Saudi Arabia: surrounded by uncertainty
On the face of it, Saudi Arabia should be reasonably content with recent developments in the Middle East; but the sands are continuing to shift and the uncertainties remain great.
On the positive side, for Riyadh, the Muslim Brotherhood threat appears to have been neutralized; the liberal forces within the Arab Spring are not making much headway; and Saudi-backed anti-Shia forces continue to battle Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq. The Kurdish question, which is moving up the Mideast agenda as the Kurds continue to consolidate and expand the autonomy they have already achieved in northern Iraq, is more of a problem for Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey than for the Saudis. Even the Iranian threat could be moderating slightly with the election of President Hassan Rowhani.
But despite all this, Riyadh remains exceptionally nervous, and with good reason. The negative side of the balance sheet includes rising Shia unrest in Bahrain and the continuing instability in Yemen; the resurgence of Sunni jihadism (which is both Saudi Arabia’s ally against Shia power in Iraq and Syria and its principal headache when it comes to relations with the US); the future of Jordan (which could still succumb, in time, to the Muslim Brotherhood); and US fickleness, not least in the way it turned against Egypt’s ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Saudi Arabia also has domestic concerns to contend with. As just one illustration, a recent Twitter campaign called ‘the salary doesn’t meet my needs’ was supported by 17m tweets in two weeks, suggesting that Saudi Arabia has not completely stifled the domestic fallout from the Arab Spring.
The most immediate problem is in Bahrain where the Tamarrud (Rebellion) movement, inspired by the movement of the same name that brought about the downfall of President Muhammad Mursi in Egypt, is attempting to stage a nationwide protest today (14 August), the anniversary of Bahrain’s independence from Britain in 1971. There are major differences, however, between the mostly secular Egyptian movement and the Bahraini version. The Bahraini movement represents the majority Iranian-backed Shia population against the ruling Sunni monarchy and its Saudi Arabian backers.
Calling the nationwide protests on 7 August, movement leader Husayn Yusuf called for protesters to join the march, to shut down their businesses, and to refrain from buying petrol, using public services, settling bills, carrying out financial transactions, and visiting commercial centres. The protest movement is demanding free elections and a new constitution for Bahrain.
In response, the Bahraini branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Al-Minbar National Islamic Society, accused the Tamarrud movement of planning violent protests and launched an online ‘Against Tamarrud Movement’. A union of Sunni youth groups, the Al-Fatih societies, accused Tamarrud organizers of “inciting sectarianism” and “chaos”.
The Shia ‘February 14 Youth Coalition’, named after the date on which protests began in 2011, has declared: “Tamarrud does not end on 14 August, but rather this date marks a new phase in the revolution to be followed by days of rebellion and civil resistance”.
One or two of the longer-established Shia groups have been cautious. For instance, Sheikh Ali Salman of Al-Wifaq has spoken up in favour of the protests, but only if they are “pacifist”. The Shia Haq Movement, on the other hand, encouraged all groups to take part in the protests and to “stay away from individualism so that the concept of Tamarrud could encompass all the social, professional, and political sections”.
The regime’s response, no doubt fully supported by Saudi Arabia, was to warn the protesters that they risk being labelled as “terrorists”. Ahead of the protests, the interior minister said: “We have warned before that we will take every action necessary against terrorists, and I don’t see a problem in making it clear that those challenging the state and disregarding its laws and aligning themselves with terrorism will bear the consequences of their actions.”
However today’s protests in Bahrain turn out, the issue of Bahrain’s majority Shia population being suppressed by the Saudi-backed Sunni monarchy will not go away.
In Yemen, the difficulties are compounded by the three-way nature of the struggle. The Shia Houthi rebels in the north are backed by Iran, but their main local opponents, hardline Sunni Muslim Salafis, are anathema to the United States which is continuing to wage an unpopular drone-backed war against jihadists in Yemen. Since 2002, up to 2,000 people are said to have been killed by US drone attacks in Yemen. According to human rights activist Abdulrahman Barman: “In many regions these planes represent fear and horror and this leads to hostility…between Yemenis and Americans.” Nor has Saudi Arabia endeared itself to Yemenis by deporting more than 50,000 Yemenis this year in a crackdown on unregistered foreign workers.
Then there is Iran. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent of the animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and while the election of Rowhani may be a positive development, few Saudis expect it to have any profound effect on relations. For instance, Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Saudi Arabia’s Shoura Council, has said that the difference between former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Rowhani is no more than the difference between “Coca-Cola and Pepsi”. Last week, the Saudi Gazette warned: “Tehran is up to the same old tricks, but with a different conjurer.” In this assessment, the Saudi view is no different from the Israeli one.
But if Saudi animosity towards Iran is not about to fade any time soon, nor is Shia animosity towards Saudi Arabia. An example of just how bitter the animosity towards Saudi Arabia has become in certain circles can be judged by a commentary published on 12 August in the Lebanese left-leaning daily al-Akhbar, written by the Jordanian commentator Nahed Hattar.
Hattar wrote: “The scene unfolding on our lands is now clear, bloody, and shameless: Saudi Arabia is waging a war of genocide in the full sense of the term against the Shiites and Alawites in Iraq and Syria. It is threatening to extend this ugly war to include Lebanon as well. Meanwhile, it is pressuring the Shiites in the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain via every possible means of repression and exclusion.”
Warming to his theme, Hattar added: “This crime…is being committed in broad daylight amidst a resounding silence that betrays unprecedented moral decrepitude and scandalous confusion on the part of the West, the Arabs, the Turks, and the Kurds…Let us confront the truth that is being smothered under a mound of fanaticism, hypocrisy, opportunism, fear, and an unrealistic insistence on the illusions of an ‘Islamic awakening’. All niceties aside, what we are facing is a dark Saudi Nazism, whose target is the Shiites rather than the Jews…It wallows in Shiite blood only to uphold a medieval political regime that enjoys imperialist support.”
Undeniably Hattar is somewhat intemperate, but this diatribe nevertheless accurately reflects a fairly broad spectrum of opinion which Iran, for one, is only too happy to exploit – and if Iran were ever to moderate and lose its pariah status with the West, then Saudi Arabia might really have something to worry about. JdeC.