The Middle East, perhaps
more than anywhere else, is a region of contrasts and contradictions, the kind
that life throws our way to teach lessons and lift the fog of ignorance. One of
those popped up last month when the New York Times spared no detail in describing the world’s most expensive home, a
chateau near Versailles owned by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. With
text and image, the article described at length the exquisite chateau and its 57-acre
landscaped park: ceilings adorned with chandeliers and fresco paintings, Carrara
marble statues, an underwater chamber with fish swimming overhead, and the
park’s gold-leafed fountain and hedged labyrinth. An earthly paradise, no
doubt.
In his short-yet-speedy
ascent to power, which included his appointment as minister of defense in 2015
and as crown prince last June, Mohamed bin Salman (often referred to by the English
acronym MBS) has exhibited a penchant for a lavish lifestyle and splurge
spending. The list of splashy purchases he made over the past two years
includes a $500 million yacht, the record-breaking $450 million “Salvator Mundi” painting by Leonardo da Vinci and that $300 million French
mansion. Rather ironically, MBS acquired these extravagances against the
background of a Saudi budget deficit totaling 297 billion riyals in 2016; growing poverty and high youth
unemployment; the recent detention of hundreds of businessmen and princes on
opaque anti-graft charges; and massive spending on a pointless war on Yemen.
In foreign relations,
MBS (the de facto Saudi ruler since 2015) has wrought havoc on a regional
cauldron already bubbling with volatile conflicts and pressures. Under his
direct leadership, Saudi Arabia blockaded Qatar, reportedly
attempted a coup in Doha, forced
Lebanon’s prime minister to resign and kept him against his will in Riyadh, intensified
a cold war against Iran and waged a ruthless war against the Arab world’s
poorest country, Yemen.
Yemen has borne the
brunt of Saudi military might, but it has also exposed its folly. It is
estimated that the war in Yemen costs the
Saudi budget around $200 million daily. The Saudis tout that their efforts are
aimed at supporting Yemen’s legitimate government and defending the region from
the spectre of Iranian expansionism, but the grim realities on the ground put
their words to shame. As a result of nearly three years of intense aerial
bombardment and a naval blockade, Yemen - already plagued for many years by
poverty and instability - has plunged into the abyss of total collapse.
Since the Saudi war on
Yemen began in 2005, at least 13,000 civilians have been killed, more than
three million people have been displaced, and the country has been hit by the
largest worldwide outbreak of cholera in five decades. Today, of 28
million Yemenis, around 20 million (71 percent) are in need of some
humanitarian assistance, including 17 million who are considered food insecure
and 14 million who do not have access to safe drinking water or sanitation.
With around 7 million Yemenis just “a single step away from famine,” the
country is facing a famine “of biblical proportions” warned one prominent aid
worker.
If we juxtapose these
two images - the joie de vivre of the Saudi crown prince and the hellish misery
resulting from the war he wages - a thorny question will inevitably hover in
the air: Other than towards securing a luxurious life for the ruling family and
bankrolling military adventures in the region, where has the largest inflow of
wealth in the modern history of the Arab World gone? These windfall gains began
pouring on Saudi coffers in the 1930s. A 1945 State Department memo
described the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia as “one of the greatest material
prizes in world history.”
Yet, rather than
focusing on enlightenment, social progress and human development, the ‘black
gold’ was invested in power, its building, consolidation and projection. To be
sure, the new wealth elevated Saudi Arabia in the scales of power from a
playground - where regional and international forces grappled with each other
in pursuit of influence - to a major player to be reckoned with on the regional
and global stage. But then what? What has this massive political and economic
power brought? The untold truth in regional discourses, the elephant in the
room, is that the largest windfalls bestowed on the Middle East in modern
history have been a curse in disguise, and a major source of misery in the
region.
Since it was founded, Saudi
Arabia has been ruled by a single family. The rule of the country and control
of its riches have been passed down from one generation to the next like a
family heirloom. The Saudis forged a drab state at odds with the order of
modern nations. Its buildings, freeways, shopping malls and cars may be modern
and fancy, but they are just a façade hiding an archaic polity. The ruling
family has opted for a sociopolitical system that is allied to the ulema;
protected by a network of draconian security agencies that show no mercy
towards dissidents; steeped in nepotism and influence-peddling; wedded
to obscurantism; and that asserts its presence in world politics using the
power of Riyalpolitik.
Worse still, at the
heart of this peculiar regime – depicted by
one political scholar as a “pious kleptocracy” - is a culture that harbors a deep
animosity towards liberties and any form of bottom-up change. This hostility
has been so powerful - as though freedom is a plague from which one should take
refuge - that it has shaped the genes of this state, both politically and
culturally. Of course, in the Arab world most, if not all, regimes tend to
oppose reform, but the ruling Saudi family has the financial means to bail out
autocrats, give them the kiss of life when threatened, and, if necessary, replace
them with other subservient autocrats in order to buoy their regimes and the
region’s club of despots.
This explains why numerous
despots who were swept out of office (such as Idi Amin of Uganda and Tunisia’s
Ben Ali) have found in Riyadh a comfortable haven. Deep down, this was a
gesture of fidelity to fellow dictators, companions of the road who keep the
regional order running as it is, corrupt and undemocratic. It also shows
indifference, even subtle contempt, to the people who endured agony and despair
under the rule of these dictators.
Unsurprisingly, then, the
Kingdom was, almost by instinct, unalterably opposed to the voices of the Arab
street clamoring for liberty in the potent 2011 wave of protests, the Arab
Spring. The calls for reform in Tunis, Cairo, Sana’a and Manama jolted Saudi
Arabia into immediate action, spending massively in support of embattled
dictators and digging in for a long fight against the forces of change. From day
one, Saudi Arabia became the Arab Spring’s foremost enemy. Not only did it
support the dictators up to the hilt, but it also encouraged regional and
international powers to toe the same line. This belligerent posture soured
Riyadh’s longstanding relations with Washington. President Obama, the oil
princes thought, did so little to save Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben
Ali, who, lest we forget, had killed hundreds of peaceful protestors under the
gaze of the world.
Culturally, the kingdom’s
conservatism has undermined the efforts of liberal religious reformers in Egypt
and the Levant, attempting to renew the religious discourse and reconcile Islam
with modernity. Much has been written about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s
attempts to export its “revolution”, but much less about Saudi Arabia’s export
of its Islamic “ideology.” Based on a marriage of power between the ruling
family and the clerics, the kingdom has espoused a narrow, dogmatic and ultra-conservative
variant of Islam, Wahabism. Not only is this version pitted against modernism,
against life itself, but it is also against the true principles of Islam.
To buttress its image among
Muslims as the voice of Islam and “the guardian of the holy mosques,” and to gain
political currency, Saudi Arabia made a concerted effort to spread this narrow
understanding to Muslim-majority countries In the Arab world, Africa, and East
and Central Asia. Decades of massive funding to charities, mosques, learning
centers and, in Pakistan and Bosnia, madrassas and training camps run by zealot
Wahhabis produced generations of young Muslims who loathe nonbelievers, view
women as a source of fitnah (temptation or affliction), and consider
armed struggle to be the panacea for all ills. Similarly, years of generous
support for the “mujahedeen” in Afghanistan bred Al-Qaeda, which orchestrated
the 9/11 attacks, and which has morphed into what is now known as global jihad.
To add insult to injury,
Saudi Arabia has in recent years been heaping oil on the fire of sectarian
strife, adding an unnecessary cause of unrest to a region already awash with
conflict and instability. This owes itself to the intense Saudi rivalry with
Iran, which has possessed the new generation of Saudi rulers. MBS, in
particular, has exhibited an increasing appetite for war, risk-taking and
harnessing sectarianism to win allies and roll back Iranian influence. Today, nearly
all civil conflicts in the region, especially in Yemen and Syria, have turned
into quintessentially proxy wars between Riyadh and Tehran loaded with a heavy
dose of sectarian overtures.
***
Various scholars have
championed the argument that Saudi Arabia is fated for a quick collapse. Renowned
British historian Robert Lacey heralded his best-seller book on the Kingdom by
a harsh statement: “In theory, Saudi Arabia should not exist—its survival
defies the laws of logic and history.” But it, and alas continued to use its
vast wealth to back dictators, hamper change, toy with the fates of other nations,
ignite sectarianism and spread a radical version of Islam. Saudi Arabia is
certainly not the only source of evil in a region caught in the grip of
numerous misfortunes. However, if these practices go on unabated, can a
democratic, progressive and non-sectarian Arab world ever see the light of day?
Nael Shama
* This essay appeared in The New Arab
(English) on January 31, 2018.
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