[DINAKuncher]

Saudi Crown Prince Nayef Dies; Led Crackdown on Al Qaeda

Jamal Nasrallah/European Pressphoto Agency
Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz in 2008.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 17, 2012
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, the hard-line interior minister who spearheaded Saudi Arabia's crackdown of Al Qaeda in the kingdom after the Sept. 11 attacks and then rose to become next in line to the throne, has died. He was in his late 70s.

A statement by the royal family said Prince Nayef died Saturday in a hospital abroad. It did not specify where. Prince Nayef had been out of the country since late May, when he went on a trip that was described as a "personal vacation" that would include medical tests. He traveled abroad frequently in recent years for tests, but the authorities never reported what ailments he may have been suffering from.

His death reopens the question of succession in this crucial American ally and oil powerhouse for the second time in less than a year. The 88-year-old King Abdullah has now outlived two designated successors, despite ailments of his own. Now a new crown prince must be chosen from among his brothers and half-brothers, all the sons of Saudi Arabia's founder, Abdul-Aziz.

The figure believed most likely to be tapped as the new heir is Prince Salman, the defense minister who served for decades in the powerful post of governor of Riyadh, the capital. The crown prince will be chosen by the Allegiance Council, an assembly of Abdul-Aziz's sons and some of his grandchildren.

Prince Nayef was known as a hard-liner and a conservative. He was believed to be closer than many of his brothers to the powerful Wahhabi religious establishment that gives legitimacy to the royal family, and he at times worked to give a freer hand to the religious police who enforce strict social rules.

His elevation to crown prince in November 2011, after the death of his brother, Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, had raised worries among liberals that, if he ever became king, he would halt or even roll back reforms that King Abdullah had enacted.

Soon after becoming crown prince, Prince Nayef vowed that Saudi Arabia would "never sway from and never compromise on" its adherence to the puritanical, ultraconservative Wahhabi doctrine. The ideology, he proclaimed "is the source of the kingdom's pride, success and progress."

Prince Nayef had expressed reservations about some of the changes by King Abdullah, who made incremental steps to bring more democracy to the kingdom and increase women's rights. Prince Nayef said he saw no need for elections or for women to sit on the Shura Council, an unelected advisory body to the king that is the closest thing to a parliament.

His top concern was security in the kingdom and maintaining a fierce bulwark against Shiite powerhouse, Iran, according to American Embassy assessments of Prince Nayef.

"A firm authoritarian at heart," was the description of him in a 2009 Embassy report leaked by the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks.

Prince Nayef, a soft-spoken, stocky man of medium build, was born in 1933, the 23rd son of Abdul-Aziz, the family patriarch who founded the kingdom in 1932 and had dozens of sons by various wives.

Prince Nayef was one of the five surviving members of the Sudairi seven, sons of Abdul-Aziz from his wife Hussa bint Ahmad Sudairi who, for decades, have held influential posts. That makes him a half-brother of King Abdullah. Before being appointed interior minister, he held the posts of Riyadh governor, deputy minister of interior and minister of state for internal affairs.

Prince Nayef has 10 children from several wives.

He built his power though his fierce crackdown against Al Qaeda branch after the Sept. 11 attacks and a broader campaign to prevent the growth of Islamic militancy among Saudis.

The Sept. 11 attacks at first strained ties between the kingdom and the United States. For months, the kingdom refused to acknowledge that any of its citizens were involved in the suicide airline bombings, until finally Prince Nayef became the first Saudi official to publicly confirm that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis in a February 2002 interview with The Associated Press.

In November 2002, Prince Nayef told the Arabic-language Kuwaiti daily Assyasah that Jews were behind the Sept. 11 attacks because they have benefited from subsequent criticism of Islam and Arabs. He came under heavy criticism in the United States, especially because he was the man in charge of Saudi investigations into the attack. Criticism grew in the United States that the Saudis were not doing enough to stem extremism in their country or combat Al Qaeda.

In mid-2003, Islamic militants struck inside the kingdom, targeting three residential expatriate compounds - the first of a string of assaults that later hit government buildings, the American Consulate in Jiddah and the perimeter of the world's largest oil processing facility in Abqaiq. Al Qaeda's branch announced its aim to overthrow the royal family.

The attacks galvanized the government into serious action against the militants, an effort spearheaded by Prince Nayef. Over the next years, dozens of attacks were foiled, hundreds of militants were rounded up and killed.

By 2008, it was believed that Al Qaeda's branch was largely broken in the country. Militant leaders who survived or were not jailed largely fled to Yemen, where they joined Yemeni militants in reviving Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Prince Nayef took a leading role in combating the branch in Yemen as well. The cooperation against Al Qaeda both in the kingdom and in Yemen significantly bolstered ties with the United States.

The anti-militant campaign also strengthened Prince Nayef's ties to the religious establishment, which he saw as a major tool in keeping stability and preventing the spread of violent Qaeda-style "jihadi" theology.

The Wahhabi ideology that is the official law in Saudi Arabia is deeply conservative - including strict segregation of the sexes, capital punishments, like beheadings, and enforced prayer times - but it also advocated against Al Qaeda's calls for holy war against leaders seen as infidels.

Prince Nayef's Interior Ministry allied with clerics in a "rehabilitation" program for detained militants, who went through intensive courses with clerics in "correct" Islam to sway them away from violence. The program brought praise from the United States.

He never clashed with King Abdullah over changes or made efforts to stop them - such a step would be unthinkable in the tight-knit royal family, whose members work hard to keep differences under wraps and ultimately defer to the king. But Prince Nayef was long seen as more favorable to the Wahhabi establishment. In 2009, he shut down a film festival in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah, apparently because of conservatives' worry about the possibility of gender mixing in theaters and a general distaste toward film as immoral.