Oil is the world’s biggest business.
In terms of both volume traded and monetary value, it has no equal.
It’s a business that touches absolutely every country on earth and every person on earth. The only exceptions are, possibly, lost tribes in darkest Africa or the remotest jungle dwellers of New Guinea.
Gold might be the closest any other commodity has ever come to being a political force. But gold won’t turn factory turbines or make planes fly. Gold has never come close to matching oil as a political commodity.
Nor has any other commodity ever been so effectively managed by so few people.
Maybe the Ecuadorians can control the world’s banana market. And maybe the South Africans can control the world’s diamond market. And maybe the best red wines in the world can only come from France. But in the end, none of that really matters.
The world will survive if the last banana tree should ever become extinct.
The same is not true of oil.
Not these days.
The Saudis, who own nearly one-third of the entire free world’s oil reserves, are basically a conservative lot who believe that oil was a gift from Allah. It was a reward for their devout belief. Ever thankful, they see no reason to deny the teachings of the Koran. They believe that they must therefore never waiver from their devotion to Islam. At the same time, God has given them oil wealth which is to be translated into money as a means by which they can modernize. But one should never interfere with the other.
It is, to say the least, a dangerously narrow contradiction.
Success for Saudi kings therefore lies in cautious change. When Faisal decided the time had come to educate girls in Saudi Arabia, he skillfully brought about the change even though the population was largely opposed to it. Until then, school was for boys and very much the domain of religious leaders who were traditionally against higher education if by that you meant anything except the study of the Koran. So Faisal appointed one of these old educators to set up the new system.
In 1965, with the introduction of television in Saudi Arabia, some staunchly traditionalist Moslems protested that this was too radical a step towards modem western decadence and therefore a blatant insult to any fundamentally conservative interpretation of Islam. So Faisal, concerned with the powerful religious elements of Saudi society, set down certain rules. For example, love scenes in films must be edited out. Even smooching in cartoons was banned. Still, Faisal said, television was vital for the education of his people and it was going to happen in Saudi Arabia regardless of the most extreme Islamic elements.
One of those who considered television as something akin to heresy was an off-balanced born-again fanatic named Khaled ibn Musaid. What made his views slightly troublesome to the royal family was that, as the son of Ibn Saud’s 15th son, he was King Faisal’s nephew.
Even then, Khaled was only a minor nuisance. At least until he led an armed attack on Riyadh’s new TV transmitter.
The police arrived instantly to quell the disturbance. But Khaled and his followers refused to disperse.
The moment the police officer in charge realized that the man leading the rioters was a Saudi prince, he sent word to the Chief of the Security Forces who rushed off to inform Faisal.
The king was fully briefed. And the Chief of the Security Forces awaited instructions.
Faisal considered the situation for a long time before he answered, it doesn’t matter who the man is. He said, no one is above the law. He said, “If the prince fires at you then you must fire back.”
It was the Chief of the Security Forces himself who shot and killed Khaled ibn Musaid.
A few years later, Khaled ibn Musaid’s brother Faisal went to study in the United States. He started at San Francisco State, transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and then went on to the University of Colorado at Boulder. But his years there were marred by drug taking and a 1970 arrest in Colorado for conspiracy to sell LSD.
Although King Faisal refused to intervene personally on his nephew’s behalf, when word of the arrest reached Washington, bells went off at the State Department. Because of the boy’s royal connections, the Colorado judge was informally asked by the government to be lenient. He allowed the boy to plead guilty, gave him a suspended sentence and placed him on probation.
In 1971, when the boy returned to Saudi Arabia, the king banned him from leaving the country.
Yet somewhere along the line, the 27 year old had picked up some radical views on Saudi politics, an American girlfriend with whom he lived for five years and the idea that his uncle had to die.
*****
For Zaki Yamani, March 25, 1975 was supposed to be just another day.
He got up early, washed and went through his morning prayers. Then he ate a bowl of special fiber porridge while he read through whatever urgent matters had come in overnight.
He sat in the small living room of his private wing at the Yamama hotel and quietly went through the message traffic, until about 8:30 or quarter to nine. Then he dressed, called for his chauffeur and drove the few hundred yards to his office.
As usual, there was a full schedule of meetings that morning.
As usual, there was already a queue of people waiting for him.
Had it been just any other day, he would have stayed in the office until 3:00 or 3:30 before going back to the Yamama for a late lunch of yoghurt, nuts, dates and fruit.
Had it been just any other day, he would have returned to the office at 5:00 or 5:30 for more meetings, or perhaps a session of the Council of Ministers, which often lasted until after 9:00.
Had it been just any other day, depending on what he then had to do, he might bring files home to read. Or, he play cards with friends. Or, he might simply stay in his room, sprawled across his big bed, talking on the phone to friends around the world while watching a video. He had always had a regular supply sent to him from the States and England. He still does. Programs taped right off friends’ television sets, complete with commercials. Everything from last week’s “60 Minutes” to reruns of “Charlie’s Angels.”
But on the morning of March 25, Abdul Mutaleb Kazimi, the new oil minister from Kuwait, was in Riyadh. It was on Yamani’s calendar to escort Kazimi and his party into the royal offices at the working palace and introduce them to the king at a 10:30 courtesy call.
He left his office at 10:10 for the short drive to the palace and greeted Kazimi in an anteroom of the king’s small office.
It was 10:20.
Yamani recalls, “Kazimi introduced me to everyone in his party, including one young man whom he called ‘brother’ Faisal ibn Musaid. I didn’t recognize him. But I was amazed because the name is a Saudi name of the royal family and yet he spoke with a Kuwait accent. What also struck me was that he was nervous. Very nervous. Yet he obviously knew Kazimi well and he seemed to belong with the group, so I thought nothing more about it.”
While waiting for the king, Yamani promised the Kuwaitis that at exactly 10:25 Faisal would enter his office. Yamani assured them, “He is so precise. You could adjust your watch to him because he’s more accurate.”
And right on cue, at 10:25, Faisal walked into his office followed by his lone bodyguard.
From where Yamani was standing in the anteroom he could see Faisal in his office. He excused himself and left the Kuwaitis in the company of the Chief of Royal Protocol while he went to speak privately with the king for a few moments.
The king’s modest office was a narrow room at the far end of a corridor, taken up by a simple desk, two straight chairs facing the desk, two couches facing each other beyond that and a single window looking out at a garden.
Yamani explained the reason for Kazimi’s visit, but the king was in an especially good mood that morning and spent several minutes joking with Yamani. Then they walked together from his office to a reception room. It was larger than the king’s office but it was still very modest, with cushioned couches along three of the four walls.
A television crew was already set up to tape the gathering, which was to last not more than 15 minutes. It was to be just enough time to say hello and share a coffee.
When Faisal was ready to receive his guests, Yamani took his place next to the king. The two of them were facing the television crew.
The door opened and the Chief of Royal Protocol ushered the Kuwaitis in.
Kazimi was first.
The others in his party waited their turn in a queue.
Faisal welcomed Kazimi.
Just as he did, the young man with the Saudi name and the Kuwaiti accent started running towards the king.
It all happened very quickly.
The young man got right up to Kazimi before anyone noticed him.
He was only a couple of feet from Faisal and Yamani. And now he pulled a .38 pistol out from under his robes and started shooting.
It was 10:32.
He fired three times.
Yamani shakes his head. “I didn’t know what happened. I heard the gun shots but I didn’t know who was shooting. Then the king fell down. I came down with him.”
Panic erupted in the room.
Yamani raised his head to see the king’s bodyguard grab the young man.
They were struggling for the gun.
The guard had a grip on the boy’s wrist, forcing his hand up towards the ceiling.
But the boy was staring directly at Yamani.
There were more gun shots.
“He looked straight into my eyes. He stared directly at me and fired into the ceiling.”
Now more guards rushed in to wrestle the gun away from the young man.
And now Yamani raced outside to scream for help. He screamed for a doctor. Other people were screaming too. There was noise and confusion as everyone crowded around Faisal, who lay sprawled and bleeding across the carpet.
Yamani ran back into the room, pushing his way through the crowd. He bent down next to his king and stayed there until the ambulance arrived.
Medics rushed Faisal to Central Hospital. But the first shot had ripped open the king’s jugular vein.
Over the next few hours, with very little information being released about the incident, official silence merely served to create the market in rumors.
The first news was that the king had been shot twice in the head and three times in the chest, at close range. The young prince was said to have easily talked his way past the palace guards.
Next came the rumor that the king had merely been wounded.
When the official announcement was finally forthcoming, when Riyadh Radio announced that Faisal was dead, the palace claimed that the assassin was “mentally deranged,” and had been acting alone.
It was obvious that the Saudis were determined to put to rest any rumors that there had been a conspiracy, or that the young prince had been a tool for any sort of uprising against the king.
Next came the announcement that Crown Prince Khaled had assumed the throne and that the Minister of Interior, Fahd, would be Crown Prince.
As Khaled had not taken a very active part in his duties as Crown Prince, the moment he became king it was assumed, correctly, that Fahd would be the country’s chief executive, while Khaled would handle the more ceremonial details.
Years before, Faisal had realized that Khaled was not capable of ruling, that he much preferred hunting and spending time with the desert tribes. So Faisal took the unprecedented step of naming Fahd to be Second Deputy Prime Minister.
However, once enthroned, Khaled had his own ideas. There was even talk at the time of a minor rift between Khaled and his Crown Prince. If there was any real antagonism between the two, it remained private, as those things usually are among the ruling brothers of the Saudi royal family.
The new king personally spent hours questioning the murderer. And it was Khaled who learned that when the young prince stared into Yamani’s eyes and fired at the ceiling, he honestly believed the gun was aimed at Yamani. He was convinced he had killed Yamani too.
It was only after Khaled decided there was “no external motive for the crime”, that a medical panel was allowed to rule that the nephew was “although mentally deranged, sane at the time of the murder.”
On June 18, Prince Faisal ibn Musaid was led into the middle of the main square in Riyadh, in front of the Palace of Justice, where a soldier paraded him before the gathered crowd.
The unsteady prince-wore white robes and a blindfold. The soldier pushed the prince to his knees in front of the execution block. Then a man with a huge sword came up behind the boy and in one smooth swing beheaded him.
The prince’s head was placed on a stake and displayed for 15 minutes before an ambulance removed it and the body.
There are some people who believe the boy was simply avenging his brother’s death. Others say he was carrying out a single act of terror in some sort of organized concert towards world revolution. There are those who contended then and still believe today that it was a CIA plot. Or that Qaddafi had a hand in it.
What’s known is that while the young prince was at Berkeley he became interested in radical Arab causes, such as the PLO, and in various fringe Marxist groups. He was a staunch anti-Zionist and frequently told his American friends that his own family was too weak on the question of Israel.
Immediately after the assassination, a New York newspaper quoted one of the prince’s friends as saying, “He often remarked that his family was one of the major obstacles to progress in the Arab world. Many times he said that the Saudi Royal Family was interested primarily in cooperation with American oil interests.”
Yamani is firmly convinced that the young prince was not just avenging his brother’s death, “He was from the other side. The brother was very religious. This one was anti-religion.”
He believes that the nephew merely wanted to change the regime. “I must admit I don’t know that for sure. But some months later, when I was with the terrorist Carlos, he told me that he knew the nephew. He said he used to tease the nephew’s American girlfriend. He used to ask her how she could go out with such a reactionary. And the girlfriend told him, he is not a reactionary. The girlfriend told Carlos, he will do something very soon which will prove that he’s a hero.”
*****
Because Saudi Arabia is such a highly complex society, the key to ruling the country is not, as some people profess, in somehow stitching together the various interest groups and factions. Rather it lies in the less easily clarified talent of keeping those interest groups and factions from ripping apart.
Government is therefore a delicate balancing act.
Generally speaking, Khaled represented the traditionalists, with the roots of his power base in the tribal areas. Fahd was known as a champion of the technocrats and, at least in Saudi terms, a progressive.
Unfortunately, as one journalist spelled out at the time, “It is Fahd who has inherited the problem. But he hasn’t inherited the talent to deal with it.”
Not that there was open dissension among the two factions in the royal family. Instead the royal family conducts its affairs with a somewhat mysterious oriental discipline. Decisions are privately argued out among themselves, behind the shut doors of their palaces. They rarely if ever hang their laundry out to dry in public. Shooting one radical nephew and publicly beheading another doesn’t count. In 1958, when King Saud bankrupted the treasury through sheer extravagance and Faisal was assigned the task of rebuilding the state and Saud eventually left in exile and everybody pretty much knew the whole story, that was a rare exception.
Now, with Faisal dead and Khaled on the throne, there was obvious jockeying for position. Khaled was devout and well loved. But he’d had open heart surgery in the United States in January 1972, and was still in frail health. Believing that Khaled was not well enough to rule for very long, the Al Fahd moved as one block to take control.
“Watching Yamani”, the British Sunday Times said in mid-April 1975, “will tell us what is happening between Fahd and the king.”
They pointed out that, over the previous year, Yamani’s relationship with Fahd had become strained. “Fahd doesn’t appear to like Yamani’s freewheeling attitude with the western press. Yamani’s power lay in the complete confidence shown him by Faisal. Neither this, nor his dazzling success endeared him to the Saudi establishment.”
Maybe that was why, they theorized, “Throughout the past year Yamani went out of his way to ingratiate himself with Fahd.”
Maybe that was why, as so many Saudi watchers started to agree, Yamani’s position had become uncertain.
The announcement that he’d be replaced was expected within a matter of weeks. When it didn’t happen, the pundits remained confident. They assured anyone who asked, it will later this year. When it still didn’t happen, they said, but it will one day soon.
That day turned out to be more than 11 years away.
Yet, James Akins asserts, it wasn’t quite so obvious to him that Yamani would be the first to go. “He’s extremely clever. Extremely intelligent. He knows his field very well. And before the king was assassinated he’d made his peace with the other members of the royal family. Fahd and Abdullah (Crown Prince under Fahd). When the king was assassinated there really wasn’t any question of getting rid of him.”
Many other people aren’t so sure.
One Aramco senior executive puts it very plainly. “It’s amazing that he worked for the royal family as long as he did because there was always a lot of jealousy on their part. And some things did clearly change for him after Faisal died. For instance, Zaki could no longer speak with the same authority. It wasn’t a very obvious change. It was extremely subtle. But it was a change. Deep down there was always the hint that he couldn’t second-guess Fahd the way he could Faisal. Still, after Faisal’s murder, when it was Fahd who was running the country, Fahd and the Sudairi group somehow managed to push aside their jealousies and Yamani stayed on. They didn’t necessarily love him. But I guess Fahd and the others understood that they needed Zaki more than Zaki needed them.”
Former British Ambassador Sir John Wilton adds to that view. “The problem in Saudi Arabia is always power. Who has it and how much they have of it. There’s no doubt at all that Fahd was jealous of Yamani’s relationship with Faisal and the power he had under Faisal. But Fahd was shrewd enough not to let that get in the way. Now it was Fahd who had the power and he could share it out as he liked.”
That said, Wilton is not convinced that Faisal’s assassination changed the course of the country as much as it might have changed the course of Yamani’s life. “One remarkable thing is the swiftness with which the Saudi system adapts itself to the changes which are necessary. When Ibn Saud died, people naturally said, how can you replace a man of that stature. Well, Saud took over. It was perfectly smooth. The machine changed gear and went on. Then Saud was seen to be quite impossible and eventually the family said we must get this chap out. After incredibly patient maneuvering over a period of years by Faisal, Saud was edged out and Faisal took over. When Faisal was assassinated the next chap was there ready to take over. The committee continues. The next chairman is always there.”
With King Khaled, the chairman was Fahd.
Wilton continues, “Everybody said, we know that Fahd doesn’t like Yamani as much as Faisal liked Yamani, so Yamani is on very thin ice. You see, instead of doing the football pools in Saudi Arabia they guess about cabinet reshuffles. The great national pastime, especially during Ramadan, is saying, as soon as Ramadan is over, the king is going to reshuffle the government and Yamani is going to be out and Sultan is going to be this and Abdullah is going to be that. You hear this every year. Usually nothing happens. The number of cabinet changes in Saudi Arabia is infinitesimal. There are still chaps in government today from Faisal’s time. In fact, after Faisal’s assassination, there wasn’t a significant change in ministerial office for years. Yes, the Minister of Communications dropped dead and had to be replaced. And the Deputy Minister of Defense, Prince Turki, offended his brothers by what they thought was an imprudent marriage and he was required to retire from public life. But apart from that the same team went on and on. Sure, Yamani was on thin ice with Fahd. But thin ice in Saudi Arabia tends not to crack for a decade or so.”
James Schlesinger, then US Secretary of Defense, sees it another way. “After Faisal’s death, Yamani became just another technocrat who had to work with a slow-moving and ponderous Saudi machine. He couldn’t speak for Saudi Arabia after Faisal’s death the way he could before.”
The reason why is suggested by Sir James Craig, another former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “Look at the personalities. Faisal was a deeply intelligent man. He never had a formal education but he was travelling the world and meeting prime ministers as a child. He came to Britain when he was 13 and met with Lloyd George. It would be easy to see how he and Yamani would get along. Khaled was a very simple man. A very likeable man, but he was a dotty old chap and I suspect he’d been a dotty old chap since the age of 10. He certainly wasn’t capable of understanding inflation. He wouldn’t even know what the word was in Arabic. And the notion that he sat there and solemnly discussed the Saudis’ five-year development plan is quite absurd. Fahd did all that. Fahd normally took the chair at meetings of the Council of Ministers. Khaled only went there for ritual purposes.”
Craig accepts that some people say Fahd was jealous of Yamani, but he believes that’s putting it too strongly. “There was I think resentment. Not of Zaki’s intellectual attainments, because Fahd wouldn’t understand what that meant. It’s like, if I don’t understand music and don’t get any pleasure from it, can I feel jealous of someone who does? But Fahd would be resentful of Yamani’s prominence. Of his publicity. That rather silly but naturally human resentment would get a bigger push from the fact that it had political repercussions. Why did Zaki last so long under Fahd with whom it was well known he had bad relations from the start? My answer is, because to sack Zaki Yamani carried with it the danger of throwing open the whole world oil market. I believe the establishment in Riyadh felt in 1975 that Zaki was so well known, was such a pillar of OPEC, a pillar of the world oil economy and, to a certain extent of the general world economy, that they were nervous. That if there was a visible row leading to his dismissal, the repercussions could be incalculable.”
Prefacing his remarks with, “It would be difficult to say just how intelligent Fahd is because intelligence depends to a large extent on cultivation, on education,” Craig does stress, “he’s no intellectual. But he had a great deal of native shrewdness and astuteness and years of experience of very high politics on the national and international stage. That rubs off. Even if you’re stupid you learn. And he is not stupid. Fahd proved himself capable of understanding, not necessarily fully and profoundly understanding, but understanding for practical purposes, things like inflation, economic development policy and oil policy. I think for most of his reign he’s been following Zaki’s advice. In 1975 he needed Zaki. But he eventually came to the point where he felt able to take decisions against Zaki’s advice.”
However, he says, that’s not to take away from the fact Yamani also happens to be a survivor. “There were stories every six months that Zaki was going to be sacked. I once said to him, I’ve heard the stories that you’re going to be leaving and you’ve probably heard them yourself. He laughed and said, look, these stories come up every year. But none of the rumors have been true so far and when it does happen, if it does happen, I suspect I’ll be the last to hear.”
As it turned out, he was.
When one leading Saudi businessman was told in 1975 that Yamani might be fired, he replied, “Well maybe. But not today. I happen to know that it took Fahd two years to fire his cook.”
One of the most obvious things that changed with Faisal’s death was a style of leadership. Yamani has always said that Faisal could never be compared with anyone else in Saudi Arabia because he was such an exceptional man. But he adds, “As far as my own work as a minister was concerned, there was no change.”
That’s not quite the case.
Some American oilmen working in Saudi Arabia who had close contacts with Yamani claim that, in more mellow moments, he even said he would be finished with government once Faisal was gone.
These days Yamani denies it. “I never said that. Maybe it is true from a sentimental point of view that I thought such things. And yes, it was very difficult for me to continue. But I did continue. It took me a great deal of time to get over Faisal’s death. Even today I still feel a great personal void. The amount of respect I have for the man is still so great.”
Asking Yamani what else changed with Faisal’s death draws a long, hard stare that shows how reluctant he is to make a list.
Question: Was there a change in what you could or could not say?
Answer: “Maybe... yes.”
Question: About oil policy?
Answer: “No, not really. When it comes to issues other than oil policy.”
Question: Such as?
Answer: “You know, I used to discuss all sorts of things with Faisal at length. I could always tell exactly what he had in mind. So I sometimes felt I could reveal certain things.”
Question: What about your relationship with King Khaled?
Answer: “It was very cordial and warm. He was a man with a good heart, who cared about people and their welfare. He used to follow what was happening in the country. If someone was ill with heart trouble for instance, he’d send him abroad for an operation. He was that type of a man. He loved his people and he was greatly loved by his people.”
Question: Had Faisal not been gunned down, had he lived say another six years to the age of 75, what would or would not be different today?
Yamani’s initial reaction is to say he never speculates on such things. So you have to cajole him and say, go ahead, go on, until he gives in and is willing at least to hazard a guess.
Answer: “If Faisal had lived I don’t think we would have seen the Camp David Agreements. He was so very respected by all the leaders in the Middle East that if he was against something they would not do it. He would go to an Arab summit conference and the minute he took the floor to speak, you could see everyone in the room paying great attention to what he was saying. His opinions were not challenged. Also, I don’t think we would have seen a higher price of oil. What happened in 1979 might not have happened. There was pressure put on us to raise the price of oil in 1979 and I don’t think Faisal would have succumbed to it. Inside he was a very strong man, strong enough to resist those pressures.”
Inner strength was not the only thing that made him special. Yamani says, “Faisal also had a special talent for dealing with all of the forces of Saudi society. He could manage it for several reasons. First, because his mother was from a famous religious family, the al-Ashaikh. It enabled him to deal with that group. Second, because he himself was respected as a religious man. None of the religious groups would challenge him. Third, he had a sense of the country’s need to move forward, so he was respected by the progressives. Believe me, he was very powerful.”
Now Yamani is asked, “What about Fahd?”
And now he answers flatly, “He’s loved and respected by his people.”
*****
On March 23, two days before Faisal’s assassination, Yamani held a small ceremony at the Grand Mosque in Mecca to conclude his marriage contract with Tammam al-Anbar.
As she was the daughter of a wealthy Saudi businessman, a former Chief of Royal Protocol and a former ambassador to several countries, a traditional Moslem wedding ceremony and parties were planned.
But all of that changed on the 25th.
Once the ambulance took Faisal to the hospital, guards attended to Yamani. They drove him back to the Yamama. He was sheet white, overwhelmed by the murder, in a state of total shock. They literally had to carry him inside.
Over the next few days, as the reality of Faisal’s death sunk in, he couldn’t sleep. And he had no appetite.
In the weeks that followed, his own health deteriorated.
His utter horror at Faisal’s murder slowly turned to a deep and consuming grief. “I was in very bad shape. I was really suffering from his death. A part of me died with him that morning.””
Under those circumstances there was no question of having a large wedding ceremony or any of the festivities that go with it. All of that was cancelled.
However, according to the marriage contract, he and Tammam were already married. “So she agreed to forgo a wedding party in the normal sense. She wanted to come and take care of me. We eventually had a quiet and private ceremony on April 14.”
There have always been rumors that King Faisal’s last will and testament stipulated that Yamani was to be treated by the rest of the royal family as if he’d been Faisal’s own son.
But the likelihood is that Faisal didn’t leave a will. Or if he did, Yamani knows nothing about it. “I don’t think this is true.”
Nevertheless, while Faisal was alive Yamani was indeed treated like a son. “I was with him most of the time. But he was my boss.”
Here Yamani is not being totally straight. Their relationship was obviously much closer than employer and employee. When Faisal was in town, Yamani would not leave town except on official business. Other ministers weren’t necessarily on call like that, but it was known that Faisal had once asked that of all his own sons.
Throughout that spring and into the summer, Yamani’s grief did not subside. The only comfort he found was in his family, with Tammam, in his faith and sometimes in his work.
It was already, without any doubt, the worst year of his life.
He prayed everything would be better soon.
Tammam got pregnant with the first of their five children.
And now the two of them shared a hope for the future. But the year wasn’t over.
At the very end of 1975, Tammam nearly became a widow.
*****