After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (37 page)

Countering the Arab Spring: the wrong side of history

During the first Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt most of the Gulf monarchies quickly and instinctively positioned themselves on the side of the region’s remaining autocracies. Perhaps assuming that the revolutions would fail, or that American and other Western interests in the area would ultimately deny the opposition movement’s sufficient international support, a number of the Gulf monarchies’ governments and advisors seemingly misunderstood or underestimated the scale of these uprisings. Consequently they chose to portray their states as being bastions of authoritarianism and—collectively—as something of a counter-revolutionary bloc. Although the full impact of this stance is not yet clear, it is likely that the new post-revolutionary electorates and governments in the Arab world will not view the Gulf monarchies favourably, even if they remain open to Gulf investments and development assistance. Moreover, and arguably more significantly, it is likely that many of the younger and more idealistic Gulf nationals will also view their governments and ruling families with distrust or as being ‘on the wrong side of history’, especially as more and more of these nationals study the Arab Spring and correspond and interact with fellow Arabs from post-revolutionary states. In early February 2011, for example, at the height of the Egyptian revolution, a new region-wide group of Gulf nationals including academics, journalists, and human rights activists gathered to ‘urge the conservative monarchies which have ruled the region for centuries to embrace democracy and freedom of expression’. Referring to itself as the Gulf Civil Society Forum, the group issued a statement calling for ‘…the ruling families in the Gulf to realise the importance of democratic transformation to which our people aspire’, and warned the Gulf monarchies not to crack down on activists planning to stage peaceful protests. Significantly, the statement also called for the ruling families to ‘understand that it is time to free all political detainees and prisoners of conscience and issue constitutions that meet modern day demands’ and claimed that ‘the Gulf peoples look forward for their countries
to be among nations supporting freedom, the rule of law, and civil and democratic rule which have become a part of peoples’ basic rights’.
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At the same time as these statements were being issued, however, Saudi Arabia’s leading religious authority and Grand Mufti, the aforementioned Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh—a septuagenarian cleric who had earlier claimed that ‘reconciliation between religions was impossible’
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—was publicly criticising the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. After claiming that ‘…these chaotic acts have come from the enemies of Islam and those who serve them’, he then went on to say that ‘…inciting unrest between people and their leaders in these protests is aimed at hitting the nation [the Muslim world] at its core and tearing it apart’. Having already provided the ousted Tunisian president with asylum in a Jeddah palace, and with the king having earlier telephoned the embattled Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to offer his support and to ‘slam those tampering with Egypt’s security and stability’
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it was abundantly clear that the Saudi ruling family both feared and opposed the Arab Spring. Moreover, soon after Mubarak’s ousting members of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces went on record to claim that they had ‘…received information that certain Gulf countries had offered to provide assistance to Egypt in exchange for not bringing Mubarak to justice’.
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Thought to refer to Saudi Arabia, this again seemed to indicate the kingdom’s position on the revolution and perhaps how its government hoped to use development aid to limit or influence the actions of any new Egyptian government. On a foreign policy level Saudi Arabia also made it quite clear that the new Egyptian and other post-revolutionary Arab governments posed a risk to the region’s security, not least undermining the Gulf monarchies’ aforementioned stance on Iran. After the post-Mubarak administration granted permission for Iran to sail two warships through the Suez Canal in February 2011
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and then announced it would restore diplomatic relations with Tehran, Gulf-based analysts quickly remarked that ‘Gulf policymakers are concerned about Iran making inroads into Egypt’, that ‘…there’s no doubt the Saudis are very concerned about Egypt’s new foreign policy orientation’, and that ‘Saudi Arabia is seeking to regain its heavyweight position in the region and doing so in a very assertive manner. It does not want to see Egypt erase any Saudi gains’.
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The UAE’s official position on the Arab Spring, at least in the early days, also appeared in line with Saudi Arabia’s. An attempted rally to
‘silently and peacefully protest against Mubarak’ by Egyptian activists outside their country’s consulate in Dubai was swiftly broken up by police.
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And a UAE national
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who had apparently tried to express support for Tunisian and Egyptian demonstrators in a mosque was later seized from his home in Sharjah on the grounds that he was ‘disturbing public security’. For several days his location was unknown, with Amnesty International filing a request that the UAE authorities confirm his legal status and whereabouts.
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Two weeks after protests began in Egypt, the UAE’s minister for foreign affairs
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became the first—and only Arab—international diplomat to meet with Mubarak during the revolution. Described by another Arab diplomat as ‘showing extraordinary political support for Egypt’, the UAE visit was treated with great suspicion by many Egyptian protestors, not least because the crown prince of Abu Dhabi
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had stated earlier in the week that ‘…the UAE rejects all foreign attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Egypt’.
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Moreover, soon after Mubarak’s fall one of the crown prince’s aides was reported by Reuters to have ‘…vented his frustration over the downfall of a major ally who Gulf Arab rulers once thought was as entrenched in power as they are’, and to have questioned ‘how could someone do this to him [Mubarak]?’ before explaining that ‘he was the spiritual father of the Middle East. He was a wise man who always led the region… We didn’t want to see him out this way…’
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Meanwhile, in Dubai’s most read state-backed newspaper,
Gulf News
, a leading member of the emirate’s merchant community argued that ‘there is a very real danger that mob rule is destroying Egypt’s reputation, stability and economy while Mubarak was the symbol of stability, economic prosperity and peace’.
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As with Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf monarchies, the UAE was also reportedly alarmed that Mubarak would have to face the indignity of a trial. As claimed by Egypt’s
Al-Masry Al-Youm
newspaper ‘…certain princes offered to pay the hospital bill of deposed President Hosni Mubarak, when they heard that the Egyptian government would not meet the costs of his [private] medical treatment’.
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More recently, even after the success of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi in Egypt’s May 2012 elections, senior UAE officials have gone on record with inflammatory statements. Dubai’s veteran chief of police,
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for example, claimed in July 2012 that members of the Brotherhood had ‘been meeting people from the Gulf and discussing toppling Gulf regimes’ and warned the Egypt-based group that ‘they would lose a lot if they challenged
the Gulf states’.
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Beyond Egypt, the UAE’s diplomatic stance has been much the same on other Arab Spring revolutions, or at least when they began. In April 2011, nearly two months after the beginning of the Bahrain revolution and a month after the deployment of UAE and Saudi troops in the kingdom—as discussed below—the crown prince of Abu Dhabi received a delegation from the Bahraini government which had come to ‘express its gratitude… for the supportive stance that had contributed to establishing security and stability in the kingdom’. Despite the crown prince having no formal foreign policy role in the UAE’s federal government, he reportedly welcomed the delegates by ‘stressing the deep fraternal bond between the UAE and Bahrain as well as all other Gulf countries’ and stated that ‘these relations are based on strong historical ties, shared interests, and mutual destiny’. Despite the brutal crackdown that was taking place in Bahrain that very week, the crown prince also expressed his ‘support for Bahrain and its people as well as the measures adopted by Bahrain’s wise leadership for establishing peace and security’. He also ‘hailed the efforts of the king and the crown prince [of Bahrain] for reforms and development as well as for protecting the values of national unity, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence among sects’.
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On a broader level, there are indications that the Gulf monarchies are now working harder than ever to portray themselves collectively as being inherently different from the Arab authoritarian republics. A concerted effort has been made to convince both their own populations and the international community that there are somehow enough structural differences between their style of authoritarianism and that of their neighbours such as to exempt them from Arab Spring-type revolutions. Most notably, there have been recent attempts to broaden the Gulf Cooperation Council to include the fellow Arab monarchies of Jordan and Morocco. Despite these states being geographically separated from the Gulf monarchies and having few economic or social commonalities it has nonetheless been reasoned that their survival now matters to the Gulf monarchies. Jordan and Morocco have faced serious protests since early 2011, but the regimes remain in place for the time being, and thus provide some temporary evidence for the ‘monarchy is different’ theory. In May 2011 a GCC consultative summit was held during which it was decided to offer both Jordan and Morocco GCC membership. The summit’s main topic of discussion was likely to have been the Arab Spring and how the Gulf monarchies could best find ways of delivering financial
aid to the region’s two other monarchies. Moreover, given that the usefulness of foreign mercenaries has become increasingly apparent since the beginning of the Arab Spring, it is likely that Jordan and Morocco—both of which are manpower rich—were viewed as possible suppliers in the event that the Gulf monarchies have to rapidly expand their security services.

Shortly after the summit the Moroccan minister for foreign affairs
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visited Abu Dhabi to convey the ‘…gratitude of King Muhammad to the UAE under the leadership of Sheikh Khalifa for the sincere and fraternal call stated in the final statement of the recent GCC consultative summit for the accession of Morocco to the GCC’. Adding that ‘such a move would further strengthen bilateral ties’, the minister also referred to the ‘…fraternal coordination and cooperation that bind us with these countries since a long time at all levels’, despite Morocco having never had any previous formal engagements with the GCC.
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Unsurprisingly, within a few months of this and similar meetings between Jordanian officials and GCC representatives, an announcement was made in September 2011 that the GCC would be funding a five year development programme in Jordan and Morocco. Finalised in December 2011 with $2.5 billion being allocated to each state, the deal was viewed by some analysts as being a ‘…consolidation of monarchies that are solidly Sunni’ and with the ‘…attraction [for the Gulf monarchies] being assistance… from [Jordan’s] well-trained military’.
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Similarly Reuters reported that the deal reflected the Gulf monarchies’ need for ‘…closer ties with Arab kingdoms outside the Gulf as part of efforts to contain the pro-democracy unrest that is buffeting autocratic ruling elites throughout the Arab world’.
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Bahrain: rage and revolution

Bahrain, unsurprisingly, has been the biggest flashpoint in the Persian Gulf since the onset of the Arab Spring. As one of the poorest of the monarchies and, beset by a long history of sectarianism, its ruling family has had to contend with almost all of the mounting pressures discussed in this book. On the back of the Egyptian revolution, the Bahraini protests saw an estimated 150,000 nationals streaming onto the streets of Manama following an initial ‘day of rage’, on 14 February 2011.
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Organised by various youth groups, rather than established political societies,
the size and strength of this movement took many by surprise. Although the majority of the protestors were Shia—understandable given the long-running discrimination they have faced and their reduced economic opportunities—there were also many Sunni participants,
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with slogans of ‘No Sunni, No Shia, Just Bahraini’ being chanted.
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Calling for the fulfilment of the 2001 National Action Charter, these early demonstrations were not specifically aiming to topple the ruling Al-Khalifa family, but were more modestly focused on getting the government to deliver on earlier promises of political reform and the release of political prisoners. With surprising vigour, however, the Bahraini security services clamped down heavily on the protests, deploying teargas, water cannons, and even live ammunition. The Pearl Roundabout monument—a focal point for the first wave of protests—was even bulldozed in March 2011, despite it representing a key period of Bahrain’s history. Clearly fearing a revolutionary landmark such as Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the rubble around the roundabout was cordoned off, and at least thirty well-established Shia mosques and other religious structures in the kingdom were similarly destroyed—officially on the grounds that they were operating without licences.
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