Saudi Arabia’s pre-emptive doctrine

By S.P.SETH

After the relative ease of people’s revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, things are not going straightforward in North Africa and the Middle East. The people are facing stiff resistance from their despotic rulers. Which is not surprising because the march of history is never linear. There will always be twists and turns and setbacks. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi regime is fighting back with great brutality to re-establish control over the eastern part of the country, with Benghazi as its nerve centre. The struggle in Libya appears to have entered a crucial stage, with the US and other Western countries still undecided about how best to help the rebels.

In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the royal family is trying to deal with the situation by a mix of bribing the people through financial largesse and using a big stick, particularly in the largely Shia populated Eastern Province, where the unrest is quite widespread and has led to the use of force by the Saudi security establishment. The Eastern Province is rich in oil, but its people have remained marginalized and discriminated because of their Shia faith. Until now, they have been kept under tight control as second class citizens. They have always been restive but with the new revolutionary ferment enveloping the Middle East, they are now keen to breath freely under a democratic dispensation.

In Saudi Arabia, therefore, the people’s struggle also has a sectarian tinge with its Shia population seeking equal opportunities and democratic rule, as well as the freedom to practice their faith with their own mosques and rituals. The Shias constitute about 10 per cent of the population, with most concentrated in the oil rich Eastern Province. The Saudi ruling class is obsessed with sectarian divisions, particularly because of the perceived Iranian threat. They have been badly shaken by the popular upsurge in Bahrain, which is about 70 per cent Shia. Its Sunni ruling dynasty has generally dealt with the Shia majority in a ham-handed and discriminatory way. And when the popular upsurge broke out there, Bahrain’s ruling establishment sought to deal with it through overwhelming force. Which only further fuelled resistance, with the rebels demanding a democratic order. The violence of the regime has only intensified.

The situation In Bahrain has become even more explosive with the arrival of troops from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The rebels have called it “…an overt occupation…” Iran has called the move an “occupation” and an “invasion”. The situation is further complicated because Iran has long regarded Bahrain as its territory, though this claim has been dormant for quite some time.

There are two issues here. First, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are connected by a 25 kilometers causeway reaching into Saudi Arabia’s Shia-majority Eastern Province, where there have already been protests leading to the use of police force. Riyadh fears that Shia resistance on both sides of the causeway will feed on each other. And with Iran not far away from Bahrain, it will try to subvert Bahrain and the Gulf region. The Shia Iran is Saudi Arabia’s ultimate nightmare, and there has been no love lost between the two countries. It was dramatized in the WikieLeaks cables, with the Saudi King urging the US to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Will Iran fish into the troubled regional waters. It doesn’t seem likely. First: because Iran’s clerical establishment has enough on its plate as it is, with the opposition in the country mounting its own protests. Second: Iran has pretensions to being the leader of the Islamic world. Therefore, any open advocacy of a sectarian Shia cause would distract from its leadership aspirations. Third: any serious intervention by Iran will bring in the US, with its 5^th fleet stationed there.

In any case, an overwhelming use of force against rebels, whether in Bahrain and/or Saudi Arabia, will be counterproductive. It is important to realize that if cornered, only a small section of the rebels can do havoc to oil installations and US military bases. And this will have repercussions across the globe.

The Saudi monarchy is hardly popular among its majority Sunni citizens. It has been tolerated out of deep fear of consequences of being thrown into some dungeon, without due recourse to proper constitutional processes. But with revolutionary ferment in the region, its people are prepared to test the waters. There have already been protests by hundreds of family members of people jailed without charge to demand their release. This wouldn’t have happened without the revolutionary ferment in the region. The Internet is buzzing with calls for staging rage rallies on the Egyptian model. In other words, people are shedding off their fear. And that spells danger for the Saudi royals.

And what is the response of the Saudi authorities? Predictably, they announced a $36 billion package of subsidies etc. If the authorities were expecting an enthusiastic response from its citizenry for this gesture, this certainly hasn’t happened. Indeed, the country’s leading intellectuals have reportedly warned that financial gestures, however big, are no substitute for real political reforms. According to Shadi Hamid from the Brookings Doha Center, “The Saudi regime is learning all the wrong lessons from Egypt and Tunisia”. Because: “The unrest in the region is not fundamentally economic. It’s fundamentally about politics.”

The economics certainly plays a role. But, as Hamid says “…what the events of the past few months have shown us is that Arabs are looking for freedom, dignity and democracy---and if the Saudi leadership can’t see that, then they’re in trouble.” Saudi Arabia a closed political system with all power vested in the ruling dynasty, with its myriad princes and relations. The kingdom has faced for many years an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from its citizens. The dynasty managed to make a partnership of sorts with the clerical establishment by buying its political silence in return for promoting and exporting religious orthodoxy of the Wahabi Islamic tradition with money and political patronage.

But the demographics and rising unemployment among the country’s youth is changing the situation in Saudi Arabia. Almost half the country’s population is reportedly under the age of 18, and 40 per cent of the20-24 old are said to be out of work. And many of the young are educated, connected with the world through social media like Facebook, Twitter etc. With this kind of exposure to the outside world, living under an oppressive regime with near-total social and political control is clearly weighing on the people. This is a recipe for disaster sooner or later, especially in the new revolutionary situation.

With such combustible situation at home, one has to wonder why Saudi Arabia has taken on the mantle of saving Bahrain’s ruling family. Of course, they fear that the toppling of the Bahraini monarchy could have a ripple effect on the Saudi kingdom. This, therefore, looks like the Saudi application of the former US President George Bush’s pre-emptive doctrine.

Well, we all know what happened and is happening to Bush’s adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moving Saudi troops into Bahrain doesn’t look like a sensible strategy, and has the potential of plunging the region into an unthinkable disaster of global dimension.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times

Israeli veto on US’ Palestine policy

By S.P.SETH

Even as the despotic Middle Eastern regimes are falling, the US is continuing to dither. One area where the US now can act with vigor is the continued Israeli intransigence over the Palestinian issue. Obviously, at the present time when the Middle Eastern countries are seeking to overthrow their dictators and despots, the attention of its people is primarily focused on their struggle at hand. But when things settle down and they forge new relations with the United States, even Egypt and Jordan, the two countries with peace treaties with Israel, are unlikely to actively help Israel to continue choking off Gaza, as Hosni Mubarak’s regime did.

Israel has always argued that its occupation of Palestinian territories is not an issue of much, if any, relevance in the Middle Eastern polity. Therefore, all those who argue that a resolution of the Palestinian question will significantly improve the US and Israeli relations with the Arab world, indeed with the Muslim world, are barking up the wrong tree.

Even Barack Obama once believed that a resolution of the Palestinian issue will greatly help the US make a new start with the Muslim world. Unless one is a downright bigot, it makes sound sense. As David Remnick writes in a recent issue of the New Yorker:”….The Netanyahu government’s refusal to come to terms with the Palestinians , and its insistence on settlement building, have steadily undermined both the security and the essence of the [Israeli]state, which was founded as a refuge from dispossession… [and] its prospects will not be enhanced by an adherence to the status quo [of occupation].”

Remnick adds, “That was true before the uprising in Cairo, and will remain true after it. This was true before the uprising in Cairo, and will remain true after it.” Because: “Judgment—whether rendered by gods or by people---can be postponed but not forestalled.”

But is Washington listening? Not at all, judging by its veto of the Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territories. The irony is that only a short while ago the Obama administration was urging Israel to extend its 10-month moratorium (which the Netanyahu government was forced to impose under pressure from the Obama administration on illegal construction) for a little longer to facilitate peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Authority. Which Tel Aviv refused?

If, this was the US position a while ago, why did it not join other Security Council members to condemn Israel for acting against international law? Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, argued it was a matter better pursued in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

At a time when the Arab world is going through a people’s revolution, on the Palestinian issue the US is still taking shelter behind arcane and, frankly, absurd arguments that even its European allies are finding it hard to digest. As Jonathan Freedland has written in the Guardian, “… that peace with Arab rulers alone could never last, and that one day Israel will have to make peace with the peoples [Arabs] it lives among.”

And he adds, “ That day may not be coming soon—but that truth just got a whole lot harder to avoid.” Not if the United States will continue to reinforce Israeli delusion by giving it political, economic and military support.

The point is that the US’ Middle Eastern strategy is in tatters. It had two pillars. First: an alliance with regional dictators to keep the Arab people down because, if allowed democratic rights, they might elect an Islamist regime hostile to the US strategic interests in the region. Indeed, there was a convergence of interests between the US and Arab dictators and monarchs because both feared the Arab people and Islamists.

The second pillar is the United States’ unquestioning commitment to Israeli state and its “security”. Both pillars are interconnected because Israeli “security” and US strategic interests require supine rulers in the Middle East, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, that would do their bidding.

Regarding the first, the People’s Power has shown that Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups were as much spooked by the popular and essentially secular nature of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world as anybody else. The militant Islam as a political force was largely exaggerated. Indeed, the protesters everywhere were gathering around the banner of freedom and democracy that should calm US fears.

Even a prominent US conservative analyst like Robert Kagan of Brookings Institution, a prominent early advocate of Iraq war, has said, “ We were overly spooked by the victory of Hamas” in the 2006 Palestinian elections. And he says, “…There’s no way for us to go through the long evolution of history without allowing Islamists to participate in democratic society.”

Which raises a pertinent question: “What are we going to do ---support dictators for the rest of eternity because we don’t want Islamists taking their share of some political system in the Middle East?” In other words, the US would need to reorient its Middle Eastern policy to accommodate the dynamics of democracy in that region, including legitimate political representation of Islamic parties.

Writing in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof is equally emphatic when he says, “For decades, the US embraced corrupt and repressive autocracies in the Middle East, turning a blind eye to torture and repression, in part because of fear that the ‘democratic rabble’ might be hostile to us.” He adds, “Far too often, we were both myopic and just plain on the wrong side.”

An important factor in this has been the Israeli pressure, reinforced by the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States, to keep supporting and nurturing the despotic rulers because they were easy to manipulate and were equally fearful of the “democratic rabble”. Over the decades, Israel and the US have become indivisible over the Middle East, particularly on the Palestinian question. And that still seems to be the case, despite all the fluttering of democracy in the Arab world, as evident in the US vetoing of the UN Security Council resolution to condemn Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestine.

Unless the United States starts seeing its national interest independently of Israel, there will be this dichotomy in its Middle Eastern policy. The democratic Arab countries in a new Middle East are unlikely to confront Israel militarily over Palestine, but their popular constituencies at home will not let them turn a blind eye to the sufferings and bombing of fellow Arabs in the Palestine. And this will have an important bearing on their relations with the United States.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.