent to Riyadh after he expressed dissident views and participated in a chat show on a Saudi opposition programme aired from north London.

In 2015, a group of princes circulated two letters on the internet entitled "A warning to Al-Saud", denouncing the exclusion of other princes such as Prince Ahmad and Talal and calling upon the elders of the family to effectively stage a coup against Salman and his son.

At the time, two princes - descendants of King Saud - disappeared. They were believed to be behind the drafting of the two letters. The prospect of a bloody power struggle is daunting but it cannot be ruled out for many reasons.

The spell of the prince

First, Mohammed bin Salman has proved to be so impulsive and erratic despite the propaganda of some Western media pundits reporting on him. Many journalists including Thomas Friedman have fallen under the spell of the prince's alleged posture, charisma and innate leadership skills. A top-down revolutionary and moderniser, Friedman called him.

The glorification of the young future Saudi king has gone too far, despite his unsettled economic policies and regional adventures, which have yet to result in crowning him as a desert warrior and a victorious neo-liberal moderniser.

Despite the counter-revolutionary measures the Al-Saud adopted to thwart that revolutionary moment, the cult is still haunted by the prospect of a peaceful rebellion at home

His iconic smartphone and PlayStation are meant to reflect his anchorage in hyper-modernity and its gadgets. But neither his smart management consultancy reports nor his smart air strikes on Yemen resulted in the anticipated quick fixes.

In fact, the prince changed his mind about economic reforms and cuts twice in six months, the latest of which is the announcement that Saudi government employees will receive a meagre 500 riyals (under £100) each month to help with rising prices.

He promised more to the soldiers stranded on the border with Yemen, with no prospect of ending a long, unsuccessful and bloody war that the prince himself started. It is not certain that he calculated the cost of these extra benefits after he announced that he wants to wean Saudis off the nanny state they had got used to.

A Saudi spring?

The zig-zag economic policies reflect his deeply rooted anxiety and fear that Saudis might take to the streets in opposition to his cuts and high prices. This will be the Saudi Spring that the Al-Saud cult has feared since the Arab masses in Cairo, Tunis, Saana and Manama challenged their rulers en masse.

Despite the counter-revolutionary measures the Al-Saud adopted to thwart that revolutionary moment, the cult is still haunted by the prospect of a peaceful rebellion at home.

What haunts Mohammed bin Salman more is that the rebellion might actually and initially be orchestrated by disgruntled members of the inner circle, marginalised princes and even worse by ones with serious vendettas.

Mohammed bin Salman has humiliated and snubbed many members of the cult to the extent that he was compelled to pick them one after another and deprive them of their freedom.  

Since November, the crown prince felt compelled to banish, imprison and encircle a wide range of princes. The list is long but it includes ex-crown prince Muhammad bin Nayef, sacked in June, and Mitab bin Abdullah, dismissed in November and held in the Ritz-Carlton for several weeks under corruption charges.

He was later released after paying ransom money to bin Salman's coffers. But bin Salman staged a photo opportunity with the humiliated Mitab to silence rumours about the latter's dissatisfaction.

Second, the prospect of future bloody royal battles is aggravated by the drive to move the Saudi succession from horizontal to vertical lines. Salman wants to ensure that he does not die before the kingdom becomes his own and his son's, thus eliminating the claims of the descendants of his own brothers (mainly Fahd, Sultan, Nayef, and Abdullah). All were so senior and powerful that no other brother had been able to challenge them at any time in the past four decades.

Now dead, their orphaned sons can easily be dismissed and even humiliated without impunity by their uncle and his young son.

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