The scene last week of tribal chiefs in keffiyeh head scarves waiting hours to pledge loyalty to the new heir to Jordan’s throne will be repeated across the Middle East in coming years, if not always with such sincerity.
The customary Arab mubayaah ceremonies for Crown Prince Abdullah, newly named as King Hussein’s successor, signal the impending passage of a generation of aging Arab leaders in an era when their successors will not find oil money so plentiful, growing populations so easy to feed or educated elites so patient with unfulfilled demands for greater access to the outside world.
While Hussein, 63, rushed back to the U.S. for more cancer treatment this week, ailing Saudi Arabian King Fahd, 76, has all but abdicated to his own Crown Prince Abdullah, 75. Syrian President Hafez Assad, 68 and reportedly ailing, is trying to groom his son to succeed him. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, 69, ponders his passing in public.
Israel, too, is faced with a coming transition as beleaguered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces early elections in May. One of his main challengers, popular former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, is the first Jew of non-European descent to seek the nation’s premiership, and the result could alter the pace of the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process.
Although each nation’s change in leadership will come with its own circumstances and challenges, the turnover will further complicate attempts to forge a broader peace in the Middle East and to isolate Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf. Within the Arab nations, the process will be played out amid the region’s halting steps toward modernization through Internet linkups, more liberalized lifestyles and economic reforms.
As seen in the struggle by new Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to moderate his nation’s Islamic revolution, the coming period could be one in which new regimes struggle to consolidate their holds on power and to find their own way to deal with demands for Westernization and, in turn, threats of a militant Islamic backlash.
“So many regimes are aging and decaying,” said Taher Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister who was in one of the first lines of dignitaries to congratulate Abdullah. “There are a lot of wild cards in the region, so nobody knows what will happen.”
Signaling Washington’s concern for stability in the region, Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited Jordan on Thursday and assured the new crown prince that the U.S. wants to help facilitate a smooth transition. Some Middle East officials suspect the U.S. of pushing for a younger generation of leaders across the region, though the Americans deny it.
Albright discussed American policy on Iraq with Abdullah, but it was clear that her main purpose was a show of support for the young prince, two days after Hussein installed him and ousted his own brother, Prince Hassan, before abruptly departing for the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and more chemotherapy.
Albright said the U.S. would speed up $100 million in aid to the desert kingdom, which has long been one of Washington’s chief allies in the region.
“It’s in the U.S. interest that these transitions occur smoothly and that, in and of themselves, they don’t become causes of instability,” said Robert Pelletreau, one of the Clinton administration’s top Middle East officials in the mid-1990s. “What you see is a number of countries in the Middle East going down the road of accumulating problems. Succession is one of them, but only one.”
Abdullah is among the first young leaders poised to come to power in a region in which Hussein has ruled for 46 years, Assad for 28, Fahd for 17 and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak for 18.
The views of Jordan’s crown prince, an army major general who turned 37 Saturday, are largely unknown. But he is steeped in the ways of his father, Hussein, whose charisma and pragmatism helped unite Jordan’s tribes and outlast many enemies.
Although he is still merely the crown prince, Jordanians already are debating whether Abdullah will push harder for democratic and institutional reforms than his father did or whether he will agree with United Nations sanctions against Iraq, Jordan’s main trading partner.
“If he’s strong enough, he can continue to lead what we call our `democratic march,’ ” said one palace analyst. “If he’s not that confident, he will protect himself, and there will be a delay.”
In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdullah has been assuming control of the country over the past two years from his brother, King Fahd. He eventually will succeed him in title as well, ahead of a long line of brothers who are not much younger.
Already, however, the crown prince is grappling with problems unknown in his brother’s prime. Due to rock-bottom oil prices, the kingdom’s revenues have fallen by a third, and Abdullah warns that the government can no longer afford to subsidize its people’s easy lifestyles.
“The boom period is over and will never return,” he said at a gulf states summit last month. “(We) must get used to a new way of life that is not based on total dependence on the state.”
One way for Saudi Arabia to ease the cash crunch is to invite American investors into its oil facilities, until now jealously guarded. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson soon will visit to discuss the prospects.
Anticipating dissent and frustrations because of the economic situation, Saudi Prince Abdullah has begun lowering some of the barriers that shelter his people. He recently expanded Saudis’ access to the Internet, though not completely.
Syria’s Assad also has allowed some institutions to tinker with the Internet, despite his iron-fisted control over the rest of Syrians’ lives, including their access to information.
Suffering from diabetes and a heart condition, he has delineated no formal succession process, which worries diplomats because of Syria’s ethnic tensions. Few outsiders know whether Assad’s son, Bashar, wants to follow in his footsteps or whether Assad will allow another contender from his Alawite minority to surface.
Another Arab leader with an unclear succession is Arafat, whose trembling lips and hands long have raised questions about his health. He denies speculation that he has Parkinson’s disease, but that speculation cropped up again last month when he ruminated about his death in front of American visitors.
“I don’t know if I will live one year or two years,” Arafat said in response to a question about what he envisioned for his Palestinian Authority in two decades.
By law, Arafat would be succeeded by the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmed Qureia, before elections were held two months later. But Arafat has never designated a political heir, so analysts predict a power struggle.
Although many of the familiar faces from Arab regimes will change, some Middle East experts say that it will not necessarily mean important changes in policy. In many cases, a ruling seat will be inherited by another close member of the ruling faction, if not a family member. Experts note that even rulers who came to power promising revolutions against kings and sheiks, such as Syria’s Assad and Iraq’s Hussein, now seek to turn their regimes into personal dynasties as they pass power to their sons.
“In the last 20 or 30 years, most Arab regimes have consolidated the position of a particular group which managed over time to exclude other contenders for power, so the impact of the changes will be rather small,” said Walid Kazziha, a political analyst at the American University in Cairo.
Joseph Kostiner, an expert in Arabian peninsula politics and revolutionary movements at Tel Aviv University, said that even in Middle East regimes where the next rulers will come from a younger generation, often they bring with them the older generation’s mindset.
“Their attitude is not really suitable for the challenges needed in the 21st Century, so I’m not sure the successors will be any better,” Kostiner said.
At the same time, Kostiner said, the Arab states’ more educated elites are demanding more from the regimes. Educated in Western universities, computer-savvy and accustomed to satellite television, he said many return home and challenge the rulers.
“These people ask real questions about their society and their future and what improvements they can make, and that can start a real frustration,” Kostiner asked. “To what extent are they going to be open to Islamic radicalism?”
Zvi Barel, an Israeli journalist, disagrees. On Sunday he wrote in Ha’aretz newspaper that the Middle East can expect to see some of these same modern traits in the new crop of leaders, and he marveled at how stable the Arab world’s recent successions have been.
“Our familiar enemies are disappearing from the scene and will be succeeded by young unknowns,” Barel said. “The terms of reference will be different, the concepts will be new.”
