The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, insightfull
Review: This book details the house of Saud and its 'coming fall'. Mr Aburish, who also wrote a book on Arafat and one on Saddam, details the growth of the house of Saud and its royal family. How it transformed a desert kingdom into a thriving middle eastern power. How it confronted Arab nationism and how it has now come to suppress its own people. Unfortunatly the book does not detail the support of terrorism and the suppression of women and foriegners(who do all the work since Saudis cant seem to learn how to drill their own oil). THis book talks about arabs from an arab point of view and is indispensible int he understanding of the Saudi mindset. It is a needed addition to any modern book that accuses Suadi of terror, for this is the inside story of the machinery of fuedal royalty living in the 21st century.

Rating:
Summary: excellent expose from inside circles
Review: This book is well-written, well-documented and important. The author (who is writing from a country outside Saudi Arabia, but is himself a Saudi) minces no words in discussing the history, government and Royal Family. My personal view is that it is important to read books about other countries that are not authored by Americans. While this country has much more freedom in what is allowed to be written, read, published and broadcasted (the chapter on the Saudi press was very chilling), the media here tends to oversimplify many issues, and people don't take the time to hunt out other sources. Thus, another country is our "friend" one day in the news, the next they are "the enemy" and politics, foreign loans, arms deals, and all sorts of other goings-on are not really explained. This author explains the reasons behind everything that has been happening in the Middle East from 1900 on, and I certainly learned a lot about the Gulf War. In addition, I have read several books from the women's viewpoint in Saudi Arabia (e.g., Princess, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street), but this shows what is going on with the men in the ruling class. The author also did a good job of convincing me that the Saudi people may not be of one mind with the Royal Family, and that ordinary citizens can be subject to many abuses. Anyone who is interested in the Middle East ought to read this book. Informative, compelling and convincing.

Rating:
Summary: Useful, but amateurish and bombastic
Review: This is a useful book in that it challenges the public image that the Saudi royal family has put much effort and money into establishing, especially here in the West. That image is one of a benign monarchy, one that provides generously for its people while promoting geopolitical stability in the region. Needless to say, Mr. Aburish presents a radically different view, one of a brutal family run dictatorship that is corrupt to the core and which ruthlessly squashes dissent at home while sowing seeds of disunity among the other nations of the region. There is no doubt but that, in daring to write this exposé, Mr. Aburish provides a useful service, since neither the governments nor the media in the West show much interest in examining the Saudi government with a truly critical eye, although to some extent this can be explained by the inherent cynicism of mainstream journalism. After all, it is pretty much taken as a given that most regimes in the area are corrupt, repressive and autocratic, so reporting such is basically a "Dog bites man" type of story.

Mr. Aburish's problem is that he simply goes overboard. His attacks too often seem personal in nature, although this can be explained by the fact that he dedicated this book to a friend who had been tortured to death by the Saudi secret police. He brings a sense of passion to this work, which is laudable, but too often it causes him to abandon any sense of objectivity in his quest to lambaste the House of Saud. As a result, this book reads less like the work of a professional journalist and more like a one-man act of personal vengeance. At times it becomes downright silly, such as when he attacks Saudi patriarch Ibn Saud for buying 40 Packards, which he derides as being "the most vulgar car of the 1940's". And it is rife with factual errors and general sloppiness, most notably in the latter chapters. Defense contractor Grumman is spelled "Grueman" and he makes reference to Vice President Edmund Muskie, a man who was only a vice presidential candidate on McGovern's losing 1972 ticket. But the worst part is simply the complete lack of any sort of even handedness, this book reads less as an accurate accounting of the Royal Family and more as a cheap piece of propaganda (most notably, the section on Desert Storm, parts of which could have been lifted straight from the Iraqi Ministry of Information). He makes numerous broad assertions without providing much, if anything, in the way of proof. Most notable is his claim that the present regime is loathed by the majority of Saudis and is teetering on the verge of collapse. Perhaps it is, but he gives precious little evidence to support it.

In addition, he seems incredibly naïve when it comes to economics and foreign affairs. On the latter, he accuses the Saudi government of constantly trying to manipulate its neighbors so as to avoid potential conflicts. Well, since when is engaging in pragmatic opportunism forbidden in the art of statecraft? It would seem the Saudi government has been eminently successful in avoiding both bloody foreign confrontations and internal havoc, a feat that the late Shah of Iran was incapable of. Also, while asserting that rank and file Saudis have been denied their rightful share of the oil wealth, he simultaneously attacks the Saudi government for not sharing more of that wealth with their fellow Arab nations, a move that would have been about as politically popular as if the American president promised to fork over a large percentage of American tax dollars to enrich the Mexicans.

Finally, he is on multiple occasions guilty of rank hypocrisy. For example, he is outraged at the treatment that ARAMCO oilmen initially gave to their Saudi workers, looking down at them and calling them "A-rabs", yet Aburish is hardly above indulging in blatant snobbery, most notably in which he sneers at the Saud family as if they were the Arabic equivalent of disreputable white trash. And yet, toward the end, he also takes Oil Minister Sheik Yamani to task for showing off his academic prowess and sophistication because it was "un-Arabic". And, in the final chapter, one gets the impression that Aburish simply doesn't know what he wants, other than the overthrow of the House of Saud. Does he want to see a Western style liberal democracy? Or an Iran style Islamic republic? Or a "constitutional monarchy"? He doesn't say. And that's the fundamental problem. Aburish is, to a greater or lesser extent, a useful critic of the Saudi regime. But what he utterly fails to do is offer up any sort of practical alternative.