House of Saud’s musical chairs
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angry-corner/house-saud%E2%80%99s-musical-chairs
The announcement of the recent change in the line of succession in the House of Saud is unusual, even by the standards of the House of Saud in the wake of the death of King Fahd. The family is now as disunited as it was back in the period prior to the 1964 coup by King Faysal (people forget that the manager of the coup was King Fahd himself). Yet, there is a big difference thus far: the family factions in the early 1960s pursued different political options. King Saud — having been a typical Saudi reactionary back in the 1950s — had assumed a progressive cast and relied on a group of progressive Saudi intellectuals to implement his, or more accurately their, vision. He compensated for the lack of family support by advocating policies that were more in tune with Saudi, and even Arab, (...)