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Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia |  | Author: Robert Lacey
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 140488
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.4 x 1.7
ISBN: 0670021180
Dewey Decimal Number: 953.8053
EAN: 9780670021185
ASIN: 0670021180
Publication Date: October 15, 2009
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Product Description
What happened in the Middle East's oil-rich powerhouse- while we weren't looking
Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox. It is a modern state driven by contemporary technology and possessed of vast oil deposits, yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back a thousand years to match those of the prophet Muhammad.
With Inside the Kingdom, journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey has given us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. While living for years among the nation's princes and paupers, its clerics and progressives, Lacey endeavored to find out how the consequences of the 1970s oil boom produced a society at war with itself. Filled with stories that trace a path through the Persian Gulf War and the events of 9/11 to the oilmarket convulsions of today, Inside the Kingdom gives us a modern history of the Saudis in their own words, revealing a people attempting to reconcile life under religious law with the demands of a rapidly changing world. Their struggle will have powerful reverberations around the globe, and this rich work provides a penetrating look at a country no one can afford to ignore.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 The long-awaited sequel... November 3, 2009
John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA)
25 out of 26 found this review helpful
... to The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'Ud which ends at the beginning of the `80's. At the beginning of his previous work, Lacey relates how a Georgetown educated member of the House of Saud told him that he had lived in the Kingdom for 30 years, and if he tried to explain the country, and how it worked, the best he could do is get a B+ on the paper, and therefore, Lacey, as an outsider, could only hope to earn a C. I disagreed, and in my review, said that Lacey deserved at least a B+, if not an A-. For this work, which covers the last 30 years, he deserves a solid A.
Lacey starts with "Angry Face," Juhayman, and his followers, including the expected "Mahdi," who seized the mosque in Mecca (Makkah) in 1979. (This event is also covered well by Trofimov, in The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam's Holiest Shrine). The author selected a wonderfully appropriate epigraph for this section, from Dostoevsky: "Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer. Nothing is more difficult than to understand him." Lacey did a commendable job in explaining the grievances of those being overwhelmed by the "future shock" that was roiling the Kingdom as a result of the influx of money and foreigners (and their ideas) following the sharp increase in oil prices after 1973. This event, plus the revolt of the Shia, in the eastern town of Qateef, in the same year, had the net effect of nudging Saudi Arabia to a much more conservative governmental social policy, yes, in effect, co-opting a portion of Juhayman's agenda... and the women disappeared from the TV, and the "Opera House" remained closed for many a year! Lacey also covers the Saudi-American alliance of the `80's, ironical in retrospect, openly supported "jihad," certainly when it was fighting the "godless" Soviet Union in Afghanistan. And now both countries suffer from the "blowback," in CIA parlance. Part Two deals with the second decade of the 30 year period, the `90's. The author again commences with an all too appropriate epigraph, this time from Edward Gibbon: "So intimate is the connection between the throne and the alter that the banner of church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people." The seminal event in this decade was Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, and his expulsion, lead by an American coalition. The net effect on the Kingdom, who saw American female soldiers driving, which was emulated by their Saudi counterparts, was to again nudge the Kingdom into a more conservative mode. Still, despite the various "fetishes" developed by the religious police, say, against red roses on Valentine's day, the country continues to be overwhelmed by Western (and world) influences, and sadly, the upholders of tradition saw nothing wrong in the influx of fast food restaurants, which led to an "epidemic" of diabetes. Paralleling events in the Kingdom, Lacey devotes space to events in not so far off Afghanistan, where the "students," (the Taliban) were seizing power, and welcomed Bin Laden from the Sudan. The last third of the book starts with "15 flying Saudis," the events of 9/11, and the aftermath, and the Kingdom's own "9/11", which occurred on May 12, 2003, when three upscale compounds were attacked by suicide bombers in Riyadh. Clearly Lacey empathizes with the modernizing goals of now King Abdullah, who had been de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia since King Fahd's stroke in '95, but only obtained the full title after his death in 2005. He closes his epilogue poignantly, with the King praying longer one evening after seeing the progress at KAUST, the university that bears his name, slower than he had hoped.
There is a small "cottage industry" which publishes books, and promotes articles that depict the Kingdom as "mysterious," that wants to "rip the veil" off Saudi society, that "exposes" the Kingdom, that produces sheer fantasies of life in the Kingdom. Lacey might have foregone a few book sales by not following this gamut, but for those who want to understand the country (and even ponder how we in the West perceive the country), this book is an essential read. The author has an extraordinary range of contacts in the Kingdom, and has woven the stories of real Saudis into his story, such as the "jihadis," Mansour Al-Nogaidan and Khaled Al-Hubayshi. Overall, through the sheer number of Saudis who were willing to speak "on the record," you had a sense that they trusted Lacey to tell the story in a balanced way, which I think he has. Tis a shame that it will be one more book on the Kingdom that will be banned by their Ministry of Information.
I loved the way Lacey utilized Saudi parables, as Saudis themselves do, to make a point, with my favorite being "The Donkey from Yemen." Lacey should also be commended for correctly translated the meaning of "Tash ma Tash," the Saudi sit-com, unlike the authors of a couple other books on the Kingdom.
Quibbles? Well, I have a few, and they only underscore the difficulty for a foreigner to get it "all right," but often they can, even better than a Saudi, due to the perspective, and "lack of baggage," including tribal ones. Per Lippman, in Inside The Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia it is unlikely American women were in Al Kharj before 1950, not 1944, as Lacey indicates (p 9). There would have been no "hilal" moon (or any other), on Muharram 01, 1400 (p 22). I'd love to know how the M113 armored personnel carrier was a "success" story of the Vietnam War (p 32). Al-Nakba (the disaster) is usually associated with the Palestinian expulsion of 1948, not the defeat of `67 (p 56). Steve Coll, in his The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century says that there are two versions of how Osama's father, Mohammed, lost his eye, but both occurred in Ethiopia and neither involved soccer; Lacey says that it happened in the Sudan, as a result of a soccer game (p 58). Concerning the formation of "Al Qaeda", the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares, directed by Adam Curtis, gives a much more plausible explanation its origins - it was invented by Americans, (!!) for the trials of the 1993 bombers of the WTC, legally, so that RICO laws could be utilized, which involve "conspiracy" and an organization. Later, Bin Laden co-opted the term! It is extremely unlikely that Bin Laden had (has) a "database" of names of all the muhahideen and their contact details, save in his brain (p 148). "Only" three compounds in Riyadh were attacked on May 12, 2003 - the Oasis compound was not (p 244). And Lacey entitles a chapter on the women of Saudi Arabia the "girls" of Saudi - and not a single "girl" was in the chapter (p 274).
Overall, though, a thoroughly researched, and balanced book, written to illuminate Western and in particular, American readers on Saudi Arabia, (Lacey, a British writer even explains that Sandhurst is the "West Point of England.") and should be read in conjunction with Lacey's earlier work, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'Ud Though I'm sure Lacey would demur that "it is beyond the scope of this course," should not all Americans ponder the progress made after each countries "9/11" concerning the issues he only discusses about the Kingdom, be it educational policies, human rights, detention facilities, employment of youth and counteracting those who advocate endless conflict with "the other." An essential 5-star read.
Exposing the Man Behind the Curtain October 21, 2009
Eric F. Facer (Centreville, VA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
Saudi Arabia is the proverbial "man behind the curtain," the guy who exerts power, wields influence, and manipulates events but seeks to remain largely anonymous. Trouble is, Robert Lacey keeps pulling back the curtain to reveal the secrets and mysteries of this most peculiar kingdom.
Thirty years ago Mr. Lacey published a history of Saudi Arabia called "The Kingdom," a book, by the way, that the House of Saud elected to ban. Mr. Lacey's new tome basically picks up where the last one left off.
Mr. Lacey's prose is enjoyable and his book is well structured, describing and explaining events in a logical and chronological sequence with digressions and thematic developments where appropriate. And after reading his book, I have gained a renewed appreciation for the Law of Unintended Consequences. We learn that the Arab oil embargo, which was precipitated by U.S. support for Israel during the 1973 war, resulted in unprecedented prosperity in Saudi Arabia which, in turn, caused a backlash among Islamic conservatives, which fostered the growth of organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood where Osama Bin Laden found a home, who then went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, and so on and so on. Mr. Lacey also does a fine job of chronicling the evolution of the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and the Royal Family's genuine fear of the Shia extremists that control the government of neighboring Iran. And he effectively buttresses his arguments with insightful anecdotes and telling vignettes.
The events in this book have been chronicled elsewhere--it doesn't contain startling revelations or previously undisclosed diplomatic secrets. But it does help you understand the forces that have created the current mess in the Middle East, many of which were unleashed unwittingly by the participants. And I personally will take it as a sign of hope for the region (albeit a small sign) if the Kingdom, this time around, does not choose to ban Mr. Lacey's book.
Exposing what would prefer to remain hidden December 21, 2009
R. C Sheehy (Foxboro,MA USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Saudi Arabia is a kingdom that lives in two unique worlds. As a global center of both the Islamic faith and oil it has to deal with the ancient and the modern and is torn by the two. Robert Lacey does a wonderful job of offering a narrative that describes how the worlds events during the past 60 years have shaped, and been shaped. Lacey gives us the standard history tour which one might expect, but he also goes behind the scenes and offers just the right amount of opinion with history.
The book is very good at explaining how Saudi Arabia was a fairly modern kingdom until a terrorist attack made it one that espoused the very ideals the terrorists espoused. This lead almost directly to the creation of the 9/11 factor and Osama Bin Laden. But only after the terrorists came home did Saudi Arabia start to act in anything approaching a reformist mindset. Lacey does a great job of showing how any reform was slow and met with tremendous opposition and even now minor steps require major battles. All in all a very good read!
Good analysis, to be read as a novel, with several anecdotes June 6, 2010
Alessandro ZANASI (Italy)
I enjoyed this book. Very easy to be read, also by non English mother tongue readers. I was looking a book which could give an insight on current Saudi life and politics and it gave it.
For the issues that I have already known, I found them correctly described.
An important book for people who want to know more about last years Saudi Arabia.
Congratulations to Mr.Lacey.
My Kind of Book: Timely, Smart, Informative, Relevant and cuts to the chase (as well as to the bone). December 3, 2009
Herbert L Calhoun (Falls Church, VA USA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This sweeping political tour de horizon, across modern Middle Eastern History, by a seasoned historian and author, with Saudi Arabia as its centerpiece and focal point, is timely, smart, informative, and cuts to the chase (as well as to the bone). Its main themes and stories are already well known: the internecine struggles within the royal family, as well as within Islam; how oil money has corrupted both the U.S., the Arab world and the Saudi Nation; and how the Arabs and Israelis continue to play each other off for greater influence over the U.S. economy and U.S. national security: They both have learned to "game" the shameless and endless corruption of U.S. politicians.
What this book brings to the party is that it goes directly to the heart of these matters without the normal detours of fluff and insincere disclaimers, or the niceties required to protect reputations that the wider set of facts revealed here suggest do not deserve such protection. It is this sense of an expose, coupled with a keen sense of urgency, as well as a precise sense of what is important to history, that makes for uncommonly good, if not, altogether exciting reading.
Thus it goes without saying that this book has a strong and refreshing irreverent tone to it. But this tone is not just irreverence for irreverence sake. It is a case of old wine being updated and poured into new bottles: old facts merged with a few fresh and newly revealed ones, all grafted onto the old stories. Together they provide a new basis for fresh thinking, fresh historical analysis, and fresh, more novel, interpretations and results. To wit: a surprisingly interesting but subtly revised history of the religious strife within both the Saudi royal family and the larger Muslim family; new revelations about how American politicians were brought to heel in the F-15 AWACs procurement episode (of which I was involved in); how the Arabs coalesced against the Saudis when Saddam invaded Kuwait, requiring the royal family to do the unthinkable: ask the U.S. for help; and how the royal family itself hoisted on its own petard, laid the groundwork and paid for the emergence of al Qaeda, as well as others Muslim radicals and internal enemies. Thus it is the series of vignettes based on new facts and the new interpretations of them that provide the excitement for the book and gives rise to new twists that leave a few tattered reputations flailing in its wake.
The main story line of course is built up on the development of the Saudi Arabian Empire, a fluke of history if ever there was one. It is a case of turning a series of running skirmishes across the desert, among sword-wielding camel and sheepherding tribes, into world-class manipulators. The winner of the last set of skirmishes (the Aziz brothers in 1925) conquered the land of sand by brute force and imposed its will as well as its dessert morality upon the surviving tribes. But with the discovery of oil (voila!) changed everything including the way the new nation and the self-installed Saudi royal family orientated itself to Islam. With oil came more money than any of the camel herders, Sheiks or Mullahs could ever have imagined, turning a family of dusty tribesmen into world-class power balancers and manipulators. The Saudis declared themselves a kingdom and a state (and even today, many Arabs still claim them to constitute, neither), and then what enviable world manipulators this small band of Bedouin tribesmen became.
For the first several decades, manipulations (more appropriately referred to as the Saudi balancing act) occurred mostly in-house - among the contending factions within the royal family and just beyond it within the Sunni wing of the larger Islamic religious family. Under the carefully engineered protectorate of the House of Saud, the influence of the royal family, through its petrodollars was felt across the Islamic landscape. As a result, no one should be the least bit surprised to discover that the version of Islam practiced within Saudi Arabia as well as among most Sunnis outside it, has been shaped to serve the Saudi royal family's needs. And, as a result, it is thus argued by their enemies at least, that the version they have crafted has also been steeped in the same kind of hypocrisy and contradictions that reflect that family's politics and morality.
Until recently, the royal family had done a relatively good job of keeping things on an even keel within this tightly wound set of moral and political constraints. However when the more religiously devout (led by "the Muslim Brotherhood," and followed by sympathizers such as Osama bin Laden), became more than just restless with the informal arrangement, it became time for the Saudi royal family to "fish or cut bait." In due course, even to the religiously devout (who were drunk on the "Kool Aid" of the royal family's largesse), the moral and political balancing acts practiced by the House of Saud, had begun to look suspiciously like religious apostasy. But the royal family, with endless faith in its manipulative powers, discovered almost too late that there was a limit to how much the Mullahs and Imams could be "reasoned with" (spelled co-opted and manipulated) through political power, prestige, class perks, big cars and apartment, and especially money.
After Saddam Hussein's power grab of Kuwait took place in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, the royal family's main trump cards had played themselves out. All the Arabs that were not already aligned against the Kingdom showed its teeth now with great glee. Everyone knew what Saddam's next move was going to be because it was obvious and eagerly anticipated: an equally quick take over of the Kingdom and thus ridding Islam of this insular decadent scourge. With its back up against the wall, in a few tense moments, the royal family, in order to save itself, had no choice but to cast its lot with the "infidels." The American military came galloping to its rescue. And as they say, the rest is history.
But there is much more here lying in the subtext: For instance, the book reveals in relief how both nation states and religions have come about through relatively free-standing mythologies, and mythical origins, centered on local moralities and belief systems organized according to local survival strategies. Watching the Saudi movie being played from beginning to end, it is difficult to see how there is any fundamental difference between the Saudi model and any others, including our own. Second, watching the way the U.S. is manipulated through its corrupt Congressmen, the book gives an even more generalized view of the modalities of corruption: ours against theirs. Again ours, stripped of our own patriotic brand name, is the same as that anywhere else in the world. We come off looking like bigger hypocrites than even the Saudis, and that is saying something. Five Stars
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