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

Closely connected to this re-orientalisation explanation, the Gulf monarchies have similarly cautioned that if democracy was to be implanted in the region then certain unsavoury groups — the usual suspects being Islamic fundamentalists — would seize power. In recent years, and especially since 9/11 and subsequent terror threats, this has been a fairly convincing justification of autocratic power, not only for citizens, but also for the international community and above all the United States. In this sense, the Gulf monarchies have been following much the same line as the collapsing Arab republics, which, according to Jean-Pierre Filiu’s The Arab Revolution: Ten Lessons from the Democratic Uprising , published in 2011, sought to ‘spread the idea that the state’s mission is to defend the supposedly unified nature of the state and the Islamic community’. [50] 50. Filiu (2011), p. 58. Abu Dhabi’s crown prince [51] 51. Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. provides a good insight into the strategy, having been recorded in a 2006 US diplomatic cable referencing a meeting with US diplomats as stating that ‘if there were an election [in the UAE] tomorrow, the Muslim Brotherhood would take over’. [52] 52. Wikileaks, US Embassy Abu Dhabi, 29 April 2006.

As much of this book demonstrates, it is unlikely that such justifications will remain effective for much longer, especially if the Gulf monarchies end up being bordered by post-Arab Spring states that hold successful elections and carefully integrate Islamic parties into the democratic process. Even prior to 2011 some Gulf nationals had begun to speak out on this issue, with a Saudi intellectual [53] 53. Abdullah Al-Ghaddami. claiming in 2010 that the autocratic Gulf monarchies would always seek to brand the strongest opposition force, whether made up of Islamists or others, as an obstacle to progress. Moreover, he stated that if Saudi Arabia had held elections forty years ago then the fear-mongering would have focused on ‘socialists and leftists… since that was predominant then. Now it’s the Islamists… democracy cannot impose results that it wants. That’s another form of dictatorship’. Similarly, writing in 2010 on the UAE’s stance, a since imprisoned blogger [54] 54. Ahmed Mansour Al-Shehhi. argued that ‘Kuwait is an enlightening example in the region and it should stay glowing despite the pressure that anti-democracy governments exert on it’. [55] 55. Reuters, 24 June 2010.

Nevertheless, up until 2011 the commentarial and scholarly consensus on the Gulf monarchies, and the Arab world more broadly, subscribed heavily to both the need for re-orientalising the region and an appreciation of the dangers posed by Islamists and opposition groups via the democratic process. Published in 2010, Morten Valbjørn and André Bank’s article ‘Examining the Post in Post-Democratization: The Future of Middle Eastern Political Rule through Lenses of the Past’ serves as a particularly good example. Valbjǿrn and Bank discuss Huntington’s predicted ‘Third Wave of Democratisation’ and how it seemed to peter out in the 1990s, having impacted only on Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Africa, without really reaching the Middle East. They then demonstrate that much of the subsequent literature on Arab politics either ignored the possibility of democracy in the Middle East, or wrote it off as a result of an ‘inherently undemocratic Islamic culture’ and the region being ‘eternally out of step with history’. [56] 56. Valbjørn, Morten, and Bank, André, ‘Examining the Post in Post-Democratization: The Future of Middle Eastern Political Rule through Lenses of the Past’, Middle East Critique , Vol. 19, No. 3, 2010, pp. 185–186. As the latter parts of this book will demonstrate, for many years this has been a convenient but badly flawed explanatory device for swathes of the academic and diplomatic community, especially when it comes to discussing the Gulf monarchies.

Five of the Gulf monarchies only came into existence, at least as independent states, in the twentieth century, with Saudi Arabia being forged from a powerful hinterland alliance of religious and tribal forces, and with Kuwait and the smaller sheikhdoms emerging from the protection of the British Empire. The Sultanate of Oman, once a modest trading empire with territories stretching from East Africa to South Asia, has a much longer history but nonetheless also one heavily influenced by foreign powers, religion, and tribal politics.

These early interactions with outside forces, especially Britain, were incredibly significant in the shaping of the Gulf monarchies’ political and economic structures, many of which remain in place today and were prototypes of the contemporary rentier state. The period of state formation and independence also matters, as the new governing institutions set up at this time were often along the described neo-patriarchal lines. In parallel, the remarkable economic development trajectories of the six states deserve much attention. Especially the fast growth of their oil and gas industries, the emergence of sizeable sovereign wealth funds, and the more recent efforts to diversify their economic bases by establishing manufacturing sectors, export-processing zones, tourism industries, financial hubs, and even real estate markets. Unsurprisingly this has led the Gulf monarchies to pursue a number of different paths, often as a result of varying levels of resources and diverging economic realities.

In 1744 an historic pact was made in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula between a powerful tribe from the province of Najd — led by Muhammad bin Saud — and the followers of the influential preacher, Muhammad bin Abd Al-Wahhab. Preaching a more purified brand of Islam — a doctrine of pure monotheism and a return to the fundamental tenets of Islam as laid down by the Koran — the Wahhabis were Unitarians, emphasising the ‘centrality of God’s unqualified oneness in Sunni Islam’. [57] 1. Peck, Malcolm, The United Arab Emirates: A Venture in Unity (Boulder: Westview, 1986), pp. 29–30. Seeking to renew the Prophet’s golden era of Islam, all who stood in their way were to be swept aside, including Islamic rulers with ‘impure’ lives, and especially those that collaborated with foreign, non-Islamic powers such as Britain. Ultimately led by the Al-Saud dynasty following Al-Wahhab’s death, they had become a ‘religio-military confederacy under which the desert people, stirred by a great idea, embarked on a common action’, [58] 2. Hawley, Donald, The Trucial States (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 96–97. and sought constant expansion in the manner of the original Islamic concept of dar al-harb or ‘territory of war’—referring to the conquering of non-Islamic lands. [59] 3. Belgrave, Charles, The Pirate Coast (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1966), p. 25. Although defeated by an Ottoman-backed Egyptian force in the early nineteenth century, [60] 4. The defeat took place in 1818. the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance soon returned to power, controlling even more of central Arabia by the end of the century. [61] 5. For a full discussion of the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance see Commins, David, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: IB Tauris, 2009).

In the early twentieth century, having fought off challenges from the Al-Rashid family from the northern province of Hail, the Al-Saud’s most celebrated leader — Abdul-Aziz bin Saud — consolidated Saudi-Wahhabi control over Riyadh, the dynasty’s capital, and the rest of the Najd province. Soon after, Abdul-Aziz extended his influence to the eastern province of Al-Hasa and eventually the western province of Hejaz, which had formerly been ruled by the British-backed Emir of Mecca, Sharif Hussein — to whom London had earlier promised an independent Arabian kingdom in return for his support for British operations against the Ottomans in the First World War. [62] 6. Bin Ali had initiated the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. See Teitelbaum, Joshua, The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia (London: Hurst, 2001), p. 243. By 1932, with continuing support from the religious, Wahhabi establishment, Abdul-Aziz was in de facto control of most of the Arabian Peninsula and named his new kingdom — Saudi Arabia — after his own family and ancestors.