Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

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’ [829] 33. This was Al-Sheikh’s initial reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture on 12 September 2006. —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’ [830] 34. Asharq Al-Awsat , 5 February 2011. 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’. [831] 35. Al-Masry Al-Youm , 10 April 2011. 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 [832] 36. BBC News, 22 February 2011. 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’. [833] 37. Reuters, 27 April 2011. Quoting Shadi Hamid, an analyst at the Brookings Center in Qatar and Theodore Karasik, a defence analyst based in Dubai.

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. [834] 38. Gulf News , 28 January 2011. And a UAE national [835] 39. Hassan Muhammad Hassan Al-Hammadi. 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. [836] 40. Amnesty International press release, 9 February 2011. Two weeks after protests began in Egypt, the UAE’s minister for foreign affairs [837] 41. Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. 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 [838] 42. Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. had stated earlier in the week that ‘…the UAE rejects all foreign attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Egypt’. [839] 43. The National , 9 February 2011. 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…’ [840] 44. Reuters, 27 April 2011. 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’. [841] 45. Ahram , 30 April 2011. Quoting Khalaf Al-Habtoor.

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’. [842] 46. Al-Masry Al-Youm , 23 May 2011. 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, [843] 47. Dahi Khalfan Al-Tamim. 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’. [844] 48. BBC News, 31 July 2012. 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’. [845] 49. WAM , 11 April 2011.

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 Co-operation 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.