RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — This kingdom's riches, fueled by the largest oil reserves in the world, are almost beyond dreaming.
Dozens of palaces are under construction here. Even the average businessman is likely to have a huge home with silk draperies, secluded fountains and crystal chandeliers. Malls are stocked with imported designer fashions. When ailing King Fahd vacationed in Spain last year, he took 50 black Mercedeses, 350 attendants and a 234-foot yacht, and had $2,000 worth of flowers and 50 cakes delivered each day.
But for an increasing number of citizens, that Saudi Arabia is a land of fable and memory. This country with pockets once so deep that it bought billions of dollars of U.S. weapons and helped finance U.S.-led military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is now deep in debt. Its younger generation is at pains to find jobs and houses in the suburbs, let alone palaces.
The dozen years since the Persian Gulf War have seen slums grow up on the outskirts of Jidda and Riyadh, the capital. Beggars hawk bottles of water at intersections. Penniless women huddle in strips of shade outside their crumbling mud-brick houses, begging for money. Many families in the capital are so poor they can't afford electricity. Raw sewage runs through parts of Jidda.
The suicide attacks against foreign residential compounds in the Saudi capital this week point up one of the most potent concerns U.S. officials have in a country seen as one of the United States' most reliable allies in the Arab world: The increasingly perilous economic situation that all in Saudi Arabia but the royalty face today may be a big factor in recruiting young Saudis to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
Chronic joblessness, diminished incomes and difficulty in collecting enough money to marry and start families are all issues that can evoke anger -- whether directed at the Saudi royal family, seen by many in the kingdom as spendthrift and corrupt, or at the millions of foreigners who hold high-paying jobs not available to young Saudi men.
"The problem in Saudi Arabia is that the middle class is shrinking," said Turki Hamad, a Saudi political scientist. "And the more poverty you have, the more fundamentalism you have."
While the kingdom's economic problems are complicated, he said, "I think there is no choice any longer. It is a kind of imperative. Either you change the essence of our political culture or you just vanish."
