Easing the Code

From the far-flung corners of the Moslem world, pilgrims last week converged on Mecca, city of the Prophet's birth, where they would make the ritual seven circuits around the shrouded monument and enter to kiss the Black Stone handed down by the Angel Gabriel to Abraham. If they took time to notice, they might have detected a change in the air. Along the six-lane highway that leads inland to Mecca from the Red Sea port of Jiddah, pilgrims were ministered to by mobile hospitals, reservoirs of ice water, and troops of Moslem Boy Scouts. In the capital of Riyadh, lights burned late in the massive ministries along the main, four-lane boulevard, and a Saudi businessman rejoiced: "Now you get decisions even without going personally to the top." Said another: "Formerly when King Saud built a new palace, that was news. Now it's news when he inaugurates a new factory for making bottled gas, as he did recently in Riyadh." Inside the seven-mile-long walls of his air-conditioned Na-ziriyah Palace in Riyadh, King Saud was embarking on a program of economic expansion and modest social reform.

Austerity Behind. By Saud's decision, Saudi Arabia is leaving behind a two-year stretch of austerity that a man of his royal tastes found painful--even though the program was useful and was ably run by Saud's younger brother, Crown Prince Feisal, 56, the hawk-nosed heir to the throne. Taking over virtually all powers in 1958, Feisal proceeded to turn in surplus budgets and stabilize the faltering rial at five to the dollar. He clipped the King's and the princes' spending money until they howled. He also patched up Saud's feud with Nasser, who was understandably annoyed at reports that Saud had spent $5,000,000 trying to have him assassinated. But Feisal had his shortcomings. Says a Saudi merchant: "He would not delegate authority. Feisal had great, almost puritanical integrity, but he was not a man of decision. His desk piled high. Prices dropped but business died."

Last December, with the backing of most of the princes and after many tearful quarrels, Saud accepted Feisal's resignation as Premier and took the job himself. To get the economy moving, Saud turned to another brother, Prince Talal, 30, who as Finance Minister runs the country with the help of its most powerful commoner, Abdullah Tariki, 42, Minister of Petroleum, Mines and Education.

Moving Faster. Construction projects that halted two years ago will get going again, though the budget is to remain in balance. Talal and Tariki are busy on a $45 million-a-year program, drawn up by the World Bank, of small basic-development projects. Says Tariki, a University of Texas-trained geologist: "We need water, roads, education and, if possible, diversification of our economy. We have a planning board now, and things move much faster." Talal and Tariki talk about a petrochemical industry to make use of the 200 million cubic feet of gas that go to waste daily in the oilfields.

Progress that is almost daring by Saudi standards is being made in education. The school population has quadrupled in ten years to 100,000, and the education budget has gone up tenfold. Saud has donated at least ten of his 24 palaces for schools. At King Saud's Sons' Institute, inside the Naziriyah compound, children of slaves sit next to young princes. Risking the displeasure of the austere Wahabi sect of Islam, which believes that woman's place is in the harem and behind the veil, Tariki has put several thousand girls in school.

Other easing of the harsh Wahabi code can be seen at every hand. Goal posts stand far out in the desert for the benefit of passing nomads who have taken up soccer. Thieves now get their right hands chopped off in the public square only after the third offense. A doctor first administers a local anesthetic, bandages the stump, and then rushes the convict off by ambulance to a hospital, where, like all Saudis, he gets free medical care. The penalty for adultery is still death by stoning, but there has not been an execution in a decade; and the code prescribes that the victim first be rendered unconscious by drugs. Prince Talal is pushing for some sort of docile parliament. But the King has so far turned him down.

On Trial. There is fear that reforms could get out of hand. Saudi students, educated on government scholarships, are returning by the hundreds from Cairo, where many of them picked up an affection for socialism. Some of them go into the army, others into the civil service. Egyptian teachers and technicians in Saudi Arabia total 50,000, and Radio Cairo is the average Saudi's favorite station. As a counterweight, the government has recently been encouraging a native Saudi nationalism. Two months ago, Saud told the U.S. that it would have to get out of its big Dhahran airbase when the lease ran out in 1962. Recently, all non-Saudi taxi drivers lost their licenses, and Bedouins, according to one observer, "were hauled off their camels and into the driver's seat." The experiment left Riyadh littered with smashed cars.

In a country of many tribes and little sense of nationalism, old Ibn Saud tried to unify his nation in the traditional Arab way: by "marrying" the daughter of a chieftain for a night. Thus the 1,000 princes are a cross section of tribes; and politics in Saudi Arabia, where no man has a vote, is largely palace politics.

The conservative princes tend to gather behind Budget-Balancer Feisal. Recently a dozen of them showed their feelings and snubbed the King by refusing to show up at the airport to greet him when he made a ceremonial visit to Jiddah. If the reforms come too swiftly--or if spending gets out of hand--Talal and Tariki could find themselves out and the Feisal crowd back in. The dilemma, according to one Saudi, is that "Feisal 'feels that reforms will topple the throne, while Talal feels that without them the throne will topple." But both are loyal to the King, and depend on him. Says Tariki: "Change and reform are in the air and have the support of the King. Our royal family didn't create Saudi Arabia, but it does hold Saudi Arabia together. This country is like a block of sand, and without the house of Saud, it might fall apart."

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