After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (4 page)

In Herb’s terms the result has been the emergence of ‘dynastic monarchies’, especially in the Persian Gulf. These dynasties, as they continue to expand with an ever-growing number of junior princes and sheikhs, have in some cases become self-regulating proto-institutions,
⁴⁰
perhaps providing some of the strength and stability normally associated with large-scale single-party political systems, such as those in East Asia. Certainly, as the Gulf monarchies’ oil-rich economies have boomed and state functions expanded, more high profile business and governmental positions have been created, and the most prudent Arab monarchs have distributed these as ‘consolation prizes’ to powerful members of their extended families. In this scenario, it is reasoned, any renegade family
member will find it difficult to destabilise the monarchy or launch a
coup d’état
, as most relatives will side with the established authority, preferring not to lose their prominent places within the regime. Backed by case studies from across the region, Herb demonstrated that the more resilient monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE had followed these strategies very closely, while other, swiftly deposed, monarchs such as Libya’s king
⁴¹
had failed to do so.
⁴²

But given the survival of other, non-dynastic traditional monarchies, most notably Oman—whose ruler
⁴³
has strongly resisted such powersharing measures
⁴⁴
—and the dynastic monarchy explanation’s lack of emphasis on wealth distribution and social contracts, does it really explain regime longevity? Moreover, the ultimately unsuccessful attempts in Arab republics to implement Gulf-style dynastic rule for themselves also seem to undermine the explanation.
⁴⁵
After all, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Syria’s Hafez Al-Assad, and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi all sought to position their sons as successors while placating other relatives with important regime posts. But, as the events of 2011 and 2012 have demonstrated, even these ‘monarchical presidencies’ or
jamlaka
have proven to be very brittle.
⁴⁶

The second alternative explanation is much less convincing, although it is still regularly advanced by spokesmen for the Gulf monarchies to explain the latter’s continuing lack of meaningful reform. Based on vague notions that international concepts of pluralism and political freedom are inimical to the region, regime mouthpieces usually claim that democracy just won’t work, due to special characteristics, or
khususiyya
, such as tribal heritage and religious beliefs. Or they simply state that their countries are too young and thus ‘not ready’ for such changes. In this manner the Gulf monarchies have usually portrayed themselves as exceptions, thereby encouraging a ‘re-orientalisation’ of the region in the eyes of their observers, critics, and even their own citizens.

Before 2011, when attempts at political reforms or the staging of elections within other authoritarian Middle East states often failed, the most autocratic of the Gulf monarchies were usually quick to alert their populations to the dangers of democracy and the fundamental incompatibility of such systems with the supposed anthropological reality of the Arabian Peninsula. Given its proximity, Iran’s various flawed elections and the resulting violence have been useful examples, but even easier to exploit have been Kuwait’s troubled experiences with democracy. As the
only Gulf monarchy which has a functioning, although very limited parliament, Kuwait’s system has long been distrusted by its monarchical neighbours, and the many problems it has faced have often been used to justify autocracy elsewhere in the region and warn against the perils of representative government. Such warnings have usually appeared as commentary pieces in the state-backed media, or even in official governmental statements and speeches. Following an especially problematic period in Kuwaiti politics in April 2010, Dubai’s ruler and the UAE’s unelected prime minister
⁴⁷
stated to the media that ‘Our leadership does not import ready-made models that may be valid for other societies but are certainly not suitable for our society’.
⁴⁸
Speaking in December 2011 in an interview with CNN he repeated his argument by stating that ‘we have our own democracy; you cannot transport your democracy to us’.
⁴⁹

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
Abu Dhabi’s crown prince
⁵¹
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

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
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
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

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
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.

1
STATE FORMATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

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.

Origins of the Gulf monarchies

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’.
¹
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’,
²
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.
³
Although defeated by an Ottoman-backed Egyptian force in the early nineteenth century,
⁴
the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance soon returned to power, controlling even more of central Arabia by the end of the century.
⁵

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.
⁶
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.

Kuwait’s history is somewhat different, as religion has played a less prominent role while—as a much smaller territory—relations with foreign powers have been more significant. Nevertheless, as with the Al-Saud dynasty, Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah family is also very much a product of
centuries-old tribal struggles. As a branch of the huge Bani Utub tribal federation, the Al-Sabah had migrated north out of the Arabian interior in the late seventeenth century along with another prominent Bani Utub family, the Al-Khalifa. Both settled in the fishing and trading post of Kuwait, before the latter left for the settlement of Zubarah on the Qatari Peninusla in 1766.
⁷
By this stage the Al-Sabah were in firm control of Kuwait, and their ruler—Abdullah Al-Sabah—spent the next four decades consolidating his family’s supremacy over the sheikhdom’s political and economic affairs. In the nineteenth century Kuwait remained autonomous of the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance, mostly due to the Al-Sabah receiving nominal protection from the Ottoman Empire.

Under the rule of Mubarak Al-Sabah, also known as ‘Mubarak the Great’, Kuwait nevertheless began to move much closer to Britain, eventually signing an agreement in 1899 which guaranteed the sheikhdom British protection in exchange for London’s control over its foreign affairs. In part this new relationship was due to Mubarak’s troubled succession in 1886: having replaced his assassinated elder brother
⁸
he needed to counter the Ottoman links still maintained by his predecessor’s supporters.
⁹
On a more macro level the switch in protection was also due to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and was intended to improve access to British-Indian markets, especially in pearls, which at that time were Kuwait’s most lucrative export. In any case, Ottoman influence greatly decreased, although subsequent Al-Sabah rulers briefly tried to use relations with Istanbul during the First World War as leverage over Britain.
¹⁰
In the early 1920s, relations with Britain deepened further following a Saudi-Wahhabi attack on Kuwait’s Jahra fort
¹¹
which resulted in the deployment of British gunboats and the crafting of a British-backed border agreement between the Al-Sabah, the Al-Saud, and Britain’s mandated territory of Iraq.
¹²