{"id":25497,"date":"2013-01-18T14:49:05","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T10:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=25497"},"modified":"2013-01-18T14:49:42","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T10:49:42","slug":"the-kingdom-of-surprises-engaging-with-saudis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/region\/gcc\/saudi-arabia\/the-kingdom-of-surprises-engaging-with-saudis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kingdom of Surprises: Engaging With Saudis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"saudi<\/a><\/p>\n

I am currently in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at a conference to discuss the region in light of these ever so changing times. It\u2019s always interesting to come to the Kingdom and even better when you\u2019re here with leading academics and the most\u00a0erudite\u00a0and informed of Saudis. Some thoughts:<\/p>\n

– It\u2019s been at least six months since I visited another GCC country so it\u2019s nice to go to Riyadh to be reminded of the differences between the states (or at least two of them). Everyone knows that Riyadh is a huge city but only flying over it and driving through it do you see the level of\u00a0sprawl with the city forever splurging into the desert in a low-rise tide of villas. Doha it is not.<\/p>\n

– We visited the Saudi\u00a0National\u00a0Museum. I had no idea that Saudi\u2019s history was as extensive as it appears to be; a true \u2018crossroads of civilization\u2019 as one Saudi put it. As yet it seems that much of this history going back thousands of years has barely begun to be uncovered and the Kingdom must be one of the least touched but richest\u00a0countries\u00a0on earth for\u00a0archaeologists.<\/p>\n

– The discussions that I attended in the Saudi capital were of the highest\u00a0caliber\u00a0 The Saudi academics and attendees \u2013 all Western educated \u2013 were hugely impressive. They were articulate, erudite and intelligent which is \u2013 of course \u2013 no\u00a0surprise\u00a0given how long Saudi has been sending its best students abroad. Qatar cannot and can never hope to compete; it just doesn\u2019t have the critical mass of people to engage in this kind of education. Indeed, I am happy to be corrected, but I\u00a0suspect\u00a0that there were more political science PhDs in the conference room alone than political science PhDs earned by all Qataris in the last decade.<\/p>\n

– There was staunch Saudi support for Bahrain. The arguments were nuanced and far more erudite than the usual \u2018it\u2019s Iran\u2019, though this refrain was used too. Two trends of argument were interesting in\u00a0particular.<\/p>\n

Firstly was the notion of \u2018what do you expect?\u2019 If there were a popularly elected government via perfect elections then this would be Shia-led given the population dynamics and such a\u00a0government\u00a0would be \u2013 so the argument went \u2013 intrinsically disposed to the Iranian government creating some kind of a Shia bastion just off KSA\u2019s coast. The analogy of the Cuban Missile Crisis was used to illustrate this point. I don\u2019t agree with this logic, but it makes a certain sense.<\/p>\n

Secondly, it was interesting how the West\u2019s worst activities were used as cover for Bahrain\u2019s worst activities. The Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were used as a calling out of the West\u2019s double standards. \u2018Look at the things you [sic] do when your \u2018national security\u2019 is at risk. It is the same in Bahrain\u2019. While I don\u2019t agree with this \u2013 one should hardly use the atypical, controversial and maligned activities of the West as a model or the most base excuse \u2013 this is a powerful argument in its own right and reminds one of how easily eroded the theoretical moral high ground can be.<\/p>\n

– The talks were attended by a senior Saudi Prince. He came for the opening evening lecture and the subsequent dinner. Much to my surprise he came back the day after for the 12 hour day of presentations and talks and came for dinner again that evening. He was erudite, engaging, open, witty, and\u00a0substantively\u00a0contributed to every panel discussion. There was no ceremony about his presence and he took the bus in the evening to the second dinner. For a variety of reasons I just can\u2019t imagine the same happening almost anywhere else in the Gulf.<\/p>\n

– Saudi itself was the\u00a0center\u00a0of much of the discussions. A UK based academic gave an excellent if familiar \u2018Saudi is in financial peril\u2019 talk and it is impossible to\u00a0disagree\u00a0that going forward a decade or so the combination of increasing salaries in the increasing Government sector, the struggling private sector, the surging domestic energy demands of the Kingdom and a range of\u00a0structural\u00a0issues such as industry\u2019s dependency on cheap fuel mean that the Kingdom is facing huge challenges. He also noted that Saudi\u2019s Gini\u00a0coefficient\u00a0(a measure of inequality) was staggeringly high.<\/p>\n

There is no answer to these challenges but the numerous Saudis around the table were somewhat\u00a0weary\u00a0of these concerns having heard very similar versions of these \u2018Saudi is ok now but in 5 years\u2026\u2019 for decades now. Of course those around the table were the elite in the Kingdom and are unrepresentative of the Saudi population as a whole. Nevertheless in defence of the Kingdom, so to speak, they made some good points. 1) The Kingdom has proven to be surprisingly resilient before. 2) There is a staggering amount of waste \u2013 \u2018fat\u2019 as one contributor put it \u2013 in the Government sector that can be seen as an area for streamlining as and when budget pressures necessitate. 3) The Saudi Government controls\u00a0up to\u00a075% of the economy and could\u00a0privatize\u00a0industries if the buffers really were approaching giving them a potentially huge windfall. Of course none of this is straight forward \u2013 the modern age, as an American contributor pointed out, has a raft of unique, new and resilient structural changes (media openness etc) and cutting fat is not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0that easy \u2013 but these were, I thought, interesting points. I still think that Saudi is facing catastrophic challenges in the next 15 years but the issue demands a lot more thought that I\u2019ve been able to give it thus far.<\/p>\n

Other random points:<\/p>\n

– The Ottomans legalised gay marriage in 1876<\/p>\n

– Istanbul is the biggest Kurdish city<\/p>\n

– Apparently the US Embassy Ministry in Baghdad has approximately 1000 Americans working there but only 7 Americans who speak Arabic. Good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVID ROBERTS: It’s a while since I’ve left Qatar but the differences between the tiny peninsula state and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are striking <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,173,83,60,482,10],"tags":[1209,18303,18286,18275],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}