After the Sheikhs

by Davidson, Christopher

  In much the same way as the Islamist groups, some opposition movements in the region, especially in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia—where there are substantial Shia populations—are now being branded both as terrorists and as part of some greater plot to further Iran’s interests in the Gulf monarchies. Linked to growing hawkishness towards Iran, this has been another relatively straightforward and convenient mechanism in these states with which to portray opponents—no matter how peaceful—as being dangerous fifth column movements serving a foreign power or entity. Again this has allowed the monarchies to discredit opponents in the eyes of other citizens, while also allowing them to demonstrate their willingness to support Western policies on Iran. Frequently in Bahrain, for example, the government has claimed that the opposition is either being funded by Iran or is receiving weapons or other logistical support. In May 2011 military officials claimed that the opposition was made up of ‘traitors and saboteurs’ who were drawing ‘…guidance lines from Iran that drew the acts of sabotage and barbarism in the kingdom’.17 And even following the publication of an independent report into Bahrain’s crackdown in November 2011—as discussed below—which concluded that the ‘Iranians are [merely] propagandists and that they can’t be expected not to take advantage of the situation’ and that ‘…to say they were funding, agitating… we found no evidence of this’, Bahraini government officials still claimed that there was a link, stating that they had ‘evidence you cannot touch or see physically, but we know it is there’.18

  Modernising forces

  Since the beginning of the oil era and the rapid socio-economic transformation of the Gulf monarchies, many of the modernising forces impacting on the region were, as described, expected to lead to significant political openings or, at least, more conscious and demanding national populations. In many ways what happened instead was the careful control or in some cases even harnessing of these forces by the regimes. Despite massively improved access and a large number of schools and universities being established, educational curricula have usually been tightly monitored or even shaped to support directly the state or the ruling family in question. This has usually led to skewed or inaccurate history being taught in the region, the absence of some fields of political science and law from university faculties, and a reliance on self-censoring, often expatriate, staff in these institutions. Similarly, with regards to communications, the Gulf monarchies have invested considerable resources and efforts in finding ways to censor interactions between their citizens and between their citizens and other parties. As such, each new communications technology that has become available in the region has either been sponsored by the state (for example the state-backed newspapers, radio stations, and television stations), or—if that proved difficult—has been blocked (such as unpalatable foreign newspapers, unwanted foreign radio and television signals, satellite broadcasts, and foreign books).

  A case can even be made that the internet itself—predicted by many to lead to sweeping changes in such tightly controlled societies—was also successfully co-opted by the Gulf monarchies, at least in the early days. The blocking of offensive websites, including blogs critical of the regimes, has occurred, while many other basic internet communications methods such as email or messenger software can either be blocked or—more usefully—monitored by the state so as to provide information and details on opponents and opposition movements.19 Moreover, some Gulf monarchies have actively exploited internet communications, and arguably done so much better than most governments in developed states, with an array of ‘E-Government’ website services having been launched—most of which allow citizens to feel more closely connected to government departments and thus help echo the earlier era of direct, personal relations between the rulers and ruled.20 Meanwhile, as demonstrated, the rulers themselves have often established presences on the internet, and their self-glorifying websites usually also feature discussion fora to facilitate interaction between themselves (or rather their employees) and the general public. Many other lesser ruling family members, ministers, police chiefs, and other establishment figures in the region have also set up interactive Twitter feeds and Facebook fan sites for the same purposes, and some of these are now ‘followed’ by thousands of citizens and other well-wishers. The ruler of Dubai’s Twitter feed, for example, exceeded one million subscribers in July 2012. Tweeting on this success, he emphasised the participatory nature of the software: ‘Together we came up with many social, humanitarian and cultural initiatives and I have personally benefited from your constructive thoughts. Thank you all, and I hope that we take our communication and interaction to the next level soon, for the good of our communities’.21

  More recently a wave of new internet technologies—often loosely bundled under the banner of ‘Web 2.0’ applications—seems to be finally having the kind of impact on the region’s access to education and communications that would have been predicted or desired by the earlier modernisation theorists. Popularly defined as ‘facilitating participatory information sharing, interoperability, and user-centred design’ these applications allow users to connect to each other using ‘social media’ based on content created by themselves in co-operation with other users, rather than simply retrieving information from the internet in the format that is presented to them. Among the best examples of such applications are the more recent incarnations of Facebook, which is now no longer just focused on personal pages and fan sites but has become home to thousands of active discussion groups; the more recent versions of Twitter, which is now host to thousands of third party applications that aid users in finding and following the most appropriate content and personalities based on their interests; and YouTube, which allows regular users to upload, share, and comment on videos from their mobile phones, or even create their own television channels. While these and other Web 2.0 applications can still be blocked in their entirety by cautious regimes, this is now unlikely to happen in the Gulf monarchies as the inevitable outcry from the large numbers of users would be difficult or perhaps impossible to appease.

  Inevitably these applications are being increasingly used to host discussions, videos, pictures, cartoons, and newsfeeds that criticise ruling families, highlight corruption in governments, and emphasise the need for significant political reform or even revolution in the Persian Gulf. Leading opposition figures are now attracting as many followers on these applications (often anonymous Gulf nationals) as members of ruling families. While there have been some attempts by regimes to counterattack against this cyber opposition, often by deploying fake social media profiles so as to threaten genuine users, or by establishing ‘honey pot’ websites to lure in activists and help reveal their identity, for the most part the applications are effectively bypassing censorship controls and the mechanisms used to control earlier modernising forces. As such they are facilitating an unprecedented set of horizontal connections forming between Gulf nationals and between Gulf nationals and outside parties—connections which are crucially now beyond the jurisdiction or interference of the ruling families and their security services.

  The exact role played by Web 2.0 applications, social media, and other such modernising forces in the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions is still not clear, as at present it is unknown what proportion of the populations of North Africa, Yemen, and Syria actually had access to the internet or were using it for revolutionary purposes. Indeed, some have argued that Web 2.0 applications did not lead to ‘Revolutions 2.0’ as not everybody was internet-savvy in these countries and that the abtal al-keyboard or ‘keyboard heroes’ of the Arab world may have posted many angry messages online but did not necessarily take part in street protests.22 Nevertheless, many observers do hold the view that the very recent internet-led expansion of the Arab youth’s public sphere has been of enormous consequence and was certainly an ‘important instrument added to the protest toolbox’.23 In January 2011, for example, the newly installed Tunisian minister for Youth and Sports claimed that ‘…in reality we have been ready, we pe
ople of the internet, for a revolution to start anywhere in the Arab World’. Stressing the interconnectedness made possible by the Web 2.0 applications, he stated that ‘we’ve been supporting each other and trying hard since a long time, and you know how important the internet was for the revolution’.24 Indeed, in both Tunisia and Egypt human rights defenders and activists were believed to be using social media and proxy websites, often hosted in other countries, to keep track of the repression taking place and to keep countering inaccuracies reported by the state-backed media.

  In many ways claims of a direct link between opposition activity and Web 2.0 applications in the Gulf monarchies appear much stronger than in North Africa, as the considerably higher internet and smart phone penetration and usage rates in these relatively more developed states indicate that most Gulf nationals—and the overwhelming majority of the younger generation—not only have the necessary access to such technologies, but are also well acquainted with their capabilities. As regards internet-enabled phones, for example, four of the Gulf monarchies now have the highest per capita penetration rates in the world, with 1030 for every 1000 persons in Bahrain, 1000 per 1000 in the UAE, 939 per 1000 in Kuwait, and 882 per 1000 in Qatar. This compares with an OECD average of only 785 per 1000.25 In 2011 it was also reported that high speed broadband internet subscriptions had risen massively in the region, with 50,000 new subscribers over the first half of the year in the UAE alone, taking the country’s total number of internet-enabled households to about 1.3 million. Over the next few years the penetration rate will continue to increase, as will the quality of access, with many of the Gulf monarchies having invested heavily in fibre optic networks. Interviewed in summer 2011, the chairman26 of the UAE’s largest state-backed telecommunications provider27 even claimed that the UAE was going to be ‘one of the top five connected countries in the world’ following government investments of more than $15 billion in such networks.28

  Web 2.0 and social media usage in the region is a little harder to measure, nevertheless most indications are that it is increasingly rapidly. An April 2011 report published by the Governance and Innovation Program at the Dubai School of Government claimed that the total number of Arab Facebook users had increased by 30 per cent in the first quarter of that year, bringing the total to over 27 million.29 Only a year later, in May 2012, Facebook’s operating company announced that it had reached 45 million users in the region, with a penetration rate of about 67 per cent, and had decided to open a regional office in Dubai.30 Significantly, the 2011 report claimed that over 70 per cent of Arab users were in the age bracket of fifteen to twenty-nine years of age. It also estimated that there were over 1 million active Twitter users in the Arab world, who had collectively posted over 22 million tweets during the first quarter of 2011. Significantly the report claimed that the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, together with the Lebanon were the five leading countries in the region in terms of the proportion of their population using social media, with over 400,000 Twitter users in Saudi Arabia and 200,000 Twitter users in the UAE. It was also estimated that there were about 4 million Facebook users in Saudi Arabia, and that over 50 per cent of the UAE’s population was using Facebook, while 36 per cent and 30 per cent of Qatar and Bahrains’ populations were using Facebook. Claims were also made in the 2011 that there had been a ‘substantial shift in the use of social media from social purposes towards civic and political action’ in the region, with social media usage being perceived by many of the report’s interviewees as being ‘mainly for organising people, disseminating information and raising awareness about… social movements’. Interestingly, the majority of Tunisian and Egyptian interviewees also argued that their ousted regimes’ attempts to block social media access ‘…actually provided a boost to the [opposition] movements, spurring protesters to more decisive and creative action’.31

  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’.32

  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’33—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’34 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’.35 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 201136 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’.37

  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.38 And a UAE national39 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.40 Two weeks after protests began in Egypt, the UAE’s minister for foreign affairs41 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 Dhabi42 had stated earlier in the week that ‘…the UAE rejects all foreign attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Egypt’.43 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…’44 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’.45