The Economist
November 10, 2012
IN OTHER places sand trickles through an hourglass at a steady rate. Saudi Arabia has a lot of sand, but it tends to get gummed up with oil or stuck in prickly religious conservatism. Yet now and then something jogs the glass, and those grains of Saudi sand briefly unclog.
Just such a nudge came on November 5th, with the announcement of a
sudden change at the top of the kingdom’s powerful ministry of interior
(its headquarters, a ponderously inverted pyramid in the Saudi capital,
Riyadh, actually does evoke the top half of a giant hourglass).Out went Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, who at 72 had held the job of minister only since June, when his half-brother and predecessor, Prince Nayef, who had filled the post for 37 years, died. In came Nayef’s son, Prince Muhammad, who had long served as his father’s chief assistant at the ministry, in charge of counter-terrorism.
What may sound like a small shift could carry large portents. King Abdullah is believed to be 89 and in poor health. His anointed successor, Prince Salman, is 76 and said to be growing scatty and infirm. Like the two recently departed interior ministers, both men number among the 45-odd sons sired by King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the founder and namesake of modern Saudi Arabia, who died in 1953.
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