The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [49]
Unimaginable wealth had fallen on these austere desert nomads—a gift from God because of their piety, they genuinely believed. Paradoxically, this gift was undermining every facet of their identity. Within twenty years of the first great oil boom in the 1950s, the average Saudi income was nearly equal to that of the United States and increasing at a rate that promised to make the Kingdom the largest economy in the world. Such tantalizing expectations masked the fact that class divisions were shearing apart a country that still fancied itself an extended tribal community. The spendthrift Saudi became a worldwide stereotype of greed, gluttony, corruption, hypocrisy, and—even more offensive to his dignity—a figure of fun. The sheer waste of fortunes at the gaming tables, the drinking, the whoring, the avarice of the Saudi women with their silver minks and their shopping bags on the Champs-Elysées, the casual buying of jewels that could capsize national economies, amused a world that was also shaken by the prospect of a future in which the Saudis owned practically everything. This anxiety was sharpened by the 1973 oil embargo, which caused prices to skyrocket and created genuine problems for a Saudi government that simply didn’t know how to spend all its money. The wholesale squandering of wealth, both public and private, only demonstrated the bottomless pocket that Saudi Arabia had become—at least, for the royal family.
They not only ruled the country, they essentially owned it. All unclaimed land belonged to the king; he alone decided who could acquire property. As the country expanded, the king’s uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins grabbed the richest parcels. Still not sated, the princes forced themselves into business deals as “agents” or “consultants,” raking in billions in the form of kickbacks and bribes. This toll on commerce came despite the fact that Al Saud—the royal family—had already appropriated 30 or 40 percent of the country’s oil profits in the form of allowances for family members. Al Saud personified all the venal changes in the Saudi identity, and it was natural that their subjects would consider revolution.
Nonetheless, in a society with so few institutions, the royal family was a conspicuously progressive force. In 1960, against powerful resistance from the Wahhabi establishment, Crown Prince Faisal had introduced female education; two years later he formally abolished slavery. He prevailed upon President John F. Kennedy to send American forces to protect the Kingdom during the border war against Yemen. He brought television to the Kingdom, although one of his nephews was killed while leading a protest against the opening of the broadcast station in 1965. He was freer to act than his predecessor because his own piety was unquestioned, but he was wary of extremists who were constantly policing the thoughts and actions of mainstream Saudi society. From the point of view of some fervent believers, the most insidious accomplishment of Faisal’s reign was to co-opt the ulema—the clergy—by making them employees of the state. By promoting moderate voices over others, the government sought to temper the radicalism spawned by the tumultuous experience of modernization. Faisal was such a powerful king that he was able to force these changes on his society at a stunning pace.
His sons helped the king consolidate his power. Turki became the Kingdom’s spymaster, and his older brother, Prince Saud, was appointed the foreign minister. Between these two American-educated